To my dear friend, who has lead a path of faith for me...

To a dear dear friend of mine on the week before her wedding...

You lovely spark of awesomeness you. I'm so very proud, happy, excited, giddy, joyful, peaceful and just overall elated for your big day that is coming up this weekend. On top of all of that I feel so very honored and blessed that you have asked me to be a part of it. Your joy with the man of your dreams has just elated me and seeing your dream come true brings my heart to little melting droplets. I just know it's literally going to be a gross explosion of love for you two this weekend and I can't WAIT to see it! Flashback, about a year and a half ago:

You and I at my wedding...ahhh what a day! Was so happy to see and have you there!
Can't wait for those dresses to be reversed! :) hehe

Before YOUR big day, I thought it would be a good idea to say thank you. Thank you for leading me. Thank you for showing me what faith is. Thank you for being there for prayers, love and support when I've needed it. Thank you for showing me that having faith isn't so weird after all. Thank you for being so strong to put up with my craziness and joking about being a bible bumper. Who would have thought all these years later I'd be a Christ follower with ya? So thank you. You have done more than you know, and as I stand back and watch you grow into a new person with your fiance, and shine even more, I can't help but thank GOD for bringing you into my life.You are beautiful. You are inspiring. You are amazing and you are MY FRIEND! I am SO BLESSED to have you in my life. Another flashback: 
 

One of our fun trips to Duluth. Sick kid, cranky kid, cranky us, apples and a fun football game!

Your faith was always a strong suit, something that intrigued me. It has led me to having faith as well and as you know, growing more than either of us could have imagined. You planted a seed, that seed has sprouted and is now growing inside of me, so no matter how far apart we live, how often we talk or how often we see each other, you will always be a part of me that helps plant seeds into others. Your kind heart will always be a reminder of what it is like to be Christ-like, and your joy in life will always be a reminder of the joy you've given me. Ok, one more flash back...hahaha...

21st birthday, yep...it was awesome!

 Through the years of knowing you my dear friend, we have seen and been through many challenges. One thing has never changed, your belief in me in finding Christ. So again, I stop to thank you, for always having that faith that I would walk the walk with you. Speaking of walk, something you once said has always stayed in my mind:  

"By the way, what no one ever told you about this Christian walk – it doesn’t stop the fact that you’re still the same old spitfire on the inside and now you have to act on the spirit, and not the flesh, even when the flesh wants to tell your coworkers where they can go shove it. Kill ‘em with kindness, oh joy." 

So soooo true. So very happy to have another spitfire to walk with (yes, I'm talking about you)! You are so wise my dear, and again, I'm very blessed to have you as my friend!

I SERIOUSLY can't wait for this weekend! Love you always, and looking forward to many many years ahead of us as friends and as bible bumpers :) 

Here's to you and your lover boy, and many years of happiness to follow! xoxoxoxoxoxoxo!!!

Religion vs. Faith

The other night I was sitting with my Alpha group. We just started a new session last week. (I love love love Alpha, and will plug plug plug for it!! It has changed my life, so if I talk a lot about it, it's because it has been a big role playing factor in my faith journey over the course of the last 3 years.) This week's topic was "Who Is Jesus?"  

Hefty question, ay?

As we got into the conversation, the question came up "what's the difference between Religion and Faith?" 

"Ummm. Wow. What a question," I said. 

As the group began to discuss it a little bit, it really got to me, what IS the difference. How does our society look at Religion and Faith?

Let's first define them, by dictionary terms:

Religion:

1. The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.
2. Details of belief as taught or discussed.

Faith:

1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.
2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.
 

I think so many times in life people get so caught up in what they think is "Religion." Thinking it's simply Christianity. Not realizing "religion" can mean any religion(s). Buddhism, Atheism, Islam, Scientology, the list goes on. Each of which having their own set of "rules" if you will, organized behaviors, their own "God" or power they believe in. Having religion in your life does not automatically put you into a Christian category. My neighbors, whom I love dearly, are Muslim. I look at them and know for a fact that they have a different religion that I do, practice different prayers and have different holidays.

Religion does not equal Christianity. Neither does faith. 

Faith simply refers to trust. Trust in yourself, in  your neighbors or in a God. Trust that the rules you have are correct, that if you follow them good things will happen, or trust that you will live another day. Having faith does not automatically make you a Christian. Going back to my neighbors, when I look at them, I still know that even though they are Muslim, the do have faith in their God. They have faith in heaven and going there. Their faith leads their lives.

Going through these Alpha courses I've run into so many types of religions and people who are all wondering the same thing. What does it mean to have FAITH IN GOD? To have faith in Christianity. To see the journeys and the questions laid in front of me is humbling. To know these people are in a very similar place that I was just a few short years ago. The journey can be long, exhausting and downright hard sometimes. But other times it's so rewarding to have the FAITH of knowing you eventually will go to heaven, to see loved ones, to see Jesus. How amazing will that day be? 

I guess my point of this post is to try and look outside the box. The words faith and religion get tossed around these days. They're important words with strong meanings, it's important we understand what they mean and how they relate to our own walks and journeys...

Baby Steps

Through the hard times, the good times, the bad times, the happy times, the sad times, the fun times and the crazy times; God was always there for me, and for us. In the smallest of ways, and in the biggest. Whether I felt it or not. He always has and always will be there through every step we take. 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6

"When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you." Isaiah 43:2

It's taken me some time to realize this fact, that God is always with you. I can't say it's something I remember EVERY single day either. It's a tough thing to grasp the fact that someone is always with you when you can't see them. Over the past few years I have had the experience of not only feeling, but hearing Him near me, helping me through some really tough situations. Here are a few of them:

Baby step #1: A little over two years ago, I began experience horrific pain in my left "ovary" if you will. These weren't cramps. It felt like someone was actually stabbing me and twisting this knife. During our Alpha course we had a "weekend retreat", which was only one day. This day was amazing though. This was the day that I figured out some sort of reason WHY I was having all of this pain. The word "Fibromyalgia" came up through the "words of wisdom" our leaders had received from prayers. I knew I didn't have this, but later on I had looked up what it was, what some symptoms were and BOOM! There it was. Big letters staring me in the face, ENDOMETRIOSIS. THANK YOU GOD! Something that made sense. This is then when I went to numerous doctors, pretty much got laughed at until finding the doctor who actually believed me, and eventually did my surgery. 


Baby Step #2: During our time at Alpha, my fiance and I had also started looking at houses together. I swear, we had looked at at least 40 of them so far and put in 5 offers. Each offer was more discouraging than the one before. Either something didn't allow us to qualify, or other bids were put in, or the house suddenly went off the market. My dreams were crushed each time as I mentally moved myself into these places. So here we are sitting at one of our last Alpha nights. I really wanted some private prayer with one of my long-time friends so we went into a private and quiet room and just prayed about the house. As she was praying, she said that a "green door" came to her mind. All these red doors, then finally a green one. At first I was kind of like, ok, yeah I get it, I'll eventually find the one we will buy. Little did I know though a seed had planted. That weekend we had 5 or 6 houses on our docket to look at. House 1, no. House 2, no. House 3, no. House 4, NO! House 5, whooooa, green door, literally. The house had a green door! Go in, HECK NO! Worst of them all! So I'm thinking "oh yeah, green door, good clue there God!" House 6...ANOTHER green door. Ok, ok. Shouldn't have spoke so soon right? Well, we go in and instantly I knew that was our home. That "Green Doored" house, was RIGHT where God wanted us. So, we put in our last and final offer on our search for our home.

Baby Step #3: Getting into the house. Whoo! We loved this house. We put less emotion into it though after the experience we had all the others. Things were moving along. We were getting to the point of having our inspection. My fiance is normally the more "level" headed of the two of us. I'm very frantic at times, and he's usually the one saying "calm down, it will be ok". Not the case this time. He was the one freaking out, getting nervous and making a big deal out of the inspection. We just wanted so much for everything to be good on this house. We were ready to have our own home. I knew I could trust God on this one. Let his will be done. So that day, we had our inspection, after prayer and believing he will do what's best, our inspection was passed with flying colors. God did have it. He had it the whole time. 

Baby Step #4: Closing day on our house. Finally! We had finally reached the point of being able to sign all the paperwork for our new home. No joke, that Friday, I had all of my life unpacked from my two 5x10 foot storage units, and put on a Uhaul, and sitting in front of my home to be. We were ready. As we're sitting there, going through every detail of every page and signing numerous times on the dotted line one of the women working there came and told us "well, we aren't able to get ahold of anyone in NY to approve all of this. You may be signing the paperwork tonight, but there's no guarantee of getting you your key." WHAT?!?! NO!!!! I'm ready to moooove! I was freaking out. Because on top of the moving I wanted to do, I also had surgery the next morning at 6am which put me out of "moving condition" for a few weeks. Sitting at the table, I quietly bowed my head and said a little prayer. I don't remember it exactly, but it went a little something like this:
God. Please. Help me. Get me the key to my house. Please.
That's it. Nothing fancy, nothing immaculate. About what felt like forever and a day later the same woman walked in and says "well, someone got it done, congratulations! Here are the keys to your new home." I walked out of there that day in complete disbelief of what had just happened. No one there knew what my prayer was...just that we NEEDED to get into that house that night. God heard me...and he made it happen. (And Here I am, in front of our new home, the day we signed all the papers :) )

Baby Step #5: Our wedding day. This is a whole blog post in itself. But to sum up my post here, this was a big clincher in showing me God's love and what it can do for you if you just give it all to him. He showed me patience, kindness, goodness, love, everything I needed that day for it to be perfect. So that when the perfect man put the perfect ring on my finger, I knew God had a hand in it. I felt it in my heart. We also did what is called a "Unity Cross" rather than sand or candles. We got so many people who said this was amazing, and they could feel the faith in our relationship. This day showed me a lot. God's power. His love. His patience. His humor. It built one GIANT step on my faith ladder. (Unity Cross is the big cross thing in front of us in the picture below. Comes apart as 6 total pieces. (1) Base, (2) outer "man" portion, (3) inner "woman" portion, (4, 5, 6) and 3 pegs that represent the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that bind the marriage all together.)

God has taken a lot of steps with us. At first they started as baby steps. As we grow into our Faith, religion and values those steps are becoming bigger and making bigger impacts on our lives, our children's lives and the people around us.  

Always know he is with you. He is guiding you. If you need help, don't EVER be afraid to ask. 

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth. 
Psalm 121:1-2