Moms...

Since Mother's Day is this weekend I thought I'd send some love to my awesome mom! This isn't the best picture we've ever taken but it is from our wedding and I wanted to share! It is hard to believe that I could let a day go by when I don't thank God for my awesome Mom. She truly is so loving and would do ANYTHING for me! She has perfectly displayed this love nonstop since I was born. Mom was a single mom on a teacher's salary yet I never knew that money wasn't plentiful. She worked multiple after school jobs and summer jobs to make sure my brother Taylor and I had the best. She never missed a special occassion and spent everyday focused on being the best Mom she could be to Taylor and me. I could relay countless things that she has done over the years that showed her love for me but NOTHING could show it better than Chris and my wedding.

My mom bent over backwards to make the wedding more than I could have ever dreamed of! For example...

She printed each of our wedding programs and put them together herself punching holes and tying over 400 bows

She printed labels, scrubbed off original labels, put on new labels, and tyed over 300 bows onto miniature champagne bottles that we gave out as favors

She did the calligraphy on EACH of our wedding invitation envelopes (inner and outer!)

She created the invitations for my bridesmaids luncheon as well as my pedicure party for my bridesmaids

She wrapped (beautifully!) countless gifts for different people throughout the wedding

She scoured ebay to find beautiful silver revere bowls for table decorations

She scoured and purchased beatiful silver tussy mussy's for my bridesmaids bouquets so they would be more than just tied together

That is just a few things and mind you she did EVERY bit of this with a huge smile on her face and no complaints!

I LOVE YOU MOM!

Thoughts for the day...

¹ Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? ² Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.  ³ Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. ⁴ Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

 ⁵ You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

 ⁶ Though he was God,^[a he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.
 ⁷ Instead, he gave up his divine privileges^[b], he took the humble position of a slave^[c]
      and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form,^{[d]
    8} he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

 ⁹ Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
      in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,  to the glory of God the Father.

Phillippians 2:1-11

Tomorrow

My song for the day...
Tomorrow, tomorrow.... you know the rest.
I need tomorrow to be here, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow. My wonderful husband comes home tomorrow. I'm going to go back to work tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a good day.

I have been sick since Saturday morning. Chris and I both had a stomach virus and he got better and I did not. We're not really sure why that is the case but I haven't been able to keep any food down in days. Words cannot describe how blah I have felt and how little energy I have. The only upside is that I'm a good 6 lbs lighter than I was on Friday. Since we're going to the beach in 2 weeks I'll take it but let me tell you... it was not worth it.

Mind you all of this sickness happened after a slightly rough week last week. Last Tuesday morning I found out our pastors Lester and Janeese Spencer who I love were reappointed to a church in Gulf Breeze, FL. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Janeese has been such a mentor for me and I have learned so much from her and my heart was just broken. She is in charge of the Women's Ministry at St. James and being on Renew Leadership Team I was like "Oh no what are we going to do." I'm much better now. While I am going to miss them terribly I know that we serve a big God and He still has BIG plans for St. James and He still wants Chris and me to be a part of that. So everyone (The Spencers, the congregation, the new minister) are all having to truly live out walking by faith and not by sight because we don't really know what is to come. I think God is trying to teach me a lot of that right now... waiting and living by faith. I am terrified of the unknown but I am having to learn that God is in control and I need to rest in that.

Then, this huge conference we had been planning for work on Shaken Baby Syndrome was Saturday. I was SOOOO excited about it! My co-worker Sara and I had worked so hard getting everything together and set up and details worked out. Well remember when I told you I got sick... SATURDAY MORNING. I went, yall I really tried to be there. I got sick before I went, got sick in the car on the way there and got sick a few times while I was there. Sadly, I got as much done as I could and then I just had to go because I could barely stand anymore. I was so sad and felt horrible about leaving everyone there in charge and I couldn't help.

So like I said, last week was a little rough. But tomorrow is a new day and I can't wait. We have Staff Breakfast at work tomorrow which is always good, I can pretty much guarantee you I won't be able to eat the normal sausage, eggs, breakfast casserole but it will still be nice to see everyone after being holed up here since Friday afternoon. So if I could ask a favor... I'm about to attempt to eat something. PRAY my little weak body can handle it!!

Faith

"When you criticize or complain, you are acting as if you think you could run the world better than I do" - Jesus Calling Devotional

A few weeks ago I read this to my youth girls small group because it applied to some things that were going on in my life. Little did I know that 2 weeks later it would fit my life so perfectly. Today I went back through my journal and came across the day I read this and had written it down to remember it. I'm in one of those moments right now where a lot is unseen but that is okay because I know God's hand is in it. I love in 2 Corinthians 5:7 where it says "We live by faith and not by sight." Sometimes we don't know what is coming and what the Lord has in His plan but we're not supposed to. We live by FAITH and we stand on HIS PROMISES and that is all we need. What joy that brings us! Thank you God for the unknown because it requires us to draw near to you and truly live by faith.

Seder Meal/Good Shepherd

Last night at church we had Dr. Jim Fleming who is a well known Biblical archaeologist came to our church to teach us as we took part in the Seder Meal. We ate the traditional Seder Meal and learned about what truly happened during Jesus' Last Supper with his Disciples. I might add that this Traditional meal was DELISH!

I knew this one already but hate it for old Leo but this is false...

Instead, Jesus Last Supper would have looked more like this. Yes, I know those people don't have faces.

So among the cool things I learned....

The man in white is Jesus because in traditional biblical times that spot was reserved for the host and Jesus of course was the host for the evening. To his right was the Beloved Disciple, John because to the right would have been your assistant/right hand man/etc. To the left of Jesus would have been Judas Iscariot. This is the spot of the guest of honor. We learned last night that Judas was the guest of honor for many reasons. At this point, Jesus knew that Judas would betray him. Jesus announced this to his Disciples and then told them that it would be the one who he dipped his bread and gave it to him and proceeded to give the bread to Judas. So why of all people would Judas- the one who would betray him be the guest of honor? Because Jesus is LOVE. Jesus was showing Judas that he forgave him. Last night, Dr. Fleming encouraged each of us to take one thing away from the night. We could have taken away a world of new information. I learned all types of things that I could go on and on about. However, what is the most important message that I believe Jesus would want us to understand on this day is love and grace. This weekend, show someone a little grace and forgiveness. If Jesus showed Judas love knowing good and well what he would do shortly then we can go out and show someone a little of Jesus' love and grace. So if you have been hard on someone or been critical or angry- ask Jesus to help you let go of that and to be able to show that person love because 2000+ years ago today Jesus did just that.

It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people.

Hebrews 10:14 (Message)

Start over?

Do you ever have one of those days where you wish you could start over? I do... and obviously today is that day. Let me just take a recap of my day-

1- Woke up late and woke up frustrated due to a personal situation. UGH!
2- Rushed to work with wet hair to prepare for a presentation I had to do and in-service I was in charge of planning. 
3- The doctor who was supposed to do the Dr.'s In-Service for staff= NO SHOW
4- The presentation I was supposed to have at 10:00= CANCELED
5- Internet on computer= NOT WORKING. Now this is worse than just no internet- this means no e-mail and I cannot connect to the server which means I couldn't even open any documents.
6- Went home to let my sweet puppy Jacks out for lunch= DIARRHEA IN HIS CRATE

So seriously? Well I was expressing some of my concerns about halfway through this rough day to a co-worker and they just said "Jessica- look for the light." So thats what I'm going to do... look for the light.

1- It is Holy Week and nothing I can face in this day can even come close to what Jesus faced this week 2000+ years ago. Even through this I am so blessed that because of what he did, my poor attitude, selfishness, and my not so pretty spirit right now can be forgiven. Whew- just a reminder of how undeserving I am.
2- A group of some of our closest friends are getting together Friday night to celebrate the birthday of a friend who moved away but will be home for Easter. So truly blessed by the friend's God has given me. I couldn't have asked for anything more.
3- I'm only working for a few hours on Friday and going to hang out with a friend and a precious girl from our Youth Group that I love!

So the light definitely shines over the darkness that has been today. Tonight I will go home to my wonderful husband and my precious (although maybe sick) puppy and just have family time. Love.

The unknown...

The unknown can be so scary for us at times... right now I'm finding the unknown a little freaky. Last night our realtor called us and told us that someone is about to/may already have make an offer on the house of our dreams! That is the house of our dreams that is missing one crucial thing... a garage. However, if we had gotten that house for the right price we would build a garage. Of course, none of that matters because as it is we need to sell our house in order to buy another house and our house just went up on the market yesterday.

So here is the unknown... we have no idea where we may live in the next few months. If our house were to sell tomorrow (yes we know it won't) there are ZERO houses on the market right now that have the things on our wish list in our price range. Are we picky or what? Now you must know- Chris and I don't have the same tastes in houses much so this narrows down our search tremendously.

I've heard all the encouragement- thanks friends and husband for your wonderful words that the right house will come along, God will put us where we're supposed to be. I know all of this and I do truly believe it. However, most people could look up houses for sale right now and at least find one other house they would like to live in in their price range. Zero really? Who are we? So we could get a fixer upper and make it into what we want it to be... but nobody seems to have faith that we're fixer upper types of people. This may be because we're so busy doing other things or it may be because Chris' sister and her husband fixed up a house and did a great job with it and they tend to be more handy/decorative than us. Who knows the reason why but either way- the unknown is scary for me right now. SOMEBODY SELL YOUR HOUSE SO I CAN LIVE THERE!