Accountability

Yesterday, I spent most of the day with Renee while John and K worked at the church. We had a lovely time shopping and running our errands together, and ended the day at Chick-fil-A so that little L could play on the playground. While we were there John and K told us that they'd like to become accountability partners in their spiritual walk.


I think it's a great thing, I love that John will have another guy to talk to and bounce ideas off of when trials come up for us. I know that women are much more suited to relating and talking through things together... it's even better knowing that I respect K and think that he's a wonderful person - so I'm looking forward to watching as this friendship helps John grow closer to God.


At the same time, I talked to Renee about the two of us branching our friendship into a little bit of spiritual encouragement as well. So I thought that the two of us could start a program that would have us read the Bible through in a year. I found this program, and we're planning on starting it tomorrow. There are three choices in terms of the reading program - so if anyone else is interested in joining in on this journey - email me or leave me a comment with an email address and I'll let you know which one we chose.


John has been doing the same program since the first week of January, and really seems to be doing well. He got an MP3 version of the Bible for Christmas, so he loads in the play list for the week and listens to his daily reading several times throughout the day. I personally don't learn by listening - so that wouldn't work for me... but he loves it.


At the same time, I've decided that I'm going to start praying for God to give us things that only he can through our journey. This doesn't mean that I can turn off the emotions, but I know that the journey ahead of us is bigger than even I can imagine right now - and God will be with us through every step of the way.

I've been reading about Kelly's story so much over the last few months and now with Harper's birth - God is even more apparent in their lives. Kelly prayed this verse while she was waiting to become pregnant, and it is now one of the cutest decorations in Harper's nursery...

Ephesians 3:20 (NLT) Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope.

I think this verse is beautiful, and I'm going to read it and pray it everyday in my own journey. I'm going to put it up in my cubicle in the morning - along with another one we read in church today... which will be another post for another day. I might even put it up so that I see it first thing every morning while I'm getting ready as well... I want to remember it always, and remind myself even through the hard parts - God will be with us.

In one of the comments from yesterday's post, the other Kim, who has been through the infertility roller coaster herself told me to guard my heart because this could be a very long emotional process. She is right, but the guarding my heart thing doesn't come easily to me... I wear my emotions on my sleeve... whatever I'm feeling, most people can see it on my face. Certainly, it'll be right here in the blog every step of the way as well - because where else do I have the platform to process through my feelings in the way that comes naturally to me?

I remember distinctly after our women's retreat last spring, wishing that I had a friend that I could build a deep lasting spiritually based friendship with. A friend that I could count on through the ups and downs in life, and that could depend on me for the same thing... and at the time - I had no idea who could become that person for me... I reached out to someone at that time to build such a relationship, but it wasn't meant to be that for us. She's a fantastic woman, and I really respect her - but we weren't destined to have that relationship.

Little did I know then that there was a woman in my life that was put there for that purpose. We both are shy by nature, and it's taken us a while - really until I was laid off... and even through that - if I weren't so afraid to put myself out there... we would have had several months to hang out while I wasn't working. Renee, I'm so looking forward to reading through the Bible with you - and being there for all of the ups and downs of your life... only God could have provided me with such a wonderful friend at the perfect time.