[ Our Testimony - A Thankful Heart ]

I wrote this post last year but wanted to post it again during this Thanksgiving week.
It's so neat to look back on all that God has done in our lives this year. God is so good!
Hope you all are enjoying this week with friends and family!


I love capturing a moment by camera and simply finding beauty in the ordinary moments of life.

But let me get really real and tell you something... it's not always like that. I don't always feel that way.

Finding beauty in the ordinary moments of life is something that has taken me an immense amount of time to embrace.
It's barely been a year since things have started getting better in my life. I will be honest: 

the circumstances over the past couple of years before that left me hopeless, and somewhat even cynical, about life. 

My husband, Joshua, and I had only been married for a year-and-a-half when he and a major crop of people at his work lost their jobs due to the failing economy. I was working at Starbucks trying to finish college. We were blissfully happy newlyweds, freshly back home from a trip to San Francisco for our anniversary and a vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Joshua had a job that we thought would be around until retirement. He had just been told months before the layoff that a relocation to Europe was quite possible if he wanted to grow with the company. Life was great and we had the world at our fingertips. I was making coffee when I got the call that would turn our world upside down.

Joshua was unemployed for over a year before finding a job that sufficed while he was in the hiring process for the federal government job he has now. And after he got that interim job-- managing a hardware store where he was severely underpaid and overworked-- he waited a whole year before he finally got "the job." We were strapped those years; financially, emotionally, and even physically. We were tired all the time. And stressed. We gained weight, but yet were worn so thin. Joshua's blood pressure skyrocketed. I do not wish any woman in this world to have to watch her man go through unemployment. It is such a massive blow to a man's ego. Our relationship and our vows were tried-- 

 "... for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer." We had to fight to make sure our relationship stayed focused on God, and on living life in the moment-- not on our circumstances. But it was rough.

To top it off, his truck completely died and we had to use one car for over a year. We moved in with my in-laws for almost a year to save money. I hated the job that I had. I was fresh out of college and hated the corporate world and the miserable, work-driven people I worked with that were consumed by materialism and making money. Everything was upside down and not anywhere near how I imagined my first couple years of marriage looking like. I never thought I would be in a position of being the primary bread-winner, or of making more money than my husband. I've always just wanted to be a mom. It rocked my world. It rocked his.

We were just at our wit's end. Everyone around us called us "troopers" and were so kind to ask how we were doing or what was the "next step" in our lives. We became somewhat anti-social to avoid the questions. We were waiting, in limbo. To this day, I don't think any of our friends or even family have any clue exactly what a difficult season we went through. It was 2 years of hell. There were some great moments in those years, too, I don't mean to not mention those. But waiting on life to just get going was the pits. And, I hate to say it-- but the stress of life really did overshadow the flecks of beauty in our lives during that season.

I learned a lot through that season and having come out of it, I believe that I can truly say that God will give you the strength that you need to get you through whatever trial you are currently facing. And even if the circumstances seem so out of control, and hope seems so lost, He will never give you more than you can handle. And I'm very confident, that one day... the sun will shine for you and you will see why God brought you through that storm and will show you incredible things that you would have otherwise never seen had you not gone through it.

I've learned that I want to approach my life moving forward always trying to find beauty in all of life's moments. Even when it's rough. Because there was a lot of things that I closed my eyes to see because I chose to. Because I let my bad attitude cloud everything. Yes, my circumstances seemed out-of-control at the time, but that is no excuse to not thank God for my daily breath, or to punish God because I feel like He has "abandoned" me. Who am I?

Have you seen this?

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Let's thank God for each and every season. Even the seasons of winter, when it doesn't even seem to make sense to us to give thanks. Autumn is here and Thanksgiving is coming. Let's live out an attitude of thankfulness every day, not just one special day a year when we carve a turkey. We aren't guaranteed tomorrow. And life is a gift itself.