sc > wa

what nobody told me about moving cross country

aside from the time I spent as a toddler in Honduras, I lived my whole life in south carolina.

the most beautiful place in my humble opinion. the epitome of hot and humid. sun-filled sandy beaches. the best food. the friendliest people. it is entirely opposite than washington.

now i'm not saying washington is all bad. it is beautiful in its own way. it has mountains, beaches, and lots of moisture... yet the things i love the most about south carolina do not exist here. its cold. and not the dry kind of cold... but the wet cold that goes straight into your bones. the beaches are rocky (as in you never have to the desire to go and lay down on the beach for hours to relax.) the food is so-so. super healthy which is great but so-so. and it RAINS. more than anywhere I've ever been.

so when I moved here, it was complete culture shock for me. but not in a quick way. i didn't experience culture shock the first month I moved here, but instead it took about 2 years of living here for me to come to terms with the fact that I will always be cold and the ocean is always freezing.

once you get over the cool fact that you are from a different place, people start asking things like, "oh what do you like to do?" and I cringe every time i'm asked it. cause i don't have a genuine answer. i don't know what I like to do.

cause all the things i love to do you can't do comfortably here. i love to lay out and tan on a sandy beach and hop into bath tub temperature water to cool off. i love to go for all-day-long drives on the boat in nothing but a swimsuit. i love water tubing. i love stepping outside and instantly feeling the sun warm your skin. i love the feeling of stepping out the door and being hit with such intense humidity that you feel instantly wet. I know that one may be weird but it's true. i love swimming (in warm water). i love everything outdoors in south carolina.

i do not however love hiking. i really enjoying being able to breath when i'm walking. i do not love the rain. i hate the cold. i will never jump into a body of water here.

and yet, i stay here. mostly because the lord asks me to. but I am also learning that the longer i am here the easiest it is to not compare.

the less i compare the two and focus on where god has me, the more i see the beauty in this magical evergreen state.

the more i see the life that the rain brings.

the more i actually find myself sighing in relief when the first rain of fall comes. like this "it's time to get #cozy" button turns on inside of me.

the more i see the massiveness of god in the mountains around me.

no-one told me that moving across country to a place that is the complete opposite of your home would be a death trap of comparison and it took me two years to figure that out. don't let it take you two years of robbed joy to figure it out.

but now that I know. comparison kills joy. and there is beauty everywhere. in all things.

shame

random thoughts on shame

i think about how the graciousness of God spared me and how his kindness has followed me since the very beginning. never once being angry.

and then i think about shame. what if shame actually wasn’t created to hurt us as humans?

yes, shame sucks and it hurts and it has the ability to destroy self worth.. BUT what if the enemy actually created shame to hurt the father? shame in and of itself can’t touch the Father. he is above that. outside of that. but what he is not outside of is his kids.

us.

if i give in and let shame weave itself in and out of my story, then i think more than anything it affects my view of how the father views me. while shame does affect how i view myself, the real underlying problem with letting shame write my story is that it tells my mind that the Father is disappointed in me, angry at me, always trying to change/fix me.

i think that's what hurts the Father - when his own kids believe lies about his character and who he is. when in reality, he is gracious. kind. loving. maybe, i have it wrong, but maybe shame was actually intended to hurt the Father and his relationship with his kids more than it was intended to hurt my self point of view.

j and m

our story

in october of 2015, i set out on an intentional year of singleness to solely pursue my relationship with Jesus and see what He wanted for me. but... let’s be honest, i was 19 (practically a baby), just started my dts with ywam, and had A LOT of soul healing that needed to happen, and I just couldn’t afford to let a boy mess that up. the months went by, and Jesus changed a lot in my heart that i didn’t even know was there.

then in july of 2016, i moved to washington state and visited for the first time my now “home church” where a stranger at the time prophesied over me that i would most likely meet and get to know my husband within the next year. my first thought was, “WHAT. either you hear from God or you messed up on this one bud...” keep in mind i had just started to getting to know jason and deep down knew he was the one and that this stranger was right. how terrifying is that?!?

during my year of singleness, i felt Jesus ask me not to kiss anyone until my wedding day. at the time i thought that was a pretty outrageous thing to ask of me but of course I said yes. I mean, come on.. the creator of the universe asked me to do something for him. of course I said yes. so this was the very first conversation i had with jason when we started dating in december of 2016. what a scary first conversation! like, “sorry dude but if we don’t get married, we ain’t kissing.” luckily, god had asked the same of him. so we didn’t kiss not even once until we got married. which was very hard to do cause love, right?!? anyways, god used those months to show us SO MUCH about his original design for marriage and it is by far the most beautiful thing.

now we are almost two years into this thing called marriage and though we have our moments, we no longer have to eskimo kiss and for that, i'm thankful. just happen to be reminiscing on all of this today...

i'm reminded of when we were dating, our story, pursuing JESUS’ original design for our marriage, pursuing each other’s hearts and how we get to serve each other. praise God for the beauty that is marriage.