Tag: love

End of 2025 update & huge changes to come

It has been so long since I have been able to sit down and write. Now that I am a mama, I pretty much do everything with one hand and an Andres on my hip. This makes blogging a little more complicated. But so much has happened in this past year, and our family will be experiencing so many big changes in the year to come!

Andres Mikkel is now 18 months old, and being his mami has been one of the most wonderful yet challenging things I have ever experienced. I have realized just how sanctifying being a mom is. It really gives you a peek into the Father’s heart for us while also drawing out your worst qualities–like lack of patience or feeling selfish while desiring a moment alone which seems to never come. Motherhood is so humbling, and I just beam looking at my bright boy. Andres is the strongest yet most tender hearted, active, intelligent, people loving baby. I guess I should toddler now because he has grown too fast and is more like a little man. He is such a great mixture of Alan and I. We look at him and still can’t believe that we created him. Thank you, Lord, for entrusting him to us. 

And to piggy back off of that, we are expecting another baby boy in May! This baby is even more active in the womb than Andres was, so I know that we will have our hands full. But praise God for our healthy, moving boys! 

We are currently in the process of obtaining Alan’s US residency. If you have followed my blog or our story, you know that this has been a long, expensive, even sacrificial journey for us. We just celebrated 5 years of marriage, almost 7 years of being together, and we still have not been able to travel to the US together. All the paperwork has been approved, and we are just waiting on the interview. Unfortunately, the Santo Domingo US embassy is one of the most backlogged out of all the countries. We are really praying for a mighty miracle that we will be able to have this baby in the United States and be present for my brother’s graduation from University in May. It would be so miraculous if it worked out. Having a baby is one of the most stressful moments in a woman’s life. Now not knowing what country you are going to have your baby in, and all the potential legal processes to follow, not to mention–without your family present, takes it to a whole nother level. I am really trying to release my desire for answers to the Lord and learn to rest in Him and His sovereignty. Even if He doesn’t answer my prayers the way I want. 

We recently just said bye to our Bruno boy (our dog). I found him on the street 6 and a half years ago, nursed him back to health, and raised him. With our upcoming cross country move, expecting another baby, and apartment life, we were not able to keep him or provide him the life he deserves. We took him to a shelter, and it has hit me a lot harder than I anticipated. I am a huge dog lover, and he was my only companion through some really dark seasons here in the DR. It really hurts my heart to know I will never see him again or know if he will get adopted. I love dogs so much, but I am not sure if my heart would be able to handle having another one being between two countries. 

My sister just got married a couple weeks ago, and my family and some friends from the states were here to celebrate. It was a beautiful wedding, and also very Dominican (jaja). It is really hard when family visits  because there is so much excitement and build up, then our days seem to fly by, and then they leave with us never knowing when we will see each other again. I am pretty much all over the place emotionally for a few days after they leave, even more so now that I am pregnant. I really hope that was our last goodbye. I am so thankful for our close knit family. It is such a treasure and so rare nowadays. 

I am coming up on my 7th year anniversary of moving to the DR. It is crazy how much I have learned and my perspective has shifted over the years while living here. I came here  with a lot of willingness to learn, yet also a lot of unvoiced expectations. Through the years I have experienced and witnessed a lot more than I ever anticipated I would. My life in the Dominican has brought me some of my greatest joys, like my Alan and Andres, and also some of my heart’s biggest aches. I have had to overcome a lot and fight for what I need in this country, and that is the way most Dominicans live every day. I could share more on these aches and frustrations in depth, but that is more of a face-to-face kind of conversation. I love this country, but there are many things that I would love to sit down and have a serious chat with the government about. 

I am sure there are many more things that I could update you on, but these are the most relevant at the moment. If you think of our family, please pray for us. This new year will bring many changes, adding another member to our family, continuing in our expensive legal processes (maybe adding another one if we have this baby here in the DR), cross country move which brings a lot of new adjustments, and the timing of everything which would make my head explode if I think about it so I just try not to. 

Thank you for following my journey through all these years and all the craziness. I thank God for how He has carried me and continues to go before me and sustain me, and now my family, through every season of life. To Him be all the praise and glory forever. 

Tough Skin and Tender Hearts: Bye Bye Bitterness

My first couple years in the Dominican Republic were really lonely. I was sort of thrown in to work and the culture while left to figure a lot out on my own. There is a whole lot that happened during these years that God has been healing me from even years later.

After my husband and I left this ministry, we felt really discouraged and hurt. I am such a relational person, and those years took a toll on me. So, I began to shut people out, and I allowed resentment to take root in my heart. 

I craved depth and connection, yet I would unconsciously push people out because I was so wounded. It wasn’t until I was stuck in the United States for 3 months waiting on a visa, thousands of miles away from my new husband (at the time), that the Holy Spirit spoke directly to me and called me out. He showed me that I was stuck in a cycle of unforgiveness, and I had to break that cycle and forgive in order to experience freedom and depth again. I spent so much time on the cold, wooden floor of the house I grew up in crying out to God to help me. I had no idea where to start in my journey of forgiving. Little by little, year by year (yes, it has taken many years–and He is still working on me!), the Holy Spirit started to soften my heart and show me how to love those I felt had hurt me. 

I have been reflecting a lot on all my years here, and how far the Lord has brought me. Seriously, it is only by His hand and His mercy that I am who I am and where I am today. 

Over the past year and a half, God has given me a tender heart to love and to receive love again. I have even seen Him use the things that my husband and I have gone through to help me have more compassion on others and be able to better relate to them. Pain can either make you more bitter, or it can make you more compassionate. We get to choose what kind of person we want to be.

 My husband and I have an INCREDIBLE church family who has come around us in some really difficult moments. We have found fellowship with others who are after the same things of Christ as we are. God has surrounded us with coworkers who have poured into us and have been so generous with us as we step into this new season of welcoming our sweet, baby boy into the world. I am in awe of the Lord and the work He has done in both my heart and my husband’s. 

It is an everyday choice to forgive. I ask the Lord to guard our hearts from unforgiveness. It is breeding ground for the enemy, friends. I pray often that God gives us thick skin and tender hearts. We do not have to carry everything people do or say to us, but we do need to love and demonstrate grace. God will take care of the rest. 

I think about bringing our son into the world and the things that I want to teach him. I want our boy to know that we must always be quick to forgive and never harbor hurt feelings. It is something I must continue to work on, so that I can train him well! 

If I have learned anything over these years, it is that relationships and connection are worth it. We were made for community. And the enemy loves to isolate us. BUT we have the ability to recognize his schemes, and the Holy Spirit gives us the authority to shut him down and say bye bye to bitterness. 

DOES YOUR LIFE SHOW JESUS?

The other day I wrote out a list of things that I would like the Holy Spirit to help me change in my prayer journal. These are things that I have recognized about myself that I know are not from God. Things like:

-pride

-selfishness

-bitterness

-being easily offended

-and many more

My husband and I have been having so many conversations lately about the way that Christians do or do not reflect God through the way they live out their lives. We always come back to the fact that when we are full of the Holy Spirit, then we are producing the fruits of the Spirit. 

In case you are asking, “What does she mean the fruits of the Holy Spirit? Like actual fruits?” The fruits of the Spirit are what we produce as Christ followers when we have died to ourselves and allowed Jesus to consume us and transform us so that we look more like Him. These are the fruits of the Spirit that can be found in Galatians 5:22-23:

LOVE

JOY

PEACE

PATIENCE

KINDNESS

GOODNESS

GENTLENESS

FAITHFULNESS

SELF CONTROL

Now, friends, I have to be frank with you…sometimes the way I respond or act does not reflect that I am full of the Holy Spirit. Especially when it comes to the lack of respect that I experience from men when I walk down the street or when people up the price and try to take advantage of me when they see my skin tone. These, sadly, are things that I experience often and really push me to gird my tongue. 

But I want to be better. I want to be someone who oozes Jesus. Where my Bible is worn from studying the Word and my life is a testament to this. The kind of person who knows how to speak truth in love, keep her heart tender towards others, and who can let things roll off her shoulders.

 That’s why I made this list. There are sins that I have been wrestling with for so long. There are some days where I feel like I have overcome some of these struggles listed above, but then something will happen and I respond in a not so loving way that brings me right back to my sin pattern. This is why I need the Holy Spirit. 

Shoot, we all need the Holy Spirit, am I right?

Galatians 5:16 says, “I say then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire for the flesh.” I have this jotted down in the open column next to this verse, “If we walk by the Spirit, we crave what the Spirit craves and the desires of the flesh are less appealing as we have the Spirit’s lens.” 

I want to be clear that the battle of our flesh does not just go away when we have the Holy Spirit in us. Unfortunately that is not how it works. BUT–the big BUT– the Holy Spirit gives us the conviction and strength to turn from temptation. When we live by the Spirit, we no longer want to gratify the flesh. But from the deepest parts of us, we long to honor Jesus in public and in private which is why we no longer crave the things of this world. We instead crave the things of the Kingdom. And as we write the Word of God on our hearts, ask God to forgive us our sins, and we seek to honor Him in all we do…then comes the fruits of the Spirit gushing out of us. 

And so I ask you, when you look at your life, are you producing the fruits of the Spirit? Is your life led by your desires and emotions or by the Holy Spirit? Are your decisions made using your worldly lens or your eternal lens? 

As disciples of Christ, the world looks to us. Sometimes for hope, sometimes for wisdom or guidance, sometimes to see how we respond in crisis, and also sometimes to see if we are real Christ followers or just people that say they are in order to make themselves appear as righteous. 

So when people look to you, will they see Christ in you? Will they recognize that you are someone who is not just preaching Jesus but producing His fruit too? Does your life show Jesus?