Preparing for a Future Valentine

I have been richly blessed lately! Well actually, I have been richly blessed my whole life. Maybe my eyes are just more opened now to the abundant blessings God has given me than they have been at other times in my past. But either way, I am recognizing more and more with each day the ways I have been blessed, and within me is building such a spirit of joy that I can't help but let some of it show! Some may think that I have just reason to not be joyful. I could, as it is easy for the human nature to do, quickly come up with a list why my life is hard, why I might be sad, or how horrible it is to be in my shoes. But who wants to read a list like that? No, instead, I would love to tell you about how God has blessed me in the daily living, and the joy that has brought me! Take yesterday for example. I woke at about 6 am. Determined to have a productive day, I got out of my bed and walked out into my little sitting area with my bible. Blessing #1 of the day was some delicious c

I can't fall asleep. Like literally laid there for a full hour or more, and nothing doing. I then read, which will usually make me sleepy; if I am laying down and reading. But nothing doing. I am not really an insomniac at all, so this is not normal. Not sure why God has me up tonight. But as I was reading, a character in my book was teaching something to a group of college students. And he did it in a way that was engaging and had all of their attention and got them all excited, and I loved reading that. I thought it was amazing the way he presented his content, and made me really want to do something similar. I felt like getting up and telling the world. A passion has been slowly growing in me lately to be more purposeful about sharing the gospel and the work that God has done and is doing with others. Like I said, it has been slow in growing, but it has been there. But tonight it burst! Like big time. I am extremely excited, and I am not even sure what I am exc

So two years ago on Valentine's Day I had this new vision for life. It dramatically changed the way I looked at life and at relationships. You can read more about that experience in my About Me section. I then started a blog about it! Here I have chronicled my adventures in preparing for a future valentine. And last year I had my first official Valentine's Day while blogging. Blog Post: Valentine's Day . In that post I said that though I was still not in a relationship with a man, I was in a wonderful relationship with Jesus. And I laid out in a unique way the "flowers," "chocolates," and "cards" that I had received from him. But this year is a little different for me. I have a Valentine this year! I love to tell people our story, and even wrote a whole post about it titled Exceedingly and Abundantly More. I also wrote an allegorical post about my personal story and the way the story of Kyle and I weaved into it. Redeemed Friend of the

Many of you may have heard of this new fad going around called Trim Healthy Mama. Everybody seems to be doing it. Even gals who aren't "mama"s are doing it. And yes, that includes my mother as well as a bunch of other female friends in my near area. I think Trim Healthy Mama makes a lot of sense. It really does. But it also seems like a lot of work to me, especially when I am still kind of stilted as I am not buying my own food but eating as my family does with maybe a few things thrown in that I purchase with spare funds here or there. And if I want to make myself a dessert, I have to have unusual flours, sugars, and gums on hand. Coconut flour, oat flour, stevia, xanthum gum, etc, etc, etc. So me doing THM(as it is usually abbreviated) sounds just a tad unattainable at the moment. So I decided to pick one large step, as my body has not been behaving up to speed lately, and it also is not doing all that a female body should be doing regularly. What was my "la