Thursday, November 18, 2010

we will never be the same



people use blogs for different reasons, so many reasons, good and bad. their thoughts, their ideas, their dislikes, their politics, their recipes, their pictures of their ridiculously cute animals...whatever it may be, they have the freedom to do. depending on who you are and how long you've known me and how long you've been following me in the blog world, you'll know that my blog history is one that is personal. i've share the world around me, i've share the world inside me.

my previous blog was primarily my writings from my time in uganda in 2008. my was exploding in so many different ways and i couldn't seem to do justice to all that was happening. i felt pain and struggle. i was joy and redemption. i felt conviction and for the first time, i knew romantic love with a man. my writings reflected my heart.

my life has changed since then. such a drastic change..i could never have dreamed of it. i returned from uganda, attempted to adjust, got engaged, got married, moved to canada and lived there for the first 14+ months of our marriage and now i [we] have come back stateside - - all in less than 21 months. if you've followed me/my blogs since my time in uganda, you'll know that the number of posts has dropped...significantly. theres a reason for that.

[here goes vulnerable for the sake of growth]

marriage has taken us by storm.
a storm can be a hard place to write from.

marriage has shaken me to the core and revealed more about myself than i could have fathomed.
God has purpose in it.


being married to josh has been one of the best gifts i have ever received but it hasn't come without some serious revelation and some serious stretching and some serious hard moments for us. God has always intended for josh to hold my heart on this earth, no doubt about it. but for us, the coming together of two separate lives and personalities into one hasn't happened as smoothly as we perhaps envisioned it. our humanness shows up every morning and it has a really nasty habit of showing its ugly self to the other.

i love this man with my entire heart. if he left my side, i fear my heart would break every new morning. [i'm learning dependence IS ok] i love him, i fight for him, i want to see him chase his heart dreams. i'd give anything for him.

all that said -- i guess you could say we had no 'honeymoon stage' of marriage. we got right down into it. God began a long and hard work in our marriage. tough questions. new realities. expectations. miscommunications. it seemed that all around me were happy couples. newlyweds without fault. i felt as though something was 'wrong'. in my own heart, i felt as though our hard times made us the outcasts - the ones who didn't 'fit' the newlywed stereotype. i started believing those lies you hear when you're down. guilt crept in. i kept my heart to myself, i kept quiet. my lips didn't speak much, my fingers didn't write much. i didn't necessarily act like everything was perfect, but i do admit to leaving out what i thought was the 'bad' and the 'ugly'. i carried a weight. i was often confused about what to write in a blog. i wanted to write from my heart but with the guilt i felt, came a fear. what if i was honest. what would they think? [if you were to ask me who 'they' were, i don't think i would have even had an answer. ]

these thoughts were wrong.

through it all, good and bad, God has been fighting for me. for us. fighting to break into my heart and bring light to this situation. i often felt/feel him wanting to speak truth about our reality, about guilt, about honesty, about how what we're experiencing is actually quite normal. my heart has been fighting to hear - fighting hard to hear more Truth. there are moments that are dark. but. there are also moments where freedom feels real and understand comes..and these moments are increasing.

and then this past weekend happened.


it was at that moment, standing in that place, in that beautiful church that it hit me.

i will never be the same.


at the start, He was there. and at the end, He'll be there.

and because of that - i'm different.



in those moments, a bit of clarity came to my heart.
God called josh and i into this marriage and i will never be the same because of that
what God intended to reveal - to shake up - to change is being done
and i am changing because of it.

he took this idea we had of marriage & turned it into a living breathing thing in our lives.
we will never be the same.

i often take for granted what's been given to me.
sometimes i take this precious gift of a husband and a marriage and i twist it in my own little world the way i see fit. i have damaged, i have hurt, i have gone too far, i have spoken words i do not mean, i have blatantly disrespected the very man God saw fit to lead me through life.

"and after all my hands have wrought, He forgives."
he forgives. forgives. forgives. forgives?

and after all falls apart,
He repairs

he loves me so much that even after all i have done, he cares to repair.
he doesn't leave me orphaned; to fend for myself.

he enters & he offers redemption for us all.
Jesus Christ offers sweet redemption to us all.
redemption. what a FULL word.

"there were scars before my scars
love written on the hands that hung the stars
hope living in the blood that was spilled for me"


so here i am - open wide.
trying to figure out to accept this grace and offer of hope.
Gods love is strong. God supplies us with His love.
God is love and love IS real.


i have so much to say now.
so many more words to help form the above jumbled thoughts into more complete thoughts and ideas.


we are loved, friends.













7 comments:

  1. julie, you are so beautiful! way to be honest & real -- what a blessing & a wonderful wife you are to do that! i can relate to you so much in this. God will keep working. it is not easy, but He will be so faithful! keep it up, girl -- you can't do it, but He can!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is so beautiful. As cliche as it sounds, nothing worth fighting for is ever easy. For me, the hardest moments and struggles is when I grew the most.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I admire this post and wish to save it for posterity... the more I am in a long-term relationship the more I feel it will be a struggle to get this independent gal to fit into a marriage, and I imagine that I may even find myself on a similar journey someday if I am lucky enough to marry that man I know God's chosen for me/chosen me for... thank you for your honesty and by no means should you be ashamed of anything from your story. Love.

    ReplyDelete
  4. why don't we live in the same place? this i want to know : ) i love you.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hey Mrs. Schneider--this doesn't really have anything to do with your post. I was checking out the local weather and saw there is about 2 days full of rain heading our way. I saw it's currently spread from ohio to KS. I decided to look at Manhattan to see if your rain is coming for me. It is! Aww :) I know that's super lame but it seems kind of cool that Julie's rainy day is coming to be my rainy day soon. lol

    ReplyDelete
  6. brian and i had really rough times when we first got together... we knew God had brought us together and that we would one day be married... but we went through quite a storm ourselves... for at least a year... but let me tell you, it made us STRONGER. by the time we got married, we were new people. there were still some adjustments but at least a year of TRIALS was out of the way. so i just wanted to encourage you that if you keep working through the hard things right now, and not ignoring them and hoping they will go away, but dealing with the issues, it WILL get better. you guys will be stronger, personally and together. it will be worth it on the other side. so hold on to each other and hold on to God. and let God arise.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks for being vulnerable and sharing, sister. Also, what about those who knew you from your previous PREVIOUS blog?! Old xanga?? We read many a good posts of each others' back then ;-).

    I do not think God intended marriage to be easy by any means. It is a constant reshaping of self and the definition of "two as one." But it is so very rewarding, yes?

    Much love to you!! [i am back on blog world] lol

    ReplyDelete