Life and Times...

After 7 years of marriage (so far) and two kiddos (far enough), I can honestly say that there's not one 'season' of life that I have favored over another. Every 'season', every month, every week, and every DAY is INSANE from the view of this Faiai momma! I do take in to consideration the fact that I'm kinda high strung, and overly anxious to begin with, but whatev. Working on it. Instead of boring anyone with details of the past 6months (or however long its been since my last post),I thought it would be a good idea, even just for me, just to assess and give an update on the things I value most in mi vida loca. Here goes.

1. My Marriage
Rewarding. dynamic. Hard. We're about 5 months in to our '7 year itch'. Is that what 'they' call it?! Heck yes, marriage is hard. But for whatever reason, through everything we've been through, we have a tighter grip on eachother now than ever before. Not just saying that. Steve and I need eachother. We're each other's BIGGEST fans and our kids, just by their nature, hold us accountable DAILY to love and respect eachother as best we can. Our kids love us more than anything else on the planet, and we know that the BEST way we can reciprocate that love to them is by loving eachother!

2. The Kids
Cameron is 6 and Riley James is 4. Completely opposite personalities. The other day, I was listening to my Lauryn Hill Pandora station. The song 'Lost One' came on. It's really about Lauryn tellin her ex homeboy that she's outie. 'You just lost one' . Cameron was listening to the words and asked me what she 'lost'. Instead of explaining the song to him (bc I was busy singing it. Hello?!), I just told him I thought she was probably talking about losing a friend or something. A few more minutes went by, the song was over, and Cameron said to me 'mom, I know about that song'. I asked him what he meant. To which he replied 'Well, I just lost a friend at school today.' I knew he was just tired and being over dramatic, but his heart hurt bad for those few moments thinking about losing a friend. That's Cameron. And Riley...well...let's just say he tells us that he's actually 7 years old and that he's the boss of his brother. He also thinks he's the boss of his mommy and daddy. And well...pretty much the boss of the world. Aggressive, tender hearted, happy, and very determined. That's my Riley. Due for his second cranial-vault repair surgery later this year. Will update on that later!

3. Friendships
Oh man. If you know me, you know I LOVE people, and especially my close friends. I love them almost to a fault. Actually, completely to a fault. But oh well...working on that, too. I have made some INCREDIBLE friends in the past year. I have a passion for digging through life with others who are doing the same! My friends inspire me. They motivate me. And most importantly, they keep me laughing, even in the times when life seems unbearable.

4. Church Ministry
I stilllll believe that the local church IS the hope of the world. We've been exposed to so many different visions, mission statements, denominations, and theology interpretations (if that makes sense) over the past couple years. Thankfully, through it all, God has kept things simple for us. We believe that the more we seek God, the more we'll know Him. And the more we know Him, the more we'll love Him. And the more we love Him, the more we'll love what He loves. Love God, eachother, and the people around us! Everything else seems to follow! The church is full of broken people, like us, who's insecurities have tendency to, well...screw up a lot of stuff that God has intended for good. We've learned about people, and God's grace through every 'church experience' we've been a part of... and we still love serving our local church. Steve still feels a calling on his life to lead people into worship through music. Thankfully, he can serve in that role on the side, voluntarily now, instead of depending on it as a source of income! Hallelujah for that! He LOVES his job at Henry's and I love his job at Henry's. Right now, we're loving watching our long time friend's new church plant grow wings! God is blessing them, and we wanna help out and support it as much we can!

5. Me
I'm learning a LOT about myself in recent months. I really have an uneasy feeling towards 'Christians' who think they've got life figured out. The ones who go around telling others what God doesn't accept about them. On the other hand, I am passionate about digging through life with people who admittedly need God, or who are trying to understand who God is. I have huge respect for people who can own up to their own ugliness, while at the same time understand that God loves them/us (on a crazy different level than we can wrap our brains around) THROUGH IT ALL!!! Jesus died to give us HOPE! And I want nothing more than for my life to bleed that 'hope'! I'm working full time at our friends Submarina franchise. I love that job! So much fun for me, flexible for the most part, a little too far of a drive, but oh well! I'm thankful for the relationships I've built there! One of my new favorite things is playing softball on our new co-ed league. Our team name is Smack That! My teammates consist of a rad group of new friends, and old ones! The dynamic of those relatiosnhips is SO awesome!! I love that team, and playing a sport that I love with them! My relationship with my extended family is in a sweet spot! I love my parents so much, and am so thankful for everything they did to make me passionate about life and people. I have so much junk I need to work on, but I'm truly loving my hectic little life through it all. Every piece of it!

I could probably write 4 more pages about all this stuff right now, but this is about as much patience I have with having to write a post using the keyboard of my iPhone! Mac Book is out of commision and the pc just got a virus. Boooo!
My poor sweet neglected little blog. I sure do miss it!