#WifeLife Vol. 5 Boudoir and Anniversary’s

My belated gift (since the photo shoot isn’t until after our June 5th one year anniversary!) to Joseph is going to be a small (10 or so pics) photo album of boudoir photos that I’m having taken. Sexy shots in lingerie and such. I’m excited! The girl taking them is someone I’ve known from church years ago who is a professional photographer now and does a lot of boudoir shoots.

I cannot believe we’ve been married 10 months. Totally bizarre. God has been so faithful to us in this first year. Life’s been insane, but He gave us each other, and that has been so wonderful.

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It’s Beginning Look A Lot Like Christmas! #WifeLife Vol. 5

We had our Christmas photos taken!

Jessie was a spaz the whole time but somehow she still looks epically photogenic.

I ordered my Christmas cards and I am so excited to send them out!! 🎄😁 Married life really is the best.

MoJoe Wedding

Just a dream y’all. Enjoy some sneak peaks from our photographer!

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This Guy

 

This guy I’m seeing. What can I say? He’s pursuing my heart with such gentleness and respect, I can’t recall ever feeling so valuable. It’s lovely. It’s beautiful. It’s still so new and so fresh, I’m looking forward to seeing where it all goes. But as it stands, it’s looking pretty awesome.

Ex-Suitor Appreciation Post!

I know so many people who have been hurt and heartbroken by their past boyfriends or girlfriends. So many who have emotional scars and trust issues, who had put their best out there and been taken advantage of. They have regrets about how their relationships formed, how they ended, the decisions they made along the way. My heart aches for them. Deeply.

Me, I have a different story to share. In June of 2015, three months after beginning a new and intimidating career, and 7 months after losing my mom, I attended a pool party and met this guy named Peter. He would not leave me alone at first. He was driving me crazy. Until eventually he said to me “You’re an introvert, aren’t you? I’ll leave you alone for a bit and come back later when you’re more comfortable.”
That made an impression on me. We traded phone numbers, with the intention of going contra dancing together. We eventually started hanging out, spending a lot of time together. 9 months or so later, he asked me if we could begin courting. And we courted for 6 amazing months. He treated me with such respect, such care. He protected my heart valiantly even when I made that difficult. He raised my standards of what it means to be a man, and what it means to pursue a relationship in a Godly, Biblical way.
No, we didn’t end up getting married. We also never kissed, never slept together, never selfishly sought to satisfy our physical desires at the expense of the other.
We made a commitment early on that we would not allow our courtship to change our friendship, and in September of 2016, when we ended our courtship, we put that commitment truly to the test. Three years have passed, and this man has done nothing but impress me. I’m so glad he’s committed to being single for life because honestly no woman is good enough for him. I’m so blessed to call him my friend, and to have gotten to share my first courtship experience with him.

Whoever my future husband is, he has Peter to thank for so much. I’m a better woman because of my relationship with Peter. I am more prepared to be a wife, a helpmeet, and prayer warrior. I’m less fearful of change, more spontaneous, more adventurous, and more confident. I’m a better communicator, better problem solver, better conflict resolver, because of the experience I had with Peter. Truly, THIS is what Godly courtship is. We grew together so much, and I’m so so blessed that three years post-courtship we are still great friends. To God be the glory. My heart is so full, and I look forward to the day my love story with my husband begins, he better be okay with me having multiple dude friends because I’m not giving them up for anything.

(He dresses weird but I like it…)

Singles Awareness Day

September 2016, I was in my kitchen, washing dishes, after having a really bad day at work. Just prior to this, I had called my best friend, whom I was courting at the time, and asked him to come over. Hoping to vent and also get some of his healing hugs. 

When he arrived, he immediately started with “Moriah, we need to talk…” and proceeded to tell me he had been thinking and praying about whether or not God was calling him out of his original calling to be celibate for life to marry me, or not. And he had arrived at his conclusion. We were not meant to marry. He was going to remain celibate, as he felt he was called to for most of his life. And, after 9 months of spending almost all our time together, he thought we should spend two months apart to heal and spend time with God without distractions. 

We had agreed in the past that should our relationship not end in marriage, we would remain friends. We would not allow the end of our romantic relationship to cause the end of our platonic one. I had agreed to this, fully expecting to marry this wonderful, amazing man as soon as he came to his senses and abandoned this notion of lifelong celibacy. After all, he openly admitted he was in love with me and that I was his dream wife. 

The next two months felt like the longest months of my life. We saw each other once in the middle, in October, when we along with one other friend went to a Dave Ramsey conference. His two roommates often came over and hung out with me. One of them, while I was doing busywork as he took advantage of my wifi and typed a resume for a job, asked me,

“Hey… I don’t mean to intrude but… Are you doing okay? After you and Peter… How are you feeling?” 

“I’m… I don’t know…”

Two months came and went, and we began hanging out again. He put up barriers, made some rules. To protect my heart. Something he was always very good at despite my arguments. And he remained my closest, most trusted friend. After all, we wanted to marry one another, and we made sure we agreed on everything and told each other everything. No one knows me like he does. And he still is. Two years and 4 months later. 

Along the way I met another guy who is also very close, but not quite as. He’s a cutie, but not in the romantic sense, for me anyway, and he and I are both happy with that arrangement. 

So why am I retelling my the story of my one and only romantic relationship?

Because. It’s nearly Valentine’s Day. I woke up today, ate breakfast, took a long walk, washed some dishes, and watched Doctor Who until now. 6:13pm. Sure, I left my house, but only to walk literally around the neighborhood I live in. How am I ever going to meet the man I’m actually meant to marry when I spend my days off tucked away in my house sipping tea?

Conversely, where am I supposed to go? I don’t have the money to just go somewhere, most places cost money. I don’t know. I do know that God is in control. It’s not my job to “find my man”. 

But still, I’m 25. Though I didn’t care about the first, oh, 16 Valentine’s Day’s, 17-now I’ve begrudgingly spent each Valentine’s Day alone. Kinda tired of that… 

New Years Thoughts for 2019

I want to be kind, honest, pure of heart.

I want to be courageous, wise, and noble.

I want to be just.

I want to be above gossip.

I want my conscience to be clear at all times.

And to rest, knowing there is nothing I have done to hurt anyone around me.

I want to be worthy, to the best of my human ability, of the royal title that I bear; Daughter of the One True King.

A little birdie told me…

So occasionally I have little bullet point thoughts 💭. They’re short and to the point and not really worthy of a full blog. But I still wanna get them out there. So I made a twitter account for this purpose.

TQG Twitter

Please feel free to follow me if you’re a Twitterer too! 😉

Fish Love 🐠 ❤️

So I was talking with one of my super awesome dude friends late last night after we had a fabulous adventure day at Carowinds Season Passholder Preview Night, and he shared a super cool thing. He gave me permission to share it with you all.

There was a Jewish man who once saw a guy eating a fish, and he said:

“Oh, enjoying that meal are you?”

and the man said, “Oh yes! I love fish!”

“You love fish? You love it so much that you killed it, skinned it, cooked it and ate it?”

So much of what we call “love” is fish love. We love something because it gives us gratification or pleasure. We don’t actually care about the well being of the person, place, or thing when we say we “love” it. What we are actually saying is that we love the feeling it gives us. If we really loved the fish, we would care for it, provide for it’s needs, give it a good place to live with fresh clean water and food. And then we would be both satisfying it’s desires and needs as well as our own, because if we really loved it, our satisfaction would be found in the act of providing for it.

You cannot separate love from Jesus. Real, true love, is the desire to provide for, satisfy, and care for the object of our affection regardless of how we feel or what we get in return. Only Jesus can sustain that type of love within us, because He is constantly pouring His selfless love into us from the moment we accept His forgiveness.

This is why so many marriages and relationships fail. We are shown through TV and movies that love is that spark, that “love at first sight” moment followed by romance, sex, and falling “madly in love”, where your passions are so strong you just can’t stay away from one another. And that is not love. That is lust. It’s the love of ourselves, our own gratification, and the feeling of being accepted and adored. Sure, it’s consensual and both parties are equally taking advantage of one another without complaint. But, a few months, a few years down the road, when desires and passions change and fade, and things start to become less like a thrilling rollercoaster ride and more like a long trudging journey uphill, suddenly “the spark is gone”, “I’m just not in love with you anymore”, and heartache, divorce, affairs… Suddenly they start seeking the feeling of “love” again elsewhere, thinking they perhaps married the wrong person, or just that “the love is gone”. No, dears. The lust is gone. The gratification is gone. And since, though you refuse to acknowledge it, you were in it for the thrill of gratification, you aren’t really interested in sticking around for the long haul. You were in it for the fish love. And well, there are plenty of fish in the sea.

Jesus doesn’t love us because we have so much to bring to the table. Actually, we bring absolutely nothing to the table. We come to the table with empty stomachs and dirty hands, hoping for a few crumbs. And Jesus cleans us up, dresses us in His own clean clothes, sits us in the seat of highest honor, and serves us humbly the best of the harvest. His satisfaction in us is to care for us. Our satisfaction in Him is to serve Him, and our joy in Him is to share His love with everyone we meet. Because why let a lost world sit in rags, begging for crumbs, when we have a Savior who longs to take us under His wing?

One Single Thing (Me)

March 4th, 2018. This is the year I turn 25. The year I wanted to be married by. Had my previous (and only) relationship worked out, I’d be just a few months away from celebrating our one year anniversary. But, alas, here I am. Single, living with an older lady from my church, spending my days working at an eye clinic and going to the gym, primarily.

I gotta be real with you all. I’m frustrated. I’m lonely. I am NOT desperate, ready to fall for any guy who looks my way, however. Quite the opposite. My best friend/man I almost married is still my closest friend and continues to be such a fabulous example of what I desire in a spouse. Just yesterday we were watching a movie and the characters were talking about failed relationships, he turned to me and asked, “Do you consider our courtship a failed relationship?”

No. I don’t. We did everything right, our relationship was and is still healthy, God honoring, and we would have made an amazing couple had we gotten married. The only reason we did not is because he feels called to be single. Our courtship did not end in marriage, but it was not a failure. We both sought God, learned about one another and ourselves, and when it ended, we continued to honor God by maintaining a love and respect for one another that I have not seen between “exes” before.

Because of that, my expectations, hopes, dreams, requirements, and standards for a man have gotten higher. Now that I know there is such a thing as a man who loves Jesus more than me, who loves me selflessly and choses to protect my heart over satisfying his own desires, I cannot and will not settle for less.

And I am frustrated. Because men like that are so rare. Or at least, it appears that way. My heart aches to share life with someone, to have someone to snuggle up in bed with after long day and just be with.

Someone who enjoys going grocery shopping on the weekends and considers that a fun day out together.

Who loves to cook with me, and doesn’t get frustrated with me when I can’t remember what ingredients I just read on the recipe and have to reread it a dozen times.

Someone who knows how important snuggling is to me, and knows that when I’m mad or frustrated with life, cuddles are always the answer.

Someone who randomly starts singing in the car even when he doesn’t remember the real lyrics, and the radio isn’t even on.

Someone who knows more scripture by heart than I do, and doesn’t act superior because of it.

Someone who doesn’t mind me sending him texts throughout the day about inconsequential things that I thought were interesting (That in hindsight aren’t actually that interesting).

Someone who sets boundaries and sticks to them no matter what, honors his commitments, and doesn’t make empty promises.

Someone who knows that showing emotions is a sign of strength, not weakness, and loves people openly without shame.

Someone who calls me beautiful, and loves me for who I am as a person. But also calls me a hot chick, thinks my body is a treasure, something to be respected and appreciated, and refuses to indulge it in until we are married.

Maybe my expectations are too high. But I know one man who meets them. And I’d rather be alone than settle for less.