My WEEKLY confession is that I'm impatient in ridiculous things.

Grocery shopping finally happened in the Stine household this weekend. It's the Stine way to leave nothing but goldfish and two-months-past-the-expiration-date-whoops-I-think-I-ate-some-last-week-greek-yogurt in the pantry and fridge to remind us it's time to go shopping again.  We started in the produce section at Kroger and immediately I found myself getting impatient with my sweet man. Brett has this meticulous "ish" where he stops at every squash, zucchini, apple, or cheese particle to examine it fully. He squeezes and prods produce for a good ten seconds before he determines if it is Stine worthy. I just look at it and think, "That color looks pretty. I'd eat that. I hope there's a new Vogue at the checkout."

I was just about to move our basket forward in passive annoyance when I realized that in that small moment, all I needed to do was stop my sassy attitude (My "Sassitude"...haha.) and say "thank you". Thank you for a husband who takes meticulous time in any decision to ensure that the choice he is making is the best, healthiest, and richest for the both of us. Thank you that he cares about taste, flavors, and richness. Thank you that he's choosing with my best interest in mind.

GROCERY SHOPPING IS THE BEST!!!  THIS FOOD LOOKS SO GOOD ON OUR OLD NEWLY STAINED TABLE. CHICKEN CAJUN PASTA!!!

I noticed my impatience also taking root in a socially unacceptable area of my life. After all my hipster friends set Brett and I up for trendy coffee making with our french press, this week I botched all their hopes and dreams and started using my old Mr. Coffee maker again. It's one of those things I've decided I don't care how it's made, I really just want it in muh belly. And Mr. Coffee does that for me. Quickly. Profusely fast. With just the click of an "on" button.

Wonderful Mr. Coffee. Lazy Stacie. YES. 

Will I sacrifice friendships because of this? Most likely... not. All hope isn't lost though, Brett still grinds with the French press, and I'm sure some day soon we'll have a planter in our window where Brett will try to grow his own, organic, lightly roasted coffee beans.

My confession of this SEASON is this: I PRAYED, God answered, and I said thanks in awe.

It started over the summer. In the midst of wedding planning and job searching Brett proposed taking prayer walks throughout the university we live by... It felt weird praying for a campus I didn't really have a heart for or was familiar with. We walked by dorms and prayed for the students in them. Brett would pray that God would use us to serve the students on campus. I prayed, "Would You give me heart of love for this campus? Would you show me a purpose I can have here? Even if it's one that I didn't expect?"

Meanwhile, we prayed that I could get a job. Brett gave me permission to take time to apply to jobs I really wanted, something I love and admire about him. So I applied... and nothing happened. And I cried a lot because I thought I'd leave college and change the world--- I'm an idealist, I sometimes just can't help my positive ridiculously high achieving stupendously unrealistic thoughts. Sometimes I'd cry out of selfishness, but sometimes begging God to help me understand and trust His purpose for me. So we prayed more. A Hall director position opened up at the nearby university, so I applied and started interviews. I prayed, "Lord, would you provide a place for me to use the gifts You've given me? A place to learn. To develop my gifts. Would you give me boldness like Mary had when she stepped into her calling... because YOU are good and trustworthy."

We continued our prayer walks. One night, as we waited to hear back from my interviews, Brett asked me if I would pray for the person who would get the position I'd applied for. We sat directly outside the building we live in now on a chilly bench that had sticky beer on the seat, and I choked out a prayer knowing that I might not be praying for myself but for someone else. I prayed that whoever was chosen would love well and meet the students where they were at. Later I wrote in my journal, God could say no to me getting this job, out of His fierce love that knows what is good for me. I also realize that if I get this job, my soul purpose in having it would to be glorify God. He will not forsake me today. When I was far, He went farther still. He has pressed into me even more--- He has loved and pursued my broken self."

I got the job. And our prayers were praises. Our prayers now revolve around specific names, situations, and wandering souls. It feels like we have a lot more big prayers in front of us, but I'm grateful for those prayer walks behind us. I'm grateful to walk forward in the amazement of God answering prayers, within His means, His timing, and His perfectness.

On my "Gratitude" list yesterday, I wrote, "Helping out a friend creatively". I also wrote, "A Husband who makes me coffee that isn't burnt". And I am UBER grateful for both. I can never get my coffee right and always end up burning it. I've wanted to own a coffee shop on a river in Oregon my entire life (or just work at Starbucks), but reality is slowly assuring me that I'm just too good at burning every cup o' jo I try to make.Helping out a Friend Creatively--- I am grateful for opportunities to be creative and learn creativity. This week my friend Meagan asked me to help her design some banners for her blog. Her blog title comes from the Song of Solomon, a book that became one of my favorites just a few months ago when Brett and I got married. It's a book about love, marriage, friendship, and celebration. How sweet it is that someone took the time to write a book on what it is to love and be loved.

Seeing her title was a great reminder for me yesterday as I battled with failure and feeling unworthy of being loved by Brett or anyone.  I AM unworthy of love, but God still chose to bestow a furiously fierce love upon me, because He decided I was worth it. He makes me, and you, worthy. That's something I hear and over-hear, and re-hear all too often in the church, but as much as I've heard it, I struggle to believe it. So I'll ask you this week, Have YOU taken the time to really believe that you ARE loved by your BELOVED?

Man oh man, Christmas is right around the corner. I mean, really, it's right at the front door step. And my confession is that I've already run out of holiday steam. Brett and I had "A Very Stine Christmas" a few weeks ago when I was feeling extra-holiday-high-on-Christmas-Ecstasy, which consisted of decorating the tree, egg nog, Christmas music, and Brett stringing a very short string of popcorn until he got bored and stopped. He did it because I asked him to, which made me beam at him with star-crossed wonder and Santa pride...My Sweet Sweet Sweety Pie Yummy Cakes stringing popcorn for me!So we decorated, high on Jingle Bells; then, semi-mournfully, we took it all down so we could move, and now I've lost all motivation to decorate our tree OR hang up our stockings for the SECOND time. Please. My Caring Friends. DON'T BE ALARMED. I've made all the arrangements necessary for lack of Christmas spirit. I've surrendered my stocking to coal and confessed to those closest to me, that I am scrooged. And at any point in the middle of the night, I'm expecting the Polar Express to show up at my front door, ready to whisk me off to teach me a lesson about the importance of being Christmasy. And really, as long as Tom Hanks is there, I'm in.

Amidst all this Christmasness and moving, I've really enjoyed reading through our churches ADVENT book. I'll confess that I'm that girl who needs a good reminder what Christmas is about. Because every year World Market Christmas advertisements bombard  my inbox. Every year Martha Stewart magazines trick me into thinking it's all about making advent calendars look chique... instead of paying attention to advent itself. And every year I JUST WANT TO EAT A CANDY CANE!! Do you understand how easily I want to give into it all? Merchandise does a really good job at stealing my affections for Savior Celebrations and precious time with my family.

BUT, I love that advent beckons, "Come, let's celebrate 'a baby born to save the souls of man.'"

I'd love to share with you the joy that has been set in my heart because of the beauty of advent:

"The 'great light' promised by the prophet Isaiah had come into the world. The embodiment of hope, love, light and life wrapped Himself in the frailty of human skin. He came, God in the flesh, full of pity, compassion and power to rescue those lost in darkness and carry them into the kingdom of everlasting light. He came just as He said He would- to do what we never could....

The beautiful thing about light is that it shines to not only expose potential pitfalls and danger but to also reveal what is lovely...Jesus came to rescue us from the black night of sin and to open closed eyes so that we might see, behold and delight in His beauty."  -Seasons, The Village Church (2012)

If you kidnapped me and threatened to chop my fingers off with a blender if I didn't tell the truth, I'd say you were using one of my favorite scenes from The Goonies to torture me. And then, I'd tell you everything, just like Chunk did.I've never stolen my uncles hair piece and glued it on my face to play Moses in a school play. And I've never pushed either of my siblings down the stairs... on purpose. But if you had my fingers in a blender and needed me to confess in the heat of the moment, I'd give you a good list:

1. In second grade I peed my pants and told my teacher that my water  bottle had spilled. And she believed me.

2. My mom almost called the police on me when I was four because she thought I was missing... I was in the garage, hiding out, eating powdered donuts I found in our freezer.

3. The first few times Brett called me while we were "just friends" I actually could never tell what he was saying on the phone because he mumbled so bad. I would hang up after an hour maybe and think to myself, "That was a good conversation. Too bad I don't know what it was about." Alas, we are married so it really must have been a good conversation.

4. Some days I feel like I could eat a pancake, and then another pancake, and then another pancake, and then another pancake...

5. My dream job in fifth grade was to be Britney Spears' publicist. Good thing that didn't work out.

"I just thought I would be in such a different place [spiritually, physically, emotionally, maturity-wise, career-wise] when I finally got married... but I'm not."A friend of mine said these words to me about a month ago. She's getting married this week, and I admire so much of who she is, where she stands in life, and how she lives her life. Beauty is in her and flows out of her. She is a life-giving woman, and I think her soon-to-be husband and those that know her best would agree. And yet her own expectations of who she would be on her wedding day were much higher than where she thinks she is. So long ago she had an expectation of who she would be the day she got married, and the person she IS today, is not the person she wanted to be standing at the altar.

I get this. Because the exact sentence she confessed to me, I confessed to my wonderfully patient mother a few months before I got married. I wasn't crying to her, I was yelling to her through sobs at how disappointed I was in myself and how much I hated me. I sat crumpled in a chair. It wasn't that I felt unright about my marriage... I couldn't believe Brett, such a loyal and understanding man, would WANT to marry an immature failure of a girl like me, because that's who I believed I was.

Of all the failures I was tempted with pre-marriage, I had believed that I was a spiritual failure the most. The other day my best friend told me how consistently she and her sweet boyfriend have been reading the Word and spending time with Jesus. How good it is for their relationships when they are consistent. And how good that will be for their marriage some day. I rejoice with her that they are having a season of such sweet fellowship. And am reminded that I have had such sweet moments as well--- and that sometimes a sweet season can change to a difficult one.

During my engagement and even some into my marriage, I was more inconsistent in the Word or even in acknowledging God, than Harry Potter would be with Katniss' bow and arrow. I was tempted to believe I would fail Brett and God as a wife. How could I serve Brett if I wasn't even serving God? (Which is a truth-filled question that Satan answered with lies.) I was scraping at everything I could get my hands on to fill me, but nothing would work. Ann Voskamp, in 1,000 Gifts, writes that when we say "NO" to God to fill us, we are asking Him not to be present in our lives. "No, God. No God." I felt like I was doing just that and hated myself for it but was too deep in to ask God for help.

Someone told me while I was engaged that if a woman doesn't have a consistent fellowship with God every day during her engagement, then she won't have a consistent fellowship with God during her marriage. And to me, that communicated I would NEVER be able to achieve a relationship with God that was full or beautiful IN marriage since I had so miserably failed OUTSIDE of marriage. It communicated that I would definitely never be what I expected I'd be as a wife: Super-woman-God-lover-never-fail-my-husband-pray-him-through-the-day-be-a-perfect-sinner-every-husband-is-jealous-i'm-such-a-perfect-wife.

But I'm writing right now to say that God is good, forgiving, and draws us to Him with grace abounding. And though my fellowship with Him was not what I wanted it to be BEFORE marriage, He has been more than willing to help me take steps to being where HE desires for it to be IN marriage. It's not even about where I wanted to be. It's where HE wants me.

When we stop gripping our hands on lies of failure or [insert identity struggle here], He opens our hands only to place truth into them. It's not about consistently acknowledging and meeting God every day as someone else's fiance, but consistently acknowleding and meeting with God as someone who is loved by Him and loves to spend time with him.

Expectations exceeded.