sitting on the dock of the bay watching time roll away

ryan and i are in such a weird place right now. a place of trying to figure out just what exactly we want to do with our lives. it seemed very strange and wrong that we were in this place.. i mean, we graduated from college nearly 8 months ago. so we are 8 months late in answering this question...or just REALLY REALLY slow in it. anyway, this has been on my mind a lot. i was talking with a dear friend about it last week and he pointed out that it is very natural that we are here. just a few weeks after graduation, we got engaged. and we were all about planning our wedding and the rest of our lives together from then until december. and by "the rest of our lives," i mean, we were all into how we were going to be committing to walking together for the rest of our days...that is a BIG deal. these things don't happen everyday, you know! :)

well, december came and i got to marry the love of my life...let me just interject and say what an amazing thing that is. i know you get tired of hearing about it, but i never get tired of talking about it. this man, that God had been so deeply tieing my heart to for years...this man, that i, for so long, compared every other fella to and saw them fall all to short...this man, that i and my family had been unknowingly praying for for years...this man, that i was and am all so deeply in love with...... we stood before our God, our family, and our friends and committed our lives to each other almost 2 months ago! i still cannot believe it! who would have thought?! :)

okay, so back to what i was saying...we got married and spent the next month celebrating Jesus with our family and friends. and, then came january...and here we are. this has been a month of us once again trying to answer the question of what we will do next. i found a "real" job that i enjoy (when i'm here)...which ties us down to birmingham for the next little while. it is giving us time to think hard about what we'll do next. but while we are thinking, ryan's trying to figure out what he wants to do immediately. so many questions to answer. i wish the answer could be that he'd find a GREAT job downtown so that we could be close and spend a little more time together. (i hate just seeing him in the evenings when we are both pooped from long days! i was so spoiled in us getting to spend so much time together before... :) ) but more than wanting to be with him more, i want him to find something that he enjoys doing... which isn't easy. we both are the sort of people, i think, who aren't exactly sure what all we enjoy, until we do something--then we can tell you either "yes, i enjoy that a lot!" or "no, i don't like that at all!" so, we will just wait and see. as for you, please be praying for us....

a thought in closing, i read this the other day and really liked it a lot...

"to suppose that whatever God requireth of us that we have power of ourselves to do, is to make the cross and grace of Jesus Christ of none effect."

-John Owen-