Weekend in Nashville

With our dear friend Rebekah

Ezra enjoying the beautiful weather!!

Jake and Marya doing some climbing.

They have a great time together.

Gosh, she looks so old. How can I slow it down?

It was so great to visit Rebekah in Nashville this weekend. WE miss her all the time. We went to some awesome parks and ate some great food, and enjoyed some beautiful weather. We did not want to leave.

Heartache

Each day, each hour wondering if we will bring the three children home. Trying to guard our hearts yet trying to prepare to double our family. Dreams of meeting them for the first time, holding them, telling them we love them, crying tears of joy. Praying, praying, praying. Waiting for news, any news. Getting false hopes that crash down around us. Fighting for joy, when sadness threatens to overtake us. Fighting our flesh as we want to give in to doubt, trying so desperately to trust God with our weak faith. Praying, praying, praying. Anger, frustration, desperation, WILL ANYONE HELP US!! God has His perfect timing for everything and we are trying so hard to find the joy in that. You are our confidence Lord, you will keep us to the end. We leave our fears behind us now!!

Friendship part three

So as I read over my other posts on friendship I make it sound like I am looking for the perfect friends and that I have been hurt so badly. That is really not true. I have been beyond blessed by my friends, it has just always been hard to keep friendships up when you move all the time. I am just on a journey to think on friendship. To help myself be a better friend and to take care of the friendships I have. To be real and break down the walls I have built. So much easier said then done. I want to take care of my beautiful flowers, to water them and prune them often. I don't want my flowers to die because I do not water them!

Friendship part two

I believe that I am hard person to be really close with. I love to make friends and I love to be there for other people but it is very hard for me to show my pain to anyone. It is even hard for me to show my pain to Jake. If I show someone the real me, will they care enough. I always want to appear tough, which is so not true. When I feel pain I like to just say, run it out girl or rub some dirt on it and never really deal with it. With that said, I have been pondering a lot what it means to be a true friend.

I have always said that your closest friends say a lot about you as a person. So I often take a step back and look at my friendships and I try to really water the ones that I want to keep up. Because with me moving all over the place, like I said, it takes a lot of work to keep friendships up. I love people hard which makes it very easy to get hurt. I love Jake hard and I love my friends hard and that has made me vulnerable to hurt in these relationships. What I mean by loving hard is, loving aggressively and strong. I don't just kind of love them, I love them hard, does that make sense? I guess I am just kind of an aggressive person, trying to be more gentle.

My goal is to love people without expectations. To love freely even if they do not love back. To show my pain and be real and to continue to water my friendships so they do not die. The bible says, a friend loves at all times, that is heavy stuff.

Friendship is such a gift, it teaches us so much about ourselves, good and bad. I am beyond thankful for the friends in my life, new and old. I just get so emotional about it. I just want to run through a field of wild flowers with my friends and we will all be wearing hippy dresses with flowers around our heads and we will lay in the tall grass and hold hands and laugh and cry together.

the webster definition of friend

friend-one attached to another by affection or esteem

Friendship part one

I love friendship, I love being with people!!! Before I graduated high school I went to four different schools. After high school I have moved nine times. With that being said, I love to make new friends. I have friends all over the USA and I love that. BUT I so often wish I just lived in one place and that I had friends so close that they knew everything about me and I knew everything about them and yet we still would love each other. With all this moving I not only get to meet new friends but I have to constantly leave friends. I often feel forgotten by friends. It is hard to keep up a good friendship at a distance, you have to really work at it. When you move to a place where you do not know anyone it is humbling. Humbling how much people don't care about you and humbling how quickly people forget about you. This is not a pitty party, it is just how it goes. Through all of this I have been on a journey to truly learn what it means to walk so closely with JEsus that I never feel alone. I will tell you that the only way to learn this is to be alone a lot. I am getting glimpses of it in my life, glimpses of such sweet fellowship with Jesus that I do not feel lonely. IT is so precious and such a gift. I will probably be writing a few posts on friendship, I have been thinking about it a lot.

Soup Recipe

This is for you Jess!!

RANCH BEAN CHILI

1 lb lean ground beef

3/4 cup chopped onion

1 tsp. minces garlic

1 medium green pepper, chopped

1 each small sweet orange, red and yellow pepper, chopped

2 cans light red kidney beans, rinsed and drained

1 can chili beans, undrained

1 can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 can tomato juice

1 1/3 cups fresh or frozen corn

1 cup water

1 envelope ranch salad dressing mix

I like to cook the beef with taco seasoning to spice it up a bit

*In a pot oven, cook the beef, onion and galic over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Add peppers; cook and stir for 3 minutes. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

*I like to eat it with a little cheese and tortilla chips, it is very pretty to look at with all the peppers in there.

We love any kind of chili at our house, we eat it all the time.