Wednesday, June 23, 2010

A New Beginning

What better thing to talk about in my first blog than my marriage!
So this is the married life.
People are always asking me what it's like and how different I feel. Honestly, I don't feel different at all. Not very many things have changed since before I was married. I mean, obviously I'm living much more selflessly (or trying to), cooking for two, and I have a man sleeping in my bed. But other than that I just have the legal paper work.
Ben and I have been dating for over 3 years prior to our engagement...we know each other pretty well. I'm sure there will be things down the road I will learn about Ben that I never knew before and vise versa. But I would have to say that the change I fear the most as a result of our marriage are the friendships that could potentially fail. I remember when a close friend of mine got married, I felt distant all of a sudden...like I was no longer invited into her life because she's a married woman now. She did nothing different in our friendship for me to legitimately feel this way. It was a totally false assumption and I see it especially now. Post wedding, my friends have remained pretty close to me thus far...minus a little room for marriage adjustment and our honeymoon. My friendships mean a lot to me so its not a huge surprise that I would be concerned for a change in them. I guess that means I should just put myself out there more.

During the day of my wedding, I had a lot of fun getting ready with my sisters Julia & Susan, and my friends Mackenzie, Julie, and Alyssa. My sisters are absolutely beautiful and the best friends anyone could have and two of the funniest people I know! Julia is the business woman of us three sisters. I would definitely consider her a mentor in many areas of life. Susan is literally the funniest person I know..the speech she gave at our wedding reception was a quote from the hang over. (HA!) She never cease's to surprise me.
Mackenzie is probably one of the smartest and prettiest people I know (what a belle!). She speaks fluent French...(so cool) and she is going to be working overseas in Germany this next year with Campus Crusade for Christ.
I have known Julie the longest of the three. In my life, she has been the picture of a strong faithful servant of the Lord. She and her now husband Jon lead a bible study in college which I attended. I learned a lot through them.
Alyssa is so incredibly beautiful inside and out! She has such a witty sense of humor and even though she won't admit it, she has the chic-est style of anyone I know. She is a great artist (again, she won't admit it)...just hand her a few buttons, scissors, glue, and floral antique fabric and she will make you your favorite thing.

Well, I might as well talk a little about Doodie's and my honeymoon. (Note: Ben recently asked that I refer to him as doodie...ha) We went to Sanibel Island, Florida where my uncle has a condo. As a wedding gift, he let us stay there for 6 days, which is such a blessing because we weren't planning on having a honeymoon...we just couldn't afford it. We spent our mornings riding bikes around the island, looking for lizards and birds. Afternoons were spent at the beach shelling and skim boarding<---well, Ben did. Evenings were spent making dinner in, or going out to some neat restaurants (The Bubble Room!), watching the sunset, and ending the night with a puzzle or a movie.

Our favorite thing we did on our honeymoon was taking a 6 hour long cruise where we saw dolphins and sea otters! The cruise took us to a strip of island where Ben and I snorkeled and found a lot of neat shells and even a few sand dollars! I took our "honeymoon shells" and made them into a picture frame so we will have them forever...or however long the frame lasts.

We are now 25 days into our marriage! We said goodbye to the beautiful Sanibel beaches & vacation, and have entered into work mode. Like my friend Mackenzie, Ben and I are going to be working in ministry as full time interns for Campus Crusade at Bowling Green State University. We loved being apart of this organization throughout college and wanted to continue to do God's work at the same place he did work in us. Our summers would normally consist of leading a group of students on a missions trip either stateside or over seas, but because of the wedding and this whole "marriage thing," ;o) we chose to spend the summer reconnecting with our support team and building it up for the next year.

"So let's not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't give up." ~Galatians 6:9