big baby news!

We are so so SO excited to announce,

I didn't want to FULLY admit it, but I REALLY wanted a girl :) in a few short months I will no longer be outnumbered in the Shook home!

Unfortunately you can't see the sign very well. That's what happens when you have the camera on timer and sitting on a rock... You can only do so much :)

We looked at dresses and bows and everything tiny and girly today.
I don't know if I can handle Travis picking out another polka dotted dress, it's just too much awesome.

And I know that one up there ^ is going to be a FANTASTIC big brother. Lovin' on her and toughenin' her up all at the same time.

Literally, always blessed beyond measure. We cannot thank God enough.

only a glance

Seriously, it's one of my favorite things.
Reed taking off to go do some big new thing and he glances back at me for a moment.
My heart stops.
He's really mine.
He sees what I do for him.
How much I love him.
And that little glance just spoke a thousand words that he just can't yet.

I learn a new lesson about my Father every day I'm a parent.
A deeper understanding of the love He has for me.
I think He reveals the same love to people who never have children, but just in a different way.

This morning we are sitting in the floor and I'm worshipping.
Well at first I'm just sitting there singing.
Then God moves my heart and the weeping comes.
The good weeping.
(I'm gonna stop right here and say I'm saying this because it's a big part of the point I'm trying to talk about. It's not by my own strength or righteousness that I come to a place of weakness and admiration in front of the Holy God. It's a gift from Him. So before it sounds like I'm bragging about how "holy" I am, I want to clear up that it's more like I'm nothing without Him and that gives Him room to move. This comes involuntarily when you see His beauty. When God brought John into the Heavens for revelation John fell as though dead in front of Him because His presence is just so heavy.)

Before this moment Reed was just minding his own, playing with blocks and what not. It was almost like he heard the brokenness in my voice before he even saw me.
When he did, he dropped everything and crawled into my lap and stared at me.
He touched my face with a concerned look on his.
He just stared at me as I cried.

It literally hit me like a train.

This is it.
This is what God wants.

God is sitting on His throne mourning for His lost children.
Some, He has revealed Himself to over and over and they still say no to Him.
His heart. It's breaking. And even though our sin never surprised Him, it's been breaking since the beginning of creation. When man chose sin, pain and death over the Perfect Dad.

I know He's mourning. Everyone who follows Him knows.
If that wasn't the case He wouldn't call us to share the Gospel of Him.

He's sitting there crying and He's begging the children that do accept Him to sit in His lap, touch His face and gaze into His eyes.
He just wants us to tell Him, I know how good You are Dad. I see how much You hurt. This is what I have to give to you. My love. All of it. I will sit here and minister to Your heart because You deserve it.
"I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. you who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give Him no rest till He establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth." Isaiah 62:6-7

But that's the thing.
We can receive the free gift of salvation, which will inevitably change our entire lives, but we can stay right there.
It would be like Reed just accepting everything I give to him, because it's free, but not leaning in when I say "Give me love, Bub."
Right now he shows love the way he knows how, climbing into my lap when he sees my pain.

We have that choice.
Just accept the pain Jesus endured and say a quick thanks, or sit in His lap and minister to His heart. To pray without ceasing.
To seek revelation into His heart and will so we can join with Him into the divine priesthood He has called us to.

"You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 2:5
"But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." 1 Peter 2:9-10

Those little glances Reed gives me MOVES me. And I am made of flesh. Love lives in me, but I am not love.
Those same little glances that we give Jesus move Him, and He IS love. The definition of love.

Just recently I heard this:
If just a glance moves Him, can you imagine what a gaze would do to His heart?
The whole body of Christ gazing at their Savior in everything they do.
That's what He's worthy of.

And that is what He's raising the bride of Christ to do, because as Jesus gazes upon us, making 24/7 intercession for us, He will have an equally yoked bride that looks at Him with the same love and obsession.

^"One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple."
Psalm 27:4

just a lil makeover

I've been working on my blog template and what not lately. None of the links work right now, so don't bother :) hopefully everything will be fixed soon!

spiritual boot camp

Well, as many of you know, our little family will be receiving an addition in March 2014! We are so excited.

That is part of the reason you haven't seen any posts lately. I had some awful morning sickness. I did not feel like doing anything and blogging just fell to the verrrrryy bottom of the priority list. Although in that season I don't think it should have.

Blogging started for me when I asked God for a way to serve Him in sharing the Good News but still be able to stay home with Reed. I could serve in a lot more ways outside of our home, but since Travis is gone half the time it's hard to commit to anything. And frankly, that's just not what He's asking me to do.

Well I finally began feeling better and sat down at my computer one night so excited to start back up and my internet would not work.
That's when I felt God saying "Spend time with ME right now."
And He's been saying that every time since.

Since I moved to Michigan I've been in spiritual boot camp.
Like, seriously. Gut wrenching, hard, no joke boot camp.
In every area of my life where I had decided to choose Him I had to decide to do it all over again, but this time it was 100 times harder.
Marriage hasn't been a big part of the boot camp, but being alone sure has.

Matthew 4 starts out like this:

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ² After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. ³ The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

⁴ Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
⁵ Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ⁶ “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
    and they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

⁷ Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

⁸ Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ⁹ “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
¹⁰ Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
¹¹ Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

This happened after Jesus was baptized and before He began leading masses.

This has been my boot camp.
But I haven't handled it quite as well as Jesus and I didn't pass quite as quickly ;)

I KNOW it was God's will for me to marry Travis, and for us to be stationed so far from anything I had ever known.
I also KNOW it was the will of God for it to be hard.
Refer back to the first verse of Matthew 4 "Then Jesus was LED BY THE SPIRIT into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."

When I decided to change my life and begin to live in obedience to His commands I was tempted all the time. Those temptations were mostly to practice sin outwardly.
"Why not just go to that party, it can be your last one."
"It can't be that big of a deal if you don't honor Him with your mouth."
"You should wear that really short dress, that will for sure get boys attention."
That was a season of learning obedience, when I first realized I loved Jesus.

As Misty Edwards puts it in her book "What is the Point?"-
"One of the core issues of conflict of the generation in which the Lord returns will be the definition of love. Do we love on God's terms, or do we love on the terms of the humanistic culture that has no reference to obedience to what He has already spoken? We must love Jesus on the intention to "keep His commandments" because Scripture is our pathway to Him and the standard that we will be evaluated by. We can't say that we love Him and then refuse the path that leads to Him. That would be like saying you love someone in a foreign country but you refuse to look at them, talk to them on the phone, read their messages, get on an airplane to see them, or even speak the same language as them. This isn't love.
Jesus' commandments are the tracks that lead to Him. If you love Him, you will take the train and find Him. That does not mean our obedience is mature or that we never fail. I often fail and come up short in my obedience but my heart is set to obey the written Word of God, most specifically the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7). It is the clearest definition of love in the Bible. There it is in three chapters."
(Also John 14:15-23)

I had come to an understanding of that and my heart was set on obeying His commands.
That's why the way I was tempted differently when I was alone.
Just like the tempter tried to get Jesus to question His identity, who I thought I was gone in what felt like a couple of months.
Everything that felt familiar was gone.
I had never really lived in the same town as the man I was married to while we were dating.
The enemy was getting into my head and trying to rip out everything I thought I had and his main target was who I was in God.

When he tempted Jesus he said "IF You are the Son of God..."
Satan didn't need proof that Jesus was the Son of God, he knew. But he wanted to bring Jesus to a place of questioning.
And the Spirit led Him there.
I know my High Priest can relate to me here because He was tempted in every way that I am.
And that was the purpose. 

Hebrews 4:15 "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin."

But Jesus knew the Word of God. And He knew who He was IN God. He was God.
But I had to get in the Word of God, write it on my heart and fully believe that I was a pure child of God that He purchased with a price, the Son of God nailed to a cross. WHAT? That was just too good to be true and there is no way this lowly sinner could be promoted to that status.
But I had been.
And I don't believe that because I think I deserve it, I believe it because after many nights of begging for the truth I received it in my heart.

"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God." - John 1:12-13

Who I believed I was stripped away but built back on the only foundation needed. God and His heart for me.

John 4:24 says "God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."
I was starting to get what it meant to worship in truth.
I was in the Word, meditating on scripture, walking out His commands, not only the outward acts but the things I had to walk out in my heart, having no condemnation and believing who I am to Him.
It was so hard and sometimes I was really tired. I just wanted to sulk in my emotions and let them overtake me but God was calling me to something more.
Something better.

In no way am I saying I'm done in this area, this will be a life long journey but the tides have shifted.
My heart is beginning to be at peace with these things and by His grace I can refer to scripture when temptations come my way, or when I don't know what I am supposed to do.
But Father has added to this season learning to worship in Spirit.
That doesn't mean sing loud during worship service and feel that good feeling while you do it, it means LIVING by the Spirit.
Seeking Him in everything. Being in constant communication with Him. Becoming intimate with Him.

This is a season where the Shepherd of my soul has been wooing me to spend time with Him alone.
To desire to just sing to Him and be excited to talk with Him and learn more about His character as He reveals it to me Himself. Intimacy.

Now I'm in a whole new level of hard, it doesn't hurt but it takes so much discipline.
To continue to seek His answers to what real intimacy is and not what the media says or what the scars of my past try to tell me.

And for that to play out I have to be alone.
In my own wilderness.
Before He sends me out to do the same things Jesus did, and greater. (John 14:12)
Just like Jesus in Matthew 4.

He is preparing me to walk out the will He has laid out before me.
It's been a hard time but so worth it.

"When I see Your face, it's gonna be worth it all."

ministering in truth

Today is a good day to write about my Papi.

15 and I'm living in some dark sin.
Adding unimaginable things to the list of ways I was trying to fill the huge void in my life.
Nothing ever worked, so I went to the next worse thing. Trying to hide and cover pain that is spilling out of my heart.

I don't believe that the people in my life couldn't see it, most of them just didn't care, or were too caught up in themselves to stop and shake me.
Because "that's love, right?"
Accepting a 15 year old that is giving herself away, getting completely intoxicated and putting herself in awful situations.
You just "love" her through it, right?
No. That's not love, and no one will be able to tell me that it is.

The only adults who did anything were my mom and this man.
Through all the hate and anger I had toward him because he was tearing through my strongholds, he never stopped.
Because he loves me.
He loves my mom.
And he REALLY loves the Lord.
The unrelenting Father that was pursuing me with one of His most obedient servants.
He couldn't sit back and watch me sprint toward rock bottom like it's the only thing I had left to do.

There were nights where he would sit up with me until 4 AM in the morning, listening to my heart, praying over me, talking to me about things I had never talked to anyone about and telling me about the awesome God who desires my heart like no other.
One of the only adults to tell me I was worth so much more than what I was giving my life to.
One of the only adults that didn't want me to think the life that I had lived for 15 years was normal and ok.
One of the only adults that advocated for my innocence as a child and would have done whatever it took to give me a childhood that didn't involve the hate and anger that it did.
And still would, if that man hadn't obeyed God when it was extremely hard, when his daughter balled her fists up and screamed at him because he wanted better for her.

This man didn't accept who I was, because I wasn't the person I could be.
He still challenges me and asks for more of me because he wants me to continue to strive for our Heavenly Father.
Letting me settle in complacency WOULD NOT BE LOVING ME.
That wouldn't be grace.

That's not how God works.
Just because I say I accept Jesus as my Savior doesn't mean I continue to live and openly walk in sin.
Papi walked with me, and some times drug me,  so I could see the Beauty of Christ and His Grace.
And since then I will do ANYTHING I have to do to please my Savior.
Because once you truly see His Beauty and His Glory, you will turn around and run whole heartedly to the God who put His life down to save you.
Yes I fail, but that is sanctification.
When you fall you have to get back up and turn away from that sin.
Don't you see that the reason He wants you to turn from your evil ways is because it hurts you?

A father disciplines their child when they need to teach them to not do things that hurt them.

And that's what Papi did for me, and what he continues to do for countless other people.
I could care less if you disagree with how he does things, because he's not doing anything to please you but walking out his marching orders every day.
And I'm a product of that obedience.
So if you care anything about me, and the fact that I'm no longer RUNNING straight to hell, then give this man the respect he deserves.

This all sounds harsh, but I want my stand to be made clear.
And every time I see him getting pushed down on the ground and spit on for what he is doing for our God hurts me.
Not many people in my life listen to me on this subject, they might as well put their fingers in their ears and yell.
So maybe if they read it they won't have time to interrupt me.

Thank you Papi, for who you are in our God.
For being the one that told me I'm worth so much more.
For really loving me.
And never settling for anything but me pursuing our Savior with every ounce of energy in me.

it's been a little while

Well. To make a long story short... We now have a data plan for our internet, I forgot and left a webpage open all night and used up all the data for the month in like 3 days... Sooooo it's been a while. But now we are reset for the month and I am being very intentional with my internet usage.

So of course that means blogging!
I was so encouraged to hear people asking why I haven't blogged and that they had been looking for new posts.
Thanks guys!

But with every long break comes a whole lotta pictures.

And to be 100% honest I'm getting really distracted by the new Duck Dynasty.
Which also reminds me when I tell MI natives I'm from NC they often ask me if the South is really like Duck Dynasty, or if it's like Honey Boo Boo.
Duck Dynasty. All the way.

Alright, now it's time for pictures! :)

 
A whole lotta beach.

A whole lotta exploring.

And a whole lotta CrossFit in big baggy shirts.
We were in a parade.

I'm so thankful for the ability to take pictures and look back on these moment that I usually take for granted.
I've been blessed beyond belief.
A lot of days have a lot of blessings in disguise and that is why pictures are so important to me. I could never live in a state of ungratefulness looking back on these blessings.

Thanks and glory to God.