"God sets the lonely in families"...
This verse is special to me for a lot of reasons. Right after my mama went to be with the Lord, Audrey (who I now consider my sister) prayed this verse over me. After praying this verse over me, John and Audrey invited me to move into their home with them for 8 months. This was such a precious time in my life and it is truly what taught me what this verse meant. Growing up with a single mom, it was always just the two of us and as much as I LOVED our girl time, I always longed to have a large family. What God began to show me in my deepest loneliness after she died is that I did have a family, a family that he was beginning to knit together day by day. As a young child I say it was just my mom and I but it wasn't, it was my mom, Marty, and I. Marty and my mom dated for 9 years throughout my childhood and he became the father I never knew. After my mom got sick, he stepped up and truly became my father and even asked to call me his daughter. In October 2009, I was contacted by my biological father's side of the family, a family I had never known who desperately wanted to get to know me. Although I was hesitant at first, mostly out of the fear of the unknown, I met an entire side of my family that I never knew existed. So not only did the Lord provide me with a father, sister, but now also a side of the family I never knew who loved me dearly.
When I met my husband we quickly fell in love... literally met in November 2009 and were married by September 2010, I'm not exxagerating when I say quickly ;) I also fell in love with his family very soon after! Just as God had been sewing my story together and placing me in a family, He did the same for my husband as my in laws adopted him the day he was born. Trevor's parents brought home a new baby boy from the hospital and that day and placed him in the only family he's ever known and it is nothing short of a gift from Him. Trevor has incredible parents who know and love the Lord with everything in them and they have become parents to me as well. I am so thankful for you Scott and Kim, we love you!
We also have countless friends in our lives who we do consider family. My best friend Chelsea and her husband Tanner are one of those couples. I cannot imagine how a friendship could be closer and I love her deeply. We have gone through highs and lows...weddings and memorials and the Lord has always been the center of our friendship, whether we realized it at the time or not. At 16 years old, Chelsea and I decided to find a church home on our home and that is when I decided to make Jesus my Lord and Savior and was baptized. She is a huge part of my testimony and has been there at every milestone in my life since that day.
Dale and Quinn were our very first friends at Fort Hood when we were dating, engaged, and married and they have become our best friends. Dale and Trevor have been stationed together in 3 different states, spent 6 months in Iraq with each other, and in 2011 we walked through the birth of their sweet baby girl Lily and all held one another and prayed together the next day when she went to see our Savior. Quinn and I have a friendship that is deeper than most people have in a lifetime and I am eternally grateful for that. We love them so very much.
I wish I could talk about ALL the people I think of that God has put in my life that are a picture of this verse but there are too many. We have been blessed beyond belief with a small group of friends here at Fort Hood that we truly live life with every single day. Since Trevor has been deployed, I have gotten so close with a group of 4-5 girls who's husbands are also deployed and it is the most authentic community I could ask for...we laugh, cry, grieve, and celebrate together. It is absolutely beautiful. As soon as a I get the "itch" for change and get excited about the idea of moving somewhere new someday, I very quickly am reminded of how thankful I am for right here and right now. We love our life at Fort Hood and I never want to take that for granted because I know how much we will miss it when we do leave sometime in the near future. We are so very thankful to consider all of these people lifelong friends and family, I truly think we have made lifelong frienships who will be scattered all over the world someday.
So this is my life verse because God HAS set the lonely in families and He continues to do so. The Lord created our family...Trevor and I together as one. He also created our families that we each came from and brought us all together as one family. He has also blessed us with friendships that we will forever consider family. I can honestly say that most of the people I consider family are not blood relatives and that I am thankful that God has placed each one of them in our lives. We even have a "family" wall in our house with pictures of these people I have written about and other than my mama, not a single person we hung on our wall is blood related but they are all what we call our FAMILY! Thank you Lord for setting the lonely in families!
I'm so encouraged that even though yall have been Called to the Crazy, you still take the time to reflect on the amazing stability you've been given through it all. You weren't born into these families so they have truly been gifts :) I'm grateful to be a part of it, because you are a gift in my life as well. <3 you!
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