The truth comes out...

Okay so here's my blog confession. I have some typical excuses for not keeping up with this thing like business, full time job, ministry, being a wife etc, but here's my honest one.
I DON'T KNOW HOW TO WORK THIS STUPID THING!!
Its so annoying wanting to blog but not having a 5 hour chunk in any day to figure the dang thing out!
In case you haven't noticed I dont even know how to add friends to the side of my page to click on, I have to go to Summer's page and click on everyone from there.
Also putting pictures on here is drama. I click on the image thing and it adds all of the pics to the top and I have to drag them each down to their appropriate place in the story of my blog. And it takes FOREVER to do that. I dont know how to add a link either which is annoying because it cuts out some of witty banter points when I can't say, "too see for yourself click here..haha!"
So without friends on the side, and without pics, and without links to enhance my witty banter I think my heart has just given up. Not to mention the few times I've written a freakin novel and somehow the whole thing has gotten erased!!ugh!
anyway, so I'll update soon. I just need some blogspot 101!

Mel

1031...This is for you!

Jamey's been asking me to post this bad-boy for some time now so I thought I would!! I couldn't decide what to title this blog. In honor of my old roomies I chose the title for 1031...but a close second was "Now this is TRUE LOVE!"
Haha! I just wanted to give a shout-out to the joy of marriage! To have a best friend that loves you so unconditionally the way Jamey loves me, is ridiculous!
And although I was advised to throw out my teddy-pj's by my friends....I didn't. Jamey even says I look "cute" in this. He was the one who actually got out the camera to take the pic!
Don't worry, all you girls who spent good money on my lingerie shower, I still wear those sexy numbers too. But every now and then you just wanna put on a good-ole-fashion night gown....... (from elementary school)....and black-ankle-high-socks....(for warmth)
haha...kinda sad, huh??

The New family Pet!

L.A. trip!! and a little more...

Here are some pics from my trip to L.A. in early April that I promised I would post!!
There are random pics of Jamey and I at a yummy mexican restaurant in Hollywood, in our rented convertible (SO FUN), at his show at the Troubadour, and with some of my favorite people in the world (aka Cassie, Sarah, and Sean)!! Such a fun trip!!







































As far as what's going on now.....
I'm a little tired and in a weird mood so I'll do some bullets and see where they take me!

- Love my job!! Its so fun and so right up my alley. Praise God that I get up in the mornings loving what I do. (I don't love having tons of meetings...) but I LOVE getting to hang out with college students and international students!!

-Jamey just started recording his first major debut album! He sends me texts from the studio saying things like...and I quote...."I'm in guitar heaven!"....not too sure what that means, but it makes me happy that he's so happy!!

-LB moved to Fort Worth!! Praise his holy name on high! Its such a blessing having a good friend here, because although I love my job, and know my purpose here, I dont feel like I've made a ton of connections with people. Maybe I'm just spoiled from my old homegroup, or the days of 1031.... I meet people, and when I do..... I can enjoy them as a person, but in my 7 months here I haven't really felt a deep connnection with anyone except my sweet friend Tessa! But there's still time, and probably somewhere deep down inside I'm looking for a "new Dawn," or a "new summy/chavon" who loves Jesus, but is just slightly inappropriate, or a "brooke" who I can have worship sessions/dream about saving the world with or someone who gets my humor....you get the idea...geez the more I write, the more selfish I sound. So I'll end on the note that I'm just thankful Lauren is here!

- Lastly, I was reading in Luke 18 about the persistent widow and something about that parable grabbed me! I decided in my heart,...."I WANT TO BE THE PERSISTENT WIDOW".... Jesus tells the disciples in this parable, "ought always to pray and not lose heart."
Lately, I've had some weirdness between me and God concerning prayer. Part of my heart was walking in some serious unbelief and it was (and still is some) affecting my prayer life.
For some reason I've been feeling like my happiness and God's desire for his glory are mutually exclusive.
Example: Sometimes when Jamey drives home late at night from an out-of-town-gig I pray that God would protect him and keep him safe. (But I do so with the thought in the back of my mind being, "Well, I can pray for God to keep Jamey safe...BUT...he's not as concerned with me (somewhat good but mostly not good christian) having a long lasting marriage....AS MUCH AS HE'S concerned with his glory being made known. And maybe His will is for me to have a 4-month-long-marriage that ends tragically and I go around sharing my testimony and God gets the glory. (Now I know what you're thinking...unhealthy train of thoughts....dont worry....I'm fully aware of this) I'm sure I need some major "katherine-esque-theophostic-sessions" to get to the root of all this, but nonetheless....God used the persistent widow in Luke 18 to encourage me some. And all I know is that she begged and pleaded to an unrighteous judge and he granted her justice. So how silly is it to not ask God for something, on the off chance he doesn't answer the prayer...pretty silly, right??
.....at least I'm trying to convince myself of that truth
How sweet of God to show me a passage about His true character as opposed to the skewed one I tend to see through the lenses of at times...

Luke 18

1 And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. 2 He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Give me justice against my adversary.' 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'" 6 And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge says. 7 And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? 8 I tell will you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"

MUCH LOVE....

Mel

Much Needed Update!!

Hey friends and family...

Well first my apologies for being so dang M.I.A. as far as my blogging. Its been a CRAZY couple of months and to be honest a hard couple of months!!
But nonetheless I'm still alive and kickin' with a few stories to catch folks up on where I've been!!

Back in March I had the opportunity to go to Guatemala with our college group! It was an amazing experience but a trying one for me personally. First of all I was horribly sick the first 4 days of being there and I was barely able to participate in the activities.
Also I had some trouble getting my luggage.
If anyone knows me you know that I'm a horrible-last-minute-packer when it comes to overseas trips. Each time I usually deem it a "good idea" to start packing around midnight the night before an early morning international flight!! This trip however I decided to start packing a week in advance. And I was sure to pack just enough outfits, the right amount of hair product, underwear you name it! Well God, in his funny sense of humor, knew that my luggage wouldn't arrive until the day before I left to come back home!! AKA I had no clothes, no hair product, no clean underwear the entire trip.
Also some background on why I was sick was that I HAD to get my wisdom teeth out 5 days before I left b/c the oral surgeon said if I didn't get them out it would have been bad news bears! (well...he didn't say those exact words...but thats a paraphrase of what he said)
So what's the moral of the story???
I should go back to last-minute packing!!
j/k

This is me trying to recover from my chipmunk cheeks!
p.s. Did I mention I was the only one who didn't get their luggage out of 50 people?? (this was God's way of ensuring that I knew it wasn't a demonic attack on our team, but rather his divine hand in teaching ME an appointed lesson)
The trip was awesome despite being sick and my bag situation. God did miraculous things while we there and made the trip well worth the my little circumstantial set backs.
Here are some pics from the trip!!


Public transportation in Guatemala usually looked something like this!
This is me about to throw up on our ferry ride!! yuck!
No matter how dirty you are, you can always look cute eating ice cream! right??

So I come home from Guat and just a few days later my husband leaves for his national tour with a popular rock band from the 90's called Collective Soul.(remember that one song they did-..."Ohhh, Heaven let your light shine down...") Jamey is getting to play different parts California, and also Reno, Vegas, Seattle, Nashville, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana...just all over! As much as I wanted to be happy for him and his travels I was quite the opposite. Pretty much miserable. As of now we've been married 3 months but we've already been apart 29 total days. It may not seem like a lot to some, but it was really hard for me. However, I knew going into this that it wouldn't be easy at first.
We are and probably will remain at the mercy of Capitol Records for at least another year. It really is an exciting time for us, and will be more of a fruitful time the more I depend on Christ for strength. And if I were honest I was way more prone to "cry fests" and pity parties than I was at using my free time and empty house for more undistracted devotion to Jesus.
But God truly blessed us and we found a cheap plane ticket midway through the tour so I could go see him!!
I was able to go out and visit my hubby in L.A. and see him play at a place called Troubadour and that was a blast. He was amazing of course!!
I'll post some of our pics from LA on my next blog.

Finally, my husband came home from tour and I was so excited to have him back. I made him his favorite dessert that I had never made before. Flourless Chocolate Cake. (and I don't think it was near as good as the one his Grandma Lee makes cause he nonchalantly suggested I call her for help next time!! haha) He also had a sold out show at House of Blues in Dallas the day after he got home and it was so fun to be back in "wife mode" supporting him and the talent God has given him from the front row of the audience. Here are a few pics from that show!!

Isn't he the cutest thing ever???

This is the lead singer Josh.




Me and LB backstage enjoying free food & drink. Praise God for All Access Passes!! haha



Some of my high school girls came out to the show!! I think its safe to say that they are mildly obsessed with my husband!!

: )


Some of the folk from my college ministry were also there to hang out! This is our "Guat picture" of all the people that went on our Guatemala trip!




That's all I got for now! It took forever for me to upload these pics. Drama!

love you all
Mel

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Well I just want to brag really quick on my amazing husband!!!
We haven't really talked much about Valentine's or if we had any plans, especially because Jamey has been sick all week. We just decided to watch LOST (the best gift ever...well other than salvation and marriage of course) and make dinner at home!!

I woke up this morning and my sick little Jamey asked me to get him some water because his throat was hurting. I walk into the kitchen and to my surprise I find that at some point the day before he had bought me 2 dozen roses, Pino Noir (my favorite wine) and the most heart-felt card I've ever read. On top of that he has edited all our honeymoon pics, had them printed out and he put them in an album for me!! The sweet part was that he had woken up at some point in the night and put it all on display for me in the kitchen. (Hence the request for the glass of water)
Ah-mazin!!! I love my husband more than I ever thought was possible and I love little surprises that aren't even expected. So this blog was written to brag on him!!!

p.s. Did I mention that right when I was about to go hug him and thank him for my gifts that our 80 yr old german lanlord began banging on our front door to come fix our hot water heater that's been leaking in our hallway the last week.
Bom Bom!!
But by tomorrow we will have a new non-leaking hot water heater which means I might get to take showers longer then 5 minutes without the hot water going out! Praise his name for another great valentine's gift!!!


Here's some pics mere moments before Helga arrived......

It's official...we're bloggers now!!!

Hello friends and family...

Now that Jamey and I are officially married we thought the last thing we should do to truly consecrate our marriage is to....start a blog! So here we are! For those of you who don't know where we're at in life I will catch you up to speed!!

Jamey and I live in Fort Worth, TX in a cute little house that I am growing to love. Pics coming soon! Jamey is still in the band Green River Ordinance and plays lead guitar. The band is doing really well right now. They are signed with Capitol/Virgin Records and are expecting to go to LA at the end of March to record their first major debut album. Right now they spend their time practicing and writing potential songs for the album and flying to LA or Nashville to do co-writes with other musicians!!
I'm working at Christ Chapel Bible Church as the high school/college Missional Director (or a local missions coordinator). The job is a unique one. I get the opportunity to hang out with students and encourage them to live missionally. I also volunteer at TCU with international students which I LOVE to do. (It gives me so much life to love on them) and occasionally Jamey and I work with refugees, homeless, etc. It's a fun job...but not an easy one. When people ask what it's like I usually quote Matt Chandler (when I heard him speaking once about getting people in the church to "push back the darkness in the world") and he described it as difficult as getting people to climb Mt Everest in a speedo. I would agree that both are quite the challenge.

But I love where God has me in my job, in this city, and in my marriage. I can see how He's at work to redeem them all for his glory!!

So this is just a little "starter" but I will keep this up as much as I can. And I'll let Jamey give his 2 cents every now and then too. Being an avid reader/thinker (and was a philosophy major at TCU) he's actually a very good writer as well!!!

I'll leave you with a little encouragement he sent to me and a few of his friends the other day!!!


Psalm 22:27-28 27 All the ends of the earth

will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,

28 for dominion belongs to the LORD
and he rules over the nations.

God RULES over all the nations. He is king over the kings, the presidents, the government. The earth Belongs to HIM! God is going to do huge things. Jesus upholds every country! He has dominion over Fort Worth. He can do mighty things. He can save a city!! Lets pray huge things, because we have a huge God. Lets pray that no one will go hungry in fort worth, that jimmy gets put out of a job because we dont need police any more because crime stops (sorry jimmy it will just mean its time to be a preacher), lets pray that malls close down because people stop buying crap.

Love you all
The Ice's