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Oh Beloved One, Agoura Hills, CA (2026)

10/17/2025

1 Day ‘Til I Do / Isaiah 26:3-4

3 You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
4 Trust in the Lord forever,
for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

I have been feeling so many emotions in the past 48 hours, and I don’t know if I can truly even unpack them all. Instead, I look to my anchor verse: I am focusing my mind on God, full of trust, and letting the peace wash over me.

Today is my last day as Amanda Brown. I truly feel like I’m becoming a new person tomorrow. I can only hope I do even more for God and am an even better person as Amanda Westlake. But I will always look on my single years with fondness at the absolute COLOR OF LIFE I experienced.

As Amanda Brown I started this blog/account/magazine. I’m not sure what the next chapter looks like for it, but I’m grateful for the impact it made on my life.

I’m sure I’ll be too busy to post here tomorrow, so I’m bidding you all goodbye and when I’m back from my honeymoon I hope I have lots of fun projects ready to start on. ❤️

~ Amanda Brown

10/16/2025

2 Days ‘Til I Do / Psalm 121

I loved that this was today’s passage, because of the closing verse: “The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.”

Nearly ten years ago, I got my first car. I remember my mom showing me a thin piece of paper, shaped like a fortune from a fortune cookie, but it was orange and thicker. 🧡 It was a Bible verse—the same one as I typed out above.

She then taped it to the car dashboard, and I felt such peace wash over me. I knew her mama’s heart was nervous about this new step in freedom, and all the responsibilities and even danger that came with it.

That verse sat there for many years. As it was bright orange, my eyes flitted to it almost every time I got in the car. When I got a new vehicle, I brought that verse with me and adhered it to the dashboard again, the pilot of all my drives.

Somewhere between here and South Carolina, that little verse got lost. But it still lives in my heart. I know every time I turn on the car, hit the gas, hit the brake, get on the highway—God is protecting my going out and coming in.

On Saturday, I have a new “going out.” I am going out into a new chapter, the chapter of marriage. And I know God will protect me in this beautiful, sacred covenant. ❤️

10/13/2025

5 Days ‘Til I Do

This time last year, I was a bridesmaid twice in one month and then I attended a wedding as a guest. So, yes, three weddings in one month! ⛪️

I remember the shadow of jealousy creeping on me when the engagement announcements had come through, because I’d been very much single at the time. But I had immediately taken it to God, because I was NOT about to let jealousy take away the joy of this moment. I was able to celebrate all three weddings with no grief of my part (it did help that shortly after my declaration of intent to not be jealous, I started dating 😉 but that was part of God’s answered prayer!).

I feel another full-circle moment is that now, after standing by these three women a year ago, I get to go down the aisle. I would NEVER say the “when you’ve settled on being single and have true contentment, God will bring you a man.” That is so unbiblical, and a form of the prosperity Gospel.

But those moments where I’d TRULY accepted that if I was destined to be single for the rest of my life, I would take it, because truly the only thing I need is God—I needed that moment of self-sacrifice. Because it is now my anchor. I know that Ben is an addition to my life, but not THE pillar of my life. Marriage is a gift from God—I am not owed it, I don’t deserve it. But somehow God decided that’s what He has in store for me.

10/12/2025

6 Days ‘Til I Do / Nehemiah 2:1-8

Well, it’s Wedding Week! 💒 I could honestly cry—from excitement, from relief. I’ve played the day over in my head a hundred times, but at the end of the day, I just really want to be present and soak up every second. Getting tot his day hasn’t been easy, but it’s ALMOST. HERE.

In my Bible study for today, I saw how Nehemiah went into a difficult conversation with the king—he prayed. This reminded me I should go into conversations with Ben, especially if they’re serious, with prayer. These words will build the fabric of our marriage, and God forbid that in my comfortableness with him I grow more snippy or lackadaisical. I don’t want my gratitude for him to turn neutral.

I’m excited to fill our wedding day with prayer. I have spots throughout the day, like prayer pit stops—one during breakfast, and then a special one with friends right before I walk down the aisle. Ben is going to pray curing the ceremony, just to fill it with blessing. And when we get on the road to our honeymoon, I again want to fill that act with prayer.

My challenge to you is to pray more this week and see God work. ❤️

10/10/2025

8 Days ‘Til I Do / Titus 2:1-8

I’ve always loved lists of characteristics in the Bible. As I kid, I felt I had to collect them like stamps, but now I realize I can let that list wash over me, pray, and then continue on in life. Because if I’m walking with God, he’s growing all of these in me all at once.

I don’t have to work on gratitude on Tuesdays and self control on Fridays. And thank goodness, or my planner would be filled to the brim! 🤣

10/09/2025

9 Days ‘Til I Do / Joshua 24:14-15

Life requires a choice: who will you serve? No one gets out of this question. Refusing to answer is only siding with darkness.

I am building a little family in 9 days. In it, Ben and I have a conviction that we must show people God’s love. That life with God is so much better.

We must show daily that we have chosen who we’ll serve: God, the Lord Almighty. It’s not a one-time commitment, but a daily choice to keep walking.

Because what we give our time to shows who we serve. How we choose our coworkers shows who we serve.

How we treat our spouse, or talk about them when here not there—that shows who we serve.

It’s a task no human can do alone, which is why I will have to reeducate myself to God every morning, asking Him for the strength to be a good person. I feel like just to get through a day without making a net negative impact, I have to really ask God for help…and even then maybe I’m just making it out of the day in neutral territory. 😅

Who will you serve?

10/08/2025

10 Days ‘Til I Do / Mark 10:6-9

This verse is so cool, because you see here that this sacred covenant we partake in—marriage—is bless by and performed by God. Something supernatural happens when you make vows: God is there with you, in that moment, joining you together into one flesh. How special is that? And he works with us to make sure we don’t break that commitment.

As wedding day approaches, I feel different things. Sometimes it’s this sacred holiness, the weight of the covenant I’ll make on that day. Sometimes it’s the super silly goofy joy of new love, the kind that bubbles up inside and makes you feel like a toddler again.

Day of, it will probably be a mix of everything. I’ll let you know. 😉 I’m sure I’ll write the most floofy, dramatic blog post of my life!

10/07/2025

11 Days ‘Til I Do / Genesis 12:1-4

I loved that this was today’s passage, because it was this passage which God impressed on my heart when I first moved here. I felt he was calling me to an unknown land in a faith-fueled move.

And now, again, here it is—God calling me to an unknown land, the land of the married. Filled with great responsibility, but also great partnership, it’s a land riddled with many battles.

So, once again, I look up to God and I say “I will do this in your strength.” I hope to be good and kind and bless Ben, and become a better person who extends the love in my heart to others outside our home.

And it all starts with saying yes to moving to an “unknown land.”

10/03/2025

15 Days ‘Til I Do

I didn’t think I’d ever have this moment. 👆Trying on wedding dresses, designing invitations, all that girly and oh-so-sweet wedding stuff.

Two years ago, I cried myself to sleep. I told God I couldn’t get married, because I didn’t know how I could ever trust someone enough again to promise them my life. 🙏

The rose-colored glasses had come off.

I had truly seen how well people lie. How cruel they can be, even when you give them only kindness.

And yet, that night, I added a solemn disclaimer: God, I want your will and not mine. If marriage is in the cards for me…I’ll do it. But you’re going to have to perform a miracle. This is going to have to be SOME guy for me to feel safe again.

Well—God took me up on that disclaimer.

I found my miracle. ❤️

Never underestimate the power of a heartfelt, tear-adorned prayer in the middle of the night. God hears us all, and He took me up on my disclaimer. I hope he saw in me a still scared but ever-willing spirit.

10/02/2025

Seeing my little life getting packed up is more emotional than I thought it would be. 📦

I’ve been so focused on wedding planning that I didn’t even stop to think about what I’m losing (because what I’m gaining is so much richer).

Almost 5 years. I did life for 5 years there. That apartment was my SAFE PLACE. ❤️ It has seen so many versions of me. It has held my crafts, my thrift finds, my baked goods. It was exactly what I envisioned in my 12-year-old mind. There, I was a woman with a purpose, and with freedom.

Freedom to go to coffee shops every Saturday morning and write a really terrible first draft of a novel. 🤣 Freedom to decorate it however I wanted: red and pink and green. Freedom to lose myself in books and cinema with plot lines and visuals that spoke to me. 📚

On that final day, when Ben and I have emptied my 430-sq-foot abode and scrubbed the baseboards and picked up all the bobby pins—I’ll probably need a moment to say bye.

After all, I blessed it when I first moved in, praying for a hedge of protection (as spoke of in Job). And God raised up that hedge of protection, and I was safe there. Emotionally, physically, mentally. ❤️

I will always be grateful for my time in that apartment. It truly healed my soul, after years of health battles and feeling incompetent and then wrestling through the heavy weight of mid-pandemic loneliness.

Out here, I was made new.

And in marriage, I will be made new again.

10/01/2025

All our lives are an engagement. 💍

As much as I am anticipating my wedding, we are anticipating one day being reunited with God in heaven. I just take the anticipation I’m feeling and multiply it by 10. And then I consider that one day soon I will understand what it is to have a wedding day, and I will multiply that happiness and joy by 30 bajillion because that is the joy that I will feel when we reach that wedding day of being reunited with God.

During this engagement time, I have prepared my heart. And just like that, the entire time of my life, I have been preparing for the ultimate wedding day.

17 Days ‘Til I Do 💍 ⛪️

09/30/2025

18 Days ‘Til I Do / Proverbs 3:5–10

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean in your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

In trust, I moved to California five years ago.

It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, but I KNEW it was God’s path for me.

Time and time again, I see how trusting God makes all paths straight. That doesn’t mean they’re easy, but they’re sure. God opens door and closes doors to guide us through this labyrinth. Instead of trying to find a map or get an overhead view, we must learn to trust God to get us out of the maze.

In this maze, I feel I’ve reached a refreshing pit stop, in 18 days, I get to marry my best friend. The one who makes LA truly feel like home. I’ve always hesitated when I say “home,” but now it fits because my home is wherever Ben is.

Won’t you rust in th LORD with all your heart and see what wonderful paths he has for you?

Oh Beloved One

10/17/2025

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