Happy Anniversary Mom & Dad!

This might be a little different from posts I normally write, but I am very excited about this one! 

Have you ever known two people that you can tell are in love? Have you ever met a couple that strives with everything in them to make it work? Have you ever met a couple that has managed to stay together after 5 kids, 4 grand kids and 35 of marriage? I have. They're my parents. 

I know that not everyone is lucky enough to have a strong set of parents, and I especially know that it's more common for divorce to occur in today's times. Like I've mentioned previously, I'm a Social Work major and that is under the Sociology program. I take a lot of Sociology classes, so I'm constantly breaking down and analyzing people and our society. After two years of problem-solving and paper-writing about problems in marriages, I am ecstatic to sit down and write about a positive marriage!

35 years ago today my parents were married. I don't think they ever knew what life would bring them. Just their children alone could have given them a run for their money. My siblings and I constantly joke around to my parents, because they only planned for 1 kid, and ended up with 5! My mom and dad had an interesting love story, and to sum it all up-they never really dated. My mom was a college student in Lancaster and my dad was a sailor in the Navy. They met at a Christian conference and started writing letters to each other. If you ask either of them, they'll agree-they never really went on dates. I love when my dad tells me stories of them, and I especially love when he said that his mother (who passed away before their wedding) told him that he better keep this one (my mom) because he wouldn't find anyone else like her! My dad ended up proposing, and they've been in love ever since.

I don't want to put it off like my parents are perfect. I know they're not, and especially now being older, I understand that marriage is something you have to work at. They're normal-they fight, they get frustrated-but nothing could break them. After many events happening to our family and different friends of ours, I constantly fear that something could happen. I remember thinking to myself "if it is this easy for a marriage to end, it could absolutely happen to my parents." I do have full faith that their marriage will stand strong and not be beaten by the sin in our world. 

My parents have shown me a lot through the years (there is a previous post about that) and they will continue to show me things throughout my life. Here is a short list of some lessons they have displayed to me and/or my sisters and brother:

-always put Christ as your #1 and do all things for His glory

-if you fight together, you make up together

-even if we do wrong and become like "the prodigal son", they will still accept us with grace and love 

-marriage is a two-way job. Both the husband and the wife have to make time and put effort in

-date night is a necessity

-parents are a team. If dad says no, mom says no too 

-always kiss in front of your kids (and sometimes gross them out)

-put others before yourself 

-be strong for the other; when my mom had cancer, my dad really stepped up as much as he could. Much to my dismay, my dad sometimes fixed my hair in the morning so my mom could continue to rest. 

(By the way... Dad with rough hands + toddler Cassie with long hair + a comb= Pure torture) 

-even when the going gets tough, fight harder. A marriage is a gift from God, and one that is worth it.

-Finally, never to settle for someone in a marriage. This applies to 2/5 children they have, but my parents knew what they looked for in a spouse, and never backed down from those values. Thank God for that-I wouldn't be here if they hadn't! 

Happy anniversary Commander Pam & Colonel, here's to 35 more (I'll be your age when that happens..oh my!) I love you both! Thank you for fighting for your marriage and always loving each other! 

^ my parents on their wedding day, 35 years ago! 

^ This was at their first child's wedding in 2005 (my sister Mandie)

^ My favorite picture! At my sister Erin's wedding in 2011

^ Also in 2011 at my other sister, Rebekah's wedding

^ This was during one of their weekend getaways..they were getting ready to fly in that tiny airplane! 

^ This was this past December at a military ball! I also love this! 

In Him, 

What I Wish I Knew in High School 2: Less IS More

   I thought that I would continue on a theme that I wrote about in the past. As the school year is closing, and many teenagers will either graduate and move onto college, or move up another grade in high school. If you would like to read my previous post (the first one in this theme!) about the importance of a good relationship with your parents, you can check it out here!

  As a child and a teenager, I felt like I always heard the phrase "less is more". It could be involved with food, opinions, fabric, paint, etc. What I'm going to talk about is makeup. The big "M" word! This is beyond cliche, but I know that everyone says things like "Makeup is only to enhance what's already there!" and obviously the one I mentioned earlier. Just to give you an insight into my past with makeup, I will include my old makeup routine versus my current one. And despite my embarrassment, I will add in pictures of the way that I used to look!

 I'm not saying that wearing makeup is a terrible thing, I wear it all the time! It's completely 100% fine to do your makeup in anyway you want-this is just my story and my feelings about it! I wish that I would have listened to my older sisters and my mom when they told me "raccoon eyes" are not the best way to flatter light blue eyes. My old makeup routine would have gone something like:
-cake on foundation all over my face, especially on my acne
-getting black eyeliner and smudging it all over my eyelid
-putting mascara on
-getting the same black eyeliner ad smudging it all underneath my eyes

 Currently it looks something like...
-washing my hands
-putting SPF 30 sunscreen all over my face
-applying under-eye concealer (dang years of me squinting to see the board in class!)
-applying a light pink or cream eyeshadow to my eyes
-putting on mascara and curling my eyelashes
-concealing any acne I have
-chapstick!

  All though my current makeup list is a little longer, it certainly goes a longer way. Here are some examples at my "raccoon days":

^Creeping on the elderly-hey, I was 14 at the time. Don't ask.

^My best friend, Natalie and I at a rock concert. We constantly laugh at this picture. We believe we resemble "drug dealers"-a lot of darkness around our eyes! 

  As you can tell, you can barely see my eyes. There was so much black stuff around it, that you could barely see my eyes. For myself, my eyes are naturally light blue, so adding chunky black eyeliner all around them made it difficult to see their beauty.

  So-what changed my views on makeup? What made me believe that less truly is more? 

I used to believe that I wasn't the most attractive girl in the crowd. I had a distorted image of beauty from watching television and movies, and reading beauty and gossip magazines. Body issues aside, I used to believe that I just wasn't attractive. Somewhere along the line, I had trained myself to think that caking more makeup to my face made me more beautiful. As for the choice of color, I had watched girls my age and older have lines of black eyeliner all over their eyes. I never realized that what looks great on other girls may not look great on me! After growing more comfortable in my skin, I recognized what features on my face needed to be brought more attention. 

No where in the Bible does it say "your face is the money-maker". It does not say "you are only beautiful if your face is pretty according to society's standards." And it never mentions "adding black eyeliner around your eyes makes you more beautiful." 

As I grew older, I realized that God made me so beautiful in His eyes! He never looked towards my outward appearance...

1 Samuel 16:7

      "...The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." 

I know that it's not always realistic to believe that all people look at your heart. I know that we live in a society where our outward appearance means everything. God doesn't care! He wants me, wrinkled eyes, big chin and all! Once I stopped making makeup a priority, my confidence increased. I looked at my face a began to really try to put as little makeup on as possible. Eventually, I did-now I'm at only a few products at a time. I still wear makeup to emphasize features on my face, and I still wear it because I think that I look better with it on! I'm just very happy that I learned not to add as much on as possible. My face is not like an all-you-can-eat sundae bar; it's a human face that God created especially for me. I want to add as little as possible to God's design! 

In case you were curious, my face now looks a little like this: 

                         ^ Four years later and we're still at concerts ,but wearing a lot less on our faces! 

In Him,