Fear and Marriage

Everytime I'm in the airport I feel the Lord speaking to my heart. I feel God has been saying over and over again that if your spouse doesn't challenge your deepest fears or your fears aren't brought to surface through marriage then you might not be in the will of God.

God is a God of love. 'There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out all fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.' 1 John 4:18

If God allowed us to continue on living with fear then we would not be in His perfect Love. And isn't marriage supposed to mirror God's perfect love for His people? I'm not saying we're all perfect or that we will ever have perfect marriages but I believe God uses the people closest to us to show us our sin, show us grace and to love us regardless. Just like Jesus.

I think of this when I'm in an airport because I used to have an intense fear of flying...And I married a pilot...And we travel...A lot.

Wouldn't satan love to drive a wedge in our marriage by causing me to fear what my husband loves? Every time I fly my imagination works itself up, imaging the worst case possible and yet I have a subtle peace that I'm where I'm supposed to be. Isn't that how the Lord spoke to Elijah? In a gentle whisper (1Kings 19:11-13). I also believe that the wife was made for her husband (1 Corinthians 11:9). And so if I was made for Nick, then flying is in God's will for my life. And therefore I should have no reason to be afraid, because if you are in the will of God what is there to fear?

Which, in a long, round about, probably very confusing way brings me back to my first point. If your spouse doesn't challenge your deepest fears or your fears aren't brought to surface through marriage then you might not be in the will of God.

Nick brought to surface an intense fear of flying (had to take xzanex when I flew), which was a deeper rooted sin in my life that the Lord wanted to heal. Its taken a while (I couldn't let go of it), but now I truly believe the Lord has healed me of my fear of flying! Praise God!

I say all of the above sitting in the Madison airport. Been here for 10 hours, oh the life of a pilot's wife!

ps this is my first blog post without pictures! i'll attach the pictures from madison in the negative degree weather soon :)

A Cold November

Nick and Whitney Do Michigan

Nick and his sweet grandma

Nick's dad and Barb took us to a winery while we were there. It was really cool! So of course I summoned them as models.

This nice man taught us about gourds. Quite interesting. They sell their gourds all over America, even to Martha Stewart!

Nick and Whitney Do Montana

So this past week Nick and I ventured out to Montana to visit Aunt Jeanie and Uncle Don (Nick's mom's brother). We entered a contest to be models for an amazing photographer in a ghost town...and won! I'll post her pics later but here is what we came up with over the past few days! 

Areo Plane

Trip 1: The Honeymoon. Costa Rica.

Out my window somewhere over Cuba...

This is how Costa Rica welcomed the Runyons, with an array of colors painted across the

sky and a beautiful rainbow. So of course being the excited tourists we were, we stopped and

tried to capture the beauty.

They love Jesus in Costa Rica too!!!

The local town down the hill/road

Out and about in the town near our resort

Nick being cool

More about this man further down

That little boy had a crab the size of his head in that bag.

Nick pondering the deep thoughts of life

So I really think Disney does the world an injustice. For at least 3 days I wasn't

to enthralled by the beauty we were encompassed in. I kept thinking we were at Epcot

or the Rainforest Cafe. However, once the initial thought of "this is fake" wore off, I was totally

enamored.

A hidden beach we found on a hike through a national park

Nick played soccer with the locals! And he kicked one guy in the balls...woops

chicken

my husband being creative!

This old man didn't speak a lick of english nor could he understand our broken spanish,

but we were able to make out that he makes chairs. Beautiful chairs at that, Nick helped him

load them into a truck.

A baby sloth!!!! Nick poked him while I took his picture!

Watching him move was like watching paint dry. It took forever but was really cute!

Above is the view from the beach at our resort. Nick is out there boogie boarding somewhere :)

Above is a one way bridge...made out of old wood...that we sat at for 30 minutes

while opposing traffic kept coming...and did I mention I stalled out in the middle and was sure we were

going to fall into the river below?

So if you're ever wondering where the best pizza in the world is

we found it, Hermosa, Costa Rica. Who woulda thought a Latin

culture would have the best pizza?

Can we say giant palm tree farm?

This is the volcano we visited on our last day in Costa Rica. We hiked to

the base of it and I even peed on some old lava rocks!

These lovely flies are eating upon a fruit of some sort at a roadside

fruit stand. Yummy, eh?