Wife after God // Day One

“God’s purpose for my marriage is to reveal His love to the world.” #WifeAfterGod 

It is important to know Gods purpose for my marriage, so I can do everything in my power to fulfill that purpose. God's love is full of grace and forgiveness! I am called to give my husband grace just as Jesus gave his people grace, and Danny is to be gracious with me. We are all human and that means we will fall and stumble, but Jesus still loves us! If others see that we give our spouse the same love, we can use our marriage as an example of how Jesus loves. No matter what we do, it can't change Jesus' love for us. No matter what our spouse does, we are called to love & forgive just as Jesus loves & forgives. I can only imagine the drop in divorce rates if every marriage were able to reflect that same love to one another. 

I will vow to view my husband as Jesus views me. I will forgive, and forgive again, with every ounce of my being, as I hope he would do the same for me. I will be patient, respectful, and loving. I will love Danny like Jesus loves me. 

Heart Transformation

Before I start, I will say that I have asked The Lord for guidance on what I should read in the Bible everyday, because it can be intimidating to start reading at first! Every time He has guided me to a scripture that my heart has been yearning for answers about. Here is one of my answers from day 4 of digging into my Bible. 

I was always told that when I get to Heaven, I will get all my hearts desires & not a tear will be shed. In my mind, up until today, my hearts desire was to be surrounded by my family, friends, and some nice "things." When I would read scriptures like Matthew 22:30, it would bring me to tears that The bond would be broken from who I LOVE so dearly. Why would God break the bond of marriage from my husband? Because, that is not my hearts TRUE desire. I have been deeply depressed twice in my life. My husband, family, friends, and fancy things COULD NOT settle my heart and heal me from that depression. Both times I was healed only due to turning my heart toward Jesus. So why do I think that when I get to Heaven, and I don't have those things, that I won't be happy? I will be in the presence of Jesus! I think I could spend eternity hugging and chatting with Him about how gracious & loving He has been to me. God blesses us with people here to love and enjoy our life, but our ultimate goal should be to be with Him, because He is the only one who truly knows our heart and loves UNCONDITIONALLY. 

I will delight in my marriage & love him deeply, because God gave me such a wonderful man. However, I will always put Gods love first, because His love is unfailing!

Our Tithing Testimony

It has been quite some time since I posted something! God had been on the move in our life, and I want to share what has been happening within our family!

I will start off by saying that I grew up a "Christian." I knew Jesus died for our sins and we were called to live a life that glorifies him. However, I didn't fully understand what that meant. So, I just "followed the rules." Eventually, I strayed away because I didn't understand WHY I couldn't just do what I wanted! (Without breaking the law, of course!) Everyone I was friends with had a great life without the limitations of religion. I had never experienced these miracles everyone spoke of, and never thought I could hear God speak to me. The relationship with God was not apparent to me. Eventually, that all changed, and you can read about it in my first blog post. I now feel like God is my protector, my provider, my source of peace, and my friend! I can look back now and see when God was trying so hard to tell me where he wanted my life to go, and I rejected it all! There were some decisions that I made that were apart of his plan, that we're supposed to be extremely difficult, but were surprisingly peaceful. Now I know, that was God. God brings out the good in every situation, even if you think life just SUCKS. 

When I started working grave yard, it was "supposed" (funny how we think we can determine our our life is supposed to pan out) to be a temporary solution while we waited for Danny to get a promotion. I was thinking 6 months, TOPS! He was in the training program to be a personal banker, and the others in the program were promoting FAST! It's not like Danny wasn't trying, he was far exceeding his production goals and he was trained for the position. He probably applied for half a dozen positions and didn't even get an interview. He was doing everything physically and mentally possible to get promoted. We both started to lose hope that we would ever get out of the financial and mental rut we were in. I was struggling with post partum depression and the lack of sleep did not help at all. However, God put AWESOME coworkers in my life! Everyone I work with on graveyard is a believer! Not just believers, they are all on fire for God! I can say that I have only survived this schedule because of their influence on my life and constant positivity! They completely turned my thought process around to putting all my struggles and baggage on God for him to take care of! We were not meant to carry all those things, so God asks for us to give it to him and he gives us peace in return. 

Okay, so onto our tithing testimony! 

I had a very rough night at work, and had a mommy date with a neighbor of mine the next morning. I was exhausted, folks. It was apparently obvious too, because we discussed how worn out I was and options to help solve my familiy's situation. After talking about how we are barely scraping by financially, digging ourselves into debt, she asked if we were tithing. "WHAT?!" That was my human response, not my Christian response. I had no idea how we were supposed to be fitting tithing into our budget when we hadn't even been paying on our huge medical bills and only minimum payments on our debt. She convinced me that the world wants us to think we have to pay these things, before we repay our God for the provision he has provided. I immediately went home and reevaluated our budget. We were supposed to be paying almost the amount of our car payment, in tithe, every month! I thought, "pssh, that can't happen!" But, by the power of God, somehow I made it work. We would still make minimum payments on debt, but I somehow fit tithing in also. I had no idea how I made it work. God. Our first tithing payment was scheduled to come out of our next paycheck. Danny got a job offer with a different company the next day. God was waiting for us, teaching us a lesson. Oh God, you are funny! This job offer was a $4 raise. I cried. This would give us the power to pay debt off, but I would still have to work the same amount. However, I had peace over that! I came to a point where I knew God had put me at Starbucks for a reason, and he is transforming me there!

 Moving on to when Danny put in his notice at the bank. His manager asked, if they came up with an offer, if he would reconsider taking the job with the different company. He said of course, but didn't think an offer would come because he had already applied for so many positions only to get a door in his face. This is where Gods sense of humor really shines in our story! We are giving online, due to my schedule limiting the amount of times we attend church. The program was down for when I scheduled to make our first tithing payment. I was finally able to send it in, after a few days of being tempted to spend it on self-gratifying things. Danny got an offer from the bank, the next day. Guys, I'll be real, I fell on the floor in tears. This offer was $4 MORE than the other offer from the other company. So a total of an $8 raise. That's almost my hourly rate! We only made one tithing payment and God showed us he was in control of our finances. He is our provider, and he just asks us to give back what he had given to us. He uses the money that we give to the church to let his glory shine. So here I am, allowing God to shine through our story! 

A few other things God has done now that we've been tithing for a few months. 

We found a $50 bill in our car we purchased after Danny got promoted. We received a wedding card (Guys, we've been married for almost three years!) with a $50 check inside. Among other things, like multiple bills being lowered and Danny almost at 300% to goal for parts of his production! I am going to continue working the same, not because I HAVE to, but because God has also given me peace about my job and my shift! Since I am going to continue working, the debt hole that I spoke of earlier, will be GONE in January! Then we can really work on getting rid of our car payments! 

I'm sharing this story, not to "brag" about how well we're doing, but to show we have not been in control of our lives. We give God all the glory to our success at this point in our life. We also know it's not going to be the only struggle we will face, but God has shown us that he will hold our hand and guide us through anything this world throws at us! I hope this was encouraging to someone, and maybe you'll take a leap of faith and see what tithing can do in your life!

Why I chose to start a blog.

Hello!

Recently, I have thought a lot about social media. What part it plays in my life, the negative aspects as well as the positive, and the message I am sending to those around me. The positive is, I live far from my family, so it is important for me to share pictures of my daughter so they see her grow. That is why I choose to keep the ol' Facebook around. However, I feel it isn't a place to share every detail of your life, nor a place to vent your worries or angers. Although I feel like it can be flooded with negative posts, if one is only posting positive parts of their life, it can paint a false picture to others that their life is perfect. I never want to add to the negativity, but I also don't want people to assume that my life is "perfect." There is no such thing as a perfect life. That is why we have heaven to look forward to. ;) I feel like this is a good avenue to share what is going on in the Rehms family. I will share the great things that are happening, as well as, how we deal with our trials and tribulations.

After Danny and I had been dating for a few months, we decided to pray with some God-driven couples in our life. It played a big role into our decision to get married, and it was incorporated into our pre-marital counseling. I was going through a very difficult season in the beginning of this process. I didn't understand why life was so difficult, why did bad things continue to happen in my life, why did I feel all alone. The first couple that we prayed with had seen me around church and we shared (very) small talk only a few times. They didn't know who I was, what I had been through, or even what I was going through. The purpose of our meeting was to pray about Danny and I as a couple. However, they felt that the need was to pray about me. Just me. I was thrown a little bit, until they started telling me what they heard from God. I'll just list a few things:

• I felt abandoned. I needed to forgive those who had abandoned me.
• They saw me as a light. They said, "People will see that you have been through so much, yet you choose to be happy. They will wonder, 'Why?'"
• I couldn't hear God talking to me.

Those aren't the only things that they heard and shared with me, but those were the things that really hit home. How could this couple know these things about me without even knowing me?! I was raised Christian, but this was the first time I felt like God knew ME, and was talking to ME through these people. My faith changed from believing in God because it was what was "right," to having a personal relationship with God.

This was over three years ago. I have decided to write about things that go on, how we deal with them as a family, and how we choose to maintain a positive outlook although life can be very hard. I hope people can find hope in their situation by learning about my life. Also, that we can all CHOOSE to be happy, although we live in a dark world.