Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.
Sharing our lives, our love, and our faith.
Sometime shortly before 7:00 CDT this evening, Lissa and I will have been married for exactly eight years! They have been eight crazy, amazing, scary, challenging, wonderful years. We left everything and everyone we knew in western New York to go to Dallas with nothing but jobs and dreams. (At least we had the jobs!) We struggled to find a church home where we both felt comfortable yet challenged to grow, and we were richly blessed. We bought our first house. We went on a mission trip to Serbia. We had Brennan. We became debt free except for the house. We were trained as financial counselors. We grew in faith — in ways we never could have imagined — together. (Still so much growth to do!)
This past year or so has been especially trying...and rewarding. We heeded God's call to again leave everything and everyone we knew in Dallas to go to Nashville and truly serve God in my work, something I had been praying about for years: work that matters. We worked (and worked and worked ...) on the house to prepare it for a sale. We packed up everything and moved it to Nashville, uprooting our entire little family and throwing ourselves into chaos.
This year has been unbelievably hard. We have struggled, disagreed, worked tirelessly, argued, cried, prayed, and, at times, cracked. But, through it all, we did it together, with God's provision, guidance, and grace. There is no one else I would want — or who would have been able 
— to have shared this time with me.
I love you, Lis!
Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.
Congrats!
Dear Jim and Lissa,
Congrats on 8 years of marriage!!! Stephen and I celebrated 7 years this December and it is no small feat!
We are so glad you guys moved to Nashville and that Melissa is serving on the MOPS ministry. What a huge difference she has made by sharing her many talents for the glory of God! We send you guys blessings for the New Year and pray for this to feel more and more like your earthly home everyday. You have proved to be His disciples, for Luke 14:33 says, "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." and you will be richly rewarded for your obedience; "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life (Matt 19:29)."
God bless you guys!!!
Love,
The Sharpes (Stephen, Jenn, Sadie & Sophie)