Celebrate!!!

So here we are... almost a year since we got back to the U.S. from Germany, and things are going pretty great.  Now, don't let that fool you, we still struggle.  We still have bad days.  We still fight.  And I am not sure about him, but I still have to ask God for the strength and courage to forgive from time to time.

Forgiveness is a process.  One that people don't realize takes so much time and thought to do.  There are times that out of nowhere my mind starts replaying images or words that hurt me.  I know now that those images and thoughts are Satan's doing, trying to undo everything God has worked so hard on in my life.   And, it doesn't matter what I am doing, where I am at, or how hard it is.  I stop and pray.  I ask for God to take the images and thoughts away and to continue to strengthen the forgiveness.

And really, that applies to EVERY situation where I am working on forgiving someone.  I wish it was as easy as saying "I forgive" and it be done, but it's not.  Which, now that I truly understand that, I am able to understand the process of others forgiving me.  But now that we are working on that forgiveness, we no longer hold the past as a way to hurt each other, we have our past as a reason to do better in the future!

In March we will celebrate our 8th anniversary.  And I plan to CELEBRATE it!  We have really worked hard to make it to where we are and we shouldn't take for granted any of it. 

Plus, we will have another reason to celebrate that day!  We will be baptized ON our anniversary.  I've been baptized as an adult, just a couple years ago, though I want this to not be just a statement for the life I want to live as a woman.  I want it to SCREAM my statement of the kind of life I want to live as his wife.  I've had to really grow to get to this point, and I know that it will just be another new beginning in our lives, especially in our marriage!

It has been a crazy 8 years with Filip, but an 8 years that I would never give up. I think we needed our trials to make us closer.  We needed to face those tough struggles to remind us of the important things, and to open our eyes to just how much God loves us.  So, I won't just celebrate the past 8 years, I will celebrate that we have many more years to come!!!