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Thursday, November 8, 2007 10:28AM I honestly cannot believe it. man time flies! Exactly one year ago today, Ray proposed to me. It was a cold night, right after evening mass in my favorite chapel at Loyola Univ. overlooking the lake. It was the same night I gave him the rosary... Today i'm a married woman who's just come back from her honeymoon, still in awe of God's amazing design for me to love another person just so i could be led to love HIM more. If you haven't yet heard what significance the rosary has for me and ray, i'd like to share with you this video, if only to express how REAL and beautiful our God is! :) It's the video we played at our wedding reception...and tells our love story. Props to our man Wendell. The Storybook. Jeremiah 29:11.
PS........ It's absolutely worth the wait :) PPS......A special website dedicated to family and friends will be up by this week. :)
Tuesday, October 9, 2007 5:14PM From our photographer. He's awesome: http://www.glenabog.com/graceandraywedding And a million other pictures from my friendy friends (thanks guys! haha). You might have to join multiply or facebook to view them though, not sure!: Lenes' Multiply And just had to add in a blog because it makes me cry: These are the only ones i know of. If anyone else has pictures, please send me the link! I have so much more to write, especially to my family and awesome friends...this i promise will be in the next entry. For now, time to get real busy in Costa Rica! HAHA! really though, busy with the conference. come on now.
Saturday, October 6, 2007 10:11AM THE happiest and most beautiful day of my life! :) thanks to God and the bestest friends and family anyone could have! now off to costa rica for mission/honeymoon! (update and pictures soon) I LOVE YOU ALL!
Monday, September 17, 2007 10:53PM Sigh...in need of some Holy Spirit right about now!! I just wanted to thank everyone for their prayers for me and ray during this time. how i wish we could invite everyone we love (especially the youth)! but then we'd have to rent an arena! haha it has been hard, believe me, if we could afford it, we would!! but this is God's plan for us and we are thankful. through the years and especially in our line of work (missionary work!), we are blessed to form bonds of genuine love with many awesome people. everytime i form another relationship through service, because of its root in God, it's not just a friendship, it's family. And I know and pray that everyone in that family understands and knows how very much we love them, and ask them to share with us in Spirit on our wedding day. And so (although i know ate franny's going to kill me that i put this up) i wanted to share this with you. that our story may be shared, and that you may pray for us on our big day. We give it all back to God. 12 days... Our wedding website: http://graceandray.jmotive.com
Thursday, September 6, 2007 10:32AM "A sacrifice to be real must cost, must hurt, must empty ourselves..." Love is a sacrifice. Love will save this world. But if love is all it takes, then why is it so hard? Once love is looked at in its truest sense, one can see how and why it should hurt so much. Love is a sacrifice. loving someone who loves you back is easy. but loving someone who isn't lovable is the true test. there are many people in my life who haven't loved me back the way that i desired them to. friends. people who i considered close. leaders i looked up to. people i invested my heart in. and to now see that there exists a lack of love between us...is really hard for me to understand. to feel unloved is just something noone wants to feel. but the worst thing one can do in response to that is to stop loving back. to give up on them is the easier thing to do. but to love despite all odds allows you to soar to the highest of places. it all comes back to sacrifice. a sacrifice of self is true love. To love I must...
Jesus loved us who rejected Him, who denounced and tortured Him. He loved us so much that even as we forgot Him, He remembered us. Through every second of His suffering, He offered us a love greater than all the whole world's love combined. His love is sacrifice. So next time you love, if it hurts a little, make sure it only causes you to love harder. shout "Thank you, Jesus!" when it hurts. for it is through that hurt that Jesus is allowing you to have a taste of what He lived when He loved, and thus... He is making you more like Him. to empty yourself for love is the type of self-lessness that will heal this world. it is through our sacrifce of self that all in this world may experience true love. "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." Mother Teresa ------------------------------------------------------------ PS. Check out my other friends who are blogging about why "Love is the answer." If you feel it too, write your own blog with that title or put that tagline anywhere on your site, then comment here with your link so we can show others what IS the solution! SPREAD THE LOVE! snailbites.com
Pictures from our "East Coast" Engagement Party and Betrothal Ceremony.
Pictures from the CFCYouth 1Hope Conference. We are all ONE HOPE. Suggested music - Play Track#4: "Hosanna" from the tracklist above while you flip through this album :). God moves His people to action! We will not stop and we cannot stop. [Photos care of me and whoever was holding Wendell's camera haha.]
Thursday, August 16, 2007 9:13AM The last few months of my life have been different. You may or may not have noticed :). I take a look back at my entries and see that my last "real" one was almost half a year ago. That's pretty darn hard to believe for me. But rest assured God's been speaking to me during this time of web hiatus. Through my friends, through situations in my family, through conflicts (and miracles) in the community I serve in, through my learning and love for Ray, through this past powerful conference season (my last one as a single woman!), through it all…He has been speaking, and I haven't really understood what He was saying…until now. The truth is I have known all this before. I know I have…but it sometimes gets lost in, well,...life. i'm amazed that at 26, i'm now once again slowly remembering what it's like... to be romanced by God. God is romancing me. He's romancing me in the most intimate and head over heels kind of way. And my heart beats faster to know that He's been chasing after me ever since the day I was born. His eyes, so sincere and tender, rest on me with a love that no one else could give me. so whole, so full, so perfect. how could I ever look anywhere else? i stutter as i try to express this return to the love of my life…because it's something so personal, i think He kept it that way so that understanding would only be just between the two of us. that intimacy is unmistakable...so sacred and pure. and the awesome thing is that He has that with each one of us, and He's basically just waiting for us to figure that out. in reconnecting with Him in this way, things have just started to make sense again in my life. Because in reality, He is the only One that can satiate the bellowing desires of our hearts. Lately it seems as though a lot of us, even though we've been with God for so long, have lost this feeling, this basic understanding of God's love. Find your love story with God. the romance. the butterfiles, the beauty, the passion and intimacy. Don't forget it, or that love will be taken for granted. Having only 45 days left as a single woman, this means more to me than it ever has before. i anticipate that day with every part of me, knowing i only walk down that aisle to meet my God first, and then the one He has given me. And as I grow more and more in love with Ray, I get to experience only part of what I was already meant to have in God. In this life, I was meant to only fall in love with Ray just so I knew first how much God loves me. that is an amazing truth that brings me to tears each time. I pray i never forget that. "Our castle is Heaven," Ray once told me. "We look towards our destiny…we will one day be there. You point me to there, and I will lead you there as well. Our love is the guide to our way home."
Through true love, may we all be guided back home to Him, where we belong.
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1. "Arithmitic"
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