True Love Stories Never Have Endings

I have been working on a part two for my makings of a Christian wife series, but God put it on my heart for the post today. I used to not like listening to sermons. Don't get me wrong, I love going to church and I love our pastor. But I never used to like sitting and listening to a sermon from someone else. I viewed it like I view audio books...I didn't want to listen; I am a reader.  But then I discovered Right Now Media thanks to my church. It is the Netflix for bible studies and I have completely fallen in love with it. Right now I am doing a study on changing the mind. It deals with issues like worry, anxiety, fear, and how trusting God and changing your mind can battle these issues. I have been struggling with anxiety and fear and today I finally realized why. I have not been happy with some circumstances that K and I have been experiencing. I haven't been satisfied with some outcomes and I have not been trusting God to change my way of thinking. I have been a...

It starts out as something small: The garbage not being taken out,  the mail piling up on the corner of the counter,  or not filling the sponge wand with dish detergent after he uses it.  I try my hardest not to nag him...so I let these things "slide".  What I really do is let them fester inside and they come to a boiling point... And this is what happened over the weekend: The pot boiled over. I was dealing with stress from several different areas of life in general and lately we seemed to be nit-picking each other. ALOT. I was getting aggravated with him over such little things. And the pot completely over boiled because I didn't let him know what was bothering me from the beginning. After a long talk and a melt-down on my part, I wanted to do something different than focusing on the things that he did that bothered me. We were better than that. We were letting the stress of life get to us and I didn't like it one bit. I started a new video bible st...

Recently, I have had this want to grow closer to God. I don't want to just be knowledgeable about the bible, (although inspired by my sister, I am on a quest to read the bible from cover to cover. As we all know, I am an avid reader and after talking to her about it, with all of the books we read...why not just read and study the bible from Genesis to Revelation? I realize that this will take a long time, but I am up for the challenge!) I want to really know God and connect with Him on an intimate level. I want my prayer life to be more than just praying in the morning and asking Him for the things of the day. Well to help me on my journey, I am three videos into this wonderful series from RightNow Media: It was exactly what I was looking for...how to have an intimate relationship with God when you have a busy life. Sometimes we get so sucked into our routines and busy schedules that we forget that we just need to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to Him and connect. Ma...

When I don't like a book, it is so hard for me to get through it. I have a hard time getting to the end. It's like a race you are trying desperately to reach the finish...who am I kidding? I know nothing about races. I don't run... Anyway...I started this book in April. I am a pretty fast reader. I try to read a book every two weeks; not ways possible but I try. So not even halfway through this one, I was desperately trying to finish this book. I really wanted to like it. I have grown to like year long journeys. I find them very inspiring. This book, however, was not inspiring.  Rachel Held Evans embarks on a year long journey of the Bible. In this journey, she will practice Old Testament customs and learn more about herself and her Christian faith. Or so we are led to think. What starts out as a month by month task list devoted to particular virtues (Grace, beauty, submission, valor etc) ends up a whine fest drowned with overtones of sarcasm. I was highly disapp...

Things have finally started to slow down over here. For the last month, I have been busy preparing my preschool class and classroom for the end of the year. This includes an end of the year production that the children get to be on stage and perform the two songs they have practiced since the beginning of the year. We had one little boy who knew every motion and word of the songs. We just knew he would be our star; however, we were surprised at just how he became our star. Instead of singing the words and doing the motions, he walked to the end of the stage stayed silent and waved to everyone and smiled the whole time. It was really funny and cute. We learned kids will be kids. I was reading a very interesting book that inspired this post. Rachel Held Evans, author of A Year of Biblical Womanhood, takes us on a journey of her quest to apply biblical principles to her life as a wife and mother, sometimes quite literally. Much like the children in my preschool, we prepare years for ou...

I have to admit...I was taken by surprise, but first let me explain. K and I just celebrated 16 years together. Here we are at his military ball in 2000. That is the night I said  "yes" to being his girlfriend and my whole life changed.  I posted this picture on facebook and was talking to a friend about it. She asked if she had known K was a veteran and I had to tell her that he was in JROTC for his high school. I bragged about some of the accomplishments he did while he was in JROTC. And then I apologized for bragging and what she said surprised me. She told me not to apologize because too many women complain about their husbands. She continued to say it was refreshing to hear someone praise their husband. After the conversation it really made me think about what she said. So many times I have seen on social media negative comments about husbands or marriage in general. This is what fueled the want to have this marriage blog in the first place. I understand every...

It's getting kind of ridiculous how many books I am reading right now. Not that I am complaining, it's just I have to be realistic to how many I can really read at one time. I read one fiction book, one marriage book, one non-fiction Christian book, and a regular non fiction. There are so many choices and such little time that I read one chapter of each. And now I also read on the treadmill since there is the nifty Kindle app that connects with my kindle so I can read on my phone while I am walking. Ah, technology these days. While walking on the treadmill I discovered this free ebook: I don't normally read books out of sequence...but I didn't realize that this is a part of a series until halfway through it. Even though this was book two, I didn't feel like I was missing anything from the first.  I am continuing my quest to find good, clean romances and this one definitely met my criteria. This book finds ER nurse Julie taking care of a former soldi...

K and I's 8th wedding anniversary is Friday. We have had 8 wonderful years. He is my best friend; God has truly blessed me with an amazing man. Usually for our anniversary we will go out of town, but this time we are indulging in being nerds and going see a movie we are highly excited about: Batman Vs. Superman. We are complete super hero nerds...We watch The Flash, Agents of Shield, Arrow. We love the Marvel movies. I love that we share this obsession. Personally, I am rooting for Superman, but we'll see! I have  posted before  about what makes our marriage great and what works for us. I started thinking about some things we don't do that also keeps our marriage strong. So I thought for this post I will talk about what we don't do: 5 things we avoid to keep our marriage strong: I will never post anything on social media degrading or negative about K. He trusts me with his reputation and trust in our marriage is so important. I don't want anyone thinking badly...

It's been a long time since a book actually made me feel convicted and made me question how I handle things.  Not that this is a bad thing...or a bad book; on the contrary...it was a great book. I absolutely loved it. But it was convicting for me. I finished it the other night. I have grown to love my mission to find good marriage books to share with you guys. For one, it gets me reading marriage books and I pick up lots of interesting tips.  This book was no different. The one thing that was so refreshing about this one was unlike most of the marriage books I have read so far, it was not a step by step on what you should do and not do. The author takes you with her on her journey of this experiment to discover what exactly it means to be a submissive wife. When she doesn't understand something or struggles with her role as a helper, she expresses it to the reader. I loved this writing style. It made it so much more personal. As I was reading this book, I start...

It starts with me saying something like "by the way, Noah is going to be sleeping over tonight". (Noah is our 4 year old nephew). Or one day telling K that I have invited family over for dinner. Because I just assume he is going to be ok with it. He never says anything; never says he is too tired or doesn't feel up to company. I just take it for granted and make the plans without consulting him first. That is the topic Sara Horn talks about in My So Called Life As a Submissive Wife: making decisions before even considering what our husbands think. In her situation, she took a job without talking to her husband about it. It's the feeling of wanting to be independent and making decisions ourselves. That we can handle what we take on. The chapter I read really convicted me about how I handle decisions with K. The problem with this way of thinking is that we don't trust our husbands to lead. I think we are assuming that by consulting them about things that involve...

Ok...you can say it. Or say it with me...I am a horrible blogger. Here it is almost 3 months since my last post. HORRIBLE BLOGGER. There are many excuses I can throw at you: I have started a new bible study on Wed nights...K and I are now going to Sunday school (now called life groups), work has gotten super busy, and for a week we had family staying with us. But all of that is my way of saying...I'm sorry for being gone but I am here. I just don't post all the time ;) I started reading a very interesting book: K and I spent a Saturday afternoon browsing Lifeway Christian bookstore and I stumbled upon this in the bargain section. I am only a few chapters in and I can say I am really glad I picked this up. Instead of doing a review of this book, I am going to treat it as discussion topic for now. As I continue through it, I am going to post about it. It raises some very interesting topics. The most interesting being  that dirty word we talked about : Submission. Sar...