Okay, now I feel like I can get into the holiday spirit. Dad called this morning letting me know that right now the ticket prices are pretty much the same (like a $10 difference) to either fly into Dallas, or right into my parent’s town! So this morning before school I purchased the tickets for Tim and I to get to fly to Texas for Christmas! We wont be there for Christmas day, we’ll fly out on the 26th ’cause I work on the 23rd of December. Yeah, not too happy about that, not sure whose decision that was, but I don’t think it was good planning. Anyways, Tim and I will be flying down on December 26th and staying through January 3rd. I am really excited! I will get to see my parents, sister and brother! I haven’t seen my brother in over a year, and seeing him is really the only thing I wanted this Christmas, and I’m gonna get it! Yay!!!

Tonight our youth group is doing a friendly costume party for the little kids. It’ll be from 5-8:30. It’s free to go to, and the kids will have lots of games to play to get candy, there will also be face painting and balloon making for them. I can’t wait! For Thanksgiving Tim’s brother and sister-in-law and their kids should be coming up to our house for the night. And for Christmas eve and day we still have to finalize, but I think we’ll be hanging out with Tim’s other brother and sister-in-law and their kid.

Before, while having to wait to purchase our airfare I really didn’t want to start thinking about the holidays, and when the snow came last week I didn’t welcome it at all. I think now I’ll be better if it starts snowing again soon. Yesterday and today have been gorgeous days in the upper 60s which is really nice!

I don’t know about you, but for me, patience is the hardest fruit of the Spirit for me to learn and follow through with. In high school I would ask God for patience, and usually to get patience I would have trials to test my patience. I quickly learned not to ask for it again, until a couple years down the road. I’ve been really timid to ask for patience again, but did last week. Thankfully God is starting small with those trials, but they are still hard.

It is so easy to just speak your mind or act on emotions. What is hard, is to try to control your tongue and do nothing when something upsets you. I am so bad about this. Immediately I want to act on my emotions instead of thinking through a situation and praying about the situation first off.

I like how Elizabeth George speaks about patience. Her definition of patience is that “Patience does nothing.” It is a passive part of love that gives us time to pray, reflect, and plan to respond in a rightous manner. This is what we are to do instead of acting when we are hurt, wronged, or ill treated, wanting to act out in a negative, harmful and sinful way. Patience helps us resist that temptation and turn to God in this time of need instead.

In order for patience to work, like other fruits of the Spirit we are called to pause in the moment and go to our Savior to help us and show us how to live our lives with how we act and speak.

It is good to read about good examples of patience in the Bible. In my 9th grade girl’s small group we have been talking about sin, and the story of Noah. It took Noah a long time to build that ark from when God told him until it was finished. And how much more patience did God give before he finally decided that something drastic had to happen because nothing was getting better? Another ultimate example of patience is Christ. He had patience with people who ridiculed and killed him. Jesus never lashed out at these people, he endured everything with patience. And, I love reading about women in the Bible, good examples and bad, but a good example of a woman who practiced patience was Hannah. Hannah was already barren, but then taunted by Peninnah on top of this because she could have no children. Instead of even going to her husband about this problem she went to God every time. In 1 Samuel 1:12-13 Hannah was accused of being drunk because she went to God in such anguish.

My prayer for me is that I can first off show patience in my own home, then with the people I come in contact with every day. Some days at school I need a lot of patience with the students I work with. I have been good at praying for my afternoon classes at lunch time, and realized that I was struggling with the morning classes, and that I wasn’t praying for those classes. God is amazing. He knows what we need and will give it to us. Just ask him!

I just felt like writing tonight. And the only thing I could think of to tell is about my 3 injuries I’ve had from youth group in the last 3 weeks. Let’s start with the most recent.

Yesterday for Sr. High Sunday night we were playing a variety of “indian” games. Here’s a link to a short video of one of the games. Well, in a different game I’m not sure if I got hit with a foot or a hand, but I got knocked in my left eye, which is really sore. I was expecting to wake up this morning with a black eye, although I think I still have a little time before it turns black. I’m bruised above, below and to the left of my left eye. Ouch.

Then Last Sunday at Sr. High youth group again I got a huge bruise on my left thigh from playing the trash can game. (What’s up with my left side!?) We play with metal trash cans, and you’re out if any part of you touches the can, well I pretty much got pulled into sitting on the rim. Not a good feeling, and the black and blue mark is still there, but the pain went away in like 5 days.

And to start it all off, the Wednesday before that, if you’re following the dates, this would be October 15th, I was playing pool-table-horse with the 9th graders after confirmation and, although we’re playing with a pool table, you can break a sweat from all the running around the table. Well, while attempting the run around the table I got tripped up by another youth and pretty much slammed my knee into the corner of the table. That was the end of the game for me, it hurt to bend my knee. Luckily though that injury stopped hurting after 2 days.

I twittered about this last night and here are the comments from a couple people:

When I got into my car last Wednesday after my bus route, this is what I was sitting in, a car with snow on it. Hello! It’s not even November yet! To be honest, I am not ready for the cold, not looking forward to it, and just not happy that Fall has already left us. We didn’t have much of a summer either. I just hope the cold will pass early in the Spring. Wishfull thinking!

Then today was a snowy day. We actually got a snow fall that has made the ground half-way white. If we were in Texas everyone would be outside playing in what we got, despite the 36 mph winds bringing it in. Everyone was walking into the church cold not quite ready to get out their winter gear. As for Tim and I, we had our heavy duty coats on and ran from the furthest parking lot in because the wind made the snow pelt us in the face. It really feels to early to be talking about snow…on the other hand…

I realized yesterday that from yesterday Christmas Day is exactly 2 months away. Wow that seems soon! And, thinking back to last year Tim, Mom, Dad, Katelin and I all walked across our lake on Christmas Day. So I’m thinking that it’s about to get to below freezing and stay there for a long time. Tomorrow the snow we have today should be melted though. I haven’t even begun to think about decorating and shopping. This time last year I was itching to decorate for Christmas.

I totally survived on God’s strength today and not mine. In the middle of the night I woke up with a sore throat, then when my alarm went off for me to go work out I was feeling a little worst and decided to sleep in. I got almost 9 hours of sleep, but still felt yucky throughout the day. I took 2 probiotics, drank an airborne tablet and drank my sore throat tea. I took it wasy at school ’cause I was really hoping that my body would heal and my strength would come back by the end of the day.

4th hour was tough because of a kid being a jerk. This student just wastes their time in class and keeps other students off task as well. I really did not feel like dealing with that student today and wanted to cry afterwards, not ’cause I couldn’t handle it, I was just not feeling well and did not want to put up with it. Thank God though, one of our youth girls came in to visit me. She is having a hard time with her sister and having surgery last week and still in the hospital down in the city and her Mom down with her, so she hasn’t seen either one in a while. Yesterday I told her to let me know if she wanted to come hang out any night this week to cheer her up and get her mind off of it. This turned around my day and the rest of my day was great despite feeling yucky.

We had our small group over for a pot-luck dinner tonight which was fun, and I picked up our youth girl before hand to come and hang out with us tonight, we had such a blast! I started feeling worst and worst as the night went on though. Our youth girl won in Imaginiff, and it was her first time to meet the other 2 couples that were there! It is amazing how much fun such a diverse age group of people can have. I really enjoyed it! I’m going to miss our small group, hopefully we’ll get together every so often during the year.

Well, I need to get some sleep, it’s almost 9, and I’m gonna wake up at 8 to see how I’m feeling in the morning. I hope I’m feeling well enough to go to school ’cause I’m suppose to get my flu shot there tomorrow, and we have small group tomorrow night that I can’t miss. Please pray for my health! I’ve been trying so hard to stay healthy, except I think my long weekend wore me out ‘caues I stayed up way too late each night. So now I will try to get 11 hours of sleep tonight!

2 Corinthians 9:8 And God will generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.

2 Corinthians 12:9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

Philippians 4:19 And this same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches, which have been given to us in Christ Jesus.

In order to experience God’s true peace we have to trust him. If I try to control parts of my life they will more than likely fall apart in my strength and just stress me out. And what do I really want? I want to have peace in my life, in every aspect, which means I have to trust God with every aspect of my life.

This doesn’t come easy. I am notorious for wondering what people think of me. I moved around a lot growing up, and actually haven’t slowed down yet. Every time we would move my anxiety of making new friends, wondering if people would like me, not wanting to say anything for fear people wouldn’t find me interesting, would start all over.

This mind frame still hinders me. Getting married and becoming apart of a new family and moving in the past 2 years has had me continue to wonder what others think, really hoping that they accept me and like me. I have to fight my mind when I start wondering what people think of me. What do they truly think of me? Are they just acting one way in front of me but think something else? I will start second guessing everything people do. Did they really just do that on accident, or was it on purpose? How do I tell?

None of that thinking is healthy and every time my mind wants to take me there I have to stop it immediately and turn to God. I have to surrender my thoughts over and think of what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable (Philippians 4:8). This is true when anything starts to stress me out. Someone annoying me, I mess up with something, am running late, have too many things to do, and many more things, that all have to be surrendered over to God. He is the only one that can make things right. My flesh is too weak to handle anything on my own.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

We have to constantly turn to God and ask him to take away from us what is not good and to fill us with his peace. We cannot have peace on our own, God gives us his perfect peace when we ask him for it. He loves to give us peace. So what keeps you from God’s perfect peace? If you’re not sure what is standing in your way, ask God, he’ll let you know.

1Peter 1:6-7 “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.”

In high school and college I can look back and see many trials that I was put through to test my faith when I was a new believer. I haven’t noticed any major trials in my life lately except for daily things that are minor and come up regularly and I’m use to. It was hard when Tim went to California, but I knew when the longing for him would be over, I knew the end was near. I wonder if God is feeding me and reinforcing his love in me for something big, or helping me settle into the role of a pastor’s wife. Am I not a strong believer right now because there are no big trials in my life right now? How does my faith grow without trials to endure?

I am guilty of constantly thinking on where my faith was in high school. I am envious of the Dana in high school. God was my everything. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have a boyfriend. If it didn’t have to do with church or Christ, I didn’t do it. I feel kind of lost in this adult world I am in now. Sometimes I still have the college mind frame thinking I’m still young. And then when I have to pay a bill or set up my own doctor appointments I realize I’m no longer a kid. I feel like I’m in transition and my faith is too, trying to figure out what God wants of me right now.

I do know since I have started learning about the Fruit of the Spirit again that I have had a huge thirst to keep knowing Christ more and more. I am excited to get all I can in one study then move on to something else that will challenge me and help me understand Christ better, and understand myself better. Actually, I just checked out Lady in Waiting from our church library. I read it in college, but I’m excited to read it again now that I’m married.

When I got my new cell phone I went crazy one night staying up late getting all sorts of ring tones for it on phonezoo.com. Someone put a lot of bits from The Office on there to download to your phone. So for my voicemail I have it set to Kevin saying, “Well I like pretzles, but I really like chips.” That episode cracks me up with him trying to figure out what to get from the vending machine and Holly trying to help him, but man it freaks me out when I hear some strange man start to talk! The first time it caught me off guard I was driving with nothing playing in my car, I really jumped at a man speaking! I should probably change it so I don’t get weirded out trying to figure out who is talking to me when I get voicemail.

John 16:22 ” So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy.”

Philippians 4:4 “Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice!”

1 Peter 1:8 “You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.”

The only place where we can find true joy is in the arms of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If we try to find joy anywhere else we will fall short and have anything but joy. While reading about joy and missing Tim like crazy while he was in California, God started to reveal in my heart that I have been looking for my joy in Tim instead of God. What a sneaky way for the devil to try to twist something good into a deceptive joy. I have put a lot of my self worth in Tim, and that is not where my soul belongs. Yes, I am committed to Tim for my life. I love him with my whole heart, but he cannot fulfill all of my needs. I am in need of Christ. God created me to only be filled with His perfect and complete love and joy. Until I realize that I will not have true joy.

We have so much to be joyful for. And the most amazing thing to be joyful about is the time in heaven we will have with God. Sometimes I day dream of getting to go on a walk with Christ listening and talking with him. Also of just being in awe of being in the presence of God. God came down to earth as a human, Christ. Christ died on the cross to cleanse me of all the bad things in my life that I have done and will do. I have accepted this gift that everyone can have if you choose! And because I have accepted this I will live eternally in heaven after this life on earth. How awesome is that!?

While Tim was gone I was really sad and missed him. That didn’t mean that God’s joy was absent in my life though. When the fruit of joy is in your life, it is there, it doesn’t go away if you’re not happy and enjoying life. We will have hardships and trials, and that is when we lean even more on God to provide us with his joy. The hard times are perfect for turning your joy into a sacrifice. I love the hymn “How Great Thou Art.” When I am working around the house I’ll start singing it, at very random times. I have noticed though that when I am upset or struggling with something I sing “How Great Thou Art” even more. Through tears and sometimes a tight jaw I sing praises to God because I know he is more powerful than anything I will ever go through and that he is there with me working through every step of life.

You can have joy. Just ask God to start cultivating it in your life. He will be more than happy to start working in you!

I went to the Christian bookstore in town to check the price and look at an idea for a Christmas present for someone. I checked, then got totally side tracked in the book section of the store.

I really have a desire to teach girls and help them make godly decisions in their life as they struggle with surviving jr. high and high school. And to help them make godly decisions when it comes to boys. In highschool someone gave me the book Lady in Waiting by Jackie Kendall. I didn’t read it until college. Through BSM (Baptist Student Ministry) I joined a small group of girls that did weekly Bible studies. At one point we read through Lady in Waiting together and discussed our thoughts of it. I gave my book to a friend after the study for her to read on her own, and am now wanting a copy of my own again.

At the bookstore I didn’t find it, but I found “The Young Lady in Waiting,” by the same author. As far as I can tell it looks pretty much like the same book, just a cuter cover to attract the teens. I have been thinking about putting together an all girl small group during the week and studying this or something like it. I was thinking the copy I read might be a little old for them, but I am so excited to find a teen version! I almost bought it today, but would like to find a copy to borrow and read to see if I should follow through.

I have been thinking about waiting until my small group is done with confirmation to do this in depth girl study, meaning starting next Fall we could do it, but I think some of the older girls in the youth group could benefit from it. A girl at school that I work with has really got me thinking today and yesterday on this, really wanting to reach these girls before they graduate and are on their own.

I also found some books that look like they’d be great for me to read when I am finished with, “A Woman’s Walk with God” by Elizabeth George. (Which I highly recommend you read if you have not..and you’re a woman.) They are, “Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World,” and “Having a Mary Spirit” by Joanna Weaver. I read the back of them, and the 2nd one sounds really good! Every Tuesday evening for over a month now we have had a small group of adults in our house to study the 40 days of Purpose. Every evening when I am still trying to get things in order before people come and they show up while I try to finish something, I always think of the story in Luke 10 about Jesus going into Mary and Martha’s home, reminding me to stop working and build a relationship with the people in my home.

Back on the topic of teens, there was a book that caught my eye first today and that is, “Secret Keeper: The Delicate Power of Modesty” by Dannah Gresh. This is another huge passion I have with girls. As a teen I didn’t understand how much power there is with dressing modest. I remember being so mad that my dad made me change into longer shorts before youth group one night trying to explain why I shouldn’t wear short shorts, but I wasn’t willing to listen and learn. Now that I am married, Tim has really opened my eyes to the world of boys, and I would like to pass some of this wisdom to the girls in our church. If you have girls of your own or work with them, this website looks like a good resource, I haven’t looked at it deeply, but it looks like it’d be good.