jamie y. watkins

Author: jywatkins

  • 30 and Loved

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       I had a plan for this weekend. I thought, I can’t stop 30 from coming, so I might as well throw myself a party. So I was going to have my family over to our house yesterday, and then all my friends over today, but Chad had a different plan. Apparently, he’s had a…

  • Seeking Community: Bible Fellowship

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    For our third church visit, this past Sunday, Chad and I visited a Bible Fellowship Church just a couple minutes from our house. Like the Mennonite church we visited a few weeks ago, this church was small and friendly, about 30 people at the service.  Unlike the Mennonite church, it was not very diverse, but…

  • Seeking Community: Assembly of God

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    I wrote last week about our visit to a Mennonite church as the first step in a process of finding a new church community. I’m going to try to record my thoughts about each of our church visits. Our second visit was to an Assembly of God church just down the street. We’re staying local…

  • Seeking Community: Mennonite Church

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    Chad and I are in search of a church community. It’s been almost a year since our small church community disbanded, and we’re finally feeling strong enough to start looking for something new. We have a lot of ideas and a lot of opinions, and that’s good and bad. We know we want a small…

  • It’s the Little Things

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    jywatkins
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    Chad and I attended my cousin’s wedding last weekend. It was about an hour’s drive northwest through New Jersey and across the border to Pennsylvania. From where we live, we had to drive through Sussex County, where I grew up, the prettiest part of New Jersey, if I do say so. It’s very rural, contrary…

  • Marriage: An Exercise in Faith

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    Today is our fifth wedding anniversary. Five years ago, Chad and I had the most beautiful wedding ceremony at a gorgeous park. The day was bright and warm, even at 10 a.m. Our wedding guests were seated around a large round pond and my dad walked me down a grassy walkway to stand with Chad.…

  • Happy Birthday, Love

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    Today is Chad’s 29th birthday, and in honor of that, I’m going to give you 29 (of the infinite) reasons I love him. In no particular order: He’s so smart. He loves to travel the world. He takes very good care of me and Olive Oil. He’s very passionate about wine, and he started his…

  • Anxiety That Flies High

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    jywatkins
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    I love traveling. I mean I LOVE traveling. My family did not travel much when I was growing up. The longest distance we ever went as a family was a cross-country trip from New Jersey out West to Arizona, where my uncle lives. But I was eighteen months old, so I don’t remember a mile…

  • Bugs in the Garden

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    jywatkins
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    I find myself often thinking about God when we’re doing yard work. There’s obviously a natural connection between God and the outdoors, nature. Plus, working in the yard is often quiet work. Even if Chad and I are working on the same project– which we often aren’t– we don’t talk the whole time, leaving lots…

  • Subduing the Yard

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    jywatkins
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    When Chad and I moved into our house a year and a half ago, the front and back yards were completely overgrown. We had walls of evergreen bushes that blocked off whole sections of the yard in the back. We had pachysandra running rampant. We had a jungle of poison ivy, thorny plants and more…