Wedding Miracles

Well, once April 15 rolls around, Jill and I will have been married for five months. If you don't already know, we were able to see God's hand in a lot of significant ways in the building of our relationship, especially in the way that our wedding came together. Our pastor told us that we should write down the wonderful things that God did for our wedding as a testimony to encourage others (and ourselves, farther down the road). Well...here are the miracles that I (Sam) remember from our wedding!
The first miracle that I remember (other than God speaking to our hearts about one another and sending us to one another) was the way that we got our engagement photos. God has placed an amazing friend named Jennifer into our lives. Jennifer does top quality photography, and we had asked her about her rates right after we got engaged. Well, she gave us the rate, and we put it in our budget. But, once we had taken the pictures (in locations that Jennifer had personally scouted before the shoot), she told us that she would not take any money. A few weeks later, Jennifer gave us the photos (over a hundred, to the best of my recall) after personally reviewing and editing them for highest quality. We still get compliments on the quality of photos that she took for our engagement!
Soon thereafter, we took those pictures to another wonderful friend, straight from the Lord (actually one half of two - Jenn and Josh, with Josh being the friend in question at the moment). This friend happens to be a graphics designer, and he wanted to help us with our engagement by helping us design our invitations. Well, he masterfully designed our invitations and sent them to us several times for our approval and to make sure that he conveyed our ideas. When it came time for use to settle our balance, he refused to take any money from us, and we got excellent professional quality invitations for nothing but a printing fee of about $75.
Another miracle happened in our lives at our Wednesday night church meeting. An evangelist who uses our church as him current home church walked up to Jill with an envelope and told her that God had told him to give her some money for our wedding, then quickly walked away. When we opened the envelope, we found a check for $500! That certainly helped ease our fears about wedding money.
Napkins...not something usually associated with miracles, but hey, God is on His throne! Jill found some reception napkins online that she really liked. They were printed to look like a little tuxedo and a little dress, and they came in two packages at $50 each (expensive napkins!). Well, we bit the bullet and ordered the napkins. After all, you can splurge a little on your wedding, right? Well, a couple of weeks later we get a package delivered containing the tuxedo napkins, but there were no dress napkins to be found. Even more troubling, I could not see a charge on my credit card for the purchase, and I was getting nervous about the order. Jill emailed the company from whom we had ordered the napkins about the issue, and they wrote her back explaining that they had discontinued to dress napkins but sent us the tuxedo napkins anyway. Because the napkins were all one order, they simply cancelled the charge and gave us the $50 tuxedo napkins free!
Cake is another wedding staple that can really run up a big charge. Well, when God is with you and sends wonderful people into your life, even cake gets His attention. My grooms' cake was bought from a bakery where our friend Bethany used to work and our friend Cory currently works. Because of the favor that God has given them in the eyes of the bakery owner, we got that cake at a huge discount. Then, my wonderful sister Jenni and my cousin Ellen came to us asking if they could have the honor of taking care of the bride's cake. To Jill's delight, they got in touch with a baker friend of their own who made 150 delicious and beautiful cupcakes (complete with icing "O's" on top) that sat just right on the amazing stand that Jenni made just for the occassion.
Let's not forget the rehearsal either. That night, my family (primarily organized by Jenni, Ellen, and Kathy) laid out an amazing lasagne dinner! A lot of couples have to stress over things like that, and I am so happy that Jill and I never had to.
In other money news, Jill's parents were able, through God's blessing, to give us $500 more for our wedding than they had planned, which allowed us to give gifts to different people who had blessed us in the course of our union. Then, in addition to so many of our friends and loved ones helping out in a staggering array of capacities, we received so much cash and wedding gifts that we were able to enjoy our honeymoon and start out our new lives together without having to go a penny in debt!
Jill could probably tell you more about the different acts of the Lord that have occurred in our relationship, but I just wanted to lay this out for anyone who might be struggling with concerns about God caring for them, especially as the economy isn't at its best right now.
As Jesus taught his disciples, little sparrows aren't worth anything to the people of this world, yet God does not overlook a single one of them. There is not a single little bird to die that God has not personally attended its funeral. He loves them so much that he doesn't even make them work for his food. They just have to get up, sing, fly, play, and find his abundance on the ground. How much more does God care for you? He knows how many hairs are on your head, and he knows everything about you. He loves you so much that he sent His Son to die for you so that you may be saved from the evil that has overtaken all of our souls. Won't he take care of the little things like our physical needs. If God cared enough to take care of a couple of his kids' wedding, won't he care for your daily needs as well? Of course He will!

In a nutshell. God loves you. He took care of our wedding because He loves us. He loves you too, and He will take care of all of your needs if you let Him into your heart.

Yesterday was March 18th (a year and two months since I went on my first date with Sam). I'm really happy God brought Sam into my life. Well, enough sappy stuff...

I think I'm about to become a drum trainer. There are a couple of kids at church that want to learn to play the drums so I'm in the process of figuring out the best time to do that. It's pretty exciting. I have to train my replacement before we move to Illinois in August.

I'm taking an online graduate course in Behavior analysis. It's pretty interesting, but sometimes it's hard to find motivation to do my school work. I've been doing okay on it lately, but I wasn't so motivated the first few weeks of the semester so I'm already a couple of weeks behind. Tonight I read one of my chapters and did a few assignments. So, I feel pretty good about myself. lol

Sam and I have decided that we are both out of shape, so I've made a new resolution to work out three times a week (Sam made the same resolution by default - I just assumed that he would work out with me. hehe). Tonight we went for a brisk walk through a near by park. It was a lovely evening. It's a lot easier for me to exercise when the weather is nice. I'm still trying to think of something we can do to exercise when the weather isn't so cooperative. Let me know if you have any ideas.

God Bless You!!

Conflict resolution...

So, in premarital counseling we talked a little about conflict resolution. Our mentors gave us a great outline to use in order to resolve conflicts. Really great stuff, but when you have such great communication skills as Sam and I, you typically don't need any formula for conflict resolution (said with a hint of sarcasm). Actually we scored very high on our premarital inventory when it came to communication, but when it comes to conflict even typically good communicators can struggle to express true desires and feelings.
I'm sure many of you are wondering by now what kind of fight Sam and I got into. Well, it wasn't really a huge deal, but we were trying to decide what to do with the couple of days I have off for spring break. Originally we wanted to try to go camping, but that fell through and we were struggling to come up with anything fun to do. Sam mentioned going to visit his family in southeast Texas and when we could think of nothing else we agreed on this. We agreed, so you may be asking, "where's the conflict?"
Here's the problem... we agreed, but not exactly on the same thing. His thoughts were to leave Friday and stay through Tuesday (We're off work Mon & Tues), but my thoughts were to leave after church on Sunday (I really hate to miss church) and stay through Tuesday (these were the originally planned dates for camping). This is when I realized marriage can get complicated (in case I haven't learned that already). What is the balance between putting each other before our extended families (what I wanted Sam to do for me) and giving sacrificially to make each other happy (what I wanted to do for Sam)? It is really my desire to be selfless, but I was really struggling. Finally I agreed to go on Friday, but I was not happy.
There were a lot of emotions going on inside and, although I'm good at communicating my needs, I'm not very good at communicating my emotions. It takes me a good 30 minutes alone in the room just to figure out what's really going on inside of me between all my thoughts and emotions. I realized that part of my sadness was due to the fact that originally this weekend was supposed to be centered around having fun with friends or maybe even just me and Sam and now we would be hanging out with family (nothing wrong with that), but not spending any fun, quality time together. I guess I was feeling disappointed.
Sam is a really great husband, but he isn't so comfortable with discomfort, if you know what I mean. He came into the room where I was laying on the bed silently crying. He said "what's wrong, Love?" When I looked up at him through my tearstained eyes, he's grinning from ear to ear (if I didn't know him better I would definately be offended, but his little smile just tells me he's uncomfortable with the situation). I was finally able to tell him how I felt. I was getting ready to make a compromise when my wonderful husband did something very sacrificial. He gave in... I wasn't crying to try to get my way, I promise. It just kind of happened that way... Thank you Sam for really loving me.
So now I'm pretty excited about this weekend. On Saturday we're going to go to the Palace of Wax and Ripley's Believe it or Not. And then we're leaving Sunday after church to go down to visit his family. It was exactly how I wanted this weekend to be. Some time for us, getting to go to our home church, and getting to spend time with his family. I can't wait!

Hope you have an amazing weekend too! God Bless You!

Beautiful Morning

Wow, it is a beautiful morning in Arlington, TX! Jill and I just wrapped up another week of working the grind...actually, we both have really good jobs, and we are thankful that God has blessed us with the opportunity to positively impact others.
In other news...
- Jill is working on school today, whilst I am tasked with getting the AC fixed on the Prizm and getting the Corolla washed.
- Hopefully, Jill's new glasses are in, so looks like a trip to Eyemasters is coming up! Maybe they can fix mine too, I have already noticed some flaking and stress lines at the bottom of one lense, and I don't think that is right, since I just got them last weekend.
- We're about to go walking to Rise and Shine for breakfast...our first time to eat out together for breakfast, I think.
- It would be nice to go fishing or geocaching, but it probably won't happen this weekend :-(
- Jesus is the Savior of the World and God is still on His thrown!

Many blessings to all of you!
Sam

Times are changing...

Well, Sam has been accepted into the Psy.D. program at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. Since we'll be moving away from our long time home in August, we decided it was a good time to start a blog. This way those who are interested can stay posted on what we are doing. Sam and I just got married in November, so this will be a fun new adventure for us to embark on together. We're both pretty excited about it. We know this is where God is taking us so we have a lot to look forward to, but it will also be very hard. We're pretty close to our families and pretty connected in our church so it will be sad to leave... But that's why we are starting this blog. Two of my best friends recently moved away from the area, one to Colorado and the other to California so maybe this can help us stay connected to them as well. Well, that's it for now...