Friday, January 30

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The Married Life: Adventures


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Wednesday, January 28

#traveling


The month of January has literally been flying by. Excuse the terrible pun BUT it's just true. Our rhythm this month has been travel/home/travel/home/travel...you get the idea. As awesome as our traveling adventures have been {visiting family, work conference, wedding} it is just so nice to settle back into a less hectic routine. Less pressure to get laundry done too, ha!

The last 2 nights, Adam and I have actually gotten to spend time together and unwind after our work days which has been a rare event so far in 2015. What has been fun though is realizing how much we have grown together through all of this month. I feel that we have been extra helpful towards each other and more thoughtful in general to accommodate our combined busy schedules. This included the adventure of taking our massive 12 foot Christmas tree down. 

We were home between our work conference trip and leaving for a wedding, that particular week we both happened to have a lot of night meetings or activities at work, the way everything worked out the only night we had nothing was a Wednesday and that was when the tree was going to have to come down - otherwise it would have to wait until we got back from the wedding. YIKES. I should add that this was all my own announcement to Adam of this timeline that I had figured out. SO. We spent several hours taking our tree down (it was easily 10pm by the time we were both home from work and started on this project). Adam would have rather gone to bed, I would have rather watched a movie or really anything besides cleaning up Christmas decorations. The reality however was that our tree was completely dead and dried out so it had to come down. By midnight the tree was dropped off our deck and out to the curb. The GIANT mess of needles just sat in our living room until the morning as a courtesy to our neighbors, who we Adam figured wouldn't be thrilled with a shop-vac being used at midnight. Give or take some moments of tension, looking back, that whole adventure had such high potential to be a disaster or result in two highly cranky people. What I love, is that we made it work, we were patient and kind - or at least tried to be which means now I can look back and remember "the time we took the Christmas tree down at midnight" and it's just a silly memory of something we might not ever choose to do again :) 
Our living room actually felt twice as big once the tree was down and Christmas was cleaned up. New year makeover and all we did was put our own stuff back in the room, win! Lots of other adventures and stories from this month to be told, but those will be other posts on other days. So for today, here is to a month of many adventures, late nights, early mornings, love, compromise, and thoughtfulness. Oh yeah, and a few days in warm, sunny Florida :)

Tuesday, January 13

A girl at a bar.

Each month, on the first Tuesday night I can be found sitting {usually} by myself at a restaurant. Now with no context this might sound like an odd way for me to spend my time but there is purpose to it. My church offers a monthly Bible study for young adults. Each month the topic changes, the restaurant changes, and usually the people change too.

I have led this Bible study for the past year and each month I have a period of time where it's just me, sitting at a table by myself in a restaurant full of people anticipating the arrival of my group. Adam comes when his own work schedule allows which drastically changes the dynamic of those initial moments of waiting. 

I am an extrovert by nature so I love being around people but I'm also not afraid of being alone...it's just kind of weird. When it's just me sitting on my own on these first Tuesdays, I find myself wondering more what others are thinking about me which is fairly self-centered to be honest. It's not very likely that the entire restaurant or bar is analyzing my aloneness, but it's sure easy to think that. 


I also find myself wondering if people will come? Am I prepared for the study? What else would/could I be doing if I wasn't here? Is this what it's like to go on a blind date and get there first?

Silly questions really, but it's always interesting to me where my mind wanders in those alone & waiting moments. Last Tuesday night was one of those alone kind of Tuesdays. The cool thing is that after those few moments of waiting and being alone it turned into a night full of good conversation & good food. We discussed an article on what it meant to simply our life from a spiritual standpoint and looked at what the Bible had to say. Check the article out for yourself if you like: Simple Spirituality


It's on night's like these where I get such a tangible reminder of how God is working in my life {and yours!} constantly. For as necessary as times of waiting and listening and being alone are, they are followed with times of community and purpose and faith-growth and it is through those moments or seasons where things might feel a little awkward that we get to better appreciate what the next day holds. God is good.