Bright Star

I recently watched the movie "Bright Star" and was in love with it. It is a biography about the poet John Keats. I love this movie! It is soo sweet. I will warn you....it is kind of a slow movie, BUT sooo good! Here is the link to the trailer...check it out.

I think my new endeavor is reading poetry. I want to read it so I can start writing more poetically. We'll see how it goes...

defrocking dating in parts

i tried to post a picture of jon and i beside this, but technical person that i am, who knows what will result? if it does show, it's of us on a ferry crossing the bosphorus strait in turkey.

dating. Dating. DTR. courting. arranged. who-needs-dating-when-you-can-just-marry-and-figure-each-other-out-later. of these, i'd prefer the latter two. i think.

by the way, dating verses Dating came from a recent phone call to a friend of old who informed me that she and her person are not capital D dating but lower case d. when i asked her what she meant, she happily explained that he wants to GUARD HER HEART and thus regards their relationship as lower case d.

jon and i learned much - c(with a vertical line underneath which then makes the "ch" sound)ok - or a lot in turkish - about dating while dating. much of the much we learned dealt with seeing dating as it is by defrocking it of the meaning our american christian culture gives to it(, which is often not only not Biblical, but opposed to the Bible). note this post does not implicate those who don't follow the Jesus of the Bible.

since i referred to it before, one question jon and i had early-on was, should we study the Bible or other books about the Bible together? we had heard countless people talk about GUARDING THEIR HEARTS referring to not disclosing parts of their life, especially their relationships with God. they'd always use "keep your heart [or guard your heart in other translations] with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life" from Proverbs chapter 4, verse 23. but the problem is that the direction of the words there is keeping one's heart "inclined" to a father's sayings or not letting one's heart stray from right to wrong, not not sharing one's heart or relationship with God with others. God, i think, gave me thoughts on this when talking with a mentor at the beginning of jon's and my relationship. in response to talk about guarding one's heart, she responded quickly that people often take that verse out of its intended context and that there are no other verses that tout that. then she asked, of all the things you'd want to do with someone you're considering marrying, wouldn't studying the Bible and learning about and from God together top the agenda?

we studied the Bible, prayed and shared together.

the purpose of dating (or for us, Dating) was confusing for us. our second outing together, we agreed that we were dating purposefully with the end intent of marrying or not and if we came to a place where the answer was "not," that we'd go different ways and not date recreationally. then, that part of purpose was clear but, for example, i would always tell myself that i should marry when with someone i better love God then when apart from him. it sounded right to me. it was, in part, informed by books and the Bible. but that was convoluted, because what is the litmus test for a person who helps you to better love God? does it take a year before the answer's apparent? does it need confirmation from 1 other person or 3? again, i sought counsel from a mentor who agreed with my nagging uncertainty about my standard: that test of better with or without is not found in the Bible. she explained to me that God can work whatever purposes through whoever, that our biggest, most consuming question in dating should be does he love Jesus and want to and work toward obeying him? not attraction. not an unclear question with unclear answers. not a question for which we don't even know the answer like whether God's wills for our lives match.

we both love Jesus and want to and work toward obeying him.

more lessons we learned later

linus and lucy in monetary terms

there is lots that i am and have been thinking about, but, for now, i'll note one comparatively minor part of our life: dog costs.

i thought pre-dogs that dogs were low(er) maintenance, our print/line-item budget barely regarding them. actually, they weren't a line in our budget for 4 months. because they were free to us?

no.

because for those months, we pulled money from other budget categories. why? we didn't know about their costs.

therefore, i thought i'd record their medical costs for those wondering.

key

b = boy
g = girl
m = month

b/g 1 m exams/2 vaccinations each/2 dewormings
b/g 2 m exams/2 vaccination boosters each/2 dewormings/g broken leg x-ray/ g bandage
g 2 m broken leg exam/removal of bandage/bandage cost
b/g 2.5 m exams/2 vaccination boosters each/2 dewormings/2 nail trims
b/g 6.5 m neuter/spay/2 rabies vaccinations


these costs added, our dogs, just medically, through their first 6 months, have cost $680.82. add to this food, kennel(s), accessories. boy, have we learned!

just this last week, jon and i were talking about their costs and we decided that people could get by paying less, but if owners want to take proper (in my book) care of their pets, these costs are necessary.

some thoughts on these costs

don't pay (in our case, $7.50 per dog) for nail trimmings! buy a trimmer at a store and do it yourself!

spaying a female costs more because they perform a historectomy! i did not know this before.

cost aside, we love our pups, linus and lucy, know that God entrusted them to us to steward and care for and to prepare us, in part, for children(, though they are not children!). they are worth the costs to us.

How much is too much?

How much is too much? This is a question I have been pondering about lately. Not just regarding clothes or gadgets, but material things in general.

SO I love clothes! I love to put things together and create outfits. My shopping habits have been something I have been battling ever since I can remember. At various points in my life, I have been really disciplined and others, I have not been. This past weekend, I felt like I spent a lot of money on groceries and things that I don't really need, but are helpful. Like a wine stopper! I have wasted bottles of wine because I have never had the proper wine stopper. The one I got has a air tight suction thing that supposedly keeps your wine staying fresher and for a longer period of time. Groceries though are something I need. I rarely eat out and so I don't feel as bad about spending money on groceries. I don't always know though if I am spending too much for one person. I like to eat healthy and so that is usually more expensive. Anywho, I also made a trip to Gap. I bought everything on sale and spent under 40 dollars. Which I thought was pretty good! I had the money, but does that make it ok to spend it? I know I have enough clothes...how many pairs of jeans or shirts do you really need? I am not entirely sure because I like new things and I seem to keep buying.

I try to budget, but it doesn't work for me because I do not have a steady cash flow. I basically live paycheck to paycheck. I tithe, save, pay the bills I have and give. So after that is done, is it ok to go and spend the left over money on what you want? Should it just sit in my account? I want to live simply but I LOVE NEW CLOTHES and STUFF! I don't even know what that really means...I go back and forth. I think a lot of it probably had to do with the heart attitude. What is the limit of having too much? Not sure. It is something I am praying about.

Thoughts or suggestions...?

lit life and discernment

i just read a book called Lord, Change My Attitude: Before it's Too Late by James MacDonald. our church's women's Bible study read it. By it, God lit corners of my life that were dim and taught me new ways of seeing ie lit life; by it, God also taught me discernment by MacDonald's extrapolative statements ie discernment.

the chapters partner in twos, beginning with an attitude that needs replacing then followed by an attitude with which to replace the former. one chapter, about love replacing criticism, accomplished both of the results mentioned before.

example of lit life

by this chapter, God gave me clarity about three relationships, each stained by my error and evil of failing to love God-like. my specific wrongs were jealousy and not hoping all things (because love hopes all things and covers over a multitude of sins). an example of the latter, not hoping all things, is assuming motives or attitudes behind action, assuming someone meant ill by an action without knowing. God spurred me to go to my sisters to ask for forgiveness. i'm thankful that each forgave me!

example of discernment

by this same chapter (amongst lots of other examples), God moved me to a place of wariness because the author kept seeming to state that because all nouns, verbs and all else done apart from love are worthless, we shouldn't use nouns, verbs or all else unless love partners with them.

here is a parallel example:

i know i should desire to pray when i pray, but i don't, therefore i won't pray until i desire it.

or

i know i should desire to care for my crying baby when i care, but i don't, therefore i won't care for him/her until i desire it.

this falls apart (clearly in the latter example), practically, because if we only do things when we "feel" it, a lot wouldn't get done!, and Biblically, often in doing what we're commanded, God provides feeling, plus commitment isn't just doing when feeling.

for example, the Psalmist questions himself about his downcast soul, telling himself that he will again rejoice in God. this is one exemplification of working through our lack of feeling or feeling the opposite of what we should.

my argument - i think grounded by the Bible - is that it is best to do all by love, but, if love is not there, it is still better to do, without love, than not to do, though we should ask God for love.

my joy in budgeting is complete

jon and i are learning the freedom of God with money.

money used to cause me a lot of stress and tightened-insides-ism (or anxiety).

through different means, God encouraged us to control and steward the money given us instead of the money controlling us. paul, in the Bible, often prefaces or concludes truth-statements with "make my joy complete," connecting the completion or fulfillment or fullness of his joy with sharing whatever truth with others. my mom told me last weekend that i always talk about our budget, budget-this and budget-that. i responded that this is a big, hopefully, life-long tip and help God taught and is teaching us.

our current budget method includes

deciding where we spend money ex groceries, gas, haircuts

alotting money monthly or bi weekly to each category based on income making sure to prioritize alottments ie giving then mortgage/rent then utilities then insurance, etc. ex groceries 10, gas 5, haircuts 2.5

creating a binder with a page per category, considering each category it's own account ex of a page

page for groceries (or g-1 indicating page 1 of groceries)

date name of place where groceries were purchased amount

basically, our pages look like a checkbook with the difference of each category having its own "checkbook" and running balance. this is helpful because when we had a budget but didn't separate our categories, we'd look at our balance online and think we had a lot of money in our account, but, really, that excess was excess in a particular category such as insurance since we only pay that twice a year. this method helps us to immediately see what's left for a particular category. we've determined to work with inputting our receipts once a week. this helps us to stay aware.

some helpful thoughts

keep your receipts it was hard for jon and i to remember to keep receipts, especially ones for small amounts. for items paid for in cash, we each have a small notebook that we keep in our cars or at work in which we'll record amounts. our system at home is to have a small cardboard box in which we keep past receipts that we've already recorded and a little bag in which we keep receipts we haven't yet recorded.

about transfering money you can transfer money! this is freeing. for example, we allow a certain amount of money for our two puppies per month, but this month they're getting neutered and spaid, which will cost more than our alottment, but we have extra money in our gas and cell phone categories, so we're transferring our needed amount. in our binder, on our dog page, we'll write under "description/name of place," "transferred from gas/cell," and on our gas/cell pages, we'll write under "description/name of place," "transferred to dog."

breathing room give yourself room to breathe. don't budget out to the penny unless it's a fixed amount like mortgage. give yourself maybe 15 extra dollars per category or whatever you feel would help your budget to breathe.

debt prioritize paying off debt. talk about freedom! God provided for us to pay off our car and credit card debt through bonuses and our lovely stimulus from our home purchase, (though consider federal and state returns or christmas/birthday money,) and it freed multiple hundreds of dollars per month. with our school debt, we are paying off mine at 1.75 times the required amount; at this rate, we should pay mine off in less than 5 years, after which we'll turn the amount we're paying toward mine toward jon's on top of the required amount, which should allow us to pay off all our school debt in a total of less than 10 years, which was the original time frame on just my debt! sure, there will be less money to work with today, but you'll know freedom from debt sooner.

if there are more questions, please ask! sharing this makes my joy complete!

what good is it if you love those who don't creepify you?

jon and i are learning a new circumstance under which to persevere in love: creeped-out-ness.

God is turning our eyes from us to others, slowly and sometimes in ebbs and flows, but surely. one demographic He has been giving us eyes to see is our neighbors. we've had lots of, hopefully, first conversations with them. one enclave of these neighbors lives on the street behind us and all of these are children (with which we've talked and spent quite a bit of time). one particular little boy, probably around 7, spends a considerable amount of time with jon, waiting for him when he knows jon will come home from work, mowing with jon, gardening with jon. and all of this, we've been excited about because we want to know, not just know about, our neighbors, loving them, showing them Jesus by our lives (hopefully), but jon just had a little interview with this boy that left us quite creeped out. the interviewee was jon.

interviewer
jon, what's the password to your garage?

interviewee
you don't need to know that.

interviewer
hmmm. what's upstairs in the garage?

interviewee
just some cardboard

interviewer
oh. how much do you make?

interviewee
enough

these are the first of their kind from this boy. and if we didn't both have a lot of experience with children, this maybe wouldn't concern us, but we do and have never been asked questions like this albeit maybe the question about income, but never questions like this in a line of unrelenting interest. we're concerned that they maybe came from his parents; we think from his and his sisters' comments that their family life isn't the best. anyway, before we loved them easily because of them - their obedience and the like - now, we're learning to love them because of God. another facet of knowing what luke said in chapter 6, verses 36-39.

black/white with gray

thank you, Wendy, for your thoughts! really appreciate them ...

isn't this edifying on whichever side? to think through what we've thought, trying to understand and uncover the foundations or premises?

first, Jesus said that he only does what the Father tells him to do and we are to imitate God as dearly loved children, thus i am not admonishing anyone to do other than what our Father tells him or her to do. i think that God can mightily use someone doing what he or she thinks God is telling him or her to do even if later, upon reflection, God helps them to reflect differently. for example, for the first 4 years of my trying to follow Jesus, i regarded God as a genie in a bottle. now, if i encountered my past self, i would label me a heretic! (which also teaches me to extend grace to others as growth and learning to imitate Jesus is a process.)

one response i have is that with jon and i, we noticed that many talk about children as though they're cars or homes, requiring thorough consideration and budget analysis. but God's Word never regards children in monetary terms, nor are they like cars or homes in that one can acquire these and not know whether they are truly from the Lord, but, with children, there is not a single instance noted in the Word of a living thing having been created by one other than God. God alone creates. (Satan distorts.) the implications of this are that no person is a mistake, whereas there are cars and homes (and jobs and decisions to move and purchases and words spoken) that could very well be "mistakes" in that it was not God's desire that we choose those states (of being) or actions. children are not among these sorts of choices.

example of worldly wisdom pervading church (in my opinion!!!)
a gal to whom i'm close who knows and loves Jesus told me in response to "God alone creates" that "Yes, but if a woman has 14 children, that's not exactly wise." my return question is "says who?" here,

God alone creates
a woman has 14 created children
"that is unwise"
God is unwise

because, otherwise, who is the "that" in "that is unwise?" the woman did not create the children. surely, there are means, but she herself nor the man himself did not create them.

but because we are under the law of liberty (James), i'll put gray frosting on our black/white cake:
before jon and i wed, we prayed through our thoughts on timing of children and jon determined (and i supported) that we should pay off our bad debt before children ie debt on objects that are decreasing in worth like our car and credit card debt. i will say that even with this, i always felt unsure but jon felt led by God and it wasn't opposed to the Bible (but rather supported throughout Proverbs and elsewhere), thus i followed him.

i will post later about ensuing questions that this post begs.

ode to trusting God, and not time nor absence of children, to establish our marriage

most encouraged jon and i to use birth control. actually, all did except for one couple that has mentored us.

most used reasonings comparable to "but you should establish your marriage first." initially, this seemed sensible. but after thinking, praying and seeking a range of council, it occurred to us - where are those reasonings grounded? the Bible? I asked a dear friend and mentor whether those words are used anywhere in the words of the Bible. she thought, then responded "no." then, the seeming source was the world. wisdom of the world that doesn't contradict the Bible could maybe ground our reasons for using birth control, but it seemed like the encouragement to use birth control was cloaked in a prepared phrase but that the actual advice they were giving was "children are a burden," "once you have them, fun and freedom ends," "if you don't wait for awhile on the front end, your marriage is not and/or cannot be established." there is a possibility that we misunderstood dozens of people, but, in the end, our consciences weren't clear following this line of wisdom.

most encouraged us to use birth control; we think God is encouraging the opposite. many more thoughts/wonderings about this ...