Engaged!! From Her Side

For those of you who have asked for this story, here it is in full detail (probably more detail than you ever wanted to know!).

For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, read on :)

This last Saturday (April 13, 2013), I went on a date. This was actually my birthday date (I turned 21 on Friday), and so Joe offered to take me out for my birthday. I complied on one condition: he was not allowed to buy me anything for my birthday because I knew he was saving up for a ring, and I wanted him to just put money towards that. So we agreed (or so I thought). I had been at a friend’s house helping her put together wedding invitations for her wedding in June, and so I asked Joe to meet me there. He picked me up around 11. As soon as I got in the car, he hands me an envelope and says “there shall be no arguing, questioning, or complaining from this point forward.” I looked at him a little oddly, but agreed. He continued, “You have always wanted to do an Amazing Race, and so today we are going to do one. That envelope is your first clue.”

At this point, a bit excited, I opened the first clue which led to a half-constructed house that we had taken shelter in a few weeks prior when our walk was rudely interrupted by a monsoon. Following this first clue were twenty more, totaling 21 locations. At each location, Joe had written down a character quality that he appreciated about me and where he found that quality in scripture. Most of these locations were places Joe and I had been on dates, though a few were new to me. In case you want to see some of the locations, here they are:

Half-built home

Clark's Creek Park

Roegner Park

Rainforest Cafe

Sounders Stadium, First Date**

Greenlake

Gasworks Park

Kerry Park

Discovery Park

Our last location was Discovery Park in Seattle. I received the 20^th clue, which read “Shine your light for all to see. Time to walk”. There was a lighthouse about a mile away, so we began to walk. We ended up taking the “road less traveled” to get to our destination, which involved semi-skipping down steep sand dunes through the woods to get to the beach. I don’t think that was the way we were supposed to go, but we had an adventure anyways. About twenty minutes later, we reached the lighthouse.

Now, just so you know, the weather last Saturday was supposed to be horrible! I mean downpour of rain all day long. But we were blessed tremendously up until this point with fairly okay weather. It was still cloudy, but the sun would peak through at points and we only walked in the rain once. Praise Jesus! As we approached the lighthouse, we could see (and hear) a thunder storm off to the left, so we knew we didn’t have a lot of time here. We walked around the front of the lighthouse and took a couple pictures.

View from the beach

Puget Sound

The Lighthouse

Without moving from my spot at the fence, Joe handed me the last clue. The character quality he appreciated about me was Love, and he had written me a poem about it. He concluded the poem with

“Now I have something I want to read and promise you”

(For those wondering, this is where I started to pick up on what was happening).

He pulled out another piece of paper and read from Ephesians 5, which talks about husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the Church. He told me how much he loved me, and that he wanted to love me forever like Christ loves the church. He got down on one knee, pulled out a ring, and asked me to marry him!!!

Storm is starting to set in, but we're engaged!

I was in complete and utter shock. We had been talking about getting married, but I hadn’t expected it for a couple more months. I managed to give him an overly excited yes as I stood there speech-less and breath-less, attempting to get my mind wrapped around the fact that this just happened and I was actually going to marry the love of my life!! We stood there for a few minutes, received our first congratulations from a father and his kids that just happened to be on the beach and watched him propose to me. I just didn’t move, still attempting to process all the excitement and joy and amazement that I was feeling. It wasn’t until Joe reminded me that there was a thunderstorm about to set in and we were a mile from the car. We began to walk back and no sooner than we left the lighthouse, it began to hail. HARD.

By the time we reached the car we were completely drenched. Joe had made dinner reservations downtown Seattle at P.F. Changs, and thankfully by the time we reached them we had mostly dried off. We had dinner, received a sweet congratulations from the kitchen staff, and headed down south to tell my parents (well, sorta. Joe had already asked their permission).

The sweet kitchen staff at P.F. Changs

As we got closer to home, Joe suggested going to the church to map out where we wanted everything to fit for the wedding. Since we had been planning on getting married, we had actually already begun to talk wedding planning. He knew I wanted to get married at our church, so we decided to stop by while it was still light out. As we pulled into the church parking lot, there were a ton of cars there. I asked Joe about them, and his reply was “well, they think we’re having a surprise birthday party for you, which we are. What they don’t know is that it is also an engagement party”.  We walked inside, everyone yelled “SURPRISE!!!” and sang happy birthday, and then gave the mic to Joe. He thanked everyone for coming, and then added “oh, and by the way, we just got engaged!” What followed was much rejoicing and hugs and “how did it happen” questions and lots of good food. I felt so incredibly blessed that all these people would come to celebrate my birthday, and then that we got to celebrate our engagement on top of it with our friends and family.

So, that’s how it happened. I am engaged to be married to Joseph Mark Keith on August 17^th, 2013. I am so incredibly blessed to be engaged to the man of my dreams. Joe is the Godliest man that I know, and he is so loving and caring and passionate and gracious and funny. He desires that God is first in his life in everything, and seeks to share the gospel wherever he goes, and yet never ceases to amaze me in how he cares for me (from everything to buying me comfort food during finals to bringing me flowers when I am sick to spending an evening helping me do my homework). I am SO excited to see where God will take us and how He will use us, humbled by the fact that I have the privilege to be Joe's wife for life, and yes I’m just a tiny bit excited for the wedding ;)

If you would like to read his side of the story, please visit his blog!

Unity in Ministry

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit…But God has so composed the body…that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 
If one member suffers, all suffer together; 

if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” 

1 Corinthians 12:12-13, 24-26

I have been thinking a bit lately on ministry. As I am finishing up my last quarter of my ministry degree, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what my ministry has looked like, what it does look like, and what it will look like. As Joe and I have been discussing our individual calls to ministry, we have been learning what our corporate call to ministry may be and would be. As I examine my relationship with the Lord, I am reminded of what ministry is and how its ultimate goal is to spread Him. Spread His love, spread His Gospel, spread His justice, spread Him.

I have felt a call to ministry since I was little. But the biggest thing that keeps on coming back to me as I examine and explore that call happens to be the most uncontrollable, unpredictable, and often the most nerve-wracking factor: people. Now as I have grown and sought the Lord, He has revealed to me that my call involves relationships with people. Yet the thing that scares me the most about ministry is people. How does one reconcile that! The body of Christ is so large, and the amount of people on this earth is so much larger. There are millions who have not heard the gospel, and yet there are millions who have and still disagree. There are people within the church who battle constantly over differences of belief, and there are many within the church who show distain or sometimes hatred for people supposedly within the same body as them. How do you deal with this? How do you deal with a church body that may not meld like we wish, that may not work together like we wish, or that purely just does not like one another? How do you deal with root issues like jealousy, envy, hurt, anger, bitterness, lack of forgiveness?  What I came to realize that scared me the most was the unpredictability and vast amount of differences that came with the body of Christ, the body of ministry, and how utterly unequipped I felt to deal with that.

So, what do you do with the body of Christ?

The body of Christ is exactly that: a body. Hearing this passage growing up, I always thought that it meant that everyone has different roles. One Is a teacher, one is an accountant, one is an underwater basket-weaver, etc. Which it does. But recently, I have come to understand it in a different light.

One of the biggest root issues I have found that hinders unity within the church is the issue of jealousy. I was reading a leadership book the other day for a class I am taking, and one of the authors mentioned that he had a love/hate relationship with leadership conferences. Often, there were very good things to learn at these conferences in how to lead his church in a more Christ-like way. But at the same time, he always left feeling inadequate and comparing his ministry to the ministry of others.  He would see the benefits of another’s style of ministry, and began to envy that.  Being a musician and a worship leader, I have felt often the same way. I have played on many teams and lead many teams throughout my time in music. However, I am a musician. I study music. I write music. I love music. I believe that God reveals certain aspects of himself through music that cannot be experienced through words. So I am constantly on the lookout for ways to enhance the worship experience through music. Many times though this means that I participate in worship under another team and I begin to analyze and compare their musical ability, their song selection, their transitions, and then hold it up against the team that I happened to be a part of at that time. This turns into either arrogance because I felt better than them, or jealousy because I envied their abilities. And often, if I did not deal with this jealousy, it began to turn to dislike for that person. How stupid!

It is through these simple issues that bitterness or dislike begins to form. I have seen it, witnessed it, experienced it, and received it in many ways. You know, that high-schooler who just really knows how to communicate with kids, that worship leader who is extremely talented in his guitar skills, that church deaconess who makes the best pies ever, that children’s pastor who is highly creative and creates the best Sunday school lessons, the pastor who is highly effective with his words and almost always seems to have a “convert” every time he preaches, the greeter who always seems to have a smile on her face, the college leader who does well with managing people and being a leader, etc. I could go on and on.

What I have found is that the most effective way to break up the ministry and body of Christ is to break up his body, literally. To divide and separate the members of a body so that there is no longer a unified people but rather a group of green monsters.

At the same time though, how does one deal with the fact that some people just do not get along? That some worship teams are just better than others? That some people have the gift of teaching Sunday school and others do not? That some are gifted in hospitality, and others are gifted in service? We are created differently. We have different talents. We have different characters. We are different.

I guess what I have come to realize is this: We are all made in the image of God, and He uses us all. But sometimes He uses us in different ways. We are all parts. We all have pros and cons, things we are good at and things we aren’t so great at. But we are all working to honor and glorify the same God, and He loves each of us as much as the other. He uses me for His glory just as much as He uses the other Sunday school teacher. He uses my worship team just as much as He uses the other worship teams, because we are all working at leading our congregations into worship of Him. We are a part of the same team. We are working towards the same goal. We were created by the same God for the same purpose: His glory. I have found that when I start to view others as a part of my team rather than my competition, I gained a new understanding of the body of Christ. There are people I do not get along with and that is ok, we are both still working for the glory of Christ. When I see my brothers and sisters in this light, I begin to see them in a grateful light as opposed to a jealous one. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve alongside them for the glory of our Father. I am grateful for the opportunity to observe their ministry and learn from it, but to have my own as well. I am grateful for the opportunities for ministry that God has given me to be a part of. So my question for you is this: what is your “body part” and how are you working alongside other parts to further His kingdom?