Asking for prayer

About a month and a half ago, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with breast cancer. After a lot of testing and waiting, Mama will be having a double mastectomy as the first step in her breast cancer treatment tomorrow.

Lee and I ask that you pray for our family and for all of the medical professionals that will be operating on Mama tomorrow.

The Unknown

Lee and I are currently living in a state of limbo and have no idea what the future is going to hold for us. It's been a crazy few months since we found out that PNC displaced Lee. Displacement wasn't the only thing that happened. My father-in-law had his hip replaced and there have been many complications along with that. Lee's uncle also passed away.

In the 4 months since we found out that Lee was displaced we've been through so much. In that time, Lee has applied for several jobs.....everywhere from Pittsburgh to metro DC to the other side of the state to South Carolina. He sent out so many resumes without any response. However, within the last month, we both finally feel that there's something good going to happen. Lee has two potential job options right this second. I'm not going to say where they are right now but we both have our favorite. We're thankful that it's the same favorite. Right now, what's killing us is the wait.......we have to wait to hear if either one of these jobs wants to hire Lee (Yes, it's at that point. See why the wait is killing us?!). It's basically down to another move right now or a move in a few months when we can take our time. I'm honestly not up for another move right now. We have so much going on with family right now that we don't want to deal with, it's influenced where we want to be.

Please pray for us. We need all the love and support that we can get right now. The unknown is weighing very heavy on us right now. We ask that you help us release the burden to the Risen Christ and that we'll be guided to where we really need to be.

The Atom Bomb

Last Wednesday was a day of waiting for news. Lee was going to be in a meeting with PNC as to the future of his employment after the merger of PNC Bank and RBC Bank. It was also the day that my father in law went in for testing to determine when he'd have a hip replacement. We got the news that we were expecting in terms of my father in law. That's not the case with Lee.

Lee's meeting with PNC wasn't a solo meeting. PNC met with Lee's entire mortgage division to tell them the future of their employment. It also had nothing to do with their skill level or their work ethic. All it had to do with was whether or not PNC already had people like them within the bank. Lee wasn't worried at all or at least didn't appear worried. He thought that PNC would take them along for the merger. We knew that we might have to be relocated to maybe Raleigh or even Pittsburgh because of the merger. So the time of the meeting came and Lee went into the meeting. I was at home in our apartment. I asked Lee to send me a simple yes or no as to the status of his employment as soon as he knew. Then my phone let me know I had a BlackBerry Message. It was one word. No. Lee had been displaced as well as his entire division by PNC.

My heart just sank. I had a feeling before the meeting that this would be the word that I would see. I just knew it. I don't know how I knew it but I did. Then all of the questions started to flow into my mind. How could they not take my husband? How could the bank that I've been dealing with since I was 17 just steamroll my husband like that? How could they do this to us? How could they just drop an atom bomb on all of our hopes and dreams for the next year?

Lee came home about 2 hours after the meeting. He was so upset. I've never seen him that upset before. I had to be strong for Lee. I knew that if I showed him right away that I was heartbroken by this news that it would make him feel so much worse. I hugged him and told him that everything would be alright. We sat down and I listened to how the meeting went. My heart broken watching him cry. Lee finally worked himself back up to going back to work because the work day wasn't done yet. As he walked out the door he apologized for me to come all the way from Memphis just to be unemployed with him. And then the door closed. I cried as soon as the door closed. I knew that there was a little drama with that statement but it just made me want to cry. I made sure I got all of the crying out of my system before Lee came home so I didn't make him feel like he let me down or that I was disappointed in him in any way.

Almost a week later, I'm very angry and upset still. How could MY bank do this to us? I cry almost every day about it. I've experienced my dad being out of permanent work for over 5 years and the financial struggles that can happen because of that. It's not exactly something that I want to be dealing with and I don't want to have this kind of heartache so early in my marriage to Lee. I cry because I feel like all of our dreams are on hold now. In my mind, these aren't dreams that we can afford to put on hold. These are dreams that we need to accomplish now. However, that's just not the plan God has for us. Lee says that he knows that God has a plan for us but he wishes that it would be just a little clearer to him right now. I AGREE! I'm not very positive about how everything is going to turn out based off of previous experience. I'm not holding out hope for things to be alright. Lee has another meeting this week to see if PNC can put him somewhere else within the company which also might require a move. If not, as of March, Lee will be out of a job.

I ask that you pray for Lee and myself as we deal with this news and try to figure out God's plan for our lives and marriage. It's still a very hard pill to swallow and not where we saw our lives heading so early in our marriage.

Wedding video

Lee and I made a video to show during our reception of us growing up through the years and eventually finding our way to each other. I'm going to put this video up here. Enjoy!

Starting A New Life

About 2 weeks ago, Lee and I got married. We had a wonderful ceremony in Chambersburg, Pa with our family and friends. We had many friends and family participate in the wedding. Lee's dad was his Best Man. My Maid of Honor was my closest friend from my time in Memphis, Brittany. The readers were close friends of mine from college. One was Megan, whom I affectionately refer to as my Jesus Buddy and the other was my suitemate from my senior year of college, BJ. We had two little boys at the Guest Book. Both were named David. One David is our "nephew" and the other David is our Godson.

My Maid of Honor, Brittany, and my suitie from college, BJ, helped me get dressed.One more kiss for Dad and I was down the aisle to marry Lee.

Dad walked me down the aisle like he had done this before. I'm so proud of him. He didn't cry at all before walking me down the aisle and that's a good thing because he kept me from crying. 

 I meet Lee at the altar and also met the woman who married us, Pastor Tara, there. Tara is a very special person to Lee and me. This wedding wouldn't have happened without her. See, Tara is married to a man named Jeremy. Jeremy and Lee were roommates is college. Tara is that pastor at the church I went to during college. It's because of the friendship that I made with Tara and Jeremy continuing his friendship with Lee that Lee and I met. There isn't any other way that we would have met.

Looking back on our wedding day, the thing that Lee and I remember the most is feeling like the only people in the room were Tara, Lee, and me. It was so intimate and personable. It was wonderful to have someone who knows both of us so well unite us in marriage.

This is the first picture of us as husband and wife. It's also our first kiss as husband and wife. I love this picture! From here, Lee and I presented our parents with roses in hopes of showing them how much we love them and care about them.

Then we were back down the aisle! I can't tell you how much joy I was filled with as I got to walk out holding my husband's hand.


From here, we took a lot of pictures. I'm going to show them in order here and try to put captions on them.

Our wedding rings

Our families seeing us kiss. My father-in-law didn't want to look. 

Brittany and I having a good time taking a bunch of pictures for the wedding.

This is a very special picture to me. I have 3 important Davids in my life. The David in the suit is my older brother, David. The little boy doing his best Jay Leno impression is my "nephew" David. The other little boy is my Godson, David. I'm almost positive that I will never get all 3 of them together again so I just had to have a picture with all of my Davids.

Cutting the cake.

This is 4 generations of my mom's side of the family. It's really cool that I had 4 generations of my family at my wedding.

The picture above and the picture to the right were taken outside Riddle Hall. This is where it all started for Lee and me. We have some wonderful memories in that building!

We went to my college after the reception to take pictures. I loved taking this picture. I've never seen another bride in a tree for her wedding pictures.

The color for the wedding was purple. I got my shoes dyed to match Brittany's dress and Lee wore these awesome socks. Who would have known that I would marry a man that loves purple just like me?

We had a wonderful wedding day! Lee and I are settling into married life now. 

Soon, we'll be heading out on our honeymoon.

So far, there hasn't been a day that's gone by without me getting all excited to the point of jumping up and down giggling about actually marrying my best friend in the world. I'm so happy to be married to Lee. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with him and watch the turns that our lives will take together.

All photography done by Kimberly Paulson

There will always be firsts

Yesterday, I discovered that I will be having yet another first within this line of work called youth ministry. I will get to experience a funeral here at St. Luke. Sadly, it's not for one of the older members. It's for one of my own.

One of my youth was shot and passed away Sunday night. She was hanging out with a friend of her's when the friend checked to see if a pistol was loaded when she was shot and killed. According to her parents, she didn't feel any pain. She was 17 years old and was just starting her senior year of high school. I never had the pleasure of meeting her but I did have the pleasure of meeting her mother. If she was anything like her mother, she will be greatly missed.

I ask that you lift up the Galbraith family as well as the St. Luke family as we grieve this young woman's passing. This has awakened all of us to really take every day with loved ones as something precious and special.

Thank you for your prayers, love and support as we deal with this shocking and sad event.

A Day At The Beach

I was very blessed with the chance to get away this past weekend to spend some time with Lee. For the first time since I was 15, I got to go to the beach. Lee took me to a beautiful beach that's pictured above called Atlantic Beach. This particular beach is in eastern North Carolina. The weather was perfect. It wasn't too hot. It wasn't too cold. If you got a little too hot, you went into the water to cool down. When you got to cold, you got out of the water and laid out on the beach to improve your tan.

It was so wonderful being at the beach. The only bad thing that came out of that was my very very foolish mistake of taking my ipod down to the water with me the last time I stuck my feet in the water. I was being my creative little self.....listening to music and kinda dancing in the sand and waves. I must have made the wrong move and dropped my ipod into the ocean. I quickly scooped it back up and it was still working when I laid it out on my blanket to dry. Sadly, That was a short lived glimmer of hope. My ipod died sometime between Friday and this morning when I tried to use it on my flight back to Memphis. (If anyone has any idea of how to bring my ipod back to life, please let me know. I'd love to have it back to functioning again.)

I really need to have more days at the beach more often. I love the beach. It's so freeing and I felt at peace for the first time in a couple of months just standing there letting the water just rush over my feet when it felt like it and just soaking in all the beauty (and people watching) that I could while I remained nameless except to one person on that beach. It was wonderful. I really need to make an effort to go to the beach more often.