i will wait.

Savannah & I are currently in a women's bible study led by our pastor's wife, Heather. She is delightful. We are studying different women throughout the Bible and looking at how God used them. The idea is that we would understand that God intended us for a purpose. This week we are studying Ruth. As I was reflecting on this book I was in awe of God's timing. He is always on time, ya know? I say this as I am currently waiting. I am waiting for a promised husband. I am waiting to understand my next steps. I am waiting for dreams to be fulfilled, and most of all I wait with great anticipation for the coming of Christ.

Waiting is so very hard. If you've spent more than 5 minutes with me you will learn that I am easily one of the most impatient people you will ever meet. Ask Savannah. Bless her patient heart. When we are in a season of waiting we have to remember that God is always faithful. Ruth and Naomi were dealt terrible losses. Naomi became bitter (eventually she came around, though), but Ruth found hope and a new God. Ruth walked blindly in faith as she followed Naomi. She never expected to find a husband again, but in God's great kindness he gave her Boaz AND she was in the genealogy of Christ. Hello?!? That's amazing. What if she would have stayed behind? What if she would have left Naomi? She probably wouldn't have ended up married to Boaz or in the line of Christ.

I was talking with Heather the other day and she was relaying a story about Beth Moore. Please stop reading here if you don't love Beth Moore. We can't be friends. How can you not love Beth Moore?!?! Moving right along... in one of Beth's books she talked about getting so upset at the thought of her husband leaving her. She said God spoke to her and said that she needed to follow that story all the way through if she was going to go there. If her husband did leave her, then what? God would be there. If the worst thing imaginable happened to her, God would be there.

I share this with you because I want you to know that God does have a plan. He is not haphazardly orchestrating your life. Everything has purpose- good, bad, ugly, pain and all. God turns bad into good. The Bible gives us so many examples of this. He is simply asking us to wait and abide in Him. Do not fear. The people who have achieved great things for the Kingdom have taken blind steps of faith- some big steps and small steps. As you wait, ask God what next step do you need to take. You can be assured He will be calling you to walk closer to Him.

Let's wait together and stand united in the love and glory of Christ. Amen?!

love.

The other day I was judging someone hard. I'm sure you've never done that before, but I sure was. I had all kind of names for this person. He was bad, and I was good. That's what my judgmental, prideful heart said anyway. God didn't let that last for long. He was quick to remind me of my sin and that I was no better than this person. In a very loving and Father-like way, The Spirit called me a hypocrite. I immediately asked for forgiveness and prayed for the receiver of my judgment. I wish I could say all my sin was that neatly packaged and dealt with, but my self-righteousness holds out a little longer sometimes.

Anyway, the Lord has really being laying 1 Corinthians 13 on my heart these past few months, and He always leads me back to that Scripture. We hear it in just about every wedding we attend, but the words Paul writes apply to more than wedding ceremonies. They are so rich, and we can all be brought to a place of humility with these words even in our most prideful seasons.

Paul gives us a list of what love is and what it is not. Love IS: patient, kind, rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love is NOT: envious, boastful, arrogant, rude, irritable, resentful, and does not rejoice at wrongdoing or insist on its own way. Time out. Think about yesterday. Scan through your day keeping this image of love in your mind. Did you show you love? Raise your hand if you failed miserably. My hand is raised high, guys.

Ok Casey, so I'm a terrible non-loving Christian, what does that have to do with this blog? I'm glad you asked. Christian community MUST be rooted in love. Satan has divided so many communities and churches because we loved ourselves more than we loved our neighbor. My super judgmental moment the other day is why marriages fail and churches fall apart. We think we are better. Paul tells us that love never ends. Let me say that again. LOVE NEVER ENDS. Love rooted in Christ-not romantic love- never ends. That is music to my ears.

So join me in praying to have a supernatural love that transcends. The kind of love that is talked about in 1 Corinthians 13 comes only from Christ and resting in the Spirit. Our world will be completely transformed if we loved this way. Let's change the world, y'all!

video: what is joyce lane farms?

We did a video to better explain what Joyce Lane Farms is. We ramble a bit, so bear with us. 

starting from seed

In order to more easily know where our food is coming from, we like to garden. Now, last year was the first time either of us had gardened. I remember my grandma having a garden and I remember picking things every now and then but, I had never tried to grow anything until last year. We learned A LOT from our gardening endeavors last year. We failed at a lot of things but we also grew a lot of great things! And since it's about that time again this year, we found a legit place and bought some seeds! There are many reasons to start with seeds (and maybe it's not ideal for you this year) but here's why we are starting with seeds!

Last year, we had decided pretty late that we wanted to start a garden so we ended up planting a lot of transplants. If we couldn't plant the seed right in the ground, we bought a transplant. We also planted a lot of stuff. Needless to say, this became very very expensive. Especially since we were paying for all the supplies to build our raised garden beds and soil and pretty much anything you need when gardening. We were basically starting from nothing. So, we decided that this year we would like to garden in the cheapest and best way possible! And that can happen when you start with seeds and grow your own seedlings.

The other great thing about starting with seed is that you know where those seeds came from. It's pretty easy to buy seeds and know exactly how they came to be. It's not as easy to know where a transplant came from when you buy it at Home Depot. Now, don't get me wrong, you can probably find good transplants from someone locally that can tell you where they came from and how they took care of them but like I said earlier, we are in the business of saving money.

This year we got our seeds through Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. If you don't know where to buy seeds, we'd definitely recommend these guys! You can check out their "About Us" section and see exactly where the seeds are grown and how they take care of them. Our kind of place. Honesty and openness is always a good thing! Anyways, we are about to be getting into the actual gardening part so I'm sure we will have plenty of stories to share soon.

xo, Savannah

commune what?!

As mentioned before, Savannah and I dream of living on a commune one day. Most people hear the word "commune" and freak. They think of the movie Wanderlust and assume that a commune is a bunch of people sleeping together and smoking pot. Our friends at Merriam-Webster define a commune as, "a group of people who live together and share responsibilities, possessions, etc." The idea is very simple and dates way back when. Really the idea of having your own house (and car) and land is relatively modern.

Look at Acts 2:44-47:

"And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people."

Acts 4:32-35

"Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul and no one said that any of things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace as upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and it was distributed to each as any had need."

These verses make my heart soar!! What a beautiful picture. The first church shared everything. No one felt that anything was their own and they helped those that had a need. No egos were involved. They were united in Christ and they understood that God had given them everything they had. We have it so messed up in America.

So yes, we want to live like the first church. We want to share what God has given us. We want to lay our egos aside and love the community around us. If I have a lawn mower that I use once a week, why does my next door neighbor also need a lawn mower when he also only uses his once a week?! Our modern society has become so greedy.

This lifestyle can be achieved in many ways and can start small. Being able to buy a piece of land and have several families move there to commune together is not practical for everyone. However, we can start buy doing things like crop swaps (you grow vegetables and your friends grow different ones and you swap) or trading favors. Obviously the first step is finding people who think this way. Savannah and I have been blessed to have friends who are on board with the idea of communal living. Maybe this is a conversation you start with your friends or church community. They might be more receptive than you think!

must watch documentaries

Savannah and I love to watch documentaries. It's like a cheaters way to consume a lot of information. Obviously, you have to watch them with a bit of skepticism and do your own research because everyone has an agenda. Documentarians definitely have an agenda if nothing less than to make their movie a hit. We have a list below of some of our favorites. I'm sure they all have flaws but they were eye opening nonetheless. If I had to pick one for you to watch it would be Food, Inc. Stop what you are doing and watch it immediately if you haven't seen it.

Food, Inc.
Farmageddon
Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead
Escape Fire
Bananas*
Blackfish
Forks Over Knives
Half the Sky
Pink Ribbons, Inc.
Tent City, USA.
Collapse
Inside Job

Sometimes you watch these kind of documentaries and you are moved and overwhelmed all at once. Usually the emotion/conviction goes away and the feeling of being overwhelmed takes over and we do nothing. Been there. Lived that. We suggest to pick one thing to change or do. It doesn't haven't to be a grand gesture. Maybe it's using reusable bags instead of plastic bags. Whatever it is, do something. Satan loves for us to get overwhelmed and then stuck in inaction. We are not responsible for fixing the world's problems. Deal what is in front of you. Pray about it and ask God what one thing you could change. He will give you the strength to follow through if you let Him. Just do something!

new beginnings.

Where to begin?? Well, you may know us from our other blog, Oh So Pretty the Diaries. There you can expect lots of hair tutorials, DIYs, fashion-y stuff, recipes, etc. We decided to start this other blog to share our experience in trying to live more intentionally and to support businesses we believe in and not support "The Man."

As Christians we believe that we are supposed to be good stewards of the earth, our bodies, time, and money. The American Church focuses a lot on how we spend our time and money but, not much can be said for what we should do with the earth and our bodies. We strongly believe that the Christian church should be leading the movement in preserving the earth. For one we need to protect it for future generations but also we need to protect the earth as an act of obedience. We certainly don't believe that God intended for us to abuse His beautiful creation the way we have. In addition to protecting the earth, we want to do our best to support companies who make an effort to treat their employees and animals in an ethical way.

At the end of the day we want to worship God and we can do that by loving people and His creation. This is all good and wonderful, right? But it's really really hard. Almost impossible to never purchase something that hasn't been tarnished in some way. We want to help you start this journey. It IS hard but everyone can do something! There are so many things we can do and if enough of us do it, dang, we might change this crazy world!

Anyways, we've got plenty of goals. How are we going to reach them? For starters, we are committing to do the following for a year:

• Purchase only non-GMO foods and buy locally whenever possible. We are trying everything we can to avoid purchasing anything touched by Monsanto. We basically want to know where our food is coming from. Crazy, huh?
• Only buying used clothing or clothing purchased from companies that treat their employees well. Again, we want to know where our clothes are coming from.
• When the weather warms up (mid-March ish) we will commute by bike at least once a week. We'd love to regularly commute to work but at this point we don't feel that we can commit to that just yet.
• We will continue to use reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags and minimize the amount of plastic in our lives.
• Recycle. We've been terrible recyclers. Ahhhhh.

So follow us on our journey to better ourselves and tread more lightly on the earth in an effort to worship and the love the Creator.

Let's do this!

Casey + Savannah