Day Planners. {Again.}

Several years ago, I found the perfect day planner. Perfect in every way. I used it for two straight years and then, like all good lipsticks and hair color, they discontinued it. Maddening, isn't it? {I mostly meant the lipstick part there - but day planners too.}

Since then, I've tried this planner and that and found them all to be not quite what I needed. Many that I really love are made for families and the kids sections are just not needed. {And blank sections betroth me.} {Betroth means annoy if you missed the post where I introduced that non-dictionary-approved definition.} And others don't have all the kinds of calendars I want...and some are too detailed...and...and...and...

Last year I found the Planner Perfect Planner and I really liked it...but I found it gave me just a bit too MUCH freedom. It's basically a blank slate and apparently in Bekahland that translates to "Welp, nothing to do today!!"

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO....

I took to Pinterest. I know! I know. It shocks the soul. But seriously - you can find a lot of really talented people out there who have created printables - many of them, free - and you can just pick and choose what tickles your fancy and create your own perfectly suited planner in whatever thickness of binder you need.

Here's the link to the Pinterest board I made for all the printables {and a few more}. I've decided I'll try this for a while and tweak as necessary. If I find some of the pages aren't as helpful as I thought, I'll stop using them. If I find that I need others I'd not thought of, I'll stalk Pinterest until I find them.

But here's what I made and why I love it.

Monthly Calendar Pages

 I need...seriously need a planner to have monthly calendar pages. I need to be able to see an entire month at a glance to see when w'ere free and when we're not. I found this set of pages at The TomKat Studio and loved the following about them: 

* Five rows of space when the months  run into a fifth week. I hate making the 30th and 31st share with the week before...
* Splash of color, but nothing obnoxious
* Squares big enough to actually write in them

I decided to use red to write in activities and appointments that only pertain to me, blue ink to represent Ryan's schedule, and black ink to mark the things we both need to attend. That helps me know, at a glance, who is actually busy.

Weekly Schedule Pages

 Believe it or not, I also like to have a weekly page. This helps me see at a glance what is happening {in a little more detail} in any given week. I found these bold and fun pages at A Lovely Array  and fell in love with the following:

* Really bold month/days of the week. It's both fun and helpful.
* Big open squares that allow me to write in {keeping my blue/red/black ink themes} what needs to be done on each day. This includes details about Mid-Morning shows that I'm on-air with, so I can prepare for interviews, work concerts and events, dates, get togethers with friends, Ryan's work schedule, and more. It also gives me space to write in a little more detail about some of them {for example, addresses to appointments so I can put them in the GPS as I'm en route, rather than trying to remember what the invitation at home on the fridge said. I can also keep track of birthdays and anniversaries on these pages, so I can keep on top of gifts/cards we need to buy.
* The two blank squares on the right are open for anything I need. I made the bigger one my "weekly notes" box, keeping track of random details that correspond with that week's activities. {Namely - things I need to take with me to certain appointments or gifts I need to buy.} I made the other square a prayer request square so I can keep track of the people I've promised to pray for that week!

I think this will help me be more intentional about preparing for things in advance, rather than running to the store the night before something...I mean...not that this ever happens.

Weekly Blog Planner

 I am very committed to daily blogging because it keeps me writing and is another form of scrpabooking for me - documenting our life and what happens. But I've learned that since getting married, it's harder to find chunks of time to sit down and blog - without taking important time away from Ryan. I thought I'd try a blog planner to help me organize ideas and such. I found this one from the Me and Marie blog

* I like the lines to plan out my topic and/or title by day of the week. I'm not big on categorizing my blog posts, but I do like the line about promoting. I try not to be a big blog plug person but now and then I like to write something that seems good to mention on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe this will help me write something plug-worthy every week. 
* I like the to-do list - will help me keep things up like changing backgrounds, photos, etc.
* Also like the place to jot down ideas for the future. Wonder how many I've lost because I didn't write them down and then I forgot?

This is a page that I'll try for a while and if it seems like a lot of hassle, I'll drop it.

Daily Planner Page

 I know. The mind reels. SERIOUSLY? You have a monthly page AND a weekly page and you STILL need a daily page? Simply put, yes. Ryan and I have forgotten a lot of things because we didn't write them down. I found this page at The Household Planner and absolutely love the structure of it.

* Love that it doesn't have a by-the-hour plan. That always makes me feel like I need to structure every moment of my day and that's annoying.
* Love the breakup of financial tasks/household tasks/personal tasks/work tasks/and phone calls and emails to make. That helps me think about different areas of our life and what actually needs to be done {dare I say proactively???} rather than trying to just stay afloat with tasks.
* Love the priority box of the top 3 tasks...helps me know what is MOST important out of everything in case I have to replan.
* Love the morning/afternoone/evening sections to help me make general ideas of what needs to be done and push myself to do some not-so-fun things in each section of the day, rather than saving it all for the end.

I thrive on checking things off - so hopefully this will help us stay more organized about our way-too-busy-for-our-own-good lives.

Meal Planning Page

 Ryan and I have yet to find the perfect meal planning system. So I'm going to try this printable I found at the Eat at Home site. Here's what I love about this:

* Doesn't plan out every single meal time and snack time. That makes me feel like I need to eat MORE!!
* Love the daily menu plan boxes - my plan is to write in {first} the meals that each of us plan to eat out that week...carry-ins at work, one or both of us out at something in the evening...so we can then take stock of how much time at home we have and how much we need to cook that week. 
* Love the grocery list right there to the side so I can look up ingredients as I plan - plus keep track of the things scribbled on the notepad on the fridge that we've just run out of. 
* Love that I can just pull this page out of the planner and take it with me to the store.

So there you have it! Our new day planner. And yes it's paper. I hate electronic calendars. They betroth me.    
           

Weekly Date Night!

Ryan and I really treasure our weekly dates. We don't always do them on the same night and we try to mix up where we go and what we do - but we try so, so hard to do something fun every week. We don't want to get OUT of the habit of dating just because we're married now and can see each other more often.

I love it that this is as important to him as it is to me. Truth be told, in my two previous dating relationships, I didn't go on a ton of actual dates. So this is much fun for me to finally get to date!

In the car and READY to go!!! Let's bring on DINNER! {Notice anything different about my handsome husband???}

 Yep. He got glasses! I love 'em. He looks so good!!

We headed to Anderson for the evening {because they possess a Target and we needed one} and our first stop was: RED LOBSTER! We had some gift cards, and we don't have a Red Lobster {or much else, truth be told} in Marion, so this was a fun treat. We were so excited about our food, we forgot to take a picture with it until it was...um...bagged up. WOOPSIE!!!!

 Loved our little booth back in the corner, out of the way. Know what else I love? THESE BISCUITS.

 After THAT, we headed to Target to purchase some things from our registry that we hadn't received. I was so excited about this. It's a clothes drying rack that not only has an area to lay things - but also to hang them. NO more draping clothes over Ryan's shower curtain!!

 As for Ryan, well, he was a bit more excited about the electronics aisle. :) {Couldn't you just DIE over those dimples? I sure can.}

 The last part of every date is always coffee - from somewhere. This time? Good ole Starbucks. White chocolate mochas, baby! {Nonfat, of course.}

Such fun. So glad I get to spend time with my love every week!

The Shafferland Shuffle

Happy St. Patrick's Day, y'all!! :) If you haven't gone to church yet, don't forget your green. You'll be in a sea of people and there's bound to be at least one pincher in the crowd.

* Last Sunday was the start of Evil DST, but we won't even talk about that mmmmmmkay? Ryan and I were POOPED from our long {but fun!!} weekend of reception palooza, so we were more interested in a nap than just about anything else. But before we got around to that, we had lunch at my parents' house, along with Lori, Jeff, and Cassie, who had driven out here from Kansas for the reception! It was our last hurrah together before they headed home. My beautiful niece with me:

* Monday evening, we went over to Ryan's house - and a grand total of NINE of us worked hard to clean, clean, clean to continue toward the sale of the home. It was such a blessing to have so many people give up an evening to help us work! Know what else was a blessing? A coke float! We took leftover ice cream from the reception to share with our helpers, and Nita made a coke float with hers. Looked good to me, so I copied.

* Tuesday I had the chance to volunteer at the Community Harvest Food Bank in Fort Wayne. My OCD was in such heaven...straightening the items on the shelves and reorganizing things. I smile just thinking about it!!

That night I went back to Ryan's house and cleaned carpets. {Another fun chore for my OCD.}

* Wednesday was a cold, gloomy, rainy day in the land of Indiana. Lynne was so cold at work that she volunteered to make hot chocolate for us. Of course, I had to add some shots of coffee to mine, because it only seemed appropriate:

That night, Ryan worked at his house again and I was busy at our house, trying to get things put away. It's a mess over here!!!

* Thursday evening, I had a treat for dinner!! Nita and I are taking pictures at a station event next month, so we had dinner with Sheryl from my work so we could learn all the fine points of the evening. Dinner? Well, it was at Mi Pueblo!! Arroz con pollo, baby!!! :)

* Friday evening, Ryan and I finally escaped the responsibility madness long enough to go on a date!! We went to dinner at Red Lobster in Anderson and then went shopping at Target to spend some wedding money! It was such a fun evening - and so nice to have the freedom to go!!

* Saturday, Ryan was gone for most of the day. Great sadness!! But while he was gone, I hunkered down at home and stayed very busy doing things I've not had time to do in a couple of weeks...blog {more carefully than on the fly}...post pictures to Facebook...journal...write thank you notes...clean...do laundry...organize...SIT...and obviously there's nothing riveting about that, so look at this handsomeness!

Our Beach Themed Reception

I know, I know. We are the only people who throw a beach party in March. :) But we tried to stay in keeping with our wedding theme, and I thought you might want to see a peek of it!! :)

Here's the thing about our reception. We wanted to have a party, where people could feel like they had the chance to attend our wedding...but we didn't want to go broke doing it. So this was our solution!

We rented the banquet rooms at Indiana Wesleyan, where I used to work, and while the long rows of tables aren't as pretty as round tables, they gave us more seating options and they allowed us to more easily show our video. We kept the decorations simple because we wanted the focus to be on the video and the slide show we played on a loop after that.

This is the overview....

Loosely based on a Pinterest idea...we borrowed a ton of Mason jars, put some sand in the bottom, and put two pictures inside - to make picture frames for all the tables! We tied some twine around the top...and it made great, low cost picture frames. No two pictures were alike, so people could see something new, no matter where they went in the room!

Some of the Mason jars sat on a square of burlap {as you see above} and some sat on these darling little crates I borrowed from Cindy at my work. {Cindy's daughter got married last fall and we benefited from borrowing quite a bit from her wedding!} A couple of my friends loaned me nets and I draped them over the crates and added {also borrowed} shells from other friends!

Our "head table" held a lot of wedding memorabilia...including the certificate we signed on our wedding day.

And...picture frames from our home and my office...

In the hallway, to point people toward the right room, we displayed some of our large prints and a canvas - on easels - with netting and shells underneath. Loved the way that looked!

Back on our head table...the Trinity candles and the stones we placed in the sand on our wedding day. We added one more together the day of the reception.

Our guest book table - more on this later. We had our guests sign stones. This is the layout for that!

I'm sure there are more pictures of the details floating around, and if so, I'll share those when I get them. But for now, this is a peek into our simple {but very "us"} decorations from that day!

SSMT: Verse 6

Boy, I will tell you people what: I feel like this week has been one giant hey let's examine Bekah's messed up heart confessional.

If you were in the greater Marion area last night and heard strange cries around 7 p.m.  - it was me. I came home, didn't even take off my boots or my coat, and collapsed on the bed with sobs like I've not cried in a while. {Not gonna lie. I love a good tear duct cleanse and it felt GOOD.} As I heard the cries escaping, I was so glad Ryan wasn't home to hear them in that moment. They were the kind of cries that are equal to throwing up...the sort of thing better done in the privacy of you and Jesus.
 Lest you worry...nothing major is wrong. We are fine, no one is sick, and life is, on the whole, very, very good. But my heart was ugly. Ugly beyond the normal SERIOUSLY!?!!?!?!? yelled at various drivers who dared to cut me off on my commute home.

Ugly in a way that embarrassed me. Ugly with anger and frustration over a variety of tiny annoyances that have piled up and it had to escape out of me somewhere. Tear ducts were the route of choice, it seemed.

I grabbed onto the pillow and cried I hate this feeling! I don't know what to do. Help me.

And here's what I loved. Before God even pressed on me to start spilling the ugly from my heart, He said nothing at all. And it wasn't a silence that made me say "HELLO?? ANYONE THERE?" It was that beautiful, comforting silence that made me feel held...gathered up close to His side...loved despite the lack of holiness oozing from me in that instant.

And when my heart had settled, He said these verses to me. While they are verses I know...they are verses I need to fill myself with right now:

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, 

and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

and uphold me with a willing spirit.

~ Psalm 51:10-12 ~

I whispered the words over and over while my wool coat scratched my arm and my cheek grew cold from tears chilling on the pillow beneath my face. 

I thought back to my desert...dark days when the very act of one breath to the next took deep effort.  In those days, I was grateful. Grateful that the hurt pulled me closer to Him. Grateful to learn what it meant to depend on Him for strength for every task - including showering and pulling a bag of chips out of the cabinet to eat something resembling a dinner.

And today I'm choosing gratitude. I'm choosing to be grateful for that one I've slacked in praying for: the one who continues to treat me as invisible. I'm choosing to be grateful for the annoyances that make me want to scream It's not fair!! - because they also make me scream Jesus! Draw me!

I'm choosing to ask for a clean heart, a right spirit, and His joy. 

Appropriately, as I was writing this post, I flipped over to Twitter for just a second and found someone had retweeted this from Beth Moore...from a couple of days back: "I just feel like some of you younger ones need to hear us older ones say that Jesus really will use every ounce of what you're going through."

In the desert I begged Him to let my journey be worth it. And He has. He is. My prayer holds. Make this season of being recreated, restored, and taught in the secret place...worth every second.

 

Pre-Reception Photo Shoot...DeJaVu!

I know we had a billion beautiful pictures on our wedding day, but I wanted a little photo shoot before our reception too!

My good friend Rachel Ashley, who took all my baptism pictures, also came to be one of {yes, there were multiples...} our photographers the day of the reception. Rachel came early and fulfilled my desire to have some pictures taken at/around the prayer chapel. {You already saw some of those pictures earlier this week.}

I found it interesting that we recreated some of the same things we did on the wedding day - and not on purpose. It just happened.

 It's just that instead of white sand...

 ...we had white snow. :)

Still the same joy though:

...even if under a different sky.

We're still goofy.

Just not as warm while being silly. :)

Two of the most memorable days of our lives:

Both memorable and amazing in their own ways....

And uh....our sign here?

It has been replaced by a lookalike. {And minus the wedding party.}

Our wedding cathedral:

And our reception cathedral:

So some of the details were different...but one thing was not. Our commitment to walking with the Lord and each other held fast!

Conviction

I so want to dive into the little pile of reception pictures I've collected so far, but I can't. Sometimes I gotta talk about what's happening in the heart before I talk about what's happening in the scrapbook.

My verse for this year...about letting God teach me in the secret places...is coming on strong. Uncomfortably so.

During Sunday School this past week, our friend Brad asked this question: Are you pursuing God as heavily as you pursue your spouse?

Gulp. Could I have another question, please?

Alas, right about then, I saw my sister walk in the front door of the church, so I left class to go meet her. Though class went on, that was the end for me, and the question has plagued me all week.

When I stood in front of the small cloud of witnesses that day on the beach, I promised Ryan that I would live "first unto our God" and then unto him...

...but my heart knew that lately I have struggled to find the same eager abandon to pursue God that I have in pursuing Ryan.

And that stung.

It stung because my Beloved has given me a gift in Ryan and in return...I seem to be late...or worse...absent...to my time with Him. It stung because the woman Ryan fell in love with was a woman wildly and consistently pursuing God...and that's the woman he still needs me to be as his wife. He needs me to keep the promise I made on the sand. The promise that I'll be faithful to God is every bit as important as the promise that I'll be faithful to him.

Last night I drove home from Ryan's house, where we were cleaning again. For the past month or so, it seems that every night had been devoted to either the reception or the house. We're starting to forget what our house looks like. And I think Braeya's starting to forget what we look like. {But I digress.} As I drove, I cried out to God, "I don't know how to do this! I don't know how to be a wife. Teach me in the secret place! What do I need to know?"

I wasn't even sure I knew how to hear His whisper anymore, but without delay, it was there...

"Find me. I loved you first."

So I go back to the vows I made in the sand...Ryan, I will live first unto our God, then unto you.

And in it all, I'm so glad for the unconditional love of these two who hold my heart most closely.

Full Circle

I've written before about the prayer chapel on the IWU campus and how I used to go there on Tuesdays to pray for Mr. Missing. Many, many Tuesday lunches were spent in the front pew on the right hand side, sometimes in tears, begging God to send me the one He chose for me.

Many beautiful lessons were learned inside that chapel. Many battles were fought and won. Many questions were answered and many others were left for someday, whenever God chose to speak.

I'd always hoped that on my wedding day, I could go to that chapel to thank God for His answer to my most long-standing request. Obviously a Florida wedding made that impossible, so when we planned to have our reception on campus, I knew I wanted to spend some time in the chapel.

So before the reception...I went back to the pew.

The pew where I spent all those Tuesdays.

The pew where I prayed to receive a husband.

And this day....he sat behind me.

Right over there. My answer to all those Tuesdays.

Rachel was taking our pictures and she said to me, "Do you always smile when you pray?"

I do when I'm praising for an answer!!

I don't get to pray in this chapel any more because I don't work there...but I love going back to the place that was my altar for so long...

...and kneel AT the altar to say thank you to my Beloved.

Thanks for these hands that hold mine.