• Life,  Marriage

    GUESS WHAT?! I’M ENGAGED!!!

    December 7, 2015

    Just dropping in to share the most exciting news of my life! I’M ENGAGED! I can’t wait to share how it happened but for now I just wanted to share about how excited I am.

    I am so completely overwhelmed in the best kind of way. We have received such an amazing amount  of love and support from all our friends and family that it just makes everything so much more amazing. I can’t get over just how great God has been to both Tommy and me. This is all just making me so excited for the wedding.

    Speaking of the wedding, no we don’t have a set date yet but we are shooting for June of next year if everything goes as planned.

    So yeah, that’s my amazing news. So happy to share with whoever might be following along with my little blog. I am beyond amazed at just what God can do when we allow Him to work in our lives. <3

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  • Life,  Marriage

    A Letter to My 19 Year Old Self

    December 5, 2015

    This is a letter to an older version of me. One who had so much to learn- especially in the realm of love and marriage. This is also to anyone out there who thinks that all they need is a boyfriend or girlfriend to just be happy. To just have someone to love them for who they are. Know that you already do. You are far more loved than you can ever even imagine. I desperately needed to hear these words back then, and I hope they can help someone struggling with the same things I did back then.

    Dear 19 year old, you think you know what you’re doing, Ashley:

    I know how much your soul aches and I know how much you are misinterpreting the ache for what you think you need. Your desire for a man who will commit to you and want to love you always is so strong. I know how you think that this is what will truly satisfy but I want you to know how wrong you are.

    What will ultimately end up satisfying that ache is Jesus. The one you think right now is keeping you from the joy of a relationship. I know you think that if you choose to continue on in your quest for love on your own terms that you think your savior will abandon you- but how wrong you are, sweet one.

    Jesus will never abandon you. There isn’t anything you can say or do that will make Him love you any less. This is the kind of love you so desperately are dreaming for, if only you knew. I know you feel that you’re upsetting Him so much. I know all the shame you feel when you make a mistake and chase a guy instead of Him. Please know that there is grace upon grace. There isn’t anything you can do to make Jesus mad at you.

    Let go.

    Let go of how you think things should be. Let go of who you think you will be happy with. Let go and let God show you the way. It will not be easy and you will white knuckle your control at times, but it will be worth it- that I do promise you.

    The most important thing you will learn is that it is possible to be happy without a man in your life. When you feel like the one thing that you need isn’t there, you’ll learn that all you really do need is Jesus. You need to go through that to really understand it and trust me, you will need this knowledge in the future.

    If I told you now that God is going to make you wait two years until you meet the man that is going to be your husband, you would think that was the worst news ever. But let me tell you it is worth the wait.

    The man God has for you is far beyond anyone you can imagine and far beyond who you think he should be. He is the most loving, caring man you will ever know and everyday that you get to spend being his is a gift. He is patient with you like you’ve never experienced and loves you way more than I think you will ever realize.

    He will point you to God in ways you didn’t even know were possible. Everything will go against what you think should happen now though.

    Rest in the fact that God has you right in the palm of His hand and He will never let you go. Rest in the fact that He is all you need. 

    Xoxo, your much wiser, learned this the hard way, 23 year old self.

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  • Life

    December Goals + November Goals Recap

    December 3, 2015

    Better late than never right? I really wanted to get this up yesterday but let’s just say that yesterday was one of those days. You know, the ones where it feels like everything went wrong? I’m just glad that it’s over and now I can just get the post up today instead 🙂

    I’ve never done goals before but I thought it was a fun way to keep track of accomplishments and helps me to keep pushing myself to be better. I made a goals list about halfway through November but never posted them so I want to start by posting that and how I did with them and then list what I plan on focusing on for the month of December.

    November Goals

    Spiritual
    + focus on words you’re saying/listening well –I wouldn’t say that I did this as effectively as I wish I did but I did find myself stopping and trying to listen better a few times this month, which is a start.
    + focus on submitting –I still feel like I have a lot of work on this one.
    + spend more time in the word/journaling  -I spent a significant more amount of time reading my bible this month and I can tell it had a huge impact on my moods, the way I handled problems, etc.
    + find a time of day that works best to journal/read your bible -I wrote about the first day I tried reading my bible in the morning here and it didn’t go so well but I preservered after that and I’m so happy to say that I love love love reading my bible in the morning now. It’s easily become one of my favorite things to do.

    Health
    + workout twice a week -I did work out once a week since I started the goal which is an improvement but not quite what I was looking for. Tommy and I also set up a schedule to work out on Tuesdays and Thursdays so hopefully this will help keep us on track.
    + eat less refined foods -This one was hard to track because I don’t really know how much refined foods I was eating before making the goal to really compare, but I think I did a little better. I also bought a real food eating plan and course about what is good and bad and recipes to go along with it so I’m excited to start that.

    Reading
    + finish reading Love and Respect     -Done! I wrote a review for it here- it was great!
    + read two other books -I started One Thousand Gifts but didn’t finish it.

    December Goals

    Spiritual
    + focus on words you’re saying/listening well
    + focus on submitting
    + continue spending mornings with Jesus
    + thank Jesus for “mundane” gifts
    + finish the advent she reads truth bible study

    Health
    + workout twice a week
    + eat less refined foods
    + do 5 lessons from real foods eating course

    Reading
    + finish One Thousand Gifts
    + read a book on submitting

    Relationships
    + focus on putting Tommy first more
    + focus on being more of an “intentional” friend

    Blogging
    + increase posts to three times a week

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  • Faith,  Life

    Thankful

    November 27, 2015

    With Thanksgiving over now, I thought it would be fitting to write a post about being thankful. Makes sense right? The things that God has done and is doing in my life over the couple of years is amazing. And not just me- my family as well. I’m so thankful that we have a God that is willing to come down and meet us where we are and not only meets us there but lifts us up out of the darkness that we so often create for ourselves.

    I have to admit though, as far along as God has brought us, sometimes I can’t help but worry about what will happen next. The path that God leads us down isn’t always easy. There have been some really hard times over the past couple of years to get us to where we are today. There were a few times where I didn’t know what was going to happen next- times where I was so scared. But what I’ve learned through those times is that God is still there and he brings us through them even when we feel like we can’t go any further.

    The other thing I’m learning about myself is that I tend to thrive in the unknown as weird as that sounds. When things are scary I tend to cling to Jesus and walk super close with him because I know that He knows what to do and I trust Him to lead me. The times I struggle is when life is going really well. I tend to forget how much I need Jesus and His direction.

    When things are going well, I tend to worry about what will happen next. What will be the next bad thing to go wrong and that’s not how Jesus wants me to live. I want to live thankful for the good days and trust in Him to hold all things together and know that He will carry me through whatever bad things to happen to come. I want to be more thankful for the easy times and less anxious.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about thankfulness lately and one thing I realized about thankfulness is just there isn’t a lack of things to be thankful for- it’s just that we forget to be thankful. Period. That’s all.

    I realized that when we go on vacations- that joy that we get usually comes from being thankful. We tend to think that it’s from just being away from our daily schedule and relaxing, and that is definitely part of it but what I realized is that when we go somewhere new or somewhere we don’t go to often we look at the area differently. We purposely look for the good. We notice the blue, sunny skies, the beautiful features in our hotel room, the delicious food that was made for us. I believe our joy on vacation is deeply rooted in that- us dwelling on the good.

    When we come back home we forget to dwell on the (mundane) good things in our lives. What about that beautiful new countertop that you put in just last year? Or your wives delicious dinners that she prepares for you? It’s so easy to focus on the bad in our daily lives because we’re so used to a certain level of goodness but I wonder what would happen if we stopped to really dwell on each good thing in our days. Because really- each good thing is a gift from God. We might just be a people known for our joy.

    Join me over the next few weeks as I try to focus only on the good in my life. Let’s give thanks to the God who blesses us so abundantly.

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  • Life

    Mondays Are Hard

    November 23, 2015

    Do you ever have those days where you woke up but didn’t really wake up? Some days I just wake up extra tired and never get to experience that alert feeling after having my morning coffee. Today is for sure one of those days. I feel like I have fog brain and I can’t really concentrate on anything. Happy Monday to me haha.

    So instead of working I’ve spent the morning doing the following:

    • Searching Craigslist for a Jeep for Tommy
    • Catching up on my Bloglovin’ feed from what I’ve missed over the weekend
    • Rereading posts from one of my favorite bloggers
    • Texted Tommy about said Craigslist searching
    • Worried about where I was going to work after March 14, if you don’t know what I’m talking about check out this post here– if you’re interested
    • Also worried what people are going to think about another decision that I will have to make soon

    I know I’m making this day sound way worse than it is haha I just wanted to share what I’ve been up to though. Overall I have no real complaints, but sometimes (most times) Mondays are just hard. Though if you ask my boyfriend he’ll say Wednesday’s are harder. No way Jose.

    This Monday may be particularly harder though because I’m coming back from such a great weekend. I shared Saturday about my awesome day and yesterday I had a long and relaxing day with Tommy. How are your Monday’s going? Are they as rough as mine? (At least we have off this week for Thanksgiving!!) 🙂

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  • Life

    Feel Your Feelings

    November 21, 2015

    Just wanted to drop in and share a little about what’s going on in my life. Today I had a GREAT day. I’ve probably gone a few months without really seeing any of my friends because we all seemed to be really busy and our schedules never seemed to match up. So I was really excited to hang out with my friends today. I had a girl’s sleep over with my cousin Nichole last night, which was great because it was just continuous girl talk. So my morning started out hanging out with her and lounging, which is always awesome in my book. Once she left, I went to the mall with my other friend Brooke and got three new shirts woohoo. Now I have a shirt to wear for thanksgiving yay. I finally got myself to the gym after and I am now relaxing after making dinner for myself and my mom. Pure bliss. Ps. I’ve been spending time in my bible in the morning for at least the past five days and I really see this day as a blessing from God. I’m really starting to see the results of how putting Him first opens the door for Him to really give back to me.

    But anyway, that’s not the real reason I wanted to write this blog post. Those things were pretty awesome though. The real thing that I wanted to share is something I realized I was doing.

    What I realized was that I tend to be very emotional sometimes and I didn’t realize that I felt some shame in that. Girls are just known to be emotional and I think that’s how God made us to be honest. We just feel things very deeply and sometimes society puts a negative connotation on this. I didn’t realize, but I wasn’t allowing myself to really feel certain feelings I had. I would think about them first and decide if I was “supposed” to be feeling this way. First of all, how crazy is that? Who decided if we are or aren’t allowed to feel any certain way. There isn’t a right or wrong way to feel. But anyway, I realized I had let something that happened come between Tommy and I because I had never allowed myself to feel the feeling and accept it and move on. Instead I buried it deep down and it caused me to act in a negative way because I never came to peace about the situation.

    I wanted to write this post to encourage anyone who maybe didn’t realize they were doing this to think about it. Make sure you aren’t telling yourself you aren’t allowed or aren’t supposed to feel a certain way. There is no right or wrong way to feel and I think it’s important that we realize that. It’s important to accept however we feel so that we can work through the feelings and come to peace with whatever it is and move on.

    Does anyone else know what I’m talking about? Have you ever felt shame in a certain feeling? Maybe because those around you weren’t feeling that way or because society made you think that the feeling wasn’t okay? I’d love to know.

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