The "difficulty" of marriage.

Let me start off by saying that I am no expert in this. Cory and I have been married only 1 year and 7 months, so (Lord-willing) we still have a LONG way to go in this marriage thing. However, even with my limited experience and limited knowledge of marriage, I wanted to give you some encouragement..especially for those who are either engaged or hoping to get married sometime in the future.

Before we got married, I can't tell you how many people told us "Run away while you can!", "Do you REALLY want to do this?!", "You're too young, don't get tied down already", "Marriage is so hard, you're going to want to give up", etc. We were told that especially during the first year we would fight a lot and that it would be really, really hard. Almost all of the advice we got was how to fight (which is definitely very valuable advice) but from how often we heard it I thought we would be fighting all of the time.

Needless to say, after hearing all of this, I was beyond TERRIFIED. I was honestly wondering why on earth people got married if it was so difficult and terrible all the time. It gave me a really negative view of what our marriage was going to look like, especially for that first year.

Here we are 1 year and 7 months later and I am so thankful to God to be able to say that marriage does not have to be like that. I am NOT saying that we have never disagreed and there have definitely been arguments, but even despite many huge life changes and struggles we have encountered so far, we have not had an all out war in our home as I thought would be the case from what others told us. I often wonder if we are doing something wrong- and maybe we are- but we've found marriage to be a whole lot easier than what we expected.

I think that a lot of it is about your attitude and where your focus lies. Marriage is about God and glorifying Him (not about you) and keeping that in mind is so important. Most of our arguments are centered around our selfishness and a lot of that can be eliminated when focus is placed on God and serving your spouse.

Here are some verses we have found to be helpful:

Proverbs 17:14 "The beginning of strife is like letting out water, so quit before the quarrel breaks out."

Ephesians 4:26-27 "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil."

Ephesians 4:1-3 "I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Ephesians 5:22, 25-29 "Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord...Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present that church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church..."

Philippians 2:1-5 "So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus."

...and those are just a few of the many that I could have put on here.

Some practical things that we've found helpful in our marriage:

• Pray for & with each other daily
• Do Bible study together
• Make time for uninterrupted date nights- no computers, TV, iPhones, kids, etc
• Talk!- once again without computers, TV, iPhones, kids, etc. Share your dreams, your successes, your failures, and even the little (and seemingly unimportant) details of your day.
• Don't allow your arguments to linger. Talk about and take care of disagreements right away. (Eph. 4:26-27) 
• Admit when you were wrong and ask for forgiveness (this is difficult!)

If you aren't married yet, you can still prepare for these things. Stay in the Word. Pray for your attitude and the attitude of your future spouse. Take care of arguments with friends/family immediately, because that verse doesn't apply to only marriages but it will prepare you for doing the same with your spouse.

My intention is not to brag on us- because we definitely don't have it all figured out and we fail often, but I wanted to write this to encourage you that marriage is a huge blessing from God and one to rejoice in, not something that you have to be scared about like I was.

If things are currently rough in your marriage, don't lose heart. Through Christ, things can change. Repent. Dig into the Bible with your spouse to study what God says about marriage. Pray, pray, and pray some more!

Please let me know how we can pray for you and for your marriage (or future marriage).

Moving...again!

If you looked at how many times I have moved in the past 7 years (6 times!), you would think that I LOVE moving. Its just not true. Packing your whole life into boxes time and time again gets very old. Its nice to get a fresh start and be able to go through everything we own in order to get rid of stuff, but its just not very fun to pack!

However, we are getting a great reward at the end...our very first home! We are super, super excited that the Lord has placed this opportunity in front of us and allowed us to go through the home buying process so smoothly.

So, for all who have not yet seen...THIS is our new home (unofficially since we haven't gone through closing yet-as of now it will be March 18)!

We fell in love from the moment we stepped inside.
We can't wait to get settled in and start making it "ours"! I see lots of painting in our future... ;)

Just wanted to give you this little update. More pictures will come once we get those keys in our hands next month!

Please forgive me.

I have been absolutely terrible about updating this.

Not to make excuses (but I'm going to anyway), we have had 2 broken computers and have been traveling quite a bit. If we weren't traveling, I was busy at work, so it just didn't get done!

But hopefully things will slow down a little bit and we will be more on a "set schedule" for at least a little while.

Things have been awesome for us- we got to go to Florida for Christmas, which was such a huge blessing. We spent 4 days in Pensacola with the Edgar side of the family. Then we spent a week with the Jewett side of the family. A huge bonus was getting to see my brother, sister in law, and niece for the first time in almost 10 years since my brother has been in the Air Force overseas!! And it was Cory's first time meeting them of course! It was great to get to catch up with them, though I wish it could have been longer!

After spending that time with family, we came back to Dallas where I worked for 3 nights, and then we drove straight back to New Orleans for the Sugar Bowl. What a disappointing/embarrassing game that was! BUT we stayed in New Orleans for a few days with Cory's parents, so it made up for it. We got to enjoy the city-especially the beignets and cajun food. We also got to catch up a little with our friends Beth and Josh who are living there now! I love that city-so much good food and a super fun environment.

Now we are back in town for at least the next couple months. Cory has started school again...his third semester believe it or not! Its crazy how fast its going (at least it seems fast to me-it might not feel so fast to Cory ;) ).

Please be praying for us and let us know how we can pray for you :)

Major prayer points:
-My job and Cory's school (as always)
-Wisdom about whether or not to move (still in DFW, of course)