Guess We Didn't Know What We Were Getting Into!

As many of you already know, we just recently got back from a week long training camp outside of Atlanta for the World Race Mission Trip that we were signed up for. Yep, you read that right. Were signed up for. I know this has been as much a roller coaster ride for our friends and families as it has for us. We arrived at training camp Saturday the 16th and were supposed to stay until Sunday the 24th then go to Atlanta for the night to celebrate our 1st anniversary. Well we only made it through Wednesday night and we left camp and headed on for Atlanta. There were a number of reasons why we decided not to go on the World Race, but bottom line, we just did not have peace about going. We have nothing against the organization and don't have any bad words to say about them, it just wasn't for us. It has honestly been a roller coaster for the both of us since we were accepted to go on the World Race last July and we had been telling ourselves "Just make it to training camp, just make it to training camp. Then we'll be fired up, excited, ready to go, etc." But for us, training camp just continued the roller coaster where we had moments like we felt like this was what God wanted us to do followed by times where we just felt like we shouldn't be there. And we were informed on Wednesday that the World Race needed a commitment from everyone that they were for sure gonna go by that night because they would be putting the teams together that we would be with all year. So I guess that is the point where we had to quit 'hanging in there' and make a decision. So we spent some time together in the Word, praying and talking, and just decided that we didn't feel like we could make the commitment. So we didn't. And honestly we left training camp completely broken. We pretty much cried all the way to our hotel room and we spent the next few days keeping ourselves really busy and finding ourselves really upset when we slowed down enough to remember what all had taken place at camp and that we wouldn't be going on the trip come January.

So we stayed in Atlanta until Monday (and celebrated a wonderful first anniversary while we were there) before coming back home. What we struggled with the most was feeling like God had finally given us some direction and insight into what path he wanted us to take (and we fought Him tooth and nail over it) and we were finally getting to the point of really being o.k. with leaving the country and our home and family and friends and lives for an entire year to go serve him and then we end up coming home without a plan or any idea what the heck we were doing. So honestly it was super hard leaving camp. We had become very close to a lot of the other campers and so of course that made our decision that much harder. And to leave camp was kind of to step back into the unknown, specifically referring to our future. We had had all of 2011 planned out since July and had spent the past 4 months preparing ourselves for this journey only to be completely shut down. So we left camp really disappointed, a little hurt, and really confused about what God's will for us was.

But God has really shown himself to us since we left. He has given us complete peace about the decision we made. And he has also shown us that we don't have to beat ourselves to death when we have a decision to make. We tend to see any kind of 'big' decision we make as having a right and wrong choice, the right choice being the path God wants us to take and the wrong choice being well, the wrong choice. And so we approach these decisions as some kind of spiritual life-altering decision where we just absolutely have to figure out exactly what God wants us to do and do just that or else we are gonna like throw God for a loop and completely alter his path for us. Now don't hear us wrong. Some decisions definitely have a right and wrong answer and God definitely has a plan for our lives, but look at this from another angle.

On our anniversary we went to North Point Community Church (Andy Stanley is the pastor) for their morning worship and heard Andy give a message on God's will (surprise surprise). And he told us how if you were to look up verses about the will of God, they will fall into one of three categories: God's providential will, moral will and personal will. His providential will is like the things he is going to do because he is God and there is nothing we can do about it. example: (this is all pretty much straight from his sermon) He promises Abraham to make him into a great nation and there is nothing we can do to stop that. God decided to raise up the nation of Israel and there was nothing anyone could do about it. God is going to create the church and not even the gates of Hell will stand against it. God's moral will is pretty obvious: the do's and don'ts of scripture. And then personal will is the one that we all want to know: What is God's will for my life??

"The personal will of God is always found within the context of the providential and moral will of God. The more familiar you are with the providential and moral will of God, the easier it will be for you to discern the personal will of God" That's straight from the sermon. And it's so true. I mean we all get so wrapped up in what the personal will of God for our lives is that we completely neglect His providential and moral will. The better we understand what God is up to in the world and the more we strive to live inside of the truths of the Bible that we know as His will, the easier it will be to discern his personal will for our lives. When we start looking at God's will for our lives through the lens of his moral and providential will we can quit beating ourselves up over exactly what career God wants us to have and exactly what college God wants us to go to and exactly what car God wants us to drive or exactly who he wants us to marry or where he wants us to live or how much of our money he wants us to give or what brand of shoes he wants us to wear. Seriously, we can really beat ourselves up and second-guess ourselves to death trying to discern exactly what God wants us to do in every situation and in every decision and area of our lives when it so much simpler to just live in what we know the Bible says is God's providential and moral will and trust that His personal will for our lives is just gonna flow from that (though really all the answers to his personal will are right in front of us. example: Exactly how much money should I give away? Matt. 6:19-21, Mark 12:43-44. While this doesn't say: "Chances, give exactly 23% or 14% or 82% of your paycheck to the church, the answers to all these questions we have are right in front of us) .

Truly God is a faithful God and while we are easily frustrated He is not easily shaken. So aren't the answers to all these "huge, life-changing" decisions we have to make everyday so much simpler than we make it out to be?

Micah 6:8 - He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

We don't have to make exactly the right decisions every single time. Of course it isn't a bad thing to seek God's will, and we really all should seek Him more, but isn't it just more freeing to not sit around and worry if you made exactly the right decision or not that God wanted you to and just love Him and love others and let the rest worry about itself??

That was a long post. Have fun reading all that! Love and Peace

Marvelous Martes!

Marvelous Martes by way of ATL

We took this pic while we were in Atlanta and thought it would be Marvel

ous Martes appropriate. Anybody else think we might be getting just a little somewhat better at this photography thing?? Ya, me neither.

1 Year!! Wow that was fast! (Anniversary #1)

So we celebrated our 1 year anniversary this past Sunday in Atlanta! And seriously, that first year went by so fast! We have been through so much in our first year of marriage and it has been really cool to see how God has worked in our relationship and what He will do with you if you are willing to walk with Him in freedom. He has drawn us so much closer this past year. We have shared things with one another that we vowed to never share with anyone and I can truly say that my wife knows more about me than anyone else in the world. Now we certainly have plenty of things to work on in our marriage and in our own lives, but man God is just so faithful that if you will just submit yourself (and in our case our marriage) to Him, He is faithful to work all in that.

We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in the Buckhead area of Atlanta. Yes it was nice. And yes they did charge us $20 to park overnight in their own parking garage. We ate at Bluefin Sushi via recommendation from my brother. And that's where Carrie learned that we will soon be making our way down to Disney World!!! I bought her tickets to and put them in a Willy Wonka bar and had her open it up to look for "golden tickets". And listen, I'm telling you that my wife totally knows me: she bought me an antique chess set for our anniversary!! What a woman! We stayed in Atlanta a couple of days and went to the Georgia Aquarium (which if you haven't been you absolutely need to) and to Six Flags, where Carrie rode her first roller coaster that did a loop!

Our prayer for this next year of our marriage is that we will give much more of ourselves and our marriage to God, that we will continually die to ourselves and live more and more in His freedom and grace. We pray that we will learn more and more what it is to truly submit our marriage to God and to glorify our Savior and live for the only thing in this world that will ever matter, His Kingdom.

Sunrise on our Anniversary! Note the construction crane, we were in downtown Atlanta after all.

Carrie so proud of her "golden" Disney World tickets.

My chess set! Apparently it is hand carved from soap stone.

Jellyfishes at the GA Aquarium.

Carrie didn't want this fine gentleman to have to watch this movie about whales by himself, so........

She joined him. What a sweetheart.

Always Get The Last Word...

Carrie has been really wanting to watch some show on TV called 'What's Eating You' and long story short we were out running around tonight and made a bet with each other about what time the show started, I said 8 central and Carrie said 9. So we get home about 10 minutes until 9 to find out that Carrie was definitely right (this is usually the case). BUT, I certainly got the last word in. And honestly as the head of the house and our relationship I really do think that the man should have the last word. Because his word is the final word (what I say goes). And this goes for everything, not just some goofy bet we make. Every decision the man makes, whether right or wrong, he should still have the last and final word, every time. Because when he doesn't his authority and decision making will soon come into question. It doesn't have to be some kind of rude response or snide remark, but if the man is to be head of the house, he certainly needs to be the final word. So for all you husbands out there I seriously urge you to really consider what it means to be the head of the house and what it means to always get the last word, and that last word always being: Yes, dear.

Now go to http://www.kleenex.com/softnessworthsharing/Send.aspx and send a free box of Kleenex tissue to somebody. It's really addicting.

Myrtle The Opossum

Myrtle the Opossum

So Carrie's parents were trying to catch some cat that has been living and procreating under their porch when we met Myrtle. And what a magic moment it was. Just look at that face! Ha, well guess this is the best picture we have to offer for this Marvelous Martes. We let ole' Myrtle go back behind the funeral home. Peace be with you Myrtle [and also with you].

How Did We Get Ourselves Into This??!!??

So for those of you that don't know, we are leaving the country in January to join about 90 other peeps on a mission trip that will pretty much take us around the world. The mission trip is called The World Race, and no, it's not like the Amazing Race, you don't win anything. We will basically spend an entire month in 11 different countries and will come back home December 2011. Check out the World Race website here to see more about what we will be doing. We are going on the January route 1 (you can see more info on the "Routes" tab on the website). We also have a blog through the World Race that we will be updating from now until the time we get back home so all of our family and friends can keep up with where we are and what we are doing. You can see that blog here. Please keep us in your prayers as we will be heading down to Atlanta this Saturday for a week long training camp! Anyways, we just wanted to share with you what all was going on, and we wrote about how we were called to the World Race and posted it to our World Race blog and thought we would share it here. So.....

How Did We Get Ourselves Into This??!!??

Haha, I think that's pretty much what we have been asking ourselves the past couple of weeks! Truthfully, leaving all we know and who we know behind for 11 months sometimes seems like such a daunting task. It's hard to let go of the plans you have made and the money you have saved up and the goals you had for the next year, to basically put everything you are doing or were going to do on hold. And honestly we sometimes find ourselves right there, thinking "How did we get ourselves into this?? Why couldn't God have called somebody else? Why us?" And to be even more honest, we were getting pretty comfortable, getting "ahead" as far as worldly thinking goes, well on our way to a fairly nice, comfortable home for our future children in a safe neighborhood. Now that for sure isn't to say that we haven't been very blessed and that we aren't grateful for all that our families and friends have done for us. But I guess what's most disturbing is that we had grown comfortable in our spiritual lives with just doing enough, just reading enough of the Bible, praying just enough together, giving just enough of our time and money and lives away to at least feel like we were truly loving God above anything or anybody else in this world, so we could for the most part feel like we were living in total abandon for the glory of God's kingdom without actually living in total abandon for God's kingdom. So that's where God met us. And here we are, a couple of months later gearing up for training camp and very soon to be leaving the country for 11 months! So how exactly did we get ourselves into this?? Let's start at the beginning, when God very first laid this journey on our hearts.

We both have a best friend going on the Race, same route and everything (Charles McCall & Sarah Branscom). We very first heard about the World Race from them, more or less in passing, kinda like "Hey have you heard about this thing called the World Race? Ya, that sounds pretty cool." And we really didn't get any further than that with it until one day we got a phone call from Charles letting us know that he was actually going to apply to go on the World Race and for us to be praying for him. We hung up with him and got another phone call about 15 minutes later from Sarah pretty much informing us of the exact same thing (neither Charles or Sarah knew at the time that the other one was applying for the Race).

So a week or so later we go on vacation with Carrie's parents to Florida and while we were there Carrie got on the World Race website to see more about it and exactly what our two friends would be doing out of the country for a year. She started reading some blogs of current racers and then started sharing some of the stuff with me and then she came across the f.a.q. page and our question was answered for us: Can married couples go on the race? Of course! Our immediate thought was "Man, that sounds awesome! We would really love be able to do something like that!" followed immediately by "Yea but there's no way we could ever do that!" followed by a few moments of us staring at each other and then "Well, why couldn't we?"

So on the way back to good ole' Tennessee, we talked a little about what it would be like to go on the World Race, how we would pay for it, what some other logistical stuff would look like, what our family and friends would say and think, and could we really possibly do something like this? So we talked a while about it on the way back home, and kind of left it at "Well it really does sound awesome and we would both love to go and share the Gospel in this way, but really we just can't go do it." About two or three weeks later, we pretty much just confessed to one another that we really hadn't been able to get the World Race off of our minds and that we both really felt like God was calling us to it. So we spent the next week or two in prayer, and then we talked to our families about it and informed them that we felt like God was laying this on our hearts and that we had decided to apply for the trip. And we did. And we were accepted. And we were excited. And time passed and training camp drew closer and closer, and we got our insurance and we got our shots and we realized we were really actually going to do this thing. And then we were just plain scared.

Scared of what a year spent just Carrie and Nathan and God would look like. Scared of being changed. Scared of "giving up" our money and a year of our lives. Scared of leaving our lives that were built around what is safe and what is comfortable. Scared of what are family and friends would really think and how they all would react when they found out we were leaving in a year. Scared of all we would miss out on while we were gone. Really just scared to truly, honestly, openly, and whole-heartedly submit our lives, our love, our relationship, our possessions, our everything to our Creator, and definitely scared of what it's gonna be like to not live for ourselves anymore.

But one thing we have found through this struggle of wanting to serve God completely but still wanting to serve our worldly desires is that we really aren't 'giving up' anything. We aren't giving up or losing the money we will spend to go on this trip. We aren't giving up or losing a year of our lives. We aren't giving up or losing anything, we are gaining everything! We are gaining the freedom in Christ to no longer live for worldly pleasures, safety, or comforts. We are gaining the freedom in Christ to live and work for the only thing in this world that will ever matter: His glory!

Of course you don't have to go on a mission trip or go to seminary or teach a Sunday school class or sell your house, move into a shack, and give all the money to the poor or volunteer at the community kitchen every Saturday morning to live in abandon for His kingdom, to live every day for nothing less than God's glory. But we feel like God has told us to Go! and share His Gospel with the nations, to love all of those that our world has decided are not worth loving, and that's what we are trying to do!

Make no mistake, we are definitely a little anxious. We are for sure getting really excited, but still a little anxious. I guess we see it as this: God says to make disciples of all nations, so we are going to. God says to serve the least, to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the lonely, and give hope to the hopeless (Matthew 25) and we certainly plan to. God says to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and man, that's all we are trying to do!

Please please continue to pray for us! Please pray that God alone would be glorified in our marriage and that we would not settle for safety and comfort over the freedom for living in complete abandon for Christ's kingdom.

Love and Peace

Sunsets Galore!

We took these couple of pics of some sunsets a couple months ago in Florida. We think they are Marvelous Martes worthy!

Random and Maybe Not So Interesting Facts (3)

- If you start eating less food it won't actually make your stomach shrink. Once you are an adult, your stomach doesn't really change size.

- A group of frogs is called an army. A group of toads is called a knot.

- 200,000 Facebook members die every year.

- All of the world's 50 tallest mountains are in Asia.

- 50% of the U.S.'s population lives within a days' driving distance of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

- A full-grown great dane only eats about 2-3 cups of dog food per meal.

- In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide and none of them were made in the U.S.

- For the past 9 years, Steven Seagal has technically been head of the Parks Department in Sioux City, Iowa.

- After petroleum, coffee is the second most valuable economic product in the world.

- Older children can still develop food allergies.

- Exercise makes people sneeze.

- Women don't like to negotiate.

- Only about 3% of all animals have a backbone or spine.

- Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.

- The Land Pigeons are by far the greatest band to ever lay down some beats. Their best song? The Elf Song.