Better Than Life

First of all, THANK YOU to the amazing Alyssa for sending me this hoop! Have you checked out her shop yet? I have several favorites and wish I could own them all!

Secondly, check out what my hubby has to say about one of our favorite verses:

I love my wife. I love my dogs. I love Taco Bell.

There are a lot of different types of love that we encounter and pursue throughout our lives, but there is one love that is better than life itself.


"Because your steadfast love is better than life,
    my lips will praise you."
Psalm 63:3


The beauty and depths of God's love for us cannot be described in a few short words, but what a difference it makes when we take time to reflect in awe on God's love. His love reaches us when we are broken, when we are unrighteous, when we are undeserving. It is an overwhelming experience of grace that we are able to know and find comfort in.
Take time to seek His love today. Be satisfied in Him


"O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
    my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
    as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
    beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
    my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
    in your name I will lift up my hands."
Psalm 63:1-4

Communication is Key

Yesterday afternoon I randomly thought about Domino's thin crust pizza and then I was set on having pizza for dinner. I texted Will and asked him if he was ok with my dinner selection and, of course, he was totally fine with pizza night. I asked him if he would pick it up and he said he would. He gets off work at 4:00 and I get off at 5:00. He then has a class at 6:00 so I wanted to be sure we would have time to eat before he left.

After he told me that he would pick up the pizza his phone died. Great. So now I didn't know the plans. I had planned to order it online and have him just pick it up on his way home from work. It's obvious now that my texts to him before his phone died weren't clear that I was doing that.

I ordered a large half pepperoni, half sausage pizza online and decided I would just pick it up after work since I had no idea where he was. (What did we do before cell phones?!) I was almost to Domino's when he finally called me (with a charged phone) and let me know he had already ordered and picked up pizza! Major OOPS moment!

So there we were at home with 3 large pizzas (yes, Will thought the two of us would eat 2 larges for some reason!) and very full stomachs. This one was all on me, I know! Guess what we're having for dinner tonight?!

Have you ever had something like this happen?

M.I.A.

I'm back from my blogging hiatus and I promise I have good excuses as to where I've been. Yes, I said excuses...as in plural.

First, let me show you what I've been up to during the past week.

We celebrated Will's 25th birthday last Tuesday. I had to work and he had classes so it wasn't as good as a weekend birthday, but I'd say it turned out pretty good! We recently were presented an opportunity to work with refugees coming to the Memphis area with our small group. Last Tuesday night we got to go meet the Somalian family that we were assigned to. Everyone sang Happy Birthday to Will--which was pretty cool to have people from all over the world singing to him!-- and when we left we went to dinner. Will's dinner of choice was Carrabba's. We love that restaurant!

He's purposely smiling with chicken in between his teeth. *Palm to forehead*

Will orders something different every time--His birthday choice was some kind of chicken and mushroom pasta

I like to stick with what I know--spaghetti and meatballs. Yum.

These are flowers that my boss sent to each woman in the office on the day before Valentine's.

 On Tuesday I started feeling a little sickly. Wednesday was worse and Thursday was awful. I ended up staying home from work all day on Thursday. I was in bed all day. Once Will got out of class, he came home and we had a Valentine's movie day in bed. It was so pretty outside and I wished I wasn't sick on Valentine's Day, but what are ya gonna do? I managed to work all day on Friday even though I still wasn't feeling too hot. Luckily my boss noticed and let me nap on the couch in my office for a while. I was thankful for that! Friday night was another movie night and I snuggled on the couch with my little family.

Remi loves to have a blanket in his mouth when he's comfy and snoozing. It's so weird and I have no idea why he does it. We think it's hilarious though.

We were supposed to go up to Illinois last weekend to visit Will's family, but since I had been sick we decided it was best that I stay home. Will did end up going and my parents & brothers also went out of town. So I house sat for my parents all weekend and even though I was by myself, it was so nice just to get rested up & recover from being sick. The photo below is at my parents house...everyone was ready for bed! 

So the first reason I haven't blogged is because of being sick. Second, I have been thinking a lot about priorities. Instead of always thinking about what to blog or what blogs I need to catch up on, I need to refocus on thinking about my quiet times and time spent with God each day. I just need to re-prioritize  And that's what I've been trying to do lately. Hopefully I can get everything to balance out as it should be and blogging will be something I do in my spare time...not in place of other things.

Have a great week!

Our American Hero

I know I just recently had a post about my Army brother, Cody, and our experience on CMT, but I came across something our youngest brother, Colin, wrote for a school assignment about his American hero. (Colin, don't kill me for putting this on the blog!)

If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I thought my brothers or I would be writing nice things about each other, I would have said NO WAY! We used to argue and bicker all the time! But what siblings didn't?? (And you'll see that Colin says the same thing below!) I'll just say that I'm SO glad we've all grown up to get along and truly appreciate one another. It sure does make things so much more enjoyable!

The photo below are my two LITTLE brothers. ( I always have to emphasize little to them because they've both grown taller than me and I'm still their BIG sis!) With one in college and one in high school, I must say that I am so proud of them both. They're pretty great if I do say so myself!

“My American Hero”

There are many American heroes in today’s society, but there is just one that is very special to me, Private 1st Class Cody Magness. He is my older brother, who joined the Army after graduating from high school. He is the person I have learned from and looked up to ever since I was a little boy, wanting to be just like him. To have a relative who will put their life up and will do anything to make sure the citizens of the United States are free really means a lot to me.

As kids, my brother and I didn't always get along, but what siblings always get along? We had high and low moments in our brotherly relationship. However, I always looked up to him and always will. He has taught me so much with so many things in life, be it while we are hunting in the woods or just everyday things. As we get older, we get along better and better and get to hang out and do more things together.

When my brother joined the Army, I was scared of the fact of him possibly getting deployed to war and losing a brother overseas for a year or so.  I soon began to get over it to see that my brother loves every second of it. Like I said earlier, to have a brother who is an American Soldier, is awesome. I love to know that I will always have somebody to look up to and a great guy who will always give me advice in life. 

I hope to one day maybe follow in my brother’s footsteps and join the service and have the courage and heart for people that he does. You won’t meet anybody else who wants anything more than to protect this country like he does. When the day comes that my brother gets deployed to protect the freedom of our country, I won’t be ready for him to go, but I know he is doing what he loves and will do great and come back. That is why my brother, Private 1st Class Cody Magness, is my American Hero.

And with that, I think I'll just have to say DITTO to everything Colin said!

Cody and his dog, Montana, being reunited at the airport after Basic Training

Cody and our parents

Let's Face It

I am so lucky to have a husband who inspires me daily and who pushes me to grow in my relationship with God. I'm also lucky that he agrees to write blog posts for me! Take it away, Will!
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Lets face it. There are normal days, and there are bad days. Most of my days are normal--school, ping-pong, more ping-pong, and then afternoon activities. Normal days are great, but every now and then one of those bad days creeps into the forecast. Bad days take a pretty wide range, including anything from a rough day at work or losing in chili cook-off contest to Amanda (side note: I’m only just a little bitter about that). 

Last week I had one of those bad days. The majority of the day I felt like I had this huge weight on my shoulders, and there was nothing I could do to make it move. It all started as I was sitting in class (seminary, aka Bible college) surrounded by a room full of guys and a professor who all seemed like they had their life plans pretty well worked out. I could point to most guys in the room and tell you where they worked or their plans for the future, but when I got to myself, the answer became unclear. For about a year I have been doing some serious recalculating in figuring out where God wants me in life. However, it is beyond hard as a married, 25 year old, graduating in May, Masters student to not be able to answer the question, “So, what are you going to do for a career?” Or the next question, “So where do you work,” when your reply is a couple of part time jobs when so many of your peers are full time employees or making headway in pursuit of a lucrative career. The reason unknown, but on this particular bad day, all these thoughts seemed to be rising to a crescendo. I was officially in the dumps. 

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After class I went to the library to work on some homework, and it was there that I ran into my friend Jim (Jim Jimmy Jim Jim Jim as I call him). We struck up a conversation about the new semester and just life in general. Jim, who works at the seminary, was pushing a big black trashcan. He proceeded to tell me that he just finished cleaning up a monster pile of fresh puke, and that he was pretty much having the worst day ever. It was in that moment that my bad day was totally put into perspective. Compared to my friend Jim, my day really wasn’t bad at all. The entire day I had been praying for peace, for guidance, and assurance. It was in that moment that God gave me a reality check. No, I'm not saying that Jim was worse off than me, but I think God was telling me to stop hanging out in “dump-land.” 

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It is easy to look at our lives and be unsatisfied or unfulfilled. Maybe your job isn’t as exciting as you hoped, maybe college is turning into a hassle, maybe you are about to graduate and don’t know what to do next. What God spoke to my heart that day was for me to take a step back and get the big picture. All too often we fall into the trap of letting certain circumstances bring us down or to the point of frustration. It might make you feel better just to know that I’ve been there. But even more beneficial is that God doesn’t want us to stay there. Looking at the big picture in my life God has done some incredible things. He showed me last week that He is not done with the work yet. 

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I’m convinced that the reason that we have those bad days, those unsatisfied moments with life, the uncertainty of the future, all boils down to a lack of trust, a lack of faith. In a world where so much hinges on the tangible, the real, we find ourselves crippled when the real becomes uncertain. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum, we find ourselves settling for less because it is reachable. 

God did not call us to settle. God did not call us to be empty broken vessels. Jesus lived, died, and was resurrected that we might live in the bountiful grace that He supplies, and the comfort of knowing that He has our best interest in mind. I’ll finish with some verses the apostle Paul writes from 2 Corinthians that give a practical approach to taking off the microscope that we put on our circumstances and moving towards a Godly vision. 

Rejoice in the fact that God comforts. 

2 Corinthians 1:3-4

“Blessed be the God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 

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In trusting God, the baton is passed from us to him. His comfort is much more knowable than anything that we can offer ourselves. What a peace to know that in our affliction God gives us His grace. 

Remember the fact that God changes. 

2 Corinthians 3:4-6:

“Such is the confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit.”

Trusting Jesus as your Savior is life changing (2 Corinthians 5:17, “For if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”). In the Christian life it is so important to remember that you have been changed. God gives us what we need to press on, to complete our goals. Our goodness is not an outflow of ourselves; it is an outflow of the grace of God within. Paul mentions the covenant of the letter (the law) because of the inability of all people to uphold it perfectly. It is only through the sufficiency of Jesus that the new covenant (of the Spirit) allows us to live in confidence and joy. Because we have access to this joy through Jesus, live it! Don’t be brought down by life’s negatives when the ultimate peace of Christ rests in your heart. 

Rely on the fact that God challenges. 

2 Corinthians 4:7-12, 16-18

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

It is through affliction that God often shapes us, molds us, and sanctifies us. Often life’s difficulties are looked at with resentment and remorse. Hold fast to the confidence that we have in faith that God will see us through. Though affliction may seem overbearing, the weight of it will never destroy when faith is rooted in Christ. He will provide. 

 Rest easy, the best is yet to come. We’ve only just begun.