Reflecting on Easter

This Easter was a lot different than Easter's past.

It was my first Easter that my family didn't have a big get-together  It was the first Easter that Seth and I had by ourselves. No Easter baskets, no presents, no morning church. 

Two months ago I probably would have told you that we would be home with our families, visiting our old church, having a normal Easter...but God changed our hearts. You see, I havent been feeling at home in our new church for the last few months. I have yearned to go back home and visit Hope Church, to be with our families, to not have to adjust to being somewhere new because it's so dang hard sometimes. 

I didn't want to put in the effort to committing somewhere new, to serving, to opening up to a new group of people, to meeting new girlfriends. Part of this is fear, part of this is pride, and most of it is just pure laziness. Jumping into the unknown is scary and hard and time consuming, we all know I don't have extra time to spare!

But God has been working on me. Working on my stubborn little heart. I've been putting in time, confessing my fears, my thoughts, my dislikes. He's given me some awesome women to meet and share life with. He's given us a new home. 

Here's most of our neighborhood group -- they have made Monday night my favorite night of the week.

Last month Seth and I felt a call. A call to be at Garden City Church for Easter. A call to become members. I felt the call to finally commit. To leave my stubbornness at the cross and trust Jesus for what He is doing here.

Easter at Garden City couldn't have been more glorious. Not because there is something overwhelmingly special about the music, or the preaching, or the people -- but it is where God wanted us. Resting in His plan is a glorious thing.

And not to mention that three ladies from our neighborhood group got baptized after the service. One of those three ladies has become a very close friend of mine. I know that God picked Michaela to be my friend when we moved here, He is so good at picking friends for us.

This is us a couple weeks ago at the Zoo!


Michaela has a powerful story of how God fought for her and saved her. Watching her get baptized was more beautiful than I could imagine.

Sonja and Stephanie are newcomers to our neighborhood group and it is awesome to watch how God put it on their hearts to get baptized and bam, here they are. One of the met Jesus less than THREE weeks ago -- how good is He?!



Seth's parents joined us at Garden City -- our pastor used to be the college pastor at their church so they actually knew a bunch of people at the service! I love when worlds collide like that, it reminds me of the fact that we are all one Church.
Easter this year was different. We went out for dinner instead of cooking something fancy. I didn't take any pictures of Seth and I, even though I had bought a cute dress for the occasion. We didn't do baskets or eggs or candy. We didn't go home like we had planned.

But we watched Jesus save lives. We got to celebrate His resurrection. We got to celebrate Him bringing our dead hearts alive through baptism.

We rested in His plan.
I'd like to start doing that more often.
Listening, discerning, praying, following.

"Many are the plans in a man's heart, but the counsel of the Lord, it will stand."
Proverbs 19:21

More Rambling, but With a Point: Internet, Work Wardrobe, Fellowship, and the Weekend.

Country life is great, until you want to use the internet.

We moved in to our little place knowing that the internet wouldn't be great, and that we would have to supplement with a "jet pack", but since we used up all of our data for this month and the new cycle doesn't start until tomorrow, the regular internet has been slower than molasses all week. Not to mention we have the highest data package which is $80 a month. And that is supposed to be a supplement to the internet we already have! #firstworldproblems

Normally that wouldn't bother me, but I'm dying to upload the wedding pictures to Costco's website to get them printed.  Do you guys know how cheap it is to print pictures at Costco? I don't know why I ever went anywhere else!

So you can imagine my dismay when I've tried 3 times now to start the upload process and it informs me that it will take 697 minutes.

I'm now sitting at Starbucks, which is a very rare occurrence, weird since I used to practically live here. I'm trying to use their internet to upload photos since ours seems to be stuck in the stone age. The upload process now reads only 87 minutes, a major improvement from home.  I splurged on a breve pumpkin spice latte, and pumpkin bread.  I feel like I might fall over from all the carbs. Also, they are playing the new Mumford album which makes me really happy.

I'm slightly high maintenance about my drinks.

We had dinner with a new friend from church last night, and right now BM is out playing "gennis" (golf+tennis) with him and some other church guys. Can I just take a second and reflect on how awesome that is? It is just the kind of fellowship we were looking for...even if we have to drive 30 minutes to find it.

As I'm typing this post I check insta and look what our new friend posted! Nothing like seeing your cute hubs show up on your insta feed. 

I've also been trying to prepare myself to dress for the professional world, since it is pretty likely I will be getting this new job. To be honest, I don't know quite what I'm getting myself into with professional clothing. Every single job I've ever had let me wear jeans, or had a uniform, so the freedom in the whole realm of "work attire" is more daunting to me than exciting.  Today, I stepped out and bought a pair of khakis, which for my ghetto sized booty, is quite a big step! It is so hard to find trouser type pants that work for me, especially when they rarely come in "tall" or "long" and advertise cellulite WAY more than they should.  I settled for a cropped style with these khakis, they don't look great, but they were 14.99 and wearing black pants to work every day will get boring really fast.  Is it ok to wear a dress to work? How long does it have to be? Pencil skirts are a no-go for this said ghetto booty of mine, and most other kinds of skirts don't work either so dresses and pants it is. It may be worth it to have a series on work attire, since I truly have no idea what I'm doing. I've heard it's worth it to check out what other people in the office are wearing before you invest in a work wardrobe that's "too fancy".

Also, I have issues with wearing heels and pants. If the hem doesn't fall at the exact perfect place on the shoe it bothers me, a lot.  Tell me I'm not alone, I think it's because every pair of pants I own varies in length, but I always hesitate to wear heels. Which explains why I only have 3 pairs. Not counting these bad boys which were only meant to wear for my bachelorette party and hurt like all hell.

I had my 3rd interview today for this job, and the 4th and final one is tomorrow with the VP of the division.  All 3 have gone flawlessly so far, so I'm hoping for the best tomorrow.  After my interview this morning I got a call for a place I applied as an event planner that wants to interview me! It blows me away that I got this much response in a matter of days when I went more than a month without a peep from any of the multiple places I applied for!  I'm constantly reminded that God is so good, and so is His timing. In the past few weeks with the tough job search, financial strain, and clinging to Christ as we search for a church, He has made Himself more real to us.

Well, I'm ready for tomorrow to be here.  I'm so ready to go on a fun roadtrip with my BM (bearded man), which actually might not be an appropriate nickname anymore since he finally shaved for the first time since the day of our wedding!  I'm so excited to abuse our newlywed status and wear our hats and "just married" pins. Go ahead and laugh if you must, but I've been dreaming of wearing them for so long!

Congratulations for making it through all of that rambling! I'll make sure to start re-capping wedding events and of course our weekend in Disneyland next week!
Have a great weekend!

Oh. P.S

Also, look forward next week to hearing about our hiking adventure with the tarantulas. 

Seth was brave enough to get kind of close to take a picture. gross.