About Me

I have to admit that the "About Me" section has always intimidated me.  How do I wrap up who I am in one simple little summary?  The truth is that I am still figuring out a lot of who I am and what my story will be in this life.  But then again, aren't we all?


So I guess I will get down to the basics.  I'm Amber, married to Josh, and mom to the world's 2 cutest, (and sometimes sneakiest) kids.  The most important thing I can tell you about me is that I have given my life to Jesus. You will read a lot about that here on my blog, as I dish out the ups and downs of life as a Christian and what it means to really walk by faith and not by sight.

While I first came to know Jesus as a little girl, I began to really walk with him as a teenager. When I was 16, I found myself with a lot of questions and a deep desire to really know who God was and what exactly He wanted for my life. I remember crawling inside my closet one night with my Bible and just crying out to God.

I just prayed for God to show me what He wanted from me. He spoke clearly that night through His Word and told me that He didn't just want my heart, but He wanted my life. I surrendered fully to Him that night and I committed to serve Him until the day I die. That's where things got interesting!

Shortly after that, I was on a plane to China. I spent 15 days on a mission trip that changed my perspective completely. I fell in love with serving Jesus and others. It just so happened that my future husband-to-be was holding my hand when the plane took off. God called him into the ministry during that same trip.

Fast forward a few years and the picture looks a little different. Josh fought his call into ministry and lived a season of rebellion. I also found myself looking for love in the all the wrong places (yes, just like the country song) and got my heart broken in a big way. As Jesus put the pieces back together, He brought Josh back into my life. I knew the first night we went out that I would marry him.

 
Today, we have been married for almost nine years. It has been a roller coaster ride! God has allowed us to travel through some major trials, but each one has refined us in a unique way. We have walked the perilous path of infertility and lived through the loss of life as we said goodbye to two babies through miscarriage. We have prayed over a premature baby in the NICU and surrendered his very life to God while we waited for morning.

We have visited the mountain tops of ministry while we watched people meet Jesus for the first time. But we have also traveled through the dark valleys when people in the church can be hurtful and selfish, rather than focused on the kingdom's work.

Some lessons in life came easily, but others were so hard that God had to teach us again and again. We've learned that marriage and family must always come before ministry. But marriage is always made stronger through ministry, just as ministry is strengthened by a healthy marriage.

Today, you can find us living by the ocean on the beautiful coast of North Carolina.  In the late summer of 2011, we literally sold everything except our clothes, our pets, and the kid's toys and we moved away from all that was familiar.  God called us to this community and we just showed up with a few boxes, a couple of carsick kids, and a lot of questions.  


Since then, the journey has been an adventure to say the least.  Josh began the preliminary work for planting a church, only to be interrupted when he went into heart failure, requiring an emergency open heart surgery.  We were thrust into the deepest valley yet as fear nipped at our ankles, but God faithfully has carried us through, one day at a time.

Today, we live with great hope and absolute healing!  Josh is pressing on towards the call to reach this county. I spend my days homeschooling our little ones, and working from home as a freelance writer. In the months and years to come, we look forward to following Jesus however He leads!

I hope you will stick around to read more of our story as it unfolds. I invite you to come along for the ride as I navigate the world of being married to a church planter, mom to two great kids, the chief procrastinator of housework, and the queen of occasional cooking disasters. 

As I share each triumph and failure, I invite you to join me and we will "Chase the Son" together.  Each day, I'm trying to be more like Proverbs 31, God's description of an awesome Godly lady. As you read, you will soon see that I'm just a southern girl and a far cry from my Proverbs 31 role model, but I'm doing my best and Striving for 31, one mishap at a time.