You know that feeling when a song just strikes a nerve? When a song brings you tears or give you goose bumps... well... I have found a song that I cannot keep a dry eye!
It is this song: Who Shall I Fear?
You should listen to it right now!! For real, click it... then jam out!! It is a song by Chris Tomlin about our God who is the God of Angel Armies, who fights for us! Here are the lyrics! And the thing I love about these lyrics the most, is that they are pure scripture! Such sweet Truth:
You hear me when I call
You are my morning song
Though darkness fills the night
It cannot hide the light
Whom shall I fear
You crush the enemy
Underneath my feet
You are my sword and shield
Though troubles linger still
Whom shall I fear
I know who goes before me
I know who stands behind
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
The one who reigns forever
He is a friend of mine
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
My strength is in Your name
For You alone can save
You will deliver me
Yours is the victory
Whom shall I fear
Whom shall I fear
I know who goes before me
I know who stands behind
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
The one who reigns forever
He is a friend of mine
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
And nothing formed against me shall stand
You hold the whole world in Your hands
I'm holding on to Your promises
You are faithful
You are faithful
And nothing formed against me shall stand
You hold the hold world in your hands
I'm hold on to your promises
You are faithful
You are faithful
You are faithful
I know who goes before me
I know who stands behind
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
The one who reigns forever
He is a friend of mine
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
I know who goes before me
I know who stands behind
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
The one who reigns forever
He is a friend of mine
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
The God of angel armies
Is always by my side
So, did you get goose bumps!? I did! This song has been such truth to Clint and I in this season to cling to and to shout at the top of our lungs in the car. "I know who goes before me, I know who stands behind..." Our God goes before us in Kinston, and he is by our side in this transition!
Have a great day!
Love,
Mary
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
May Days
Some
great days in May!
I love the month of May! For many reasons... 1) beautiful weather 2) humidity is low (good hair days) 3) No mosquitos yet! 4) The month we celebrate our marriage 5) Mother's Day 6) Trips to the beach! 7) Wedding season begins!
This month has been such a great month so far!
We have celebrated the end of Young Life with a Picnic!
This is a fun picture of all of the Meredith College Young Life Leaders! Love these people! Will miss these relationships the most! "I love you Meredith College, Oh yes I do! I love you Meredith College! When I'm not with you I am blue!"
We have continued to get super excited about Kinston! We are looking at a July Move date! So EXCITED! We are so thankful for Raleigh and these last 2 months here, but we are looking forward to Kinston!
We celebrated Molly and Harrison's marriage in Beaufort, NC! Such a beautiful wedding!! Their ceremony was in the Ann Street Episcopal Church and their reception was in the Watercraft Center on Front St. Such a fun day!
Clint and I at the reception! Beautiful day!
This may the funniest thing I have seen in a long while! We were eating our icecream outside the General Store Saturday night. And this man came up to Charlie Rouse to see if he could hold his dog. Look how tiny this dog is!!!! And, to make the story even more funny... guess what the mini-dog's name was? Charlie!!!!!
We celebrated Mother's Day with Clint's Mom on Sunday morning in Beaufort! So sweet to be with Hannah Rouse and celebrate who she is! So thankful for my Mother-in-law!! We then headed straight to Cary to celebrate my Mom and Karla Kincaid! So thankful for my mom! SO thankful for Karla as she is the mother of my sweet niece Phoebe!
Friday, May 3, 2013
Leaving a Legacy
Garner
Trojans
What a gift it has been to love and serve Garner High School for the past three years. Clint is a trail blazer (if you didn't already know this about him), he has a great gift of beginning new projects, meeting adults, raising money, blazing the way, Clint Rouse is unstoppable!
Clint was giving the fun project of beginning Young Life at Garner High School, and he has certainly done that with the assistance of The Lord (the credit and victory is given to Jesus, obviously!) and an incredible Young Life Team: Nolan, Taylor, Maggie, Sarah, Cameron, and Becca! When we think of "missing Raleigh" next year the thing we will miss the most is our Young Life team at Garner. They are really like our children. We have gotten to watch them grow as men and women of Christ, we have seen them fall down and scrape their knees, and we have seen them learn to walk. We love our team! I may have two tears rolling down my face writing this, because we love these people.
Last night was Clint's last Young Life Club, but CERTAINLY not the last Garner Young Life club ever! We really feel like we are leaving a legacy in Raleigh Young Life with Garner Young Life. I have never seen people love one another the way this team does. They have included and embraced all their roommates, boyfriends/girlfriends, friends, class mates to make up "Garner Team Extended." Through this extended part of our them they get to include the people they love into a ministry they love. To the High School Kid's its like they have more then one college friend!
So, seniors spoke to share with the club what they learned from Young Life. A lot shared how great their leader was and a few shared how great God was! What an honor to hear! The last person to share was Clint and his final nugget to share with Garner High School was, "Will you take the trade?" Will we trade this life of brokenness for full life that Jesus offers to us by dieing on the cross for our brokenness? He spoke specifically about Jesus on the cross and the two criminals being crucified on either side of him. One of the criminals rebuked him and threw insults at him, while the other criminal saw who Jesus was, he was the Son of God, this criminal accepted the trade! So, Clint's main point was which response will we have? To reject Jesus' offer on the cross or to accept Jesus for who he is, the Son of God!
Luke 23: 39-43
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Jesus is so gracious, he is so forgiving, there is nothing that we have done that he will not forgive! He forgave a criminal in the final hours of his life, why not allow him to come in to our lives?
Here are a few shots of Garner Club last night:
After Clint was introduced by David "Moo Moo"
Clint, David "Moo Moo", and I. This sweet young man will always have a special place in the Rouse House. We love David!
A few of our sweet friends who make up Garner Team Extended! There are probably 20 people not in this picture!
Outdoor club is the best!
It has always been Garner's tradition to give the seniors a small blue mason jar to represent all the memories shared at Garner Young Life. All the students, the team, and extended team gave Clint and I the biggest blue mason jar we have ever seen full of notes and memories about Garner Young Life. This will be a cherished center piece in our life ALWAYS! We love y'all so much!
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Happy 6th Birthday Carter!
Carter
Elizabeth Kincaid
This sweet girl is SO loved! I love her more than words can explain! It seems like just yesterday she was born! Her parents are my oldest brother and his sweet wife, Thom and Margaret! Carter has played many precious roles in my life: she was my first niece, she was our flower girl in our wedding, and she is such a source of joy in my life!
Here are a few photos to celebrate this precious girls birthday!
April 24, 2007
This is the day she came home from the hospital!
My big brother Thom and Carter on her "time out" step. Please notice her ankles! She has been a little lady since birth, crossing her ankles!
Carter on the day of her Christening.
Carter at her 3rd birthday party!
Carter at my College Graduation Party! She thought it was my birthday!
Playing dress up at Papa and Grand's house!
Christmas morning!
The sweetest flower ("feather") girl to ever live!
There she is in action! I love her little bare-feet!
At her 6th Birthday Party on April 24, 2013! Sitting on her Uncle Clint's lab!
Happy Birthday Carter!!
Sweet Carter! I love this little girl and her love for her family (very BIG family!), her social skills (she speaks as if she were 17), how she loves her dogs, her passion for dolls of all sorts, her imagination, that she never meets a stranger, and the love and joy she radiates to everyone around her! Carter, I hope you feel so special and loved! Happy Birthday!!!
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Instagram...
an Unhealthy
obsession
So, Instagram my friends is super addicting! There is nothing like opening this little camera shaped app on my phone and seeing beautiful pictures of babies, delicious meals, sweet vacation snap shots, and the occasional selfie picture. Sounds not as interesting in words, but to the eye it is so appealing!
I read this blog post earlier this week and it spoke loudly to my inner soul, you should read it right now!! For real... read it! It will take 7 min of your life, but probably save you more minutes from wasting it checking social media....
Instagraming a Perfect Life
Favorite "nuggets" from this blog:
"The danger of the internet is that it’s very very easy to tell partial truths—to show the fabulous meal but not the mess to clean up afterward. To display the smiling couple-shot, but not the fight you had three days ago. "
"Facebook is always going to yield a prettier version of life than the one you’re living right now. That’s how it works....The Internet is partial truths—we get to decide what people see and what they don’t."
"Our envy buttons also get pushed because we rarely check Facebook when we’re having our own peak experiences. We check it when we’re bored and when we’re lonely, and it intensifies that boredom and loneliness."
"It makes sense, then, that anyone else’s fun or beauty or sparkle gets under our skin. It magnifies our own dissatisfaction with that moment."
"For many of us, walking away from the Internet isn’t an option. But using it to connect instead of compare is an option, and a life-changing one. Using technology to build community instead of building carefully-curated images of ourselves is an option, and a worthwhile one."
"...life isn’t about the story you tell about yourself on the Internet. It’s about a million more beautiful and complex things than that, like love and faith and really listening. It’s about using what you’ve been given to craft a life of gratitude and passion and grace."
Wow! Now that is truth! Now that is convicting! So, in reading this blog post on Monday from Relevant Magazine, it made me want to change my blogging. I want this blog to be filled with real life, not this partial truth I tray to display of myself. My friends, I do not have it all together! And I am beginning to see and face the truth.. I will NEVER have it all together! I will never be perfect! We have dishes in our sink for days on end, laundry piles fill our bedroom most days, dog hair will be on your black pants if you enter our home... all of this truth about my weakness and my inability to have it all together makes me run to the one person who is perfect... Jesus! I love the truth that Jesus says, "My power is made PERFECT in your WEAKNESS!" 2 Corinthians 12:9
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
"Good-Bye" Young Life Leadership
Clint and I had no expectations of what this night was going to look like, but tears were shed, laughs were laughed, prayers were prayed, and Christ was present! Raleigh and Western Wake said "Good-Bye" to about 20 faithful leaders. It is overwhelming to think of the lives touched and changed by these Seniors in college. It is wild how many hours are sacrificed a week in this room of young people, about 2,250 hours a week are given to pursuing high school kids, middle school kids, and college aged kids... now that is community changing!!
So, it is Greater Raleigh Young Life's tradition to honor the Seniors that are leaving this ministry and moving on to adult life/graduate school/marriage/etc. Clint and I fell under this category this year. It was an emotional time for us because I was a high school kid that my Young Life leader set in this room and prayed for me, I was a Young Life leader in this room who prayed for girls at Leesville Road High School, and now I am a Meredith College Life leader who sits beside my serving "MCD" (Meredith College Divas) in this room. Clint has sat in this room as a Leesville High School Young Life Leader, sat in this room as a Garner High SchoolLeader, and as a Raleigh Young Life Staffer, and now he sits beside boys who have met Jesus who are now loving High School Boys at Sanderson, Millbrook, and Enloe. Let's just say there are A LOT of ripples in this room! WE LOVE THESE PEOPLE! We love this ministry! We love Raleigh! We love Garner High School! We love Meredith College! But, more then anything in this world we LOVE JESUS!
My 2 favorite thing said on Sunday night came form the lips of Mike Strawbridge (via Courtney Lancaster) and from Clint Rouse.
Mike said, "Satan is really mad about what is going on this room!"
Clint said, "The Lord could have done this ministry any way he wanted, but he chose US, he chose US because He had something in store for US in this ministry!'
This is so true! Yes, we got to see lives changed! Yes, we got to serve Jesus in countless hours sacrificed to loving people! But, it is undeniably true that Jesus changed Clint and I's heart, our marriage, our home, how we love, through this ministry of Young Life. And for that we are SO THANKFUL! We are SO GRATEFUL!
Clint and I are SO excited about the journey to come in Kinston, NC! WOW! We are prepared, excited, and anticipating our socks to be knocked off by what Jesus had in store for us there. And to that we say, "BRING IT ON!"
Here is a picture of the Garner Young Life Team "stacking hands!" We do this after every time we are together! This isn't the last time we do it, but it is a fun time to remember!
Monday, April 22, 2013
Windy Gap: Raleigh Family Camp
The
Rouse house Playing dress up
Clint and I had the great privilege to do program for Raleigh, Western Wake, and Little Washington Family Camp at Windy Gap. Our team consisted of Chris Cockerham (who was a Young Life leader at Apex High School when I was in High School... for real a dream do do program with this guy!), Matt Williams (he is the Area Director for Western Wake Young Life), and then Clint & I.
This was such a fun weekend full of joy and laughter. My character was the little sister who wore a glittery too too, I was a celebrity for the weekend for little girls. It was a really sweet experience! Clint was the bad guy, R. Cade, which was sad because a lot of children were genuinely scared of him.
It was also SO fun because Mom and Bigdaddy game to be Adult Guests for the weekend. They relaxed and enjoyed seeing their children be silly!
This was such a fun weekend especially with the news of moving at the end of the summer to Kinston. We love Raleigh SO much, but more then just the town we love the people! This was a fun celebration to be with all the families we love so dearly at Windy Gap.
Speaking of Kinston... we are SO excited and feel an abundance of PEACE in regards to this decision of moving to Kinston, NC to begin the minsitry of Young Life! We have felt so encouraged by people giving us contacts to people they know in the community, texts from friends in Kinston saying there is a buzz around town talking about Clint and Mary coming to town, and people from Kinston weeping with joy because we will be loving the youth in their hometown. We are excited, but are faithful to finishing strong in Raleigh, enjoying this present day!
I wish we had a video of the entire weekend, but here are a few pictures!
Clint dressed up for the Hoe Down. Move over Scotty Mcreery!
Clint and I in our western gear:
Matt, Clint, me, and Chris AKA: Rocky, R. Cade, Wiibecca, and Ricky!
So fun to do this with my friends!
Wiibecca and R. Cade
Have a great day!
Mary
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