Four Powerful Words

June 29, 2015January 24, 2016 Mihaela Echols27 Comments

Companionship

Partnership

Children

Tending (the earth)

These four words are the words that are going to make our marriage work. They are our reasons for our mission: marriage. There is a power behind each word reminding us to die to ourselves and glorify God every day for the rest of our lives.

Let us define them….

Companionship:
The romantic part of our relationship that can not die out. If within our marriage we let romance die….we become slaves to a piece of paper and a ring. We glorify God when romance blossoms and grows.

Partnership:
Teamwork that is vital. We are partners with God to accomplish the things He has set out before us. Without God effective partnership between us could not exist.

Children:
As future parents we have an opportunity to pour Biblical wisdom, show Christ’s love, and be Godly examples for our children. By doing this they too will learn to love Him.

Tending (the earth):
This really is another phrase for nurturing our mission of marriage.

Marriage is the front line of the spiritual battled field. There is nothing like two people coming together and loving each other like Christ. Satan hates it.
As soon as we were engaged the battles were all around for Peter and me. Our patience and self control were being tested more so than when we started dating. I honestly thought that it wouldn’t be harder but when we say we are committed to each other and Christ it is harder.
My engagement ring broke the week he was leaving for Malawi. The week before that, my car was hit in the parking lot while his car was having problems too. Two weeks before the wedding both of our cars died and I didn’t have a phone.
All the little things kept getting under my skin. Old insecurities from my past were arising. We were in spiritual warfare. Although our eyes were up and our prayers were constant there were many times we wanted to take the “easy route”. But what seemed easy in the moment would only hurt us in the long run.
We have the choice to fight for our mission. Fighting for God’s glory is love. This is what we have been learning, applying, and treasuring for our marriage.

Written by: Peter & Mihaela

https://hylachamberlain.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/my-retreat/

Make Up

June 26, 2015October 6, 2016 Mihaela Echols13 Comments

Make up is a megaphone. It’s voice speaks volumes of a woman. Make up is a mask, a beauty, an art and a confidence. We love it. I love it. Shoot, I even sell it! Many who know me might ask “why don’t you wear it?”

I have a fear of letting it become my confidence. I want to leave my house feeling confident with out mascara. I love the expression make up can have and the voice it has, but I do not want to look in the mirror and frown like I used to with out it. (Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who’s The Fairest Of Them All?) Make up used to say “You are hiding, and you don’t like what you see without me” when I wore it all the time. Wearing it in different stages helps me find my balance in having fun with expression and still feeling good without it.

Ladies you already know where I am getting at. What does your eye shadow say? Or your lipstick? Or your favorite foundation?

Your make up has a voice and you know her best.

Do you like her?

My Retreat

June 24, 2015January 20, 2024 Mihaela Echols21 Comments

2 Corinthians 4:16-18
“Therefore we do not lose heart.
Though outwardly we are wasting away,
yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us
an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen.
For what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.”

“Malawi…Peter is in Malawi” I answer when everyone asks where he is.

He is gone for a month.

The first night away from him I was in a daze. I looked around. No one was there. Amen. No honestly Amen. It doesn’t sound like I miss him, but I do. There are countless times in a day I want to hear his voice or even watch my phone buzz knowing it’s him on the other line.

But he is not my everything. God is.

This is where God has us right now in our engagement and we are both happy because this month away is only going to make us stronger as a couple. Readers do not miss this part. I am not talking about our distance and lack of communication. I am talking about what we are doing in our month away. He is in Malawi serving missionaries, welding, and serving the people living there. I am on a retreat! This is our separate season and we are taking advantage of it by serving Christ. I am overwhelmed by how far God is bringing us as a couple and as individuals. I don’t know the girl I was a year ago. She is a stranger.

This retreat has been awakening to what God is doing in my heart. I have been able to catch up with old friends and get started on more ministry projects, and dive into the word. He is preparing me to become a partner, a companion, a mother, and missionary with Peter. Some areas need more work than others but pardon my progress. When Peter comes back he will be different as well. Both of us stronger in Christ than we were when we said good by for a month.

https://hylachamberlain.wordpress.com/2014/12/12/the-gentlemen/

https://hylachamberlain.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/going-to-the-chapel/

https://www.bloglovin.com/people/hylaechols-17002353

Dear Embarrasing Parents

June 16, 2015September 9, 2015 Mihaela Echols4 Comments

teen-girl-with-sad — Photo Cred: Unknown

Dear Embarrassing Parents,

I don’t think you understand the fellowship you are breaking with your child when you are posting negative things about them on the internet. Even if it’s a prayer request. Posting things like:

” Please pray….challenging child.”

“Look at what my child did when I said ‘no’.”

“Teens are soooo hard. “

“I need a night with the girls.”

“Pray for patience with kids today.”

You are only going to damage your relationship with your child. So…..

What are your motives with these posts? Maybe your intentions aren’t to hurt them and you actually want prayer. Call a friend, but don’t expose our child’s faults. They are still learning. How unfair to a three year old who is throwing tantrums-because that’s what some of them do–and their parents tell everyone. Three year olds do stuff like this. Manage it, dont expose it. Would you like it if your child posted stuff like

“Parents suck,”

“They never got me,”

“Need a sleepover with friends,”

on the internet for the whole world to see. Even if it’s set to private there should still be a privacy of the hard times kept between you and your child.

Do you think others don’t go through it? Everyone who is a parent will have at least one hard day with their child in a year. Posting these things makes me wonder if you are thinking you are alone in the parenting battle. You are not! Many of you have placed negative posts about your children don’t even have special needs. For the moms I know who have special needs children they don’t have time to complain. Why? Because they are counting their blessings when their child is speaking, sleeping through the night and simply playing. Parenting isn’t a cake walk.

Do I have children? No. But I know it would be hurtful to find out if my parents were posting those things while I was growing up. I would hide my personal life, resent them, and wonder why they adopted me in the first place if they were exposing my faults.

A childs Hero

The Little Girl Inside

June 5, 2015October 13, 2015 Mihaela Echols27 Comments

” Mihaela, dad wants to talk to you” I begin to sweat. It was Trevor’s fault. My twenty-four year old self kept repeating the same sentence in my head as I was approaching my dad. I was nervous. Even though it has been years since Trevor and I had been blaming each other for things the little girl inside me thinks, if it’s bad then it’s his fault.

This Summer I am getting married. But I can still say the little girl inside me is not dead in fact she is just growing. Her last name, her lifestyle, her home, and her family will change. But not her siblings, her desires, and her God. You see, she is still in me. The changes are not going to change her heart they will conform to her.

Peter will be my desire, my home, my family. He is an addition for my siblings and for my walk with Christ. The little girl who knows herself best Your Cup Of Tea listened to her heart and chose the change because she knew her God and her desires.

https://hylachamberlain.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/going-to-the-chapel/

Not This Time Satan

June 2, 2015October 13, 2015 Mihaela EcholsLeave a comment

An hour is all I get to show my Sunday school children God’s love, teach them truth, and life skills. It is still not enough, but this past week showed me its still impacting.

The weight of the responsibility of not only being intrusted with pieces of parents hearts but guiding them toward Christ was and still is a fear of mine. What if we they don’t remember what I taught them last week? What if I am teaching them the wrong thing? What if they don’t like me? The fears grew each week for months.

Fear has the power to paralyze.

But God is stretching me, and forming me especially in my new challenges. The past two weeks of being gone has brought tears to my eyes. I have realized how passionate I am about being apart of children’s walk with Christ and am amazed by my helpers and subs. I came back to children who were open to me. It amazes me how they trust us. But what really will always have a hold of my heart was last week’s lesson. The burden and fears were arrissing in me as I was talking about how Jesus died for all our sins. So badly Satan wanted me to give up because I was sharing the most powerful lesson of a life time. But not this time Satan. I continued.

Our lesson:

I asked them to get their hands in the dirt, happily they did. Then we talked about sin. “Sin is what makes God sad.” -Lilly. We talked about what makes God sad.

I asked them to make a line. They did. I spoke with each child about how God washed our sins away on the cross just like how I am washing their hands.

When we were making sin hearts and clean hearts I was overwhelmed! When a child is making sad faces on her flower sticker because it’s on the sin heart and happy faces on the clean heart I am in awe. What we are teaching them each week is making a difference. THIS IS WHY I TEACH SUNDAY SCHOOL! I am taking no credit. Parents way to go! Keep reading those Bible stories and speaking truth into their lives. I have seen so much growth in my helpers and my preschoolers these past few weeks and am thrilled to see where God is going to take us.

https://hylachamberlain.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/the-hidden-gifts/

The Hidden Gifts

May 27, 2015October 13, 2015 Mihaela Echols23 Comments

Have you ever wondered if what it would be like to impact someone’s life in a miraculous way for a living?

To know because of your work someone’s life is being impacted for the better?

Every day when I walk into the Miles Autism Resource Center for the past year I have become more stronger and more aware as a person. When I am working with the children I know they are also teaching me.

Each child has a gift that they are unaware of and our job is to show them just that. Some do not talk and leave speaking in full sentences. Some do not know to that a car rolls down a ramp, a ball bounces, and trampolines are to jump on. We show them how. The ones who can’t read, learn to read, write and spell. These children leave completely transformed all because some said “I will impact a child.”

As rosey as that all sounds there is a battle inside each child called Autism. Our job is to know how we can crack the code and know how to reach them. There is a life long commitment beyond just parenting for the parents and we are there to help. We will not give up. Some of them refuse to learn something new but we stick with them the whole way. If it takes thirty minutes for a child to sign cracker for a cracker then we are doing it right. Why? Because they now know we are not giving up on them by just giving them the cracker. Another battle won, communication. As silly as that sounds it’s real. Showing them the gifts they have by fighting every battle is worth it. The littles battles are the gateways of helping these children become transformed.

Knowing I am impacting a child for a living has impacted me.

https://hylachamberlain.wordpress.com/2015/03/13/what-drives-you/

Going To The Chapel!

May 10, 2015May 9, 2016 Mihaela Echols24 Comments

I have been blessed with the opportunity to love someone and be loved by someone for the rest of my life! Readers do you remember the writing The Gentleman? Well now I am marrying him!

It seemed like a casual double date with Zach and Jessica. We got food but then split because they were going to “check on the cars” When I was wondering where they went Peter suggusted we could walk on the doc. I saw them behind a van but thought they were just taking their sweet time meeting up with us again. I always walk a head so when I turned around he was down on one knee and asked. It was perfect! I said yes yes yes about a thousand times.

Peter and I met a funeral about three years ago in August. Both of us didn’t know the person who had passed but we were friends with the family of them. In the spring of 2013 Peter being the smooth move criminal he is hit my car and left a huge scrape. That is where it all began. It definitely was not love at first sight for either of us but our friendship started forming by doing favors and hanging out in groups. That Summer ministries were being launched including Project Hope. We were always talking, laughing and keeping each other posted on our running time when we would run. Even in our friendship Peter was always encouraging me, praying for me, and was there whenever I needed help with something. Last Summer when Peters and my friendship grew Peter started liking me. I of course, being afraid of someone as amazing as him possibly even looking in my direction, ran for the hills. He was patient with me, gave me my space, and was of course a gentleman. December 10th was when we were “official” a lot of people were hoping for us to date so when they heard they were ecstatic.

Here we are today blessed beyond belief with the opportunity to love each other as Christ loves us, forever.

Four Powerful Words

My Fantasy Birth Mom

April 25, 2015June 19, 2023 Mihaela Echols25 Comments

Would you meet your birth mom?

I have a fantasy birth mom. A lot of us adoptees do. She likes us. She can do no wrong. But some of us know that if we were to show up at her door one day she would ask why we came. Our fantasy would die. When I was twenty one I had four thousand dollars saved up. I know I had enough for a plane ticket. I bought a car instead. I know if I went to Romania I would go expecting something, but it wouldn’t be what I fantasized. I know my fantasy would die. So no I don’t plan on meeting my birth mom.

On my Birthdad

Jenga

April 18, 2015April 20, 2016 Mihaela Echols13 Comments

Session #6 The last session. Chapter 17

If we do not get together with those who share our purpose our lives could fall apart. I always think of the game Jenga. If too many pieces are pulled out, the tower falls over. That is what happens when we don’t come together with those who share the same purpose. If we try and walk alone with a purpose our purpose may seem less important. That is why there are churches and clubs.

My purpose is to glorify God in all that I do and that is why I go to church. We share the same purpose and we encourage eachother to press on by praying, helping those in need, and talking about how God is growing us in our personal lives.

For those who have read this book you know that I am only about half way. The next sections in the book build off of what the first section is about. I hope those who have followed have enjoyed digging deep, and doing my little activities.

Session 1 What Drives You?

Session 2 Where Are You Going?

Session 3 What Are Your Strengths?

Session 4 Walking With A Purpose

Session 5 All or None