Greet the Heat

Welcome to summer and the ungodly days of 100+ degree weather with no rain in sight! Yessssssss! To properly greet this inevitable oven we will be living in until Octoberish, Ray and I grilled out and watched The Sandlot!

June has proved to be suprisingly busy, but exciting nontheless! June 8th, I began teaching 5 Bearobics classes at Baylor. I have fallen deeply in love with teaching! So much so, I let the ladies of my church talk in me in to teaching 3 times a week in Mertens. Although my body hasn't been as excited about teaching 8 classes in 5 days, I'm positive it will catch up and stop hurting soon (or at least I hope).

Ray and I went with some of our best friends Josh and Autumn Lockett to our first Rangers game of the season! We had a blast and thankfully did not get struck by the massive amounts of lightening overhead!



June 14th our church celebrated it's 125th birthday. With Mertens being home to only 150 people, this is of course a huge accomplishment. We celebrated with two worship services, hundreds of friends and family, former ministers coming to lead us in worship and Word, and some Bar-b-Que! Ray and I are continually reminded of how lucky we are to have the opportunity to live along side such a loving community of people, who eagerly search for God's working in their lives.
Last night our good friend (and worship Pastor) John Lassitter was ordained. He and Ray planned such a beautiful service and celebration of God's call on John's life. In the short time we have been at Mertens, it has been an honor to watch John grow and develop into such confident and passionate pastor of worship. We love ya, John and are lucky to serve with you during such a formational time of all our ministries!

(John, in his truest element)

We are looking forward to the rest of the summer! My best friend gets married in a few weeks, Ray and I will be parents to our 2 month old niece Annie for several days (scary, I know), AND, before the summer is out Ray and I are packing up the car and heading to Colorado to climb our first mountain together!

Until next time!

I want to be Harry Potter

I say with no shame that I deeply love the Harry Potter series and would give almost anything to a cast members in the films!! Although I try to pretend that I'm not a total fanatic, I caved today and took a Harry Potter Patronus quiz on facebook!


According to the quiz, my Patronus is a wolf!


"You work best in a close support group and are fiercely loyal to those you love. You are unbeatable in a group and incredibly strong even alone due to your cunning at getting the job done. You are often the sort of person who has strong faith and compassion. You’re an excellent communicator and very intelligent."

What is your Patronus?!?!

Smorgasbord of Catch Up

Congratulations to my incredible husband for graduating from Truett Seminary yesterday! It was a great day of celebration! We had lunch at Truett with some of our best friends and Ray's professors, and the actual graduation ceremony was later that evening. I'm so proud of the many things Ray accomplished during his time at Truett. He has learned so much and I could not be prouder or more excited for him and the ministry God will do through him in the future. (I don't have a lot of great grad pics, so I'll post more when I get them from Friends) It was such a wonderful celebration with family and friends (not to mention some good Ninfas, thanks to wonder boy Ryan Arnold!)!







It was a perfect day!

Duke has been sick lately :( He lost 3 lbs. last week thanks to a nasty little virus. But, we've been pumping him full of drugs the vet gave us and he seems to be doing much better! We're just glad he didn't get eaten by what we found in garage last week:


Yup. The snake was 6 ft. long and about 2 inches around. Ray's from Beaumont, I'm from Dallas, we had no clue of what to do. Thankfully a church member did (Buddy killed it by swinging it in circles, beating it's head on the ground. yikes).

Last weekend Ray and I went to Dallas to celebrate with Lauren Doumany and Jeff Sutton in joining their lives together! The ceremony (at SMU) and reception (at the Petroleum Club) were absolutely beautiful, perfectly stylized for their personalities, and so much fun!

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I am so excited for the summer and ready for it to get here! Starting in June I'll be teaching 5 classes a week for Bearobics! Along with TurboKick, I'll be teaching a Step class and a Spinning class. Yah! So excited and cannot wait!

For a long time I've struggled with figuring out what I am going to do in the fall. I've had several opportunities, and several things fall through; all in all, nothing seemed fulfilling. Growing up as a minister's kid, my experiences in churches have been less than stellar. Though my mind and heart work and think like a minister, I've always been to afraid to willingly walk into church ministry. Why in the world would I go to a place I know might hurt me, again? Wasn't marrying a pastor good enough? I mean it gets me pretty close to being a minister without technically being one. I think we all know the answer to this one. Last year I was accepted to Truett and decided to being a masters of social work instead. So, when I walked in to Truett this week to talk with Mr. Grear Howard, I assumed he would tell me I needed to begin the process of applying all over again. Within 5 minutes of talking with Grear, he figured out how to get 70% of my tuition paid for, waved the $100 registration, and offered me job.

Yeah. Wow.

It's amazing how things fall into place when we decide to stop being afraid and faithless and surrender to the call God has on our life.

So I've registered for classes and officially begin in the fall. In all honesty, I'm not super excited yet, but I trust that will come. Nevertheless, it's so nice to feel at peace and know I'm being obedient to God's call and hold on my life.

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That's all I got! Happy Graduation weekend!

A Few From Spring Break

Duke was not a huge fan of the car

Ahh the mountains!

The famous staircase made with no nails

Happy Birthday to me and ray!!

Long week :)

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Silence
Most people are incredibly uncomfortable with silence. Especially among younger generations who are so technologically overstimulated that they have forgotten what face-to-face communication is like.

I can remember the first time I ever truly experienced silence. It was my sophomore year of high school and I was climbing my very first mountain with a good friend and group of church members. Before heading out to Mt. Hope, our climbing guides stripped us of all things technological. This was completely okay with me, until they took my watch. My watch?! You're kidding right? How am I supposed to know what ungodly hour your waking me up at? How am I supposed know when it's time for dinner?

The response: "Trust us; your guides. You don't need to know how and when things will happen, they simply will . . . take time to enjoy the silence."


Enjoy Silence? And why should I trust you? How do I know you really know what you're doing?



I've found myself saying similar things to God this year. God has only ushered me into two silent seasons with him in my life and let's be honest, these seasons are not my favorite. Mostly because there's not much to do when God is silent other than grow . . . and growing is a slow, some times frustrating and almost always an uncomfortable process.


It became clear last semester that God was inviting (more like telling) me to step up with confidence and make the next directional decision. That's where we hit the road block. God knows that I will follow Him anywhere, anytime, but we've discovered I'm not so quick to move (if at all) when the decision is left in my hands. I have found myself not asking if He is trustworthy, but rather if I am trustworthy.


What we believe about our own abilities are a direct reflection of what we believe about God's.


A painful truth that has been searing itself into me for months.


Reminders
As Ray and I climbed our first mountain together last week, he reminded me that Mother Teresa followed God's command to the slums of India and then did not hear from God again for another 30 years. A reminder that was not so encouraging at that moment, but profoundly powerful in the days to follow.


I have begun to grow fond of the simplicity of His silence and the way it forces faith to stand there naked; the way it invites you to trust. I continue to be amazed at how simply pieces of me have come to life during this season learning to live as beloved child who has been made in the image of the Creator.

Where is all this leading? I have no idea, but in silence or communication, I trust my guide.
He's been up this mountain before.