Passion in Brokenness.

Honestly, its been a hard season year over here. Lots of tears, battles fought, with some won and some taking every ounce of strength I have and then some. Thankfully through it all there has been a lot of refining, growth and holding onto the Lord with everything I have. So I can't really complain about the process. Anything which brings me closer to Him with a daily drive to be in His presence is worth all the pain. 

Being married has been a blessing in so many ways, yet in others I have found it extremely hard. I have this bad habit of caring deeply what other people think of me. Often allowing their opinions to define who I think I am and not the Lord. And its been a hard year for learning to let go of approval from others. From not being ashamed of where the Lord has taken me in life, how He has orchestrated certain things and how I met my husband young. 

I started sharing our love story here. Then I stopped, to be honest I almost completely dropped out of the blogging community all together not long after. Many things factored into this happening. But one of which was feeling the desire to hide. You see, I grew up with a deep heart for purity and waiting. For waiting on the Lord's timing for romance and wanting to encourage single young women to fall in love with Him and trust Him to work out the rest. I had a lot of friendships formed with that common ground. 

It was a beautiful season in my life. 

Then I got married.

 And I was ashamed to talk about this beautiful story the Lord had written in my life. I didn't want to make other girls feel bad about where the Lord had them. I wanted to still encourage them to keep waiting and trusting, now knowing that what He had whispered to my young heart about trusting Him was completely true! 

But I began to allow this to rob me of the joy He has given me with where I am now.

It has been a hard few years understanding why the Lord gave me a passion for Waiting and Purity, then bringing my husband to me at a young age. I can't begin to understand what it feels to be a late-20 something single girl who is struggling with loneliness and longing for an earthly prince. Yet my heart breaks, because my heart is minister to you, friend. To reach out and assure you that it will be ok. That the Lord does have beautiful plans for each one of us, we are just never sure what those plans are until we are the other side.

{Via}

I am still not sure how He will continue to use me with this passion. Whether it will change into a passion for something else completely or if He will continue to use me in small ways in this area. I have no idea what the Lord is doing to be honest. 

Something I would appreciate your prayer for, friends!

I had started writing here sharing thoughts on purity, waiting and loving the Lord. I still think these are totally relevant. I also feel at a crossroads of Him doing something bigger and moving forward, I just can't yet see what that is. So maybe there are big changes ahead for this little space as I pray, listen and hope to follow His leading.

In the meantime, I am resting in the assurance that God is good. 

He is gracious and loving. 

Understanding the longings of my heart even I can seem to understand 

(or explain). 

I am so thankful to sit in His presence when my poor husband is not sure how to help because I don't understand how this passion is still so present in my current life situation.

And my heavenly prince gets it. He understands what I'm feeling and probably smiles knowing what is on the other side of the crossroad. 

In the meantime I hope to continue encouraging you ladies, sweet friends. Even in all the rambling and brokenness from this girl. Thankyou for being gracious with me as I have not replied to emails or taken forever to do things. 

You show me Christ daily and I am so thankful. 

Much Love!

L

SuperBowl Disappointment.

{via}

I'm not a huge football fan, there isn't really a particular team I cheer for. 

Our local team I guess, 

but lets just say they weren't up to the skill level involved for the SuperBowl. 

I do love how sports are encouraged and promoted in this country. 

Driving through the neighborhood in the summers and 

seeing families out back playing together or at the park 

throwing a football or shooting hoops. 

Its an active lifestyle I really enjoy or at least want to enjoy more of. 

I love the programs for kids here, the local adult teams, big nationwide professional competitions in a variety of sports. 

At least in places where I grew up, there are less of these. 

I am a huge supporter of encouraging kids to be active, 

learning how to play as part of a team, 

learning how to get along with others in this way, 

learning good sportsmanship. 

I think its really healthy for them to get exercise and learn all those great life skills. 

So yesterday, we were watching three young boys and happened to throw a SuperBowl party. 

The older two are totally into football, on weekends they enjoy watching the game and cheering for their favorite team (it might be based on the team colors ;) haha). 

I also enjoyed seeing the top ten ads from the SuperBowl in previous years. 

A lot of them have been really funny and again I just love the sports aspect of it all. 

This year I was excited to tune in and watch the game. 

Even if I don't follow football at all. 

But I honestly couldn't remove my jaw from the ground most of the time from the content. 

(Thankfully none of the three young impressionable boys I was caring for had any interest in the game on Sunday. They were playing in another room, which was totally a blessing from God.)

Because we tuned in for some family friendly fun SuperBowl viewing and we were subjected to numerous sexual innuendos and promiscuity during the ad breaks than I would probably feel comfortable with in a movie. The GoDaddy commercial alone was so disturbing, I was thankful the kids didn't see it. Not to mention the Doritos ad, Best Buy, M&M commercial all had inappropriate sexual content. And this was a football game.

I would almost expect late night TV to contain inappropriate content, but not from an event viewed in millions of homes across the country....where kids were watching.   

Perhaps this was my bad from assuming that we were tuning in for a game alone and not just a large dose of the new direction American culture is going. 

{via}

Talk about awkward conversation when a GoDaddy commercial came on when sitting with my husband and two of his friends. We laughed it off and called it inappropriate, but really!!! Was it necessary? It saddens my heart to think culture in this country is going in such a direction. To a place where we are no longer guarding and caring for young hearts and minds. It used to be proper to not talk about certain things in front of your children. To keep certain things for the bedroom alone. There was an understanding of the importance of innocence and not growing up too fast, while still teaching responsibility from a young age. I am fearful of where we are headed when no subject is taboo while kids are present. Like including a halftime show where a beautiful woman is stripping off her clothes and thrusting her hips. (I read an article about my home country where kids as young as eight are now being pressured into being sexually active by peers at school! This is outrageous!!) 

(We can't possibly shield our children from every form of media without living in a bubble)

I do understand the sad fact, sex sells. But why do companies feel the need to stoop to that level to sell their products. 

Why make something like Doritos chips or a hamburger seem sexy to make money.  

People really can choose to view all kinds of things. 

And where your boundaries are with regard to content of movie, TV shows and internet content are your own concern, 

I'm not trying to tell anyone what's right and wrong about a variety of content. 

(I believe those are personal convictions)

But honestly, I don't want to have to be on guard about what I'm going to view on daytime sports TV. 

This to me was not a personal choice, 

it was pushed on me while watching a sports game.

I've seen the comments about averting your eyes and guarding what your kids watch and changing the channel. 

And I am all for those ways of protecting purity as it is unfortunately necessary. 

I implement these ideas on a daily basis, although I am not claiming to be perfect. 

But all I'm saying is why should I have to keep up my guard on what I or my husband or kids are about to see during a football game? 

The game itself was perfectly suitable for any audience.

Yes, if I had made a decision to allow kids to stay up past their bedtime to watch an R-rated movie, I wouldn't be able to say anything about the content they were subjected to. You are making an informed decision on that part. But the Superbowl halftime show or commercials don't come with a rating, they are on daytime TV. It was about 7.30pm on the east coast during halftime and 4.30pm (!!) on the west coast. Hardly after kids should be in bed asleep! 


My heart just breaks at how the halftime show played out. I really respect Beyonce, she is a beautiful woman who is in amazing shape after just having had a baby. I'm just saying that the show was anything but family-friendly. And I don't know why I would have known ahead of time that just because it was Beyonce, it was going to be otherwise. The actual game itself was fine in content, the ads and halftime show were not. And why??? Why the need.
I just wish that we weren't alone against the culture in guarding our hearts and minds to things we don't want to see, and those of our children. I wish we didn't have to worry about what commercials might come on daytime TV while young impressionable eyes might see them.
(On a slightly side note, I really enjoyed the funny Tide commercial, Jeep ad supporting the troops and Ram farmer ad, what amazing choices! I applaud you guys! These were totally family friendly!)

I really hope someday to be able to teach my little, impressionable children to value the precious gift of sex. To encourage them to view women differently than what the ads are showing them. To teach my daughters that you don't need to strip off your clothes to gain the attention of a man. That they are all worth far more than what the media tells them. 
Honestly, I am afraid of how I am supposed to protect them from viewing pornography from a young age when a lot of ads/commercials/halftime shows are becoming increasingly X-rated in content. It concerns me as a someday mommy. So I can only imagine how a lot of you mommies feel already! 


I share these thoughts today, because my heart has been burdened with them since Sunday night, not to start an argument over Beyonce or a particular company. So please don't hear me digging for an argument. I am just stirred and troubled as a wife, pursuer of purity and hopefully someday mommy by the media. 
And I always said I would share things near and dear to my heart.

Lets be in prayer. We need it striving to live life for Jesus in this world.

Much Love,

L

"Turn my eyes away from worthless things;

preserve my life according to Your word."

-Psalm 119:37

 "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people."

- Ephesians 5:1-3 1

A Quick Note, A Heavy Heart.

This is me just leaving a quick note, without embellishments.

In light of the shooting which I'm sure all of you have heard about, I did not do a regular post on Friday.

My heart was simply very heavy for the families who are currently going through something I can't even begin to try and understand.

So instead of posting about a trivial thing, I made the decision not to post.

This morning our pastor preached a message on John chapter 19-20.

Where Peter and John find the tomb emptied after Christ has been crucified, 

'Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came early to the tomb, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already taken away from the tomb. So she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.” So Peter and the other disciple went forth, and they were going to the tomb. The two were running together; and the other disciple ran ahead faster than Peter and came to the tomb first; and stooping and looking in, he saw the linen wrappings lying there; but he did not go in. And so Simon Peter also came, following him, and entered the tomb; and he saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on His head, not lying with the linen wrappings, but rolled up in a place by itself. So the other disciple who had first come to the tomb then also entered, and he saw and believed. For as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that He must rise again from the dead. So the disciples went away again to their own homes.'

{John 20:1-8, emphasis mine}

Our pastor pointed out that the disciples who came to the tomb saw and believed but did not understand. 

This sits with me in light of the shootings, that while I don't understand the purpose of why this has happened.

God is still in control. 

He still has a plan.

I choose to still believe that, even if I don't understand.

Please be in prayer for the many families affected by Friday's tragedy.

Much Love,

L

P.S. I will be away for the next few days with my hubby, seeking God and celebrating marriage.