Simply Samantha.

I had my first day on the new job today. I got a job at a local green house in the office. I wondered what exactly they needed me for and prayed that they would find there was enough work for me and not have to let me go. Really, how much office work can a greenery have, right?

Wrong.

Turns out, this is the Greenery of super stores. They hold classes, take care of landscaping big businesses and county offices, hold festivals and have local schools help, own a HUGE store, AND have a limosine company.. all family owned and started decades ago. I'm not sure what else they do, I just got that from the bits and pieces people were telling me.

Anyway, I was seriously getting 4 calls at a time from people wanting to know "what's this?", "how much is that?", "do you sell this?". "what should i do?" on TOP of having three other paperwork things that they wanted me to do. If I didn't know how to answer someone's question, I had to run around trying to find the personw who could without keeping them on hold to long because I don't have a walkie-talkie yet. I wasn't familiar with one of the two computer programs either, so I pretty much had to guess all day (and only messed up once..!) It was a long day. And it was only day one.

I'm thankful though! In all honesty, it's a perfect job for me and one that David will be happy with too! It just stinks because it's impossible to text him with how busy I am. But I am so thankful to the Lord for this job and am going to try hard to glorify him even when I get tired.

Tonight Dave and I have to go work on my car because I broke down last night (had to borrow my mom's car for work this morning). It stinks to have to miss premarital counseling but I think we're ok with it this week... it's been a long one. I still haven't caught up on my sleep from our late night drive home from Wisconsin.. looks like I'm going to have to give myself an early bed time tonight!

I thought it was supposed to be the men that were afraid of marriage; letting go of their "freedom", and making the big decision to allow the opposite sex to invade their home with flowers, the smell of perfume, and one (or twenty) too many pairs of shoes.

Not my guy.

While I'm busy frantically grabbing every Christian marriage book I can get my hands on, memorizing 1 Corinthians 13, and joining approximately two million women's bible studies accompanied with two pre-marital counseling groups/meetings; Dave's humming "Here comes the Bride" peacefully in his head while clearing out his closet space to make room for my clothes in hopes that I will run away with him today, tomorrow, or "How about next month?!"

He's not scared.
At all.
In fact, he's even EXCITED about working his patooskie off to provide for all the extra money I'll add onto his bills every month. No joke. We talked about it last night. 

At our last premarital counseling session, we watched a video about cleaving... and what could happen if you don't do it and do it RIGHT. Towards the middle of the video, I could feel my breathing getting heavy and my heart rate starting to go up.

Anxiety.

When the video was over, I turned to Dave with my eyes wide and brain ready to explode with "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!"'s.

Before I could say a word, though, he looked around the room smiling, sighed happily and exclaimed, "I can't WAIT to get married!"

What.
Did he not just watch the video?
Where was he?!

You see, it's odd because he tends to always think more practically about everything than I do (not that that's hard ; ):

I'm positive where he's more negative

I think "It's only life, baby!!!" where he tends to think "Logic!, Logic!, Logic!"

... so you can only imagine my surprise every time he seems to completely disregard every marriage warning we hear. He isn't naive or blind to the facts of marriage, he can just look at all these terrible stories and think of nothing but how much BETTER he knows our marriage can be. He says he understands that we'll have hard times, but he knows we'll make it through with God's help.

He is in love with me. 
AND THAT'S AMAZING! 
He knows allllllllllll!!!! my faults (there are a lot) but he is still excited to marry me!

Now, I'm not saying in any way that I am not madly in love with David because I don't always show that same excitement. I'm ecstatic and I cannot wait to be Mrs. Samantha Clark. I dream about serving him, honoring him, and loving him even when he might not "deserve" it. I can't wait for him to come home from work or school to the haven I want to create for him. But the fact of the matter is, we do not come from the same type of family back round. He comes from a Christian family full of happy, lifetime marriages. 

I come from a "Catholic" family jam-packed with 4 affairs, 2 divorces, and a bunch of women that seem to think they deserve to rule the nest instead of submit to their husbands and make it work like the bible commands. It's always seemed in my family that if they didn't have something terrible to say about their husbands that week, they were probably lying. Mind you, I really like all of my uncles and have a feeling they probably aren't that bad at all. It's hard to get out of that "WOMEN POWER!" mindset and submit to even the smallest things. It's hard to envision a happy marriage when all I experienced growing up was tension and disrespect from a wife to her husband.

The point is, like Dave, deep down I know we can do it. We could fight it all we want, but God has made it very clear that it is His will that we be together. (Thanks, God!)

I need Dave.
When I'm scared, he reassures me of the fact that we do not need to be afraid but instead rejoicing, not only because we are marrying the person we love, but because we are serving a glorifying God with the bond we are creating. We are becoming one and living out God's will.

That's a beautiful thing that no one else in my family could attest to. I pray that I can take all of these negative situations that I've been surrounded with and use it as a "what not to do" guide instead of something I worry about falling into. The Lord tells me not to be afraid, and I will trust Him with that. I'm just so tired of hearing so many negative things when I feel like it should be the complete opposite. People who don't know the Lord treat marriage like a black plague. I know that God will help me to be the wife that David deserves, and I pray everyday that I don't let him down.

The other day, WCRF had a lady come on to talk about how she started up the scrapbook frenzy at her local church and it grew larger and larger until it became the phenomenon it is today. She was explaining how her company, Creative Memories, took off and they now offer digital scrapbooking on their website (See http://www.creativememories.com/ for more info). All you do is load up your pictures, type in some little stories, and they'll send the book to your home! I haven't discovered how much the books are yet, but if they are low in cost, I'm definetly going to invest! For me, scrapbooking is more "photojournalbooking", so I don't like to take the time to make it pretty. It will be awesome having someone do it for me!

She continued on to say that she came up with the idea of "faithbooking", and that's where I really tuned in! Faithbooking is where you document in a scrapbook your life before and after salvation with pictures of the journey and fun decorations that can glorify God's great mercy for guests in your home (see http://www.faithbooking.com/ for more details). They'll also do that online if you're interested and send you a gorgeous book full of photos and verses that document every step. What an outreach for unsaved family and friends to see your experience written down. I can see my family and friends reading a book a lot easier than hearing me talk about it every time I see them. I can't imagine the encouragement saved brothers and sisters in Christ would feel too!

I'm very excited about this smart woman's idea and hope that soon there will be a "faithbook" on every Christian's coffee table! ;) It's awesome.

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