Pictures!

A day at the Hoyt Arboretum... (All photos courtesy of Julia and Daniel)

Beautiful Friendship... and all the rough spots too ;)

How often I hated watching friends drift away as I was growing up... early on, it was when they went off to public school, or different churches, then college, and recently it is falling in love with :gasp: a BOY and getting married.

I have difficulty being vulnerable with people, so when I form a close friendship, it hurts terribly if anything happens to tear them away... it feels nasty, awful, depressing... you name it, that's a broken friendship.

That's why I started this courtship wanting to remain in touch with my dear friends. Have I succeeded?

It's hard to gauge... by e-mail, yes, in person not so much.

Priorities for married folks ought to be...

1. God.
2. Spouse.
3. Children.
4. Work (you could argue with the order on this one, but providing for #2-3 is kinda important).
5. Friends.

So us in-betweens have a dilemma... we have someone who is somewhere between #2 and #5... but definitely closer to #2 than #5... yet because they are not yet the significant other, it doesn't seem quite right to other friends who are left out.

I still feel guilty that I am not there for my friends as much as I used to be... and that I'm not spending a lot of time culturing our friendships and helping them to grow.

But if you think about it, how would the person you're in a relationship with feel if you told them that your friends are equally important to you and thus you spend more time with them instead... this other person who is already sacrificing their own time and wanting to spend the rest of their life with you in the closest possible human relationship... what are they supposed to think by that statement?

Whose fault is it? The one 'lost in love' or the 'dejected rejected'?

Change is always hard, but maybe we're looking at this the wrong way.

It's the difficult seasons that shape us... for better or worse, depending on what we do with them. I want my friendships to deepen - not stay the same. Maybe I disappear off the map for a while... maybe in a year I come back, "Why, hullo stranger!", for a time of renewing and deepening friendship. And since I firmly believe everyone should get married :insert big wink: ;), hopefully by that time we'll both be married and have a lot of new common concerns/interests... but if not, we can still have the cool and unique opportunity of learning and encouraging each other by what God is doing in our life, single and married alike.

Country Courtship

Isaac and I, walking cows home for milking ;)

I enjoy spending lots of time with Isaac these days... :D

These past few weeks I have met with and talked to many godly ladies, younger and older, about this courtship. To be honest, I feel as though my communication 'quota' (yes, strange as it may seem, I'm a girl who has one of those) has been exceeded by 200%. There's a lot of pressure to get married, and do things the 'right' way, so it has been a struggle to be patient with myself. I'm different than everyone else, move at a different pace, and have different struggles to work through. For a while I'm going to focus less on getting advice from other people, and work on communicating with God and Isaac. Just the three of us :)

"May the peace that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus."

The lyrics to one of my favorite songs by John Michael Talbot:

Shepherd me, O God beyond my wants,
beyond my fears, from death into life.

God is my shepherd, so nothing shall I want,
I rest in the meadows of faithfulness and love,
I walk by the quiet waters of peace.

Gently you raise me and heal my weary soul,
You lead me by pathways of righteousness and truth,
my spirit shall sing the music of your Name.

You have set me a banquet of love
in the face of hatred,
crowning me with love beyond my pow’r to hold.

Surely your kindness and mercy follow me
all the days of my life;
I will dwell in the house of my God forevermore.

Fences

Courting comes with at least a few boundaries, which I compare to fences...



You see, I use electric fencing. A certain voltage runs through the fence charger from a battery and sends pulses along two strands of poly wire enclosing the field. It's purpose: to zap anything touching it and the ground.

Cows prefer to think of themselves as 'above the rules'. You tell a cow to do something, and it will do exactly the opposite unless it was their idea in the first place. Even if it was, they take fiendish delight in orneriness just for the sake of being difficult.

One evening, I haltered our milker-mamas and the new baby and walked them home along the road... leaving the three yearlings in the field. Halfway through milking, I hear Caleb's, "...um... Emily... EMILY".

Three bellowing heifers galloped up the driveway, herded by one of our cattle-raising neighbors. I didn't say a word, remained calm and tight-lipped, opened the gate and gave each a slap on the rump and they went into the field.

In their anxiety to be with the rest of the herd, they had broken through the fencing. Perhaps the grounding rod wasn't in contact with enough moisture on that dry day, or maybe a branch was shorting out the wire... Or maybe it wouldn't have mattered.


I naturally want to fight rules and boundaries, just because they are there. Look at all that roadside vegetation and freedom waiting for me on the other side! And I have to be content with my acre of vetch, clover, and grass. Can't people understand that as a mature Christian, I wouldn't run too far away, and these rules are totally unnecessary?

What my cows don't realize is that those cars racing along the road outside their pasture can do damage. Major damage. They don't realize that a cow running down the road has more chance of being stolen. They are too busy wanting freedom from restraint to realize the purposes behind it.


In the same way, I'm too busy fighting the fact that there are boundaries to stop and appreciate some of the other reasons they exist.

When Isaac went to obtain both sets of parental permission and blessing before even telling me of his interest, I react by wondering, "why couldn't you ask me first? It is ultimately my decision, not theirs, since you obviously aren't wanting to marry my parents..." Others would tell me it wasn't fair that I did not know beforehand, that they couldn't have done it like that. What they do not know is that the very reason my decision was easier, was because I knew both that God speaks through parents, and that all doors were already wide open. That my natural desire had a deeper foundation I could depend on.

Sometimes certain boundaries are like cross-fencing: those single strands of flimsy wire within a field to keep cows from eating the next days' grass. To a cow, these wires don't keep them safe, there's no reason that they can see for keeping them from eating more of their OWN grass, and they are much easier to break through if hunger strikes.

Like Isaac and I don't go driving alone together - in my mind I think, "we are two Christians, have been shown trustworthy, and have just begun a relationship, I don't think it's a big deal right now"... and I can't see beyond myself to realize we are setting an example for our church and families by the things we do.

Thank you, Isaac, for your example to me.

Thank You, my heavenly Father, for showing me what it means to respect fences.

Exciting News

I guess I'm just now finally processing the fact that Isaac and I are courting.

:insert big grin:

For a long time I didn't allow my hopes to grow, wanting him to ask, and it's taking me a while to figure out that I can at last get excited :) Eeek :D

Thanks, God, I see Your work already and am glad You're the beginning, end, first, last, our hope and our future. That's security.