The Process of being Human

Two weeks ago today, I was standing on the other side of a door wearing a white dress, holding a bouquet, and wanting so badly to peek through the blinds to see my fiance standing at the other end of the aisle. 

Oh the adrenaline. Thankfully, I successfully walked down the aisle, under the gaze of 200 or so guests, without incident to meet the man who would soon become my husband. 

Jana Kay Photography

What a picture of beauty and perfection. Even with all of the little things that went wrong, no one could look at our wedding, at our union, and say that it was not a pleasing and good thing. God's will is always pleasing, good, and perfect (Rom. 12:2). On that day, I could feel God's mercy radiating down on me like never before, making me the happiest bride there ever was. :)

Fast forward two weeks.

People ask me how it feels to be married now... I tell them it is wonderful, and it is! Ryan and I sharpen one another, as  Proverbs 27:17 says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." In my last post, "Perfect Love", I talked about how unperfect we both are, and how the Lord uses that to continually make us more like Him.

Jana Kay Photography

This is a process that will endure until the day that we die. As Philippians 1:6 reads, "...[be] confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completiong until the day of Christ Jesus."

The trap is forgetting that this is an ongoing process. Unfortunately I didn't wake up the day after getting married to realize, "Oh my goodness, now I am the perfect wife!" Instead, what I have found is that I am completely and utterly HUMAN! And thus incapable of such perfection.
Well rats.

Wrong. I need to remember that it is a process that requires first transformation by the Lord and second continual renewing by the Holy Spirit. Messing up doesn't mean I have failed, it is merely a reminder that He who began a good work in me is still working on me! Thank God there is hope for me when I turn making spaghetti dinner into a three hour process!!

source

Romans 12:2: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing, and perfect will."

Patterns of this world =  relying on myself to meet my needs. My needs are basically summed up by Genesis 3:16, "'...Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.'" I want Ryan to be happy. I want him to come home from work every day to a clean apartment, a delicious dinner, and a flawless wife, but I'm not perfect. (This is a shocker, I know.) I have to realize that Ryan's love for me, because it is grounded in Christ, will never fail, just as God's love and mercy never fail.

Saint Augustine beautifully explained it in these words, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it find its rest in thee." I can't be the perfect wife. I can't always be good or pleasing to Ryan. But both of us are constantly in the process of being renewed by the Holy Spirit, and because of that, we can find rest for our restless hearts. ♥

Jana Kay Photography

Perfect Love

My goodness, how life can change in the blink of an eye.

It seems that it was just a couple months ago that I was weeping over my heart being broken by a silly boy who I had crushed on for about three years. I can still remember the day I met my friend, Jessy, but I can't exactly remember the first time I met her brother. Back then I never saw what was coming, but everything has been such a beautiful picture of how God's plan for our lives is so far superior to our own.

On May 2nd, my boyfriend of then ten months, asked me a very important question. 

The past year has been a whirlwind in which I have had to hold on tightly to God's word and His promises at all times. Like those old merry-go-rounds at the park where someone would spin you and you'd have to hang on for dear life, if I let go for just one moment and decide to lean on my own wisdom (apart from God's), the result would be a painful landing and a stabbing regret.

As much as this falling sucks, it is the most vivid example of how deeply we need a Savior. Before we even started dating, Ryan and I were strong Christians, but this relationship thing has shown us that we knew nothing! How humbling is that?? 

We make each other the most angry and the most happy; we are the cause of the most joy and the most pain for one another; we have to come togther but keep God as the center or else we have nothing to hold us together. Love is a kind of paradox that makes no sense unless you look at it through the eyes of Jesus.

There are times when being engaged is the scariest thing in the world. There is this other person for whom you will soon be responsible, to love, to care, to feed, to give shelter...

1 John 4:18 says, "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives our fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." This verse causes a lump to rise in my throat because it strikes so close to home.

It is very true that there is no fear in love, but it is also true that perfect love cannot derrive from anything I can create. Perfect love can only come from one place, as anything perfect ever can. The only way to find this perfect love is to go to your knees.

Ryan likes for us to pray together on our knees, and as strange as it was to me at first, I now see that it is engaging your entire body in a posture that asks for grace and mercy. A begging position. That is what we are, after all. Beggars.

"You make beautiful things, you make beautiful things out of the dust. You are making me new." Those words from the Gungor song are so true. The dust that is our lives is made new by the Lord when we ask Him for grace and forgiveness. 

It is only through this perfect love that Ryan and I can experience no fear in our relationship, and that is not by anything that he or I have done, but it has everything to do with how great a God we have!