God Only Knows

God only knows what you’ve been through. God only knows what they say about you. God only knows how it’s killing you. But there’s a kind of love that God only knows.

for KING & COUNTRY “God Only Knows”

Hey y’all! Thank you to those of you who messaged me in the past couple of weeks to see if I was okay since I did not post a blog last week. To be honest, I’ve been struggling a little bit over here. I’m hitting the three month mark of being over here, and I miss my life in Tennessee. I’m so thankful that I have an amazing husband though who has been doing all he can to help me out, plus I have some amazing friends who have checked on me everyday even when I didn’t want them to. It’s been getting better though in the past couple of days.

I really haven’t done much of anything in the past two weeks that are stand outs. Mine and Buddy’s anniversaries are coming up very soon. On February 21st, we will have been married one year. On February 26th, we will have been together for five years. One of my anniversary gifts that Buddy gave me early, and thank God he did, was a VPN. That is a virtual private network, and I had never heard of one before living over here. It goes through your computer systems and changes its location. For instance, hulu is not allowed to be watched over here in South Korea. I do not know why, but anytime I tried to watch something, it wouldn’t let me and would tell me I could not access the site. With a VPN, we have our location set in the States, so our internet thinks that is where my computer is so I can watch hulu now! I know it’s confusing, just know that I can now watch Grey’s Anatomy again!!!

The plus side though of having the internet know I’m over here in South Korea is that on Netflix, I get Korean dramas as an option to watch. And y’all, they are my new favorite. They are in Korean, so thank God for English subtitles. There is a brand new series called Crash Landing on You and it is literally so good, I might be more into it than I am Grey’s Anatomy and that is really saying something.

This past Friday, Girl Scouts started selling their cookies on base. So of course, I went as soon as they started selling. I love Samoas, Buddy loves Tagalongs, and I got a box of the Toffee cookies because Buddy loves everything toffee. It made me so happy to see the colorful boxes.

This weekend was also a good weekend because we spent everyday with the Austin Anton. On Thursday, I met Buddy and Anton at a taco bell on base for lunch, and Anton asked if when they got home from work, if we could take him to the Commissary. He has a moped, so it’s not that great for getting groceries. I told him no problem. So after the guys got home and showered, we all got in the car and went to get groceries. After we all got groceries and loaded them up in the car, I asked Anton if he needed anything else while we were out and he had the use of the car. He said he needed a pot, because we were going to do a chili cookoff that night for dinner, his versus mine. So thankfully because it was so cold (it stayed below freezing all week), we went into the PX. Anton picked out a pot, but as it often goes when we go to the PX, we start getting more and more items that we did not originally go for.

By the time we were finished in the PX and back in the car getting ready to go home, it was 7:30 and neither of us wanted to go home and cook. So instead, we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. Lucky for me, the Memphis Tigers were on TV playing basketball. I love seeing Memphis things here because it is so rare.

Even though Friday night is usually date night, Buddy and I decided that since we had spent the previous night out basically doing date night with Anton, we would stay in. So Anton and I did our chili cookoff then. When our chilis were done, Buddy and I went to Anton’s room to watch Zombieland Double Tap with him while we ate. I did not realize that Graceland and Elvis were such a big part of the movie, which I loved since it was something Memphis! Fun fact, dad and I know a guy in the movie too. Kevin King is a monster truck driver that dad spent many years racing with, and he had two of his monster trucks in the movie and did all the driving in the movie. He was also turned into a zombie and he had his own scene in the movie, coincidentally with one of his trucks! That was so cool to watch! I had seen all of the behind the scenes stuff on his instagram while they were the filming the movie, so it was really neat to see how it all played out!

Sunday morning, the boys and I got up and went to church on base. The church is called Agape Humphreys, and it is at the Four Chaplains Memorial Chapel. Even though all three of us grew up in a very traditional type of church setting, I decided to go to this service because of the church Buddy and I went to when we lived in Clarksville. The church mom and I went to when I was growing up consisted of fewer than 50 people attending, and that was on a good day. Mom and I were also the youngest people there, but I loved that church. Our last Sunday there was the Easter service my freshman year of college because there were not enough church members left there to keep the church going. But we sang every Sunday out of the good ole Southern Baptist hymnal with an amazing pianist. Even when I went to Union and tried finding a new church home in Jackson, I kept going to the more traditional services because contemporary was something that I saw good just for chapel services at school. When we moved to Clarksville though, we found LifePoint church. This church is huge, with stadium seating, and is very contemporary. The first Sunday we went though, we both felt immediately at home and like Pastor Mike made that sermon just for us. Once I figured out I had a classmate from Austin Peay go there too, we began sitting with her, which put us on the very front row. But I have never seen a church more on fire for the Lord than that church, and you could feel it in the air. I love that church. I still listen to Pastor Mike’s sermons through their app from time to time. People in that church also helped me get through some really hard and difficult times. I would move back to Clarksville just to be able to attend that church. All of that to say, LifePoint changed my mind about contemporary churches. I enjoyed the service on Sunday, but it will take some getting used to. I do think we are going to give the Traditional service, called Common Grounds, a visit this upcoming Sunday though. Anton kept asking me where all the hymnals were this past Sunday, since Agape uses projection screens. So we’ll see how that goes!

Today (Monday) I went grocery shopping and picked up our apartment. I also made Buddy several lunches for this week and prepared some food to have for dinners this week. I’m hoping to continue my productivity this week, including going to the USO as I only went once last week. There are several things I want to get done this week. Plus, it is Valentine’s this week, and it falls on date night! Because if it didn’t, we wouldn’t celebrate it. With our anniversaries being so close to it, we have never celebrated Valentines except more than a card and that’s basically because I worked at a Hallmark store for two years.