Leaving THIS Family

Here we are, with only two Sunday's left at our church, New City. My big question is, how do you leave a church family that has saved you, saved your life, saved your marriage and brought you home? The more I think about leaving these people, these people that we have called family for just a short three years. In this time, we have made so many life long relationships with some of the most God loving people I have ever met, and they saved my life. My heart aches.

It did hit me last night as I was thinking about what New City as a whole has done for us, welcoming us in with overly friendly smiles and open arms. We walked in, broken, lost, in dire need of some intervention to save our marriage. It came to the point that we had tired everything on our own to heal what had been broken, and we finally decided we needed to walk through those doors. It was May 26th, 2013. Our second time in a year attending New City. Our first time, was a year earlier, Pastor Kern had shared his testimony and wreaked my heart because we had so much in common.

We had been living in Great Falls for two years at this point.

I knew that God was in my heart and been sitting there waiting for me to call on him since 2006 when I first got saved. And here I am sitting there at the end of service raising my hand because I knew I needed to know him more, my marriage depended on it. For my 26th birthday in June, all I wanted was to get water baptized, so on June 30th I was made new. 

We jumped in. We knew this is exactly where we needed to be.

We started serving our hearts out, with youth, conferences, little odd and end jobs, and got over flowed with joy in our lives. Time started flying by, growing in God, having all these wonderful friends surrounding us, learning more about ourselves, and growing in God. Individually, we grew stronger in Christ. A year had passed by and we decided to host a small group at our house with Josh & Athena leading it. It was Marriage 101. Ryan and I had been married for four years at this point, thinking we knew so much. We learned so much about our marriage in this time and made some more amazing friends. Six months later we realized we had been so busy, with life, and our new house, work, serving and strengthening ourselves, that it was really time to buckle down on focus on our family and marriage. So we did. We took a step back from all the crazy schedules.

This past year we have found a whole new marriage, renewed our friendship in each other and gained so much. We really felt like God wanted us to take the time to concentrate on us and this wonderful marriage he had put us in. 

Now the time has come. One of the biggest challenges we will be faced with, moving back to California. As many of you may wonder, why is this going to be so difficult? Its the beach, we have our families in driving distance, the sunshine,.....all that "stuff". But when we left California back in 2010, I left my past, left everything that had made me into the person I was before Christ. Some of you know my story, some of you may not. But to make it really short, I was lost, I was a girl searching for acceptance in guys, drinking, parties, drugs, wanting attention, bad boyfriends, lots of bad influences in my life. And in the mainstream of my worst, Ryan walked into my life. 

Ryan walked in and the savior he is, wanted to save me, and he did. But I needed lots of fixing and I brought all that baggage into our sweet innocent marriage and almost destroyed it. 

I can not be more thankful for such a wonderful man, taking me under his arm and saving me from the world. He takes care of me, cherishes, loves, listens, and teaches me daily what a marriage is and should be.

So here we are.... states away from family and my past, learning to do it on our own with God's army behind us. Fighting for us and we are winning.

Now its our time to go. Our time to be challenged in our strength as a couple. The wonderful people and pastor's at New City have been prepping us for this over the past three years. The teachings from all the Pastor's have been life changing and always tugging at my heart. You could say that the whole reason we joined the Air Force and were placed in Great Falls was to find this church family, you COULD say that and I would say, it was God's plan all along. He brought us here to teach us, to separate me from everything that I once knew, in order to make this marriage last a life time. Jesus Christ, my savior, my hope, love, the light that makes me shine.

Today's message was titled, "You've got this!"..... could that have been any more fitting. 

Thank you New City and all our friends for everything. You saved us!