Once Upon A Time...

...there came a beautiful princess, a special gift from God, named Riley Lynn.

"For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb, I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made..." (Proverbs 139:13,14a).

Family love <3

Uncle Jake

"As you do not know what is the way of the wind, Or how the bones grow in the womb of her with child, So you do not know the works of God who makes everything" (Ecclesiastes 11:5).

Uncle Zack

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, The fruit of the womb is a reward"  (Psalm 127:3). 

She loves to listen to her daddy talking :)

Proud Aunt :)

Aunt Tate



"For this child I have prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of Him" (1 Samuel 1:27).




Our good friend Kelly! :)



Papa Bear!

Life on the Farm

Here are a few pictures of  the farm. I hope you enjoy!

The new chicks that just came in!

Some that are a few weeks old.

Jenna likes to play momma for the chicks.

My personal favorite of Taylor.

Oops!

The farm has lots of old trucks.

Pal was my faithful sidekick.

another old Chevy.

"I didn't do it, I promise!"

I have no idea how to pose for pictures..that's Taylor's talent.

"What's inside?"

Blue bird eggs.

 Jenna, the tag-a-long for the day.


Until Next Time! :)

Moving Out and Family Time

Another semester comes to a close. It has been wonderful and God blessed. I have grown a lot over the semester and made so many good memories.

Friday

My Mom came down on Friday to help Taylor and me pack up and move off campus to Travis and Heather's house for a month while we wait on baby Riley to get here. She got here pretty late in the day and we all had time to freshen up and head out to area wide singing at Redland Road Church of Christ. It was bitter sweet for me because that is the last singing that I can go to for a little while. Singings mean a lot to me, I have enjoyed getting to go to them since my freshman year at Faulkner. They are so encouraging and it is always wonderful to be able to get together with members of the Church. My Church family is often what keeps me going during the week.

After area wide we went back to campus to pick a few things up that Taylor and I would need for the night out at the farm. Mom was tired from a long trip and Travis had been working all day, so we all agreed to come back to load it all up the next day.

Saturday

The next day we all worked on little things around the house while Travis worked on getting the chicks taken care of...Travis and Heather are raising Chickens, Lord willing, in the future there might be a post dedicated to them. ;) After that the girls left after lunch to go finish packing up the van and clean up the rooms. I had forgotten that I had a whole apartment to clean up. I was use to just having a dorm room to get clean, I had my work cut out for me. I had some wonderful help during the day! Heather and Mom came over after helping Taylor with her room. We got things done much quicker then. When Travis got there later with the truck, we were all ready for him, much to his relief I think.

We Went to Sonic Before Getting to Work

The Ocean Water From Sonic Turned My Tongue Blue!

Taylor's Room After Being Packed Up. :)

Putting Everything in The Elevator!

Thanks Goes Out to Travis for His Truck!

Saturday was also Travis' Birthday!!!! He is 23 years old. We are all so thankful for Travis. He has been such a blessing in our lives and I could not have picked someone better for Heather. We had a cookout in his honor that night after packing. He is truly a servant. He work from sun up to sun down on his special day and didn't complain once. We all love Travis!

Sunday!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Ever since we were really little we have woken mom up for mother's day and crawled into bed with her with our arms filled with presents and cards for her. Whenever we are together we try to keep the tradition going, no matter how old we get. It's our favorite way to start her special day. We also do this for Father's Day and their birthdays. After that it was time to go to Church. In Bible class our lesson was on Abigail, I have never heard a lesson on Abigail for mother's day. It was really good though.

After church we all came back to the farm and had lunch with Travis' family. I love them all very much. They always make us feel so at home with them. We had some wonderful food and good conversations.

I'm so thankful for my Mom!

My mom is a special wonderful blessing from God. I could not have asked for a better one. She has been there for every scraped nee, and every tear that we cried when we were little, she has been there as we girls have taken a step out of the house for school and made sure that we talk to her everyday..sometimes 5 or six times in my case. ;) My mom has been a wonderful teacher in more then one way. I hope that I never stop learning from her.

Right now I'm sitting in the living room with the whole family. (Dad, Zack, and Jake are on the phone on speaker). It is so good to be together again. We don't get this chance too often. We are all growing up and moving away. I cherish these moments now, because I know that they are going to be few and far between soon. I love my family so much. God is good and keeps blessing us.

I hope you all had a wonderful mother's day! God bless.

India

Peppermint tea...again ;)

I'm sitting down this morning very thankful for my family, friends, and peppermint tea. This weekend has been a rough one, but still I find I felt completely blessed through it all. I had a headache for a few days that just wouldn't go away. I tried my hardest to get rid of it, all without slowing down though. Sometimes I have a hard time listening to those hints to slow down. Well... the night before I developed a fever and I couldn't keep anything down. I didn't have the energy to get up out of bed. When you don't slow down your body finds ways of making you, that's what my mom always says. My last blog was about learning to slow down, and not worry so much, I think I should have paid attention to what I was writing. :)

I was however reminded of how blessed I truly am during all of this. I was missing my mom something awful. She is such a good nurse and if she could, she would have been here to hold my hand the whole way. It was hard to not have her near. There is just something about a mother's love while you are sick that just makes you feel so much better and I think it makes me heal faster. That could be because she has a way of making sure that I stay in bed, even when I don't want to. When she is not around I tend to find something that I need to be doing and do it. I'm not one to stay in bed.  I know it was hard on her to not be here too. She called all the time though and sent over my sisters to keep checking on me. It's hard being so far away from my family. They are one of my biggest blessings in life.

Another is my family substitute here in Alabama... Mrs Lisa has been wonderful this weekend. She came over and took the role of mommy for me. It was nice to have someone put a cold wash cloth on my face and make sure that I took my meds and just be there for me. It made it easier to be away from home. She is such a blessing in my life and I thank God daily for the Reese family.

A huge thanks goes out to my sisters and brother-in-law, Heather and Travis came over but didn't come up because Heather can't be around people who are sick right now with the baby coming. They brought over some soups and juice and filled up my apt with enough food to last a week. I talked to them over the balcony. It was good to see them. Family is very important to me and I wish I had more time to spend with them. I can't wait until Riley gets here! 

Taylor has been wonderful too! She sat with me most of the afternoon and part of the night last night. I don't really feel like I was good company for her but she stayed anyway. We watched Little House while I tried to fall asleep, and she kept trying to get me to eat something. She told me to sit down and stop cleaning that i was going to make things worse (words of wisdom that I eventually listened to.... lol.).

 I'm so thankful for the many phone calls from Dallas that had a way of cheering me up all on their own. He is always such an encouragement to me! :)

I'm also thankful for all of the prayers that were said for me! I love you all very much!

I'm writing this while drinking peppermint tea. I haven't had it in a long time. I forgot how much better it makes you feel when you don't feel so good. It's still number one in my book. I love the little blessings in life, like peppermint tea. ;)

I feel so grateful and blessed. There is nothing like having to fall down to see how blessed we really are.  "God is good, all the time".

India

A Day of Fun

  Today was one of those days that you can sit back and be completely happy with. It started out with work, where I found an encouraging poem in the hours of nothing else to do, then that afternoon I had lunch with Dallas (which is always nice). After my one and only class for the day Mrs. Hunt left the kids with me for a few hours. We all decided to go out and play. It was a wonderful day for it. The boys wanted to climb the trees and bring all the girls flowers for their hair, and the girls just wanted to run around the field giggling chasing each other or the boys. By the end of our outing all the girls had about five flowers a piece in their hair and the boys were worn out from being chased by the girls. We went back to the house and put in the Fox and the Hound. I think it's just about the saddest kids movie I have ever seen. The kids love it though. It's hard for me to get them all to sit still for very long, but they sat through the whole movie. After the movie went off the boys got picked up by their dad to go to baseball practice, so it was just me and Marley for the next few hours. We ended up painting our toes all kinds of crazy colors, which is only a thing that I will do with Marley, because i don't really like dramatic colors on my nails. ;)  After we had as much fun as was possible with the nail polish, we decided that the living room needed to be made into a tent. I had not made one in so long. I use to make them for my little cousins when we all lived near each other years and years ago. It was so much fun to see all of the excitement that she got out of it. She sat in the middle of the tent and watcher her hair full of static stick to the top of it...we took pictures on my phone so she could see how silly it looked. After that we played hide and seek until her mommy came to take her home.
All in all it was a very good day and I cant help but look back and be satisfied with it. It's amazing the affect little kids can have on you. They see the world as something to enjoy and we as students sometimes can only see the hard times we have ahead of us. Things are so simple to them. I think that is one of the lessons that God would have me take from my time with the Hunt kids. One of the many that I'm sure are to come.


God bless,
      India

A Rose Unfolding

I was at work this morning and I found this poem that I would like to share with everyone. It helps to know that even though I may not know what is ahead, God does and is ever standing next to me.

The secret of unfolding flowers

Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so sweetly,
When in my hands they fade and die.

If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God's design,
Then how can I think I have wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?

So I'll trust in Him for His leading
Each moment of every day.
I will look to Him for His guidance
Each step of the pilgrim way.

The pathway that lies before me,
Only my Heavenly Father knows.
I'll trust Him to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.

Author unknown

Pure

You all get the first look at my article for Women of the Word. Let me know what you think! :)

Everything that God created in life has a purpose. Sex is not excluded from this. God designed it to be a special and yes even a beautiful act when put in its rightful place. Giving of yourself to another in such a way creates a special bond that God intended to be righteous and without blame. He intended it to be pure. God created us to be intimate people by nature. Song of Solomon is a great example of the intimacy that God created in us. We would not be able to attain the kind of deep intimacy that God had planned when we are sharing of ourselves with more then one person. He intended it to be between one man and one woman for life in marriage. Like everything in life, we find that when we don't do things God's way we end up harming ourselves or others. You run the possibility of getting a sexually transmitted disease that you will have for the rest of your life, or until it kills you. What we call “safe sex” today should rightly be called “reduced risk” sex. The only way that you can be sure you will not acquire an STD or an unwanted pregnancy is by saving yourself for marriage. When not done according to God's plan it becomes “high risk” sex that could have eternal consequences.

As girls we are created as emotional beings. We are constantly looking for emotional connections to others. Those are the relationships that we cherish the most in life. We are often willing to go too far to gain that connection. There are a few problems with this though. The best emotional connections are made when you both respected each other and God enough to wait for marriage. You draw closer to God and to each other when both are working together to overcome the daily temptations and exercising self-control.
When a spouse comes into a marriage having already had sexual relationships, you run into problems of comparison and jealously. Often times, there is also a lack of trust. It is hard to have the intimacy and dependency that God had planned from the beginning in a marriage relationship.

“But we are in love” This is a common statement made in the defense of sex before marriage. I wonder if we understand what love really is. When I was younger my Aunt had me memorize 1 Corinthians 13. We call it the “Love Chapter”. I didn't really understand it at the time, but since then I have come to appreciate its definition of love. “Love is patient.” True love can wait until you are in the God given setting. True love is sacrificial. I heard it said that having sex before marriage is like “wanting to get”, and inside marriage its like “wanting to give”. You can never really understand love without first knowing God and His love for us. “God is love” we are told, and fornication is not a characteristic of love. In doing so, we “sin against our own body.” Paul tells us to run from fornication in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20. These verses also tell us we do not belong to ourselves, but to God. He bought us.

There are two examples used in the Bible when it comes to staying pure. One was a man by the name of Joseph. He was sold into slavery by his brothers as a young man. While as a slave he came to live in Potipher’s house and was favored by him. He was put over Potiphar’s entire household. When Potiphar was away, his wife would try and seduce Joseph into coming and lying with her. Joseph responded with the famous line of “How can I do this wicked thing and sin against God.” When it came down to it, after Potiphar's wife pressed and pressed Joseph, even to the point of grabbing onto his clothing, Joseph fled temptation leaving his clothes with her. The outcome of doing so brought unpleasant consequences for Joseph, but he still followed God and in the end God blessed him.

The second example that we have in the Bible is David. He was “a man after God's own heart”, and yet even David with all of his strength fell to the temptation of sexuality. He went up on his roof and saw a beautiful woman by the name of Bathsheba bathing. He did not turn away from the sight, he chose to stay and watch and covet something that was not his own. You see, Bathsheba was married and her husband Uriah was in David's army. While Uriah was out fighting for David one day, David had Bathsheba brought to him and he laid with her. David, “a man after God's own heart,” gave into the sin of adultery! The story doesn't stop there though. Bathsheba became pregnant with David's child and David in an attempt to cover it up tried to get Uriah to go home to his wife. Well, Uriah would not go. David ended up having Uriah put on the front lines in the heat of a battle in order for him to be killed. Being impure in our sexual life often spreads to our daily life as well. 1 Corinthians 5:6 says, “...a little leaven leavens the whole lump.” Just a little bit of sin will corrupt a whole soul. God can have no part with sin. Because of his actions, David had to suffer the consequences. His son by Bathsheba died soon after birth. He was heart broken, yet after it was over David moved on and took responsibility for his actions.

Being pure is not just a matter of saving yourself for marriage. God calls us to be pure in our entire lifestyle. In the way we talk to others, in the way that we dress and in our daily activities that we are involved in. It is a choice that we make to live for God. I once heard it said that the outward appearance reflects the inward heart of a person. If we have corrupt thoughts then that is going to show in our lifestyle. It is impossible to have the kind of pure heart that God wants us to have and dress immodestly. The Bible says, “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it springs the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

We are as I stated before an emotional people. Our impulse is to respond to every problem from our emotions. God knew that we would do this. He created us. That is why He tells us to guard our hearts and not let it become corrupt with the things of the world. He tells us in Philippians 4:8 the kinds of things we should let dwell in our hearts. “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy- meditate on these things.” Love and intimacy are not wrong when we stick to God's plan and make the choice to live a pure life, purely for Him.