You know its love when....

When he drives 180 miles to go to the grocery store with you on a Monday night
When you check your blog and he has written a love letter to you
When he looks on the top shelf at Target to find an address book
When he sits on the couch and just holds you


I am so blessed. In five months (ish) I will be a blessed wife. The idea of leaving my father and mother hit me hard this week as my last family vacation ended. The last time I will go on a family vacation as Amanda Boudreaux. But in a way it was good...well after the meltdown it got better. Any encouragement from you married ladies is much appreciated!!

But what God showed me is that by trusting Him and committing to his plan for my life, He will bless my life in greater ways than I can imagine. I have been so focused on the various changes, adjustments and decisions that are coming up, that I forgot to focus on the fact that the Bible says "Leave your father and mother and be united with your wife" God designed marriage to bless us and to create a picture of Christ and the church.

Obviously I have no idea what this will look life post January 2, 2011; but I know that God has promised that He knows the plans for my life and that they are plans to prosper and not to harm me. Plans to give me hope and a future.

And I know that the Lord has blessed me abundantly with a family who loves me dearly, a future husband who passionately pursues the Lord and serves Him daily, and a sense of peace towards the changes to come

Grace and peace to all who love the Lord Jesus Christ, with an undying love
-AB

Sacrifice

So, i just had a brief thought while listening to a breakaway podcast that i wanted to share before leaving to go into the field till thursday. This weekend amanda and I both had moments where we realized what we were giving up in order to get married. We both agreed we still wanted to do it but at times had trouble quantifying why it was worth it other that thats what we knew we wanted. And i heard the reason in a teaching from the Gospel. Readers digest version is, Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is and they say messiah, making a commitment to follow him. He tells them the cost of following and they still do. This is because to truely be devoted to Jesus, or the parallel on Earth, you spouse, there will be sacrifices. But those are considered worth it because by truely making that sacrifice to Jesus/spouse you begin to develop a deeper intimacy with them that before wasnt possible. Jesus shows this by then immediately begining to teach the disciples His truths "plainly". Well in marraige when you make that sacrifice to pursue your spouse, the parallel happens and you begin to know them on a whole new level never before possible. Yet another way husband and wife is a picture of Christ and the church.
I love you amanda.
Shalom,
TJ

Distance is hard...

I know it may sound a bit pathetic since we are only 90 miles apart and get to see each other every weekend but that doesnt necessarily make it any easier. We have just passed the halfway point for finishing this summer apart and it has really started fighting us. But one thing it has taught me is a little about what to expect in marraige. Though we refer to ourselves as crusty love aroud our friends because by our age's standards we have been together forever, to the couple that has been married 50 years we are still very much new love. What this summer has shown me, especially this week, is how delibirate and conscious love has to be. Just this week, i was going along thinking i was doing pretty well at loving Amanda and making her feel loved, I was just loving her however and whenever it just naturally came out, but was making little no conscious effort to love her in a specific way. After only two days of this it was brought to my attention that she was feeling no love from this and I was taken aback, in my mind I had been doing pretty good. What it made me realize is that just taking for granted that your love is being conveyed effectively and assuming your natural tendencies are enough is a very dangerous road to take. It made me realize that if I do not have a very specific plan and concentrated focus on how and when specifically I am going to love her, I run the very real risk of neglecting her. Now, to tie this back into my original statement about what it has taught me about what to expect in marraige, is that I will have to be every bit as deliberate and more in our marraige. If this is how out of whack it can get by just being a little tired and not seeing each other for a few days, I can only begin to imagine how much more that this is true 15-20 years down the road when the natural tendency (just a guess) is to take each other for granted, and at times the desire to love each other ebs somewhat. If that day comes and I have not learned how to love deliberately and intentionally, I can only hope to let her down in those harder moments. So now the action from this lesson, since a lesson is no good if you don't do anything about it. For starters, I am going to start each week thinking of one special thing to do for her and plan it specifically out. Then, in addition to doing that, I am going to start the habit of in my morning prayers each day, asking God what little ways I should love her throughout the day and then commit to doing them. Thats all i've got so far but I can only assume I am going to learn a lot more about loving her over the rest of my life, and nothing in this world excites me more than that thought.
Shalom,
TJ

Only 198 days

Only 198 days until we are married!! Yay!! Thank you Jesus. Time actually is moving! TJ is still enjoying  working at BP, which is good because he still has 8 weeks to go. He finally got paid a petroleum paycheck which is very exciting! Amanda has started her new job at the Heights, which is alot of work, but its a new challenge. She is also working at KBTX in the mornings at 4:30am, which is very early but has been more fun than she has ever had with meteorology. So life has been busy, but the Lord is faithful to keep time moving.
All of the sudden we are 6 months away from getting married, and honeymoons are being booked, the venue, cake, caterer, DJ have all been booked. The dress has been purchased. The photographer is amazing http://www.rachelledbetterphoto.com/ and the bride and groom are so excited.
    Jesus keeps stretching us. Amanda has gotten less patient and TJ has gotten more patient. She keeps learning that God's timing is not hers, and patience is always an area that needs work. The verse "Love is patient" keeps coming back to my mind.
  Dear TJ,
      I love you. I love that you get to go to College Station every weekend. I love that you stand outside my front door smiling with a jar of JIF Reduced Fat Creamy Peanut Butter. I love that you help me do all the wedding planning. I love that you text me " Good morning beautiful" every morning when you wake up. Basically I love your querky, goofy, enginering self.


Essentially, you rock


Love
Amanda

Its been a crazy week

Well what was supposed to be a short work week turned into a crazy, God is totally in control of our lives, week. Needless to say, God has a plan for us and while most of the time we "never saw that one coming" i is amazing how God provides abundantly. After reading the Treasure Principle, we committed to include giving in our monthly budget. Money was very tight and we weren't entirely sure where the money was going to come from. God has so blessed us because we were given a raise!! Amazing! Proof that God rewards those who follow His commandments.
   Like TJ said we have been reading Love and Respect. I have been told all my life how the husband needs to be respected. It is in the Bible everywhere as well "wives submit to your husbands" "and the wife must respect her husband" but I guess I didn't know what that looks like in real life. This book has opened my eyes about how everything I say or do conveys a message of either respect or disrespect. I am really enjoying reading this book because it is showing me every place that I am falling short and how I need God's grace to get it right.
   Not a huge fan of the distance this summer, but its ok because we have both been so busy I don't know if we ever would have seen each other anyway. I start at KBTX this week, bright and early at 5AM....oh goodness the life of a meteorologist.  So I will work 5-9 and KBTX and then 9-6 and Heights/Crossing Place. Plus summer school. Exhausting. I'm just going to focus on the Lord and it will be ok. " Let your eyes look straight ahead fix your gaze directly before you. Makelevel paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or the left. Keep your foot from evil" Prov 4: 25-27

Love and Respect

So Amanda and I are reading the book Love and Respect this summer as we try to prepare our relationship for marraige. We have decided to read two chapters per week this summer so that it will last the whole of my internship so not only will it help our relationship, it will inspire conversation in spite of the awkwardness that can be caused by distance and neither one of us enjoying long phone calls. We have just finished through chapter four and I am already super excited for what it could do for us. The book promises to help teach me to love her unconditionally, in the way that she needs and desires, not the way I think is best. This excites me because it is something I desperately want to be successful at. I also think it will be good this summer because I will have to make sure that I make a conscious effort to do so, not just out of habit or absent mindedly, since we wont see each other and habit won't translate over distance. This too excites me because I feel like if I can learn to fully meet her need for love from a distance this summer, hopefully it will make it that much more second nature to do so when we are together and I will be much less likely to make her feel unloved. Well those are my thoughts for now, I'll probably go further with this train of thought once I'm further into the book. I love you Amanda!
Shalom,
TJ

update

So for those of you who haven't heard yet, I am in houston for the summer working as a Drilling Engineer Intern for BP. As a first time intern they gave me a rather large project; it's a part of a possibly billion dollar project being planned. So that's a little intimidating, but is exciting too. Being here in Houston is bitter sweet as Amanda is still in college station, and everyday I come home from work makes me realize how much I truely want her to be my wife and I just can't wait until she is and when I come home everyday she will be there. So yea, that's made me miss her just a little bit. Other than that, I played frisbee one night, tore up my knees and made myself incredibly sore, so good game :); I hung out in the biggest house I've ever been in with a friend who lives in Houston. That's about all from my first week but I just wanted to give everyone a brief update and tell Amanda that I love her <3.
Shalom,
TJ