Life style change!

As I look back at pictures from almost 5 years ago when Josh and I were dating, I think man I looked skinny. The funny thing, is that then I thought I need to loose weight. As I began taking birth control before getting married I began gaining weight. After marriage I gained even more and of course during my pregnancy I gained more than that! Before getting married I weighed around 140 lbs and got up to over 200 lbs during my pregnancy. After having Jude I went back down to 170 lbs within the first six weeks after delivery. However, I have remained at that weight for the past year and a half almost. I have decided to change my life style in order to hopefully get back down to my pre marriage weight. It is not an image thing so much as it is wanting to feel healthy and good about myself. Not to mention I work at a cardiac center and feel as if I need to be healthy to work there. I am trying to make a life style change because I know that if I just diet for a little while the weight will only come back and come back quicker. Not only that but I will probably gain more weight. I have always thought well I will never be back down to my old weight so I just didn’t even try. I have found encouragement through old friends and random stories online of people who felt the same way but chose to make a change and are now at a healthy weight. I have decided to cut out most carbs and sugars. I no longer eat breads, pastas, rice, etc, and I have cut out sweets which is killing me. However, day by day I feel better and better and can see and feel the weight coming off. I started on Tuesday and weight 171 lbs. Today (Sunday) I weighed myself and weighed in at 163 lbs. I am so excited to see the weight almost falling off and I know that it wont continue to fall off that quickly but I am encouraged. I have also been trying to run in our neighborhood or exercise inside when it is raining. I found that it has really been easier than I thought to eat food without bread or pasta. I am excited to try a cauliflower pizza crust and cauliflower buns this week. Hopefully I will be able to follow up on how good it was. I also have found a few recipes for sweets that don’t have flour or sugar which I am really excited to try because I definitely have a sweet tooth. I wanted to blog this experience in hope of keeping myself accountable, and hopefully I will be an encouragement to others. I didn’t want to try the quick fix of taking medicine. I wanted to know that I am loosing weight a healthy way and loosing it because I have worked hard at it. I need people to hold me accountable so if any one is willing please feel free to do so and if any one has any great recipes please feel free to send those to me as well. I look forward to posting more and hopefully in the next few months I will have reached my goal weight. 

Does anyone know how to stop time?

Almost three years ago, as I was getting ready to be walked down the aisle by my dad, he pulled me aside with tears in his eyes to tell me how proud he was of me and how much he was going to miss me. Although I know he was proud and at the same time sad, I remember thinking why are you so upset, I’m not going anywhere. I was also filled with joy and excitement of it being my wedding day and was nervous as I was getting ready to walk down the aisle. Even if I wasn’t overwhelmed with what was to come, I don’t think I could have felt what he was feeling without having a child of my own. 

I now have a child of my own and although he is only 15 months old, he is growing way to fast. At times I think I still have at least 17 years with him and that is a long time. At other times, I think about how quick the past year has gone by, in fact how quick the past 10 years has gone by. I think the reality has set in more the past few months because I have a cousin who is graduating this weekend and I remember him being born. How did the past 18 years slip by so quick? Not only that but, a young girl that I use to watch at a day care just turned 13 and I watched her when she was 3. I feel like it was only last year when I worked at the daycare but no it has already been 10 years! That can’t be right! I graduated college 2 years ago. Really? I honestly can hardly remember high school or college, it was such a blur. I am quickly realizing that James 4:14 is very true. I think the part that saddens me the most is that I know far to soon Jude will be grown and leaving to start his own family. It almost brings me to tears thinking about it. I am not sure why it saddens me so much. I’m sure it is partly selfish desires to want to keep him to myself as long as possible and partly due to the fact that he will loose his innocence and that I won’t be able to protect him the way I can now. I feel so overwhelmed and blessed at the same time to be able to teach him and raise him to love the Lord.I find myself tearing up often as I think about how fast he is growing and times I hold him a little closer and a little longer just because I can at that moment. Now I know at that moment on my wedding day exactly how my dad felt. So with all of that being said can someone please tell me how to stop time or at least slow it down a lot?

God or Birth control

Before getting married, as most engaged couples do, Josh and I began going to marriage counseling. We had what I believe was a normal marriage counseling session except for the part that came to having kids. You see the couple that was counseling us, challenged us to not use birth control and just trust God in His sovereignty. I think I laughed inside as I heard this and thought yeah right. I mean who wants to get pregnant on their honeymoon? Three months before getting married I decided that birth control was the route I was going to take because I was not ready to have children and wanted to enjoy being married for awhile. Not only that, but I was still in school and we were living in a small apartment off of  Josh’s paycheck alone.

After just a few months of being married I began to remember the challenge that had been given to us. I began to feel convicted and  felt as if God was telling me to just trust Him. I began to hate the fact that I was taking hormones and knew that long term this was not the healthiest options for me. Throughout this time of struggling with my conviction, I heard different stories from random people about not being able to have children or about how they got pregnant while on birth control. I talked with Josh about my conviction but at the time he did not feel the same. I decided that I would not stop taking it until Josh agreed. I began praying that God would change Josh’s heart if this was His will. Just a short while later, Josh told me that he was okay with me not taking birth control any more and with an anxious yet excited heart I quit taking birth control that day.

Before discontinuing to take the pill, I had talked to several people about my conviction. I realize that many people do not have the same conviction I had and in fact most people told me “well, if God wants you to get pregnant you will whether you are on the pill or not”. I also heard “I believe God gave us the knowledge and means to make and use birth control”. While all of these reasons may be true for some, to me it was just a reason to not completely trust God. He had been convicting me and I knew that I needed to be obedient.  You see God is my creator.  He is sovereign and He ultimately is the only one who can create or prevent  life. Like I was told if He wants you to get pregnant while on birth control then you will. With that being true, I thought why would I want to be on a pill trying to prevent life and possibly causing harm to my body when God is the one who is really in control? Josh and I took a leap of faith but I rested assure that if I got pregnant or even if I didn’t, I knew that it was God’s will and His timing.

I stopped taking birth control in November of 2010 just three months after our wedding. In April of 2011, I found out that I was pregnant! We were so excited yet so scared. We had Josh and I had both started new jobs and I had only been at my job for a couple of weeks. I didn’t have insurance and we had just purchased a new home. I had no idea how we were going to make this work. With my new job I wouldn’t have insurance until after the first ninety days and by this point I would already be over three months pregnant. As always, God was in control. Around the time of me being hired, our company merged with a large local hospital and I became an employee of the hospital. Because I was now a hospital employee, I received insurance within the first 30 days as opposed to 90. But the story doesn’t end there; no, it only gets better! I was not yet 26 and because of that, I was allowed to stay on my mom’s insurance and use it as a secondary insurance. Not to brag, but my God is awesome and all we had to pay for the entire pregnancy and delivery was $300. If you know how much having a baby cost, that is an amazing deal! During my pregnancy and even a few months after Jude’s birth, Josh was helping with a kids baseball team. The team threw a diaper shower for us and we had diapers until Jude was 6 or 7 months old, which was a huge blessing.

While I was on maternity leave we discussed day care options, called around and got prices, and even looked for an in home sitter. We were blessed with a friend from church who offered to keep Jude for us. We couldn’t have asked for a better child care provider. The only concern was how we were going to afford child care. Around the time that I was getting ready to go back to work, God provided once again. Josh received a raise that would be the exact amount of what we needed to help pay for the babysitter.

Not only were we blessed financially in so many ways but we were blessed with a beautiful, healthy, I mean very healthy 10 lb 5 oz baby boy. He has been such an easy, happy, fun loving baby. If you ask anyone who knows Jude they would most likely tell you the same. I am not just being biased. I truly believe that God has blessed us in so many ways because we decided to completely trust Him!

Since we made that commitment, I have never taken birth control again. If you think trusting God completely with getting pregnant when you have no children is hard, just wait until you have a newborn and are trusting Him in is timing again hoping that it isn’t any time soon. It is obvious to me who our creator is and that He is sovereign and in control. Jude is now 13 months old and we have continued to trust God with the provision of our next child in His timing.At this point He has not seen fit to bless us with another child, but I am sure there will be a blog about it when He does. It has been an amazing journey and I have learned so much by just letting go, taking a leap of faith, and completely trusting God with a situation that seems so hard to let go of and give Him all control.

My hopes for this blog is that it may help someone who is struggling with trusting God to step off of the edge and leap. I hope that one day my children will read this and rest assured that they were completely apart of God’s plan for our lives, and I hope that we can leave an example for our children as they will be faced with the decision to trust God or trust in themselves and the things of this world.

How could anyone want to miss out on having one of these?

A Love Story Written by God

I remember very vividly the day almost 10 years ago when I decided to be fervent in praying for the man who would one day become my husband. As a high school student I realized that there weren’t very many Godly guys my age and I knew that if I wanted to have a Godly husband I needed to begin to pray for him. That day I began praying for my husband’s salvation and for his relationship with God to grow so that he could one day lead our family. I was raised in a Christian family and attended the same church my entire life up to this point. I always thought that I would meet my husband at that church, we would marry there, and raise our children there as well. 

Although I had my dreams of my future, God had other plans. Two years after graduating high school, through some unfortunate circumstances my family left the church that was all I ever knew. It was my second family and my life. My family and I began searching for another church home when we felt God was leading us to Life Point church in Senatobia. Honestly this was one of the hardest times in my life. I felt so hurt and at times felt like giving up on church.

On January 7, 2007, as I sat at a Bible study I read the verses Matthew 7:7-11 which says   ⁷ “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.⁸ For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. ⁹ “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!

This verse meant so much to me considering that I was 20 years old and had never had a boyfriend. You see God was reminding me that I had prayed begun praying for my husband  several years before this moment and that He would not give me anything less in a husband that what He saw fit for me. From that moment on I clung to that verse and hid it in my heart. 

Just a month later I began building some great friendships with some of the college students at Life Point. We began spending time together more often and at time spent almost everyday together whether at church or just hanging out. One of the guys that hung out with us was Josh Haughwout. I began developing some feelings for him as our friendship grew stronger and as we began to spend more time with each other. Several months into our friendship several of us decided to get a group together to go to the movies. Some how this group date ended up just being Josh and I. A few of our other friends joked about it being a date, but Josh and I both refused that it was. A few nights later I was going to a concert with my friend and she was asking me if I liked Josh and how things were going with us. I told her I wasn’t really sure where we stood but that I liked him and thought he was a great guy. Little did I know that I would shortly find out exactly where we stood. After the concert my friend and I went to eat and at the end of dinner I received a phone call. I saw that it was Josh and excitedly answered. After answering the call I heard him say “hey I heard that some of our friends were missing with you about us going on a date and I just wanted to let you know that I don’t like you”. Now looking back I can laugh but at that time my heart sank as all hopes of us becoming more than just friends were just shattered. I was determined to not let this ruin our friendship and we continued to hang out and get to know each other better. Josh and I slowly became best friends. After a few months of growing our friendship Josh asked me to go to Starbucks where he planned on telling me that he really did like me. Instead some friends showed up and we ended up just all hanging out. After we left Starbucks and headed our separate ways, he called me to tell me that he thought he had a crush on me and prayed that it would go away if it was not God’s will but after several months it didn’t go away and so he decided to tell me the truth. My heat was filled with joy and my stomach filled with butterflies as I heard those words. He told me that he didn’t want to jump right in and start dating but he wanted to pray about it for a couple of months and get mentors to help give us advice and keep us accountable. 

Several months later we began what would become a life long journey. Josh and I began dating in June of 2007. From the beginning our relationship has never been a fairy tale, and in fact, has been filled with a lot of trying times. However all through out our relationship I can see God’s plan and hand guiding us. After a year or so of dating, I began to struggle with was he “the one”? Is there such a thing? I knew that he was a great Godly guy and it would be stupid of me to ask if he were the one if he wasn’t Godly and was living in open sin. One day as we were talking the subject of marriage came up and we shared with each other our thoughts and where we stood. I told Josh my concerns and what I had been struggling with. At that moment he pulled out his Bible and read to me the very verse that I had held so dearly to since January of 2007. I knew at that moment that God had answered my prayer. I began praying for my husbands salvation when I was in 10th grade and Josh was saved his senior year in high school.  Throughout our relationship, I learned more about God and more about his love and mercy and just what it meant to give mercy and grace. 

In September 2009 Josh proposed to me to which I replied “it’s so beautiful”, ha ha. I never responded with yes I was so taken bake by the beauty of the ring. We were wed 11 months later in August of 2010. I am so glad to know that God gave me my husband and that He wrote our love story. Throughout our marriage knowing that God is in control has been so comforting throughout the trials and has been an added joy during the best of times. I look forward to spending as many days together as God allows and can’t wait to share what God has done in our lives since we said I do almost 3 years ago!

First Blog

So over the past several months I have been thinking about starting a blog mostly for family who lives out of town, but also for the purpose of sharing my crafts and photography! I have several friends who blog and through them I have been inspired. I also thought having a blog would be a great way to keep myself accountable and to have as something for my children to look back on and see how God worked in our lives.

Just a little about me, I am 26 years old and have been married for a little over 2&1/2 years to my husband Josh. We have an adorable 1 year old named Jude. We live in Southaven , Ms where I work at a cardiology clinic performing ultrasounds of hearts, arteries, and veins. Sounds fun doesn’t it! I hope to one day ( in the next 10 years) to be a stay at home mom where I can be crafty and do photography all of the time. In the past few months God has blessed us with a church home at East Point in Lewisburg where we have grown so much already and have built what I believe will be some life long friendships! I am so excited about starting this blog and already have so many things in mind that I plan on sharing in the days to come!

A pic of my precious little boy!

A pic of me and my hubby