July 2020 — pg. 25
urfm You are the church
time building our intentional relationship with God.”
The couple began making church attendance and weekly date
nights priorities, and they examined their career goals and spending
priorities.
“We realized when Nick got sick that all of the things we’d been
working toward, suddenly didn’t matter,” said Alyssa, who recalled
conversations from Nick’s hospital bed in which they discussed “how
many hours we had spent just earning a paycheck to pay for a house
we were hardly ever in because we were always gone because we were
always working.”
Career advancement suddenly wasn’t as important.
“We made a complete shift when he first got sick, and that was an
incredible two and a half years of my life. I was able to work from
home almost right away,” said Alyssa, who took a new position doing
content creation for a local startup. “I actually left my position as the
chief operating officer of an incubator here in Seattle because there was
no way to balance those hours.”
When she started dating Jay, she let him know, “I don’t live my life
according to money. I don’t live it to try to earn a paycheck. I buy most
of my stuff secondhand. My focus is on God, and my focus is on my
family, and then it’s on taking care of other people, and eventually I
want to build my business better.”
Sharing Openly
The book also reveals Alyssa’s own battle with Behcet’s disease, a rare
autoimmune disorder causing blood vessel inflammation throughout
the body.
“I’ve had so many incredible conversations with people who are
going through their own chronic pain and chronic illnesses,” said
Alyssa, who thankfully has not had an attack in four years.
“I choose to believe that I am fully healed in Jesus’ name,” she said.
“Every once in a while, I have something that hints a flareup might be
coming, and I use the tools that I’ve learned about anti-inflammatory
eating and exercise, and general stress and anxiety care.”
Along with her health challenges, Alyssa discusses mistakes she
made when she moved from Washington state to Florida for a year
and dated a man who was part of a church worship team.
“For me it was very important to share about my experience in
Florida, because I think there’s a popularity in choosing what looks to
be correct to the rest of the world. There’s a popularity in picking and
choosing things from the Bible, and the outline that God gave us for
His version of our best life. We like to pick that apart and say, ‘Well, this
one doesn’t make sense. Not sleeping together before you’re married,
that doesn’t actually make sense in this day and age,’ and it’s really easy
to fall into that trap,” Alyssa said. “I’ve lived that life of trying to put
my own lines in the sand and change them from where Jesus has put
those.”
+ Nick and
daughter Austyn
+ Alyssa and Nick
+ Jay and Alyssa
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