Not Living For The World

Lately I feel like a theme that keeps coming up is that we are NOT living for the world...we are living for the LORD. It does not matter what people think of us or what the world’s messages tell us...that is not the voice we are listening to in the first place.

I was reminded of this a lot when choosing what job I would do for this next season. My goal was not to build the best resume ever and become the next President of the United States. Instead, my dear husband and many others kept reminding me to go where the Lord is leading and do what I WANT to do. Hmmm...that’s a novel thought... “what DO I want to do?” NOT ‘what do I think others want me to do, etc' but what do I really want to do?? Amazing to sit back and see how oftentimes we make decisions based on what we think other people want us to do - and that is simply not the way we want to live. 

For anyone that has spent time around the two of us, you know that we have our differences...especially in social settings. I love to talk, catch up, connect, and so forth. B loves to talk with people he knows - but is not always the first to strike up a lengthy conversation with a new person. He loves connecting over sports - but is not into asking people where they grew up, what their major was, and what their current job is! For sometime, I would wish that Brandon would say more - especially if we were around friends we had not seen in awhile. I was worried that they would think he was being rude, while he was being quiet. Eventually I saw that this is the way he was created. Getting onto him for being quiet would be like him getting onto me for talking. God created him this way. Love him for who he is. Who cares what people think? I know that he is my amazing, wonderful, suitable helper that God designed perfectly for me. I am around him when he’s out of his box and silly. I see the gifted communicator sides of him and it is the perfect compliment for my design. Again, I am not living for the world. It’s been such a blessing for me to love Brandon for the way he was made and not try to make him be someone he’s not. And I must say, social gatherings are that much more fun now because I am not analyzing all the “ifs, ands, and buts” about the night in my own head during the get-together. 

Just this weekend when we were at an Engagement Party, I was out on the deck with the ladies and Brandon was inside watching the LSU Football Game with the husbands. One of the ladies, who so happens to be one of my aunts, mentioned that she loves the way I am so comfortable with Brandon being inside with the men watching football and not making him be out on the deck with us - and she went on to say that that’s something she’s trying to work on with herself and her own husband. SHOCKING! How funny that she’d bring that up right after I feel like this is a huge hurdle I’ve gotten over. It was so freeing to see her perspective of it and it reminded me of the simple truth: There is fellowship when we walk in the light. I don’t know how many others of you have been dealing with the same thing in your head - endless thoughts that go round and round and have no purpose...all over what the world may think of you, your husband, your job, or whatever other situation. Join me in drawing the line in the sand and saying, ENOUGH. 

Closing statement from the man of the house: “There’s not much to say after those words except for ‘Amen!!’ A verse that comes to mind is 1 John 1:7, “...if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another...” This reminds me of why we are writing this blog in the first place. We want to be real with what the Lord is teaching us in our ‘marriage moments’ and really do pray that you are encouraged in your own walk with Him through reading our journey. I, too, have been blessed to see how Whit has put into practice what she has written about letting go of her cares about what the world thinks.”