Brad and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary last week.
We went to Blue Grotto in Brookside for dinner, then to Starlight Theater to see The Sound of Music. It was a beautiful evening. Eighty degree weather- much different than two years ago. If you were at our wedding, you remember how hot it was.
During dinner, we read the blog post I wrote a year ago for our first anniversary. It was fun to read about all of the things we experienced that first year, and to reminisce about all that we encountered during our second year.
This year was a crazy one. The Lord was so good to us.
One year ago we were about to help plant a church in Springfield. We actually spent our anniversary weekend helping with the church’s vacation bible school! We spent 9 months there before we moved to Kansas City. We got to witness the Lord work in us, the church, and in the community in incredible ways during those months. We miss Freshwater and we pray for them continually. We knew from the beginning that we weren’t there for the long-term, so our motto was 1 Corinthians 3:6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” Yes, we helped plant Freshwater Church. Others are watering now and others will in the future. But God is the one who has given the growth.
To find out more about Freshwater Church, go to the website, or read this blog post.
In November Brad ran his first half marathon! We (yep, I’m joining this time) are currently training to run another one this October! I never thought I would be a runner, but now it’s one of my favorite hobbies! I’m really thankful that it is something that Brad and I enjoy doing together.
My very favorite thing that happened to us this year happened in December. We got Libby. We were at Brad’s grandma’s house on Christmas Eve when we announced that she was looking for a new home for Libby. We called our landlord, got the okay, and took her back home with us to Springfield the day after Christmas. She has brought so much joy to our lives and I can’t image our lives without her.
February is when things really started to get crazy. The day after Brad’s 25th birthday, he got in a hit-and-run accident, totaling the car. We were pretty upset. We had the Blueberry for less than a year and we were not expecting to have to buy a new car any time soon. This added to what was already an unclear next few months of our lives. So we decided to wait. Sharing the Jeep was inconvenient, but we managed. Two months later we had the opportunity to buy Brad’s great-uncle’s Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight. Wanna guess how many miles it had on it when we got it? 6,000. Yep. God provided for us in a way that we never expected.
So in March, we knew that I would be graduating soon and that Brad was going to go to seminary. However, we had no idea where that would be. We’d been praying for months that the Lord would lead us where He willed, but we were still in the dark about what would happen in two months. So we kept praying and waiting. Our tentative plan was for me to start applying for jobs in March in both Louisville, KY, and Kansas City, because Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary were Brad’s top choices for school, respectively. I would work full-time while Brad went to school. We figured that I would support us while he was in school as he had done for me and our goal was to pay for school along the way so that we didn’t have to take out more loans. We were looking at three more long years of watching our pennies, but we were okay with that.
Then out of the blue Brad got a phone call advising him to apply for a job that had just opened up at Midwestern as an admissions counselor (what he was currently doing at SBU). So he applied, we went up to Kansas City for an interview, and he got the job! Whoa. Again, God provided for us a way that we never expected.
Brad started at Midwestern about two weeks later. I stayed in Springfield to finish school until May, then we permanently made the move to KC. (For more about my graduation, read this post) The next item on our agenda was for me to find a job. I assumed that I would be searching for a job for months, but instead the Lord blew away our expectations once again and provided for me a job just one week after my graduation.
Now we live in Kansas City north (by Worlds of Fun for those of you from KC) in an apartment that we love, I work at Viracor-IBT, and Brad is about to start seminary at Midwestern. God clearly brought us to Kansas City. He provided for us in ways that we didn’t even know to ask for.
The last piece of the puzzle was to find a church. As He usually does, the Lord led us to a church that we did not expect. We’ve decided to join Pleasant Valley Baptist Church in Liberty. We are so excited to get involved and to see how God is going to use us and grow us during our time at PV!
A year ago I thought that year two was going to be hard to top, but I was very mistaken. I can’t even begin to image what Brad and I will encounter in year three.
Brad is the best, marriage is wonderful, and God is good.