New Life: August 2011

12 The Promised Land is a land the Lord your God cares for;

the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it

from the beginning of the year to its end...

15 God will provide grass in the fields for your cattle,

and you will eat & be satisfied.

16 Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away & worship other gods & bow down to them.

17 Then the Lord's anger will burn against you,

& He will shut the heavens so that it will not rain

and the ground will yield no produce,

and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you.

--Deuteronomy 11:12, 15-17

What if, by "land", "grass", & "cattle", I read Provisions- for whatever need is in my life.

What if, by "other gods", I read Physical Beauty. Control. Safety. Being right. Self.

What if, by "ground will yield no produce", I read Will never be at peace with the way things are now.

How often do you or I flail to attain even the inherently & genuinely good things in life, but experience perpetual disappointment because we expect things to work on our terms?

I do want a healthy marriage- I want to trust, to be gracious, and to encourage my husband when we're both imperfect. I want to see a difference when I work out & seek nutritional balance - because I do those things way more often than not. I want to be at peace with the way I earn my living- despite the fact that it isn't what I thought I would do growing up. I want to feel like I'm not disappointing someone, somewhere, somehow, on any given day.

But I can't do any of those things, no matter how hard & consistent I try.

I can't do them on my own. Do you ever feel that way?

Dear All,

I write to you from the Casa de Jennings 2.0. That's right, we are up 'n running, and actually in a house!

It has a been a whirlwind month; lots of change, lots of stress, lots of exciting things happening! Let me give you a rundown of our life over the past couple months.

Ben's been traveling a lot more for work- mainly to Pennsylvania. He's really been enjoying things lately. I really love that he loves his job- it's that much more fulfilling for us. I've been working fewer hours, but still manage to keep myself busy. I just finished teaching a week long class at one of the high schools for their end-of-summer band prep. The last couple of weeks in particular have been downright exhausting. We were really blessed in that we kind of had the run of the house before our lease actually started, so we were able to paint some and get big stuff moved in at our leisure. I can not imagine what it would have been like trying to do one big move all at once. I would have died.

I haven't exactly explained the whole house-situation to some of you; so for those of you who think, "wait, what?? They're in a house??" let me give ya the skinny. Essentially my bassoon teacher/colleague (who I studied with all throughout Middle/High School) moved to Philadelphia because of her husband's job. Through a turn of events & a lot of miraculous conversations, it turns out that Ben & I are now leasing the house! There have been countless instances where we've thought, "well... this seems impossible", but God has opened doors & paved ways, and made it abundantly clear that this is the place to be. He's provided so much, and we know it's all because of His grace, and 0% because of us. (i.e. there was a little mix-up at our apartment concerning our lease, and we were very nearly forced to hand over $1,200 in fees... essentially we were going to have to throw away over a grand because we didn't give the appropriate # of days' notice that we were moving. But it turns out the apartment didn't give us the appropriate # of days' reminder to give notice, which allowed 30 days notice sufficient... yeah, we found this out on the 30th day before we planned on moving out... thereby allowing us to keep our $1,200. Miraculous.)

All that to say, it's been quite the roller coaster. We spent a week painting, moving, getting settled, unpacking- all that jazz. THANK YOU, thank you friends & family (Mom, Dad, Aunty Ellen, Sammantha & Luke, Andrea & Tepera, Jeremy, Chad, Luke) for helping us lug all our stuff back and forth. We finally have juuuust about everything in its' place, particularly because yesterday we hosted our first ever House Warming Party! It was splendid, just splendid. Saturday was actually my 24th birthday (that means official mid-20's, right?... eesh) so Ben took me out to a surprise hotel-stay and fancy, fancy Italian Restaurant. Then we returned to our house (teehee) for a day of celebration in the home. I've told a couple of my friends: I think we're just about beat. We're so mentally incapable of having errands, details, adjustments, & to-do lists hanging over our heads; and our bodies can't take many more demands, I don't think. I seriously am concerned that I have stress fractures in my feet from jumping up and down stairs and ladders, and just standing for so many hours each day. We are READY to enjoy this home now; which, I think, yesterday really helped us jump-start :)

So, here are some official pictures of the new house. We are so excited to see what all life brings us in this new phase of life. Each night I feel like Ben or I make mention of how blessed we feel to be in this home- we can't wait to use it to host friends, family, ministry... we can't to see how God uses us through it.
(oh, forgive Brandi- she just trailed me around the house, so she's in a lot of the pictures and wouldn't get out of the way... *shrug*)