Forever Beloved - Faith, Love & Truth

November 1, 2019

Blogvember Day One | Introduce Yourself

Oh my lanta, today is the day! I’m so excited to have y’all here joining me for The Blogvember Challenge!! Today the challenge kicks off and the train keeps on truckin’ through to the end of the month. I am SO excited that you’re here, and I can’t wait to get to know you all better by the end of this.

For a complete list of The Blogvember Challenge prompts, click HERE!

November 1 – Introduce yourself however you’d like.

Well hello there y’all, I’m Amy. I’m the girl behind the blog here at Forever Beloved. I started my blog on July 19, 2006, so thirteen years ago! It was started as an outlet, a way to share my scrapbook pages and a way to keep in touch with family. But then something happened. As time went on, more and more people started reading. Forever Beloved is a happy, positive place. A place where you know, even on your worst day, you can leave it with a smile on your face and feel refreshed. A place where the heart of Jesus shines through. I share my heart on this blog. I write to inspire others and make them smile; to share hope, grace and truth; to share my own mistakes and sins; to share my heart; and to share Jesus and His amazing love with others around the world.

I’m a small-town country girl, born and raised. I’m a wife of 23 years to the most amazing man ever, my husband Joe. I’m a Mama to two beautiful adult littles, Joey and Jade. And this year we gained a precious daughter-in-love, Bekah. We also have one dog, two cats and too many chickens to count (including one sassy house chicken).

I have a strong desire to live off the land and am blessed with the small homestead we’ve built. Late summer and fall I can be found in my kitchen, canning everything I can get my hands on. I love to create meals from scratch and my house usually smells of homemade bread.

As a child I was I am enamored with old photos. So much so that it sparked this insatiable craving to take pictures of people. I spent ten years following my passion and owning a photography business. To me, pictures are a priceless treasures. They allow you, if only for a second, to travel back in time. I was so blessed to hold that job, and capture precious memories for so many families. I retired from my business this past May.

Now for the extra interesting parts: I am a daughter of The King and God has changed me and mended me in ways that words can’t even begin to describe. I was adopted at three days old by the most amazing parents. At 20 years old I found my birth-mother and my three little brothers. I married my husband after only knowing and dating him for four months and it was the craziest, best decision I’ve ever made. I am a hopeless romantic. Music is a huge part of my life, and it has been since I was little. Some of my favorite memories are sitting at my piano, playing an old hymn and harmonizing with my Dad. Music also played a key part in my love story. I prefer going barefoot over wearing shoes and I absolutely hate socks. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m a Type-A, listing making, notebook keeping, people pleasing kind of girl. I have a huge desire to make a good impression, be liked and be accepted. I want the parties I throw, the relationships and friendships I have and anything I touch to all run perfectly perfect. I hate spiders and think they are completely unnecessary. Laughing happens a lot in my life, it’s one of my favorite things! I speak fluently in movie quotes and song lyrics.

Find me & follow me here:

Instagram // Facebook // Pinterest // Twitter

I cannot wait to meet you all and get to know each of you better through this challenge. Don’t forget to link up below and use the #blogvemberchallenge tag to stay connected. I’ll see you back here tomorrow for Day 2!

October 31, 2019

Is Your Marriage Worth Saving?

I remember the exact moment those words flew past my lips.

I hope I’m not pregnant, this marriage is worthless!

I remember everything about that moment…where I was standing, what I had on, what the lighting looked like and more than anything I remember the look on his face.

In that moment my marriage felt hopeless and to be honest, not worth saving.

I want to tell you this, from my heart directly to yours, every marriage is worth saving.

Sometimes marriage is hard. Really, really hard. And by hard I don’t mean disagreements over where to go to dinner. I don’t mean dirty, wet towels being left on the floor. I mean in the trenches, fighting the battle to bring darkness into light, when satan comes at you from every direction to steal your joy and your hope because he knows he is loosing ground kind of hard.

Maybe in your marriage you are the only one fighting for it. It is such a helpless feeling to have a sense that your marriage is slipping away and you cannot convince your spouse to work on the relationship. That dynamic is common – one spouse is emotionally exhausted, and eventually withdraws from the marriage. The other spouse responds too late, finally understands and then, out of desperation, frantically tries to talk their spouse into staying.

Perhaps your spouse has already filed for divorce and the decision is out of your hands. That may be the end result for your relationship, though I pray not. If it is, cling to God like never before and allow Him to carry you through it.

I cannot make guarantees about what will happen for you, but looking back at our history, and hearing the histories of others, I am convinced that God wants to save your marriage. He wants to start with your soul, but He cares deeply about your covenant with your spouse.

When my husband and I went through a rough in-the-trenches season of marriage there were only two things that helped us survive…handing our marriage to God and clinging to hope.

A big thing to remember is God doesn’t work on our time schedule. And that, my friends, was a hard pill for me to swallow. I am a hard-headed, impatient girl. But God had some work to do on my heart first. And it wasn’t until I had learned those lessons that things would start improving in our marriage.

I needed to nurture my relationship with Jesus for my relationship with my husband to change.

When it feels like all hope is lost, hand that relationship over to God. Pray for His direction, discernment and allow Him to lead you. Oh, how many times I’ve hit my knees praying for the right words, actions that would please Him and a heart that follows His. I’ve thrown myself at my Fathers feet in a teary hot mess heap more times than I can count.

Please, I plead with you, don’t make a rash decision while your heart is hurting. Many days, divorce sounds like the best and sometimes easiest option. Believe me, there were days that through my tears and brokenness I just wanted to throw my hands up, admit defeat and file for divorce. But I heard God consistently telling me to stand for my marriage, regardless of what the world told me to do. He showed me divorce extracted a high price, a price I simply wasn’t willing to pay.

When you hand your marriage over to Him, you open yourself to a beautiful reconciliation full of grace. A relationship that, once it has endured the storm, will come out of it stronger and new. Through fighting in the trenches side-by-side, all the late night conversations, all the deepness, you now know each other differently. This is the blessing of true healing from the hands of God.

But in the midst of the battle, God hears us. He hears our cries. When you call out to God in your distress, He hears your voice. And it moves His heart. He can see into the deepest depths of your heart and He knows exactly what it will take to restore Hope into your heart, into your life and into your marriage. He doesn’t wait for us to “clean up our act”. He meets us where we are and loves us just as we are, sinners. He showers us with His amazing grace. We have a God who not only knows our doubts and hopelessness, but our tears and pain break His heart.

At times, taking it day by day seems like such a big task. Take it minute by minute if you must, and allow His grace to carry you through each one.

I know even reading this post made your heart ache and your eyes well with tears. I wish so very much I could reach through this screen and give you a big hug and just cry with you. One day the pain will be a little less, I promise. One day your husband will walk past you in the kitchen, brush up against your arm and you’ll feel those butterflies again. The good days will be more often. And each week, there will be more glimpses of sunshine. Eventually your good days will run together, and smiles and laughter will abound. Trust me, you will get there if you allow God to heal your heart. He brings beauty from the ashes.

The beautiful thing about marriage restoration is you get a front row seat to watch His glorious, redemptive work.

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His answers don’t always come as quickly as we hope. It isn’t always the answer we want or expect. And yet, He is faithful. He is good. And we will praise Him still.

You will move on past this. You will hold your head high, knowing the storm may have knocked you down but it didn’t win.

By the way, I found out the next day that I was indeed pregnant. And that was 20 years ago! I am so thankful that our love story didn’t end there, that it did have many more God-scripted chapters to it. The reward of restoration was well worth the wait. And I am eternally thankful that our love was rescued by God!

October 22, 2019

Pouring Kindness Into Hearts

Kindness is so very powerful.

Kindness is defined as the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate. How would you describe kindness in your own words? Friendly, generous, warm-hearted, soft-spoken; these are all words I would associate with being kind.

When I think of kindness, my Dad always comes to mind. I actually would imagine his face might be in the dictionary beside it. To him, kindness is a way of life.

Throughout my lifetime, my Dads kind gentle spirit has always been shown both inside and outside of our home. He is one of the only people I know that can find good in any situation and in any person. If he had heard someone say something unkind to him, his response was always the same. They didn’t mean it that way. If he would hear me saying something unkind, he would always remind me that we are Christians, and God doesn’t want us to be unkind. If someone stole from him, he would brush it off by saying they must need it more than I do.

And today, especially today, as I watch my Facebook feed overflow with strong opinions on the John MacArthur and Beth Moore situation I can’t help but wonder what my Dad would say.

So I called him, explained the situation to him and asked his opinion.

His answer was “it’s never right to publicly humiliate someone who is also a Christ follower” followed quickly by “we should always be kind, we are called to be as Christians“.

And that, my friends, is the bottom line.

Tearing others down, judging harshly, judging their hearts, making rash and unkind judgments is all wrong.

How would Jesus have handled this? When Jesus encountered people who He felt needed “called out”, first He showed them love.

The first thing He did was love on them. He didn’t publicly humiliate them. HE LOVED THEM! Is it easier to hear criticism from someone if they loved on you first? If they said it with kindness and you knew their heart was in the right place? Absolutely! It’s all about love, kindness and grace. Gods greatest commandment was love one another (John 13:34).

Ephesians 4:32 says And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. And be ye KIND one to another.

Kind. Kind. Kind.

Galatian 5:22-23 says But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit y’all. Like the other fruits of the spirit, it can only be obtained through abiding in Christ. It is an outgrowth of the genuineness of our faith. According to the Zondervan NIV Bible Commentary, the Greek word translated kindness here is “the divine kindness out of which God acts toward humankind. It is what the [Old Testament] means when it declares that ‘God is good,’ as it so frequently does. Christians should show kindness by behaving toward others as God has behaved toward them.”

Kindness is humbly giving of ourselves in love and mercy to others who may not be able to give anything back, who sometimes don’t deserve it and who frequently don’t thank us for it.

At times kindness can be associated with weakness. But let me tell you, it is anything but. It requires extraordinary strength and courage to show kindness, especially to those who don’t deserve it. And let’s be clear: not a one of us “deserves” it all the time. There are times when responding with kindness has felt like it almost killed this stubborn, hard-headed girl. In those moments, I always think back to my Dad and how he would respond.

Kindness is being friendly, considerate, generous, warm-hearted and gentle. It’s being friendly when the person across from you isn’t, it’s being warm when she’s cold, it’s being soft when the person across from you is hard, it’s giving when she has nothing to give in return, it’s running through the McDonald’s drive-thru to give that homeless person a warm meal and it’s holding your tongue sometimes.

Kindness doesn’t speak of the character of the receiver but it speaks volumes about the giver.

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There have been times when I’ve felt that gentle nudge on my heart to extend kindness to someone. I’ve heard echos of you’re naive, you’re being taken advantage of and you’re too easy. My response is always the same. When I feel called to be kind to someone, how I answer that call matters.

As Christ followers, we are to love as He loved us. And His love is always, always wrapped up tightly in kindness. We see time and time again His love offered to undeserving people. A wife who just disrespected her husband, a child who just sassed their parent, a husband who just laughed at an inappropriate joke…in other words, every single one of us.

Hosea 11:4 says I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.

We need to learn to be gentle, sensitive and tenderhearted. When we start being tenderhearted, it’s easy to be kind. Having a heart that is easily touched and sensitive doesn’t mean your weak, although that’s what the world would say. If we are sensitive to those around us, we start seeing their needs instead of our own. Have a loving, tenderhearted, compassionate attitude and let it shine for everyone to see.

We are called to be kind to others because God is kind to us. He loves us when we are unlovable, and He does this over and over again. Kindness is extremely powerful. You can change lives with your actions. You can change lives by your words. You can change lives with your kindness. You can change lives by allowing Christ’s love to shine through you. I’ve watched my Father do all of those things.

Don’t ever be afraid to show your kindness. You might be the one voice in their life at the moment that they need to hear. Your encouragement might be the one thing that keeps them going.

Maybe you are the one who will help them see Jesus through your kindness.

And remember, your words matter.