Radical.

So I mentioned in this post a few weeks ago that Kley and I had finished reading the book Radical by David Platt. I said I would do a separate post on that later, and honestly I forgot. Whoops. I should have done it earlier, because now I've forgotten some of the things I wanted to write about it!

It was such a thought-provoking, challenging, and interesting read. It mainly just talked about being radical for Jesus. He talked a lot about underground churches in China that he'd visited and how on fire they were for Jesus and they would spend hours on end just studying the Bible together. Are we like that here in the US? Not usually. He talked about how people drive their cars to church, having everything they need, sit through a service, and judge it on how they "liked it" or how it "suited their needs." He talked about how it's crazy that there are millions of dollars worth of cars sitting in church parking lots, while other people in the world are starving and living on nothing.

One of the most interesting things he talked about was how the church handles this; mainly talking about how little churches give to needy causes, but how they raise so much money to build themselves a new building. I am not saying building a new building is bad, and neither was the author, but it definitely is an interesting concept to think about. He talked about a church article that had two articles featured on the front page, one where the church spent millions on building a new building, and the other about how great it was that they raised $5,000 dollars to send to a need overseas. Why such a discrepancy in the amounts?

He ended the book with challenging the readers to participate in a year long challenge, doing five things:
1. Pray for the entire world. He gave books/websites that could help you do this, to be praying for different needs and countries all around the entire world.
2. Read through the whole Bible.
3. Commit your lives to multiplying community- such as being really involved in your church, and specifically in participating in a small group.
4. Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose. He talked about setting a cap on your lifestyle so you can free up as much of your money as you can for helping the lost/needy and advancing the Kingdom.
5. Give your time in another context- spend one week on a mission trip somewhere outside of your community.

I would recommend it! You should check it out- you will definitely be thinking!

You can check out the Radical Experiment here.

Snow Day!

Today was a snow day! Woo hoo! :) It was so great to have a day off. Here is what I did:

Exercised (I did this "fit for soccer pro" game on the wii and it was intense!)
Cleaned the apartment
Made scrambled eggs and cinnamon rolls for breakfast
Made BBQ pulled pork sandwiches for lunch
Made chocolate chip cookies from scratch
Painted my nails
Watch Footloose
Took a nap
Paid bills
Did homework for a class I'm taking for work
Did a load of laundry

It was a good mix of getting things done and doing fun things. Hope you all had a great day too!

Parts of Psalm 63- my favorite Psalm.

Psalm 63^[a]

A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah.

¹ You, God, are my God,
    earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
    my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
    where there is no water.

² I have seen you in the sanctuary
    and beheld your power and your glory.
³ Because your love is better than life,
    my lips will glorify you.
⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
    and in your name I will lift up my hands.
⁵ I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
    with singing lips my mouth will praise you.

⁶ On my bed I remember you;
    I think of you through the watches of the night.
⁷ Because you are my help,
    I sing in the shadow of your wings.
⁸ I cling to you;
    your right hand upholds me.

Ice Skating.

Last night we went ice skating. We had a groupon for it and had been saving it for awhile (actually we tried to go once in December but they had run out of skates, so we couldn't get in). Last night was a great night to do it! It was so nice to get some fresh air after being cooped up inside all week, because it was too cold to ever go out for recess at school. But it finally warmed up some yesterday- yay! It was fun to break out the old skates again. I took lessons back in Jr. High!

Fun date night. :)

The rink. We went to this outdoor place downtown. It was nice to go while the sun was setting!

View of downtown. :)

My favorite sights at the rink were: 1. This boy was wearing hot pink gloves, and he kept bending down and wiping his gloves on the ice, and then licking the remnants off. He would lick the entire glove, and he kept doing this over and over. Yuck. 2. This little boy was skating with his dad, and he was so excited he was flailing his tiny legs everywhere. His dad had to hold him up the entire time. 3. This older couple got on the ice, and initially they didn't look very good, but then they surprised everyone by doing coordinating dance moves together to the pop songs on the radio. It was funny. :)

Then we went to Texas Roadhouse, but it was so packed that we ended up getting takeout. This was a great idea since we were both so famished after skating/eating late. It was one of the most delicious things we've had in awhile. :)

Count your Blessings.

This January has been tougher than normal to count my blessings. Kley was off from school (started back today!), and it's been very cold the last few days. Also, I've gotten several new kids at school this month, which always takes time for adjustment. Adding more kids to the room makes it more chaotic, and adjustment periods are always tougher when they aren't used to it. So, I've been working on counting my blessings this week.

Here are just a few of the things I am thankful for:

A place to live.

A warm bed.

Spring Break Vacation coming up to Florida!

Seeing my good friend Stephanie for most of January (she hasn't been home that long in awhile!).

A trip to Denver coming up to visit my good friend Lauren! (Taken the last time we visited them.)

My siblings. (I was looking through old pictures the other day and stumbled across this one. It's my new winter favorite. Ha.)

 My parents (taken in 2008 in Michigan).

Beautiful creation.

 Sunsets. (Always makes me think of Psalm 19:1- "The heavens declare the glory of God...")

Oh, and I'm pretty thankful for this guy too. :)

Spirituality in Marriage.

This post has been floating around in my mind, not really knowing what to say and wondering if I should even post it, but not wanting to ignore the topic either. Because I think it's important. But I also don't want to share too intimate of details, as part of our marriage is just for us.

Sometimes, well, all the time, I think spirituality in marriage is hard. It's hard to find the balance between having healthy and growing spiritual lives apart and together. This past month has not been good for us spiritually. When one of us was doing well, the other one wasn't, and we didn't do a very good job of connecting together spiritually.

We find, and assume that most other Christian couples find, that when you are having marital problems, a lot of it stems back to how you are doing spiritually. It's ironic that God is the most important thing, yet often times when you are diagnosing a problem, He can be the last thing you sometimes think of.

We had a good, and much needed, heart to heart last night about our spirituality. We have been not doing many things together to connect spiritually. And you know what that's brought? A lot more fights, disagreements, short tempers, and all in all, a lot of things we don't desire our relationship to be.

It's so good to clear the air. Realize your issue and come back to God. But sometimes it's hard for be to trust and wait for the change, because I want it to be better RIGHT NOW. But that's not always how it works. I will never appreciate the mountaintop experiences if we never go through the valleys.

I am proud to be married to a man that desires to be the spiritual leader, and a good one at that. I am blessed to be married to someone that isn't afraid to admit his mistakes, that pushes me to talk about it so we can get better, asks for forgiveness, offers forgiveness, and tries to do better.

Thank you God, for always using our experiences to mold us for the good. Thank You for forgiveness, and the opportunity to grow and be better.

Sometimes it's okay to not have everything together. Sometimes it's okay to be broken.

(Kley pre-read this post and okay'd it, as I would never want to post something he didn't want me to or that revealed something he wanted private.)

Skiing and Tubing!

One of my Christmas presents to Kley was an outing to Sleppy Hollow Sports Park for a day of winter fun. We brought my little sister, Kayla, along too! We went skiing and tubing. It was quite fun and neat to do something different!

This was only my second time skiing. This is a picture of the beginner hill, which I am proud to say I mastered. It was also fun to teach Kayla to ski- it was her first time! She got the hang of it in the end. :) 

Kayla and I (not the best picture, I know). We hung around the beginner slope while Kley ventured onto the big ones. Most of the trouble was hanging on to that crazy rope that yanked you to the top!

Kley and I.  A successful and fun outing! :)

Tubing was so crazy fast down those hills that I couldn't get a good picture. We were flying!