Welcome back

I suppose I am welcoming myself back to the blogosphere. It's been a long absence of writing on a regular basis.

This has been a hard year for me... I'm not even sure where to begin. A part of me wants to start a new blog because I feel detached from... well, before. Before what, exactly? I'm not sure about that, either.

Joshua and I just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. It's hard to believe that it has been a whole year since we stood on the side of a mountain and said our vows to one another. Marriage has turned out to be so much more and so much different than anything I thought it would be. It has been a hard year for us. We are two people with different wounds and different broken places within our hearts, and joining together in such a significant relationship, there is bound to be some collateral damage along the way.

Marriage is more than I thought it would be because I have a deep-- and when I say deep, I mean deep in that sense that you know with all of your guts-- knowledge of the presence of the covenant that unifies us and the fact that it is not Joshua and I who are holding it together but God Almighty Himself. Marriage is so different than I thought it would be because I am an American woman and we are all brainwashed by movies, romantic novels, and society in general which asserts that love is more about how someone makes you feel rather than what you give. No matter how many times you say, "I know it's not like the movies" the truth is you actually don't know that, not until you are in it. This year I have been unabashedly confronted with my own selfishness, self-centeredness, and the realization of just how conditional my love for others truly is.

All of that to say, marriage is not for sissies.

My 25th birthday is coming up later this year. When I was 19 and on my second tattoo, I decided I wouldn't get any more ink until I turned 25. That seemed like an eternity at the time... now here I am. I recently decided on the spot I'd like to get it done, but the inspiration for the actual tat has eluded me. Today I was reading the psalms and as I read these verses I think they might have provided that inspiration.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.

The images are rolling around in my brain. I wish I could draw.

I think I've decided to return to blogging for awhile. Hope you'll join me.