What I'm Looking Forward to in August & Highlights from July

Another month has passed. Don’t you wonder where all those days went? I certainly, do. So here’s a little bit of a look at some of the highlights that made up the month of July for me:

• My husband and I celebrated our two-year anniversary on July 10th. In some ways, it feels like it’s barely been that long at all, and in other moments it feels like it’s been so much longer than that. Either way, it’s thrilling to know that we’re slowly building our marriage, stone by stone, lesson by lesson. That’s why, alongside this milestone, I kicked off the new series Secrets of a Newlywed. We celebrated our two-year anniversary quietly with, what felt to us, like a swanky brunch out, since we don’t eat out nearly as much as we used to!
  
  
• I also used this month to get my freelance endeavor off the ground a little more, by launching a new website, which you can see here. (I also added a little button that links there in the sidebar.) I built the site myself over the course of a few days and have also pitched a few writing ideas around to new publications, although no bites from those ones just yet.
  
  
• There were a bunch of blog posts that I wrote this month, from sharing my favorite gadgets in the kitchen to an update about how my garden has been growing. I think my favorite of all this month’s posts, though, was one from the Secrets of a Newlywed series, Let Your Husband Lead. I really want that series to be transparent about the struggles we face in marriage. This post, especially, took a lot of vulnerability to write about areas where I have had to make the conscious decision to let my husband lead, because, more than anything else, it was admitting my weakness as far as wanting to have control. I hope that in doing so, it provided inspiration to some of you reading!

And here we are, with August already at our side. Here’s some of what I’m looking forward to with this next month:

• Experiment more with photography, thanks to a new camera I got that allows me to manually adjust more of my settings. I’ve been reading through this 31 Days to a Better Photograph series and learning quite a bit! I would also like to tackle the 30 Day Photography Challenge I came across on Pinterest at some point.
  
  
• Continue to forge ahead with my freelance writing. Right now, I’m reading through a couple of books about freelance writing (I’ll share more about them later) and I’m taking the whole process step by step, trying to tackle one thing at a time. I would love to be able to pitch an article to a new-to-me publication this month and have it get picked up for publication. We’ll see!
  
  
• I’d also like to commit myself more to journaling during my Bible-reading time. This is a practice I pick up and put down frequently, and I think it really impacts my retention and ability to dig in to Scripture when I take the time to journal and note-take as I go. I’m also looking forward to praying more intentionally for other people through the Women Praying Boldly initiative that I just started. I have been asking over the past couple of months that the Lord would give me more of a burden for intercessory prayer, and I think that this is part of developing that passion. If you want to sign up, there’s still time!

So there you have it. The calendar flips from July to August, and we find ourselves with a blank slate, a new string of days just waiting to be written. Goodbye, July. Hello, August!

Do you have any favorite highlights from July? What are you looking forward to during the month of August?

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