faith Archives -

February 8, 2019February 8, 2019

Sweet Baby Milo – I’m Pregnant! 20 Weeks!

I’m pregnant!! Ahhh!! It’s still so hard to believe at times.

Becoming pregnant is not like the movies. It is much harder than it may seem. My husband and I tried for 9 months! Finally the Lord blessed us. I could make a whole other blog post about those emotional 9 months. I can’t imagine how hard it is for women who have a harder time than I did. If you are struggling right now becoming pregnant, my heart just pours out to you.

It’s all about the health of the mother and God’s sweet timing.

If you want to watch my youtube announcement video click here!

I wanted to create a real timeline so you could understand my journey.

So let’s travel back in time!

January 2018- I was two weeks late… but not pregnant. That left me heartbroken.

February 2018 – Mother Nature come back regularly.

March 2018 – Hello again from Mother Nature.

April 2018 – Mother Nature – ugh

May 2018 – This period is really getting old.

June 2018 – Well, least I can enjoy my summer……

July 2018 – Is there something wrong with me?

August 2018 – I can’t take this anymore Lord, please answer my prayers.

September 2018 – During the weeks of church evangelism…. We conceived. Ironic timing Lord. 😉

October 14, 2018 – I took a test early Sunday morning and we received the results right away… We were pregnant!

October 20, 2018 – Told my husband’s parents we were pregnant by having a Bible verse written on a pumpkin. Proverbs 17:6.

October 27, 2018 – Told my parents by printing off a June 2019 calendar and marking June 21st.

Pregnancy week 6 – Hello morning sickness. Nausea but not to the point of throwing up. I also dealt with some headaches. No food sounded good at all.

Pregnancy week 7 – Morning sickness lasting till about 2pm everyday.

Pregnancy week 8 – Naps please!

Pregnancy week 9 – First Ultrasound!! Heart beat 173!

Pregnancy week 10 – Made baby Facebook official.

Pregnancy week 11- Starting to get a bump!

Pregnancy week 12 – The beginning of never ended back pain. I was dealing with some sinus issues. I choose to try some Claritin and it did help some. Doctors appointment – healthy, heart beat 160!

Pregnancy week 13- Size of a plum!

Pregnancy week 14 – Mostly dealing with back pain. Morning sickness started to go away, praise the Lord!

Pregnancy week 15 -Starting to feel some “flutters” in my belly. 😉

Pregnancy week 16 – I dealt with horrible neck and shoulder pain. I got my first prenatal massage! I highly recommend! It took my husband giving me a few more massages before my neck got better. Doctors appointment- very active baby! Heart rate – 146-150. He kept moving around so it was hard to find the heart rate. I had eaten Dove chocolate before the appointment. 😉

Pregnancy week 17 – Started to get some sharp pains in my lower abdomen. Most likely round ligament pains. They only lasted for a few short seconds at a time.

Pregnancy week 18 – I felt more movements. I was waking up randomly at 1 and 3 am – was this baby waking me?

Pregnancy week 19 – Started using a body pillow! It helps ease some of the back pain. I was feeling more kicks, but my husband could still not feel them.

Pregnancy week 20 – It’s a boy!! He seems to have long legs and his feet are already 2 inches! Possibly changing my due date by two weeks if he continues to grow at this rate. He was in the 94% range. (Average is 50%). He currently weights 1 pound. His heart rate was 136.

Once the shock of having a boy has set in, I am so excited and can not wait for June 21st to get here. My sweet boys name will be Milo James.

I hope my timeline can be encouraging for those trying, and helpful to those currently in this journey.

I can not wait to see what the next 20 weeks holds for me and baby Milo. Although, if the back pain could stop…. That would be great. 😉

~Gracefully Fashionable Britt

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019

Proverbs 31 ~ A Virtuous Wife

I’ve always felt passionate about Proverbs 31. As a woman who takes her faith seriously, this is “goals” for wifehood. Something that I believed the Lord has laid on my heart, is for me to study Proverbs 31… and to share my notes, thoughts, and rants with you.

I think one big long post about this section would be way to long for even me to read. I hope to spend a blog post just discussing a few verses to think about everyday.

I hope that through this experience of reading and writing, we can grow more as a woman, a wife, and a believer in Christ.

So Proverbs 31 – The virtuous wife.

Before we even begin to read, I had to look up what virtuous even really meant. The ESV version uses the word “excellent.” Good ol’ google uses “having or showing high moral standards.”

But what does that really mean? I’m more of a one-word definition type of girl. Some synonyms are: righteous, good, pure, “whiter than white.”

Let’s pause for a moment… “whiter than white”…this synonym made me pause and squint real hard to make sure I was reading it correctly. Because if it literally means “whiter than white” I am truly virtuous. ;). Any other pale skin girls? The type of pale the sun literally reflects off your legs and your need sunglasses so you don’t blind yourself? ; )

Unfortunately just based off our skin tone does not qualify us as virtuous. When I think of “whiter than white” I think of pure, holy, kind, and loving. A woman that reflects Christ in every aspect of her daily life.

Now that we know what a virtuous wife is, let’s read what she is like.

Verse 10 says, “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.”

A woman who loves Jesus is worth more than any jewel. We may not feel like it or look like it all the time, but remember what our worth is found in.

Verse 11 – “The heart of her husband safely trusts her; so he will have no lack of gain.”

My husband is my best friend. I can’t imagine if he wasn’t. We still use phrases like “PINKY PROMISE,” even though we both trust each other. My husband trusts me so much that he can tell me where my Christmas presents are and I will not go look. I am tempted to look. ;). When tempted, I just remember how happy he will be when he sees how surprised I am.

“He will have no lack of gain.” Once again, I am puzzled, what does that even mean? Different translations add some more insight:

NIV – Lacks nothing of value.

NLT – She will greatly enrich his life.

CSB – He will not lack anything good.

CEV – She never lets him down.

What does it mean to not lack value or anything good? As a wife it may be caring for the physical needs, I tend to think this has to do more with a spiritual need.

As a wife, I feel I need to be a source of confidence for my husband. To give him hope when he needs it. To encourage him and to show I believe in him. I am learning, men need this more and more every day.

“I love you.” “You did great!” “I appreciate you helping me.” “Thank you!”

I notice when my husband hears these sayings more and more, his confidence grows and he believes more in himself. He feels purpose and love in our home.

Galatians 5 talks about the Fruits of the Spirit. The Fruits of the Spirit are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I hope to work more on providing these fruits to me and my husband everyday.

Verse 12: “She does him good and not evil. All the days of her life.”

All is a big word. Thankfully we constantly receive grace from God. We are not perfect. But how much different would our day be if we realized honoring and reflecting Christ is the goal for the day. Going to work, doing chores, and running errands are just opportunities to reflect, share, and grow in Jesus.

Let’s work on loving Jesus and being a reflection of Jesus to our husbands every day, ALL day.

Jesus loves you oh virtuous wife.

March 28, 2018July 17, 2018

How I Survived 5 Year Long Distance Relationship – Now we’re Married!

My husband and I never lived in the same town/city/ state until we got married. I don’t know how much that puts us in the minority but I think we are in our own special statistic.

I grew up in Bowling Green, Kentucky. My husband is from Indianapolis, Indiana. How did we meet? Facebook.

There is a little more to it, than just Facebook. My childhood best friend (also from Indianapolis) is actually really good friends with my husbands family. So through her, is how he became Facebook friends with me.

One night during my senior year of high school, I saw I got a Facebook message from some guy and of course asked my best friend about him. She said he’s a really nice guy, and from then we chatted ever since.

I wasn’t much of a girl who likes to date growing up. My best friend had several boyfriends, and I just never was like that. Call me old fashioned I guess. We started talking in January of 2010 and we chatted every day on Facebook.

I eventually had to give him my phone number; I guess he was too nervous to ask. But I was getting annoyed about having to log into Facebook everyday. So we moved onto the texting level of our relationship and eventually the actual talking on the phone stage.

By March, he and his mom had planned a trip to come down to Bowling Green. His mom, like I said was good friends with my best friends family. So she planned on visiting with them, while we went on our first date.

Side note, I’m pretty sure both of our families thought this was a silly relationship to begin with, we didn’t even live in the same state. It was actually a four-hour drive between us.

Our first date went well, we actually went and saw the first, “How To Train a Dragon” movie, which now is kind of a special movie to us, for that reason.

From then on, he pretty much would drive down to see me almost every weekend, or every other weekend. We were young and in love. 😉

Five years later we got married, and now we’ve been married for almost three years.

So what are my tips, now that you know the background of our relationship.

– 1 – Become each other’s best friend. That is really my tip in any relationship. But if the genuine friendship is not there, it will not last. You have to be able to talk to each other, especially since the physical aspect isn’t always there. We talked about everything, our day, our dreams, jokes, things we like. He was and still is one of my best friends.

– 2 – Be committed. This is not going to be easy. If you feel like you can’t do it or don’t trust the person enough, either spare yourself the heartache, or go back to my first step and work on your friendship.

– 3 – Faith. Both my husband and I love the Lord and try to live our lives showing Christ’s love. Now neither of us are perfect or holy. But I think our faith was a big part of our success. We both believed in being faithful to each other, honest with each other, and believing in God’s design for marriage. We would pray together and read our Bible together while on the phone or Skype.

– 4- Have a countdown on your phone! Some times we would go a month without seeing each other. That was really hard. So one thing that helped me was downloading an app on my phone that would do a count down. I would count down the days till we got to see each other again. It was always fun getting so excited when the countdown was just two or three more days.

– 5- Variety of dates – We knew that when we got together, we would be doing something fun. We would go to museums, parks, go hiking, shopping, or go to the movies. These dates make fun memories. Some of my husband and I most fun memories is when we went hiking in Tennessee to see three different waterfalls, all while it was a rainy day. Also, sometimes its just fun to snuggle on the couch and watch Netflix when you haven’t seen each other in weeks.

– 6 – Have a schedule for talk time. While my husband and I texted through out the day, it is still really important to try and talk on the phone or Skype/ Facetime. I noticed that when all we did is text, it made me miss him more. Talking on the phone or seeing him on Skype gave our relationship a sense of being together. We actually had a one hour time difference between us. So we had to plan our times around that. Every night before bed, we would try to talk on the phone. Even if it was just to say good night.

Now, while these tips might make it sound easy, I don’t want to mislead you. There were nights I would just cry because it wasn’t always easy being so far apart. Our relationship was not perfect and we did have some hard times. But what relationship doesn’t?

It’s funny watching people’s faces when we tell them that we dated long distance for five years. Sometimes I can’t even believe we actually made it. I’m not too big into believing in soul mates, but I do believe my husband and I have a very special relationship. It’s a little freaky sometimes how much I feel that we go perfect together.

But I believe it’s all because the Lord blessed a friendship that started on Facebook.