Team Tuohy

There is a very precious thing in our life named Lincoln. He is by far the sweetest gift and we just adore him. You can ask any of my friends, and they will laugh and tell you that its pretty ridiculous how much we love him. The first year we were married and living in England I was struggling with filling my time and not missing home so for Valentine's day Mike surprised me with finding this little love of a puppy. When we first went into the home Mike joked that I was a goner due to this ball of fluff and his insane pinky of a tale wagging at rapid rate. We also knew when we saw the condition of the house that this dog was coming home with us no matter what. We learned with time that this was not the best home for him and are still working on eating habits that come from having been malnutrition, but the joy he brings outweighs that completely. He made the trip over from England with Mike and was a trooper through customs and all. Everyday he fills our life with laughter and we feel so privileged that he is ours! Lincoln is such a large part of Team Tuohy (he will always be Mike's "British Baby") and we thought he deserved his own post full of all his goodness that we get to gawk at each day (we will try to keep it to a minimum)...

Steals my heart every time!

Smooch!

He loves this!

Sweet Baby's First Bath

So Pumped, Cant you tell!

All snuggled up under there!

The Story Plain and Simple

Todd Wagner | 04-24-2011 | Selected Scripture

http://www.watermarkradio.com/



xoxo

Go Rangers!

Mackey's!

Walker's

Billman's

Hilarious!

Marshall & Parker!

Enjoying some baseball

Love this!

So Fun!

WE WON!

WE WON!

Love me some WMark Girls!

WE WON!

Perfect Friday Night!

This sticker immediately makes me smile!

Ernie & Bert

Yum Yum!

Happy Boy =)

12 years ago today I was in 6th grade running into my grandparents house with my baby sister after school to be greeted by our dad on the phone in Colorado. It is one of the very few times I remember hearing my father cry. It was a cry of sadness, devastation, pain and more than anything fear. Fear for what was occurring right around them and fear of the unknown that would come after it, for him and my mama were about to witness just how much would be lost that day.

Growing up in Colorado, Highlands Ranch, I had never been concerned with my safety nor had my parents to the best of my knowledge. On this day, however, the selfish act of two young men would change that forever. Not only for our small suburb of Denver but for cities all over our nation. It also meant that our sweet sweet family friend's lives would also be changed forever when those young men took the life of their son. I won't begin to pretend I know what that was like for them, from watching my parents cope with it though, I can only imagine it was unbearable. Often times it seems as if we are invincible, that the stuff we see on the news is devastating but would never happen to us or to our "people". However, each person on there is somebody's "person". This time it was one of our own, we are not invincible- each day is not a guarantee.

Our sweet friends are two of the strongest people I know and each year my heart goes out to them and I am reminded of the privileged in each hug and each "I love you", today is no different. I write this today as a reminder- I don't want there to ever be a day that we forget what happened and stop appreciating the gift of love and life. There is nothing we can do to change what has been done, however we can choose to never forget those beautiful kids who were tragically taken away and instead continue to push forward in love and truth in their memory. For each life mattered and deserves to be remembered; their story is not finished.

 Choose to love today, choose to wrap your arms around your family and squeeze tight. Call those who are distant and remind them of their meaning to you. Smile at the stranger in the elevator and be a light for life. Uncle Rich and Aunt Sue, I love you dearly and you are a testament to strength, courage and love- I know my parents agree- we are blessed to be a part of your lives. Danny, you will never be forgotten. Columbine, we love you.

Photo Credit

Our goal every week is to write about a verse that is changing our life as we memorize it with the context and meaning into our hearts. I will admit I have been "scripture crazy" recently- I just cannot get enough of His truth and all He promises to and for us. For week one I wanted to do one that is so dear to my heart.

“Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand" Jeremiah 18:6 (NIV)

In Context:
 ¹ This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: ² “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” ³ So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. ⁴ But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.  ⁵ Then the word of the LORD came to me. ⁶ He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. ⁷ If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, ⁸ and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned" Jeremiah 18:1-8

The potter was making a pot but he discovered a flaw. Possibly the potter allowed his hand to slip, knocking the pot off center on the wheel. At any rate, the pot was damaged. When a pot has been damaged, the potter does not throw away the clay,  the potter remakes the pot into another vessel.God said that just as the potter can use the damaged clay, He can make something beautiful from the ruins of our lives. (Commentary from C. Littlefield & J. Mallory).

How wonderful that our Lord knows we may slip and be damaged from His perfect plan due to our own sin or our life circumstances, but that does not mean He leaves us. Instead, He simply reshapes us into a new perfect plan in His wonderful and caring hands. He never lets us go.

I use to wonder what it looked like to God, our lives, how did He know all we were going to do with free will/live through - even the bad- and still have this perfect plan. It is because He is sovereign and constantly making something new and beautiful out of slime and mess. I often find it helps to put my name in versus such as these when I am in those quite and weak moments as it tends to sink deeper, "Like clay in the hand of the potter; so are you in my hand,_____________" mmm just the thought of being in his hand warms my soul and comforts me.What a truth that can free us from shame and inadequacy, from feeling as if we are not ever going to be good enough again. That is a lie and the truth to that is God is always using our story for it is His story, He does not allow those to end without some form of good. We don't need a Sunday afternoon, or a birthday or a New Years Eve to have a clean slate. He is already on it, wiping that flaw smooth and creating His masterpiece that is even better now than it was before.

enough said. 
 i love us credit...

Lately our world has relied on soaking in scripture and leaning on God to answer our questions (as it should always be). We have such a blessed life, but it is not without trials. If our life is easy peasy I would seriously question whose hands we were in =). This is not to say our lives should not be full of goodness and joy, I am just a firm believer as children of Christ living for Him that if we are not doing something to make the enemy tick, we are probably also not doing something that brings glory to our heavenly father. Think about it...

So today, we wanted to share some of the sweet promises that we are holding on to for they alone are truth. It is funny how I have struggled my entire life since becoming a believer to memorize verses, until now. When you need those sweet promises, and turn to those sweet promises daily- they penetrate your heart and are engraved there forever:

"The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still" Exodus 14:14

"The lions may grow weak and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing" Psalm 34:10

"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10

"Look at the nations and watch- and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." Habakkuk 1:5

"Trust in the LORD with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all of your ways follow Him and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5-6

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" Philippians 4:13

What sweet sweet promises are these. Man, Exodus 14:14 "The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still" how truly beautiful is that. Right now as Team Tuohy battles through some heavy stuff from my childhood this is huge for us. So often I find myself wanting to go to battle for my heart and my feelings, for what happened but I do not need to. As long as I am living with Christ, He will go to battle for me, I need only to trust Him in that and let Him do His works. For as it is promised in Habkkuk  His works are far better than anything I could believe, even if I were told. This sweet promise I am soaking in daily. I know the Lord has a plan for my life, my life verse since I was saved was Proverbs 3:5 which tells me this. However, I have still always wanted to push forward and plan our life; deciding where to go and what to do trying to sprint this race He designed to be a marathon. I can say with full confidence He is preparing us for something with all we are going through right now, I don't know what and so we wait with an open heart for whatever He is doing here, we only want His will to be done and are guarded of making it something of our own. As I told my sweet girlfriends the other day, I welcome that plan with giant open arms and so therefore I welcome all this yuck that it takes to get us there because I believe our God is good and I know He will do things with our life that are far greater than we can even begin to fathom. How he loves us....Until then we continue to hang onto these sweet sweet sweet promises full of love in hopes that we are constantly being changed to be more like Him along the way.

Have a blessed day sweet friends!

xoxo

The Flying Grape

Meet the newest edition to Team Tuohy- The Flying Grape. When We moved back from the UK last year we were lucky enough to still have my trusty Trailblazer waiting patiently for us. It was all we needed and was working out great, until Michael got his new job and his coaching job leading us to be headed in completely different directions. Got to love the lack of public transport in America (not that I was a fan in England, call me crazy but it scared me!). So we went on the hunt for a new car. Seeing as we are blessed to have relatively no debt we were nervous about making the jump to a monthly car payment (We are really pushing to always live off of one income so that we are as prepared as we can be for whatever tomorrow may bring!). On the flip side however, we could not find a used car in good condition for our price range. We spent weekend after weekend looking and Tuesday after Tuesday being encouraged by our foundation group to just hang in there. It was totally God's will for us, as He had a great opportunity in store for us right around the corner. A month of carpooling and craziness later an amazing couple from our church asked if we were still  in the market for they were ready to sell their old Honda and could not have been sweeter about the terms around selling it to us. Seriously, it is hard to not believe in a God when everything fell into place as it did. It was not necessarily what we had been looking for, but it was exactly what we needed and we are forever grateful for the opportunity that He placed before us. If you are patient and let His will be done, it is amazing to see how good it gets! The best part is that we are in love with this car, it is our first big purchase together, both names on the title and debt free. Every day I get in it I am grateful for each mile it drives me and reminded of the true goodness that the Lord has in store and the amazing things He had done with our life together. Our hearts are constantly changing and it is so exciting to see how great His plan is, it has been so far and always will be better than we could have ever imagined.

Whoop Whoop to many more years in The Flying Grape!