NYE and Noisemakers and Celebrating

I found myself standing in a crowded living room, counting down the final ten seconds of 2014 while holding onto my fiancé(!) tightly and looking around at all of my smiling (and screaming) college friends.

Life is that moment was good.

The past month was a whirlwind of activity and my life as I knew it was also forever changed. The man of my dreams (and my very best friend) asked me to marry him. My cousin, who was raised almost like a big sister to me, had her first baby and I got to hold precious little Avery in my arms as we welcomed her into the world. We had THREE(!) Christmases due to two families now and tiny Avery being born on Christmas Day. We watched as handfuls of friends also got engaged and we celebrated the anticipation of our new lives right alongside of them. I traveled multiple times between a staff training, half of Christmas week at my soon-to-be in-laws, and a vacation to celebrate the New Year in Delaware.

To ring in 2015, eight of us Mary Washington InterVarsity friends and two of our now fiancés decided to rent a house by the beach. In those four days of cooking and cleaning, laughing and dancing, playing Settlers and other games, watching movies, talking, having group manuscript bible studies, chopping wood and making fires, I was reminded that this group would always feel like family to me.

After a year of not seeing these sweet college friends and after a lifetime of believing the lies that I would never be "good enough" for marriage, there was a part of me that still couldn't believe this was my life--in real time--as I stood in that living room on New Year's Eve. As the ball dropped and I kissed my fiancé and cheers-ed my friends and blew my noisemaker as obnoxiously as possible, I was celebrating more than a new date. I was celebrating the culmination of a really great year.

2014, you were a good. I saw my dad come to know Jesus in a real way and grow exponentially in his walk. I said "yes" to a new position within InterVarsity at TCNJ and have learned and grown tremendously from it so far. I met and became engaged to the man that I've decided to spend the rest of my life with, a man that God crafted as more perfect for me than I could ever even dream up myself.

In that moment, I was celebrating freedom and new life, friendship and love. I was celebrating how God really does the miraculous, how He holds friendships together over time and distance, how He can take the most stubborn and broken woman and make her ready to be someone's wife.

My heart at the end of 2014 was full of sweet bliss. God can do amazing things, more than we'll ever ask for or imagine.

And I am excited for what God has in store for 2015. I'm getting married this year!!! (Those are words that I still can't believe I'm writing.)

So here's to 2014. You were good to us. But, 2015, we welcome you with open arms and an eager expectation for what's to come.

our new year's week crew