January

It's a new year and for us this is meaning lots of changes.  I start back school on Tuesday and in 4 short months I will be graduating, preparing for boards, and looking forward to our new journey to San Antonio.  Most of our close friends and family know this already, but by the first of June I will be in San Antonio working to find a place to start my career and our future home.

This plan has been a long time coming.  Phillip and I have been "planning" our future since we got engaged in 2011.  There was plan A... which failed.  Plan B... you guessed it failed. C, D, E, F and G.  And by now I am pretty sure we are having to double back through the alphabet because let's just face it OUR plans did not work how we thought.  Let me tell you they were all GREAT PLANS, but they were nothing in comparison to God's great plan for us.

                      ¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.         
                                                                               Jeremiah 29:11-13

This is a verse that has always stood out to me and I am sure many others.  God has a plan for me.  God has a plan for my marriage.  God has a plan for my future.  That is what I read.  That is exactly what He is telling me, BUT the last verse I was constantly overlooking.  I must seek Him with ALL my heart.  He can not be a back up to my back up plan.  

I decided to reread this book called Crazy Love by Francis Chan over break.  (Great book! Get it!)   He says at one point in his book, "Worry implies that we don't quite trust that God is big enough, powerful enough, or loving enough to take care of what's happening in our lives."  

That kinda summed it up for me right there.  I consider myself to be a rather independent person.  Being naive or arrogant enough to think I am capable of handling things on my own.  After all I'm "good" at planning.  But it wasn't until we finally turned our worries over to the One who can and will handle what is going on in our lives that we started seeing His plan, not mine, in action.  

My dad moved to San Antonio about the same time we got engaged.  Which started our thoughts of wanting to move away from this area.  We originally had ideas of getting married, move to NWA and I was going to complete my nursing school there and Phillip work while I was in school.  As you already know that didn't work out.  We then decided to stay and wait until I finished school here, get a job, get married, and happily ever after.  Didn't quite work out that way either.  So with many more plans in between we finally decided it was the right time to get married right before I started nursing school (not that I would change my decision for anything in the world, but would not advise it for others).  It made life hard.  Stressors.  Stressing.  Any form of the word stress was in our vocabulary.  Soon after we got married my mom joined my dad down in San Antonio.  That was rough.  I have never considered myself a home body or dependent on my parents, but have since realized it is so much more than that.  Why wouldn't you want to surround yourself with your support system and the ones you love most?  So needless to say this began long talks of the what ifs.  Last March I attended a nursing conference in Houston.  While at the conference we took a career walk and spoke with local hospitals and actually had the opportunity to send our resumes with them to potentially have a job once graduating.  That got me extremely excited looking forward to the next years conference and now knowing what to expect I would be prepared.  It wasn't until I turned to the back of the program that I saw the 2014 conference was in San Antonio.  Coincidence I think not!  Providence.  Divine providence.  I had no idea if this could actually be the direction our futures were heading in.  If you know my husband then you know he was not made for a big city.  I mean white knuckled while driving cannot deal with traffic and the larger population.  Not to mention his family all lives here.  So we decided we needed to take a visit.  Neither one of us had been there since we were younger and never really saw anything but the tourist spots.  So this past summer we took a vacation with my parents and spent part of the week in San Antonio.  We fell in love with the city.  Phillip found a comic book store that stayed open to 12!  Which is top priority!!!! We went house hunting (a little premature, I know).  We took walks every night around the neighborhood and it was breezy!  In August!  We visited a church while we were there, and everyone was incredibly friendly.  We were no longer worried about our stressors, but talking about how excited we were about our future and what it has in store for us.  

So even though our plans didn't work out and all our big ideas weren't so great for us God knew His plans he had for us.  Still not there yet, but honestly we both feel this is where we are meant to be.  Prayers are much appreciated!

So really TMI I know, but this is not only a blog but more of a journal log that I can look back on our early years together.  

Now back to the whole reason I started this blog!  Our date night.  We went and test drove a new car that we most definitely cannot afford right now. Then had an amazing dinner and saw the Hunger games.  All in all it was a fun date night! 

Date night pic!

December

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone and the new year is here! 2013 seems like it literally flew by!  I am getting bad at this, but I am posting for December in January!  So for December.... I finished the fall semester of Nursing School.  Just one semester away and graduation now seems attainable!!!  We had our lovely date night!

We drove down to Marshall while the weather was getting a little icy in Texarkana.  Phillip was a little apprehensive, but it turned out to be a great night.  We watched the light show, listened to the Christmas carolers, got some food and hot chocolate, and took a double decker bus tour of the lights around town.  It was a nice little getaway and a perfect date night that got us in the Christmas spirit!

Next we took a trip to Wichita, Kansas for my cousin's wedding.  We had a few delays on both flights there and back.  We got to witness a beautiful wedding, and even got to play in the snow!  It was so nice to get together with my family and made tons of memories with our family game night!

We had 3 Christmases this year.  I think Phillip has finally realized that Christmas time drives me just a little crazy.  And my crazy is hard to deal with sometimes.  I read the other day that there are five stages in marriage.

Stage 1:  passion prevails. You are head over heals in love with your mate.

Stage 2:  gives way to an earth-shattering awakening; marriage isn't at all what you expected it to be.

Stage 3:  most people believe there are two ways of looking at things, your spouse's way and your way, also known as the Right Way.

Stage 4:  couples come to terms with the fact that they are never going to see eye-to-eye about everything and they have to figure out how to live more peaceably.

Stage 5:  peace and harmony.

I completely believe Phillip and I are in the third stage.  Ironically, most couples go through this stage while faced with making all sorts of life-altering decisions (children, where to live, who will do the cooking and cleaning, who will handle bills, etc.)  And for Phillip and I this has become a competition.  We are not partners, but more like opponents.  Each one of us wants the final word and "KNOWS" exactly the way things should be and how it will work best.  We are working towards the fourth stage.  It isn't always easy.  Marriage is WORK.  Hard word.  We are both becoming more readily to forgive each other's hardheadedness and recognize neither one of us are exactly easy to live with.  So for the new year I strive to work on several things.

1.  Let go of blaming my partner.

2.  Accept our differences because these can be the best of what the other has to offer.

3.  Communicating with each other not just beating our points in with harsh words.

4.  Focus on small, positive changes because Rome wasn't built in a day.

5.  Love each other in all ways always.  We aren't perfect and only strive to be the best we can be together.

Happy New Year everyone!

Baby JAX is 2!!!!