Archive for Marriage
Last day to enter giveaway!
Posted by: | CommentsToday is the last day for the giveaway for the book Reading Your Male. Go here to get all the details! 
Book review and giveaway – Reading Your Male
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Author: Mary Farrar
ISBN: 978-1-4347-6871-1
Genre: Religion, Christian Life, Women
Pages: 303 pages
Publisher: David C. Cook
Rating: 4 stars (you can look here to read about my rating system)
Mary Farrar has written a fabulous book with a peek into the male mind. After much research, she does a fabulous job in this book of explaining how our men think, what they expect out of life and marriage, what issues they struggle with, and how we, as their wives, can best be their helpmate. Men and women are so different in their thinking and their emotions and I would recommend that every wife or soon-to-be wife read this book. It can be a tremendous help to your marriage to understand what your husbands needs are and how to best fulfill your role as his wife. The most important aspect of this book, in my opinion, is that everything she says is from a Biblical standpoint – she explains how to fight the enemy with God’s truths.
I received this book from Phenix & Phenix and they were kind enough to send a couple of copies so that I could have a giveaway! So, I’m excited to announce my very first giveaway on this site!
- For 1 entry eligibility, just leave me a comment – you can just say, “I want to learn more about my man” if you want
- For 2 entries, leave a comment and also subscribe to my blog through email by entering your email address in the subscription box at the sidebar then come back and leave another comment letting me know you did so
- For 3 entries, do both of the above and twitter or blog about this blog post leaving a third comment letting me know you did this as well.
I will have a drawing next Wednesday, September 30th, for both books. I will e-mail you at the e-mail address you use to comment to let you know you have won and to get your mailing address.
Adultery = Destruction
Posted by: | CommentsThere is no way around that. Adultery and destruction go hand in hand. Adultery is based on lies and deceit so how can it be anything but destruction? I shared a couple of days ago about how adultery leads to disaster and yesterday I shared how to reduce the risks of adultery. If those points haven’t convinced you that adultery is dangerous and a very bad choice, I hope that what I share with you today will.
As I pointed out in the previous two posts, this series that I’ve written are based on points taken from our pastor’s sermon that he shared this week from a series called How to Wreck Your Life in 5 Easy Steps. Adultery is not something I have ever had to worry about in my own marriage. My husband and I have had our share of problems that we’ve had to deal with but adultery has never been one of them. We are both 100% committed to each other and making sure our marriage truly does last until death so doing things to jeopardize that by doing anything inappropriate with the opposite sex has just never been something we were willing to do. So as our pastor began preaching this sermon we were, quite honestly, cracking jokes to each other at the beginning when he talked about the percentages of people who commit adultery by the age of forty because it’s just so foreign to us! (Being that we are both so close to forty we were saying we don’t have much time left to make the statistic. Of course we were TOTALLY kidding!)
As the message went further and further, though, it really began to get to me. When he reached the point where he began to talk about the destruction to the family I literally lost it. I was sitting in church just weeping. I think my husband was a little concerned at first (not that he became unconcerned mind you!) but then he figured out why I was having so much trouble and whispered in my ear to ask, “Are you thinking about your parents?” Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. You see, my family was ripped apart when I was a young child and it is still devastating. That’s not something that ever goes away.
One of the most powerful statements our pastor made through this whole sermon was when he said that you need to visualize the destruction that this will cause if you are anywhere close to thinking about adultery. He said to think about telling your children that you are leaving the family and destroying everything you have built so that you can go be with another person. That’s when I lost it. Because that’s what my dad did. Not that he sat down and told us that but he left and went to be with another woman. He created another family for himself and left us behind. I would go visit him at few times throughout the year each year as I grew up but things were never the same again. I did not get to grow up with a daddy. I did not have a father there when I needed one. I still don’t have a relationship with him and, for the most part, I have moved on and I’m okay with that but deep down it still hurts very much. There are times, even as an adult, when a girl just needs a daddy. I don’t have that. And it really stinks!
So, if you are thinking that an “innocent” business meeting is no big deal – think again. If you think that an “innocent” business trip is no big deal – think again. If you think that talking to the opposite sex about anything personal – especially your marriage – is no big deal – think again. These things, and SO many more, lead to the path of destruction called adultery. Protect yourself, protect your spouse, and protect your children – don’t put yourself in situations that have the potential to lead to disaster.
You know, we all may sit and think that it will never happen to us but it really just takes little steps here and there moving in that direction and then, before you know it, you’ve done something you shouldn’t have. Watch the sermon. He gives a GREAT example of little steps that a lot of people probably think are innocent that will lead to disaster. You never know, it might save your family.
How to reduce the risks of adultery
Posted by: | CommentsYesterday I shared with you five steps you could take to commit adultery and ruin your marriage. I hope you found that you were able to say that you weren’t doing any of those five things! Today I want to share with you ways that you can radically reduce the risks of committing adultery. Proverbs 5 is a great passage to read to help you beware of how dangerous it can be. I encourage you to go and read it.
Just as I mentioned yesterday these points have been taken from the sermon that our pastor preached this last week at church. I would highly recommend that you go and watch it. It may be one of the best investments in your marriage!
Anyway, to continue on…
The important thing to remember is that you need to do whatever it takes to reduce the risks of committing adultery. Here are five steps to help you with this:
- Keep a growing relationship with Christ. If you are seeking to serve Christ in all that you do you are much less likely to stray in your marriage.
- Never be alone with the wrong people. You should never place yourself in the position of being alone with the opposite sex. Not only can it be dangerous but it just gives the appearance of something bad. If you were to have a business lunch with the opposite sex and someone you or your spouse knows were to walk in and see you dining with that person, what would they think? Would they assume something is going on? Always protect yourself by having another person with you.
- Never talk badly about your marriage with the wrong people. This is SO important! Once you start talking about the problems in your marriage and the bad things about your spouse not only does that person only have a negative image of your spouse but if you are confiding in the opposite sex about your marriage you are becoming emotionally intimate with them. The only person you should be sharing with is your spouse! Things cannot get worked out unless you are working together. If things are bad enough that you feel like you need to talk to someone else seek a trusted marriage counselor for help – not the shoulder of a friend or co-worker.
- Surround yourself with strong marriages. Our pastor gave a great example for this – if you are surrounded by people who think it’s okay to cheat and commit adultery what’s going to stop you from doing it? You will become so used to the idea that people cheat that you will do it without a thought. Surround yourself with people who have good marriages, who care for their spouses, and who cherish the vows they made when they got married.
- Avoid all inappropriate places and situations. Just as I said before, a business lunch with the opposite sex is not appropriate. You should always do things in groups if it’s business related and if that’s not possible then just don’t do it. Have phone meetings or meetings at an office where there are plenty of people around – not a restaurant setting with just two of you. At my husband’s office there are men and women that work in the same office and the set up of the office is one large room with two smaller offices off of that. My husband and his boss have made the rule for the office that the men will never leave one man there if any women are still present and a man and woman are never to be in one of the smaller offices with the door closed. It’s just safer for everyone involved that way. I trust my husband completely and don’t worry about what he might do but I really admire him as well as his boss for taking this stand and making sure everything stays completely appropriate. Not only does that show respect and boundaries for the women working in the office, it shows honor and respect for the wives of the men who are not there with them.
The main thing that you need to be doing, besides all of these great tips, is investing in your marriage. If you are pouring your heart and soul into your marriage and your spouse you are much less likely to feel like you need to seek attention from outside of your marriage and your spouse will be the same.
What five steps do we have to accomplish this?
- Get transparent – be totally real with your spouse
- Get alone – have a date night every week – spend time with just your spouse
- Get spiritual – pray together
- Get help – if things get bad seek help from a trusted counselor
- Get n*ked. I think that’s self explanatory.
Our pastor shared a quote that I just LOVED that I’d like to share with you: If the grass looks greener in someone else’s yard – it’s time to water yours! Isn’t that awesome! We don’t get green grass without taking care of it and we don’t have a great marriag without taking care of it. Invest in your marriage and your spouse and you will reap the rewards.
The last part of the series is equally imporant as all of these things so I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for the rest. I will talk about the destruction that adultery causes and my first-hand experience growing up in broken home.
Take care and happy marriages!
Adultery – it leads to disaster
Posted by: | CommentsOur pastor gave a powerful message this weekend. Of course, he usually does but this one hit a little close to home for me. You see I come from a broken home and it really stinks. I was little when things went wrong in our family so I can’t tell you exactly what went wrong from first-hand knowledge but from all indications and outward appearances I’m pretty sure that steps toward adultery were a large cause for the destruction of our family.
Anyway, our pastor is doing a series called Five Easy Steps to Wreck Your Life. The title of the series and the promotional videos are catchy and pretty funny but the subject matter definitely is not – and it shouldn’t be. This is serious stuff and too many people in our country have decided it’s no big deal and/or normal for this kind of behavior to occur. The first week, as you’ve probably already gathered from the title, was about adultery. I want to highlight his sermon this week in what will probably be a three-part series but if you have thirty minutes I would highly, HIGHLY recommend watching the message online. Whether you are a Christian or not and if you are married or ever plan to be married I promise it will be good information for you to hear.
First some statistics:
Up to 65% of husbands and 55% of wives will commit adultery by age 40. (Journal of Psychology & Christianity)
Percent of people who actually marry the forbidden lover – 3%
Percent of those marriages that end in divorce – 75%
The odds of a lasting marriage as a result – .075%!!
Pretty unbelievable stats, huh!!
So what things can pretty much guarantee that you will wreck your marriage and commit adultery? I’m glad you asked! Here are the five things our pastor gave us:
1. Neglect your marriage – if you aren’t paying attention to your spouse and making sure to invest time in your marriage it will suffer. It’s not a matter of if but when.
2. Enjoy common interests and form an emotional bond with someone else – if you are spending time sharing your thoughts and feelings with the opposite sex or if you are finding things that you enjoy doing and doing them with someone other than your spouse you are heading for trouble.
3. Anticipate time together – if you are sitting around thinking about the next time you’ll get to see this person and looking for ways to make that happen those are some serious red flags!
4. Flirt whenever possible – do you spend time flirting with people but saying you are just “friendly”? Flirting is flirting and you shouldn’t flirt with anyone but your spouse.
5. Make excuses and rationalize your actions – many people will say they aren’t committing adultery if they haven’t actually had s*x – that is 100% not true. Matthew 5:28 says “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Any time that you are spending intimate time with someone – even if it is “just” talking – you may not be physically cheating on your spouse but you are cheating emotionally. Just don’t do it!
If you have found yourself doing any of these five things you should really sit down and evaluate your marriage and how you’ve been treating it. Is is important to you? Is your spouse important to you? Are your children (if you have children) important to you? Hopefully you answered yes to all three of those questions. If so, I would encourage you to really work at fixing what’s wrong in your marriage. Watch this sermon – it will help you! Most importantly – pray for healing and seek help from a trusted marriage counselor. It can change your life!
In the next part of this series I’ll talk about what you can do to reduce the risks of committing adultery.
You may have already seen this but…
Posted by: | CommentsI HAD to post this here! This is one of the coolest videos I’ve seen in a long time! I just love how excited and happy they all are! And what a celebration! It’s just awesome!!
One of the many reasons why my hubby is the best of the best
Posted by: | CommentsI just have to take a moment to brag on my hubby and share with everyone how wonderful I think he is. He is so good to me!
This weekend is not quite turning out as I’d planned. I wanted to spend time working on the yard and cleaning house today – getting everything in tip top shape since tomorrow is Father’s day. You see, my husband is a wee bit on the OCD side and so it makes him really happy when things are sparkly clean. I also wanted to plan a special day for him for tomorrow and make him feel extra special since he is so special to us. This all came to a crashing halt after last night though.
For the last several days my neck has been hurting – not too badly but enough that I’ve been taking ibuprofen in larger doses than I would typically take in order to try to dull the pain and get some good motion back in my neck. Well, each day it seems to have gotten a little worse and last night just went way over the top.
I woke up about three o’clock in the morning in excruciating pain. I really could not even move because every movement just shot unbelievable amounts of pain through my neck and back. I had some pain medication in the medicine cabinet that was left over from a surgery I had a couple of months ago so my husband helped me sit up, propped me up on several pillows, and got me a pain pill. By then, it was about three thirty in the morning and instead of rolling over and going back to sleep -something that for sure wasn’t happening for me but something I tried to convince him to do – my husband turned the TV on and found a show on the DVR that we both like to watch together and stayed up to watch over me and keep my mind occupied with something other than my pain, checking on me ever so often to see if the drugs had kicked in. Unfortunately, they never did take the pain away completely but they did dull it enough that I could lie back down (with his help) and I did fall asleep again. My husband did not lie down and go to sleep until he knew I was okay and that I was (somewhat) comfortable.
For some reason the pain that I’ve been having as been worse at night but then kind of recedes a little during the day so I was hoping to wake up this morning to find that it was feeling better. Well, I was still in a lot of pain this morning so he did everything he could to take care of me and try to help the situation. It just wasn’t getting any better and I was finding it difficult to even sit without even moving without a lot of pain so we ended up going to one of those clinics that’s opened when doctor’s offices aren’t opened to try to figure out what was wrong and get some help. (He wanted to take me to the emergency room but I just really didn’t want any part of that!)
Just a side note here: Can I just say that having to get in a car and ride somewhere was one of the most horrible things to have to do considering the tiniest movement of my head would cause pain so bad that it literally took my breath away. I told my husband that nothing but actual childbirth comes close to rivaling the pain this is causing!
Anyway, through all of this my hubby has been the most amazing, most caring, most compassionate man and he’s made me feel so loved and cared for. Not that he doesn’t on a regular basis – he absolutely does. It’s just that this was supposed to be his weekend, he had things he wanted to be able to do this weekend and I had things I wanted to do for him and with me not being able to move very well at all it’s kind of messed that up yet he has continued to push all of those things aside and devote his time and attention to caring for me. Could a girl be any more blessed? I am so thankful that he is in my life and he is mine.
(Just in case you’re wondering, the doctor just said that my muscles had probably just tightened up slowly over the week for some reason – I don’t know why – and they tightened up to the point that they are causing spasms and it’s spreading to other muscles that are connected to the ones where it started. He said I could double the dosage of my pains pills plus he prescribed a muscle relaxer. I’ve taken the pain pills and am feeling a little loopy already (so forgive me if something sounds a little loopy with this post! haha!) and the pain is actually subsiding a little - finally. Hopefully within a couple of days I’ll be back to normal. I was so tired of sitting her staring at the walls though so I had to occupy myself with something! Why not blogging! )
Marriage
Posted by: | CommentsMarriage is one of those things that requires a lot of work and dedication. Both people have to be willing to give and not just be takers. It’s not just about emotions or “feeling” in love – it’s about being in love and making the decision every day to love your spouse. No matter what. We need to remember our vows and be there “for better or worse, for rich or poor, in sickness and in health.” Remember those words? A lot of people seem to forget them after a little time has gone by. They decide they aren’t “in love” with their spouse any more and dump them for a newer model. It’s so sad. I believe marriage can be the greatest gift from God if we follow His plan for it.
My husband and I celebrated eighteen years of marriage last week. I think there are probably some who are surprised that we are here. We’ve had many struggles, many hard times, and days where we just plain didn’t like each other. We have always said that we would stick together no matter what though and here we are. And it’s been worth it all. I love my husband more now than I ever have before. We started dating almost twenty-one years ago when I was sixteen years old so we’ve had a lot of growing up to do together. It’s been a bumpy but very fun journey. Because we stuck together we have the two greatest kids in the world and a family life that is unbeatable. God has really blessed us for taking the stand for marriage and sticking through no matter what.
Household Management
Posted by: | CommentsI’m taking a little break from sharing about homeschooling fears because a new idea was on my heart to write about. I was in a great Bible study not too long ago that has some fabulous homemaking lessons. The Bible study was really great because every other week it had a lesson from Titus 2:3-5 which says:
3Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. 4Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, 5to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
and on the other weeks we had a lesson on some type of homemaking skill. One of the ones that I loved was on household management. It gave me some really great ideas for taking care of my home. The verses for the skill sessions were Proverbs 31:10-31.
One of the most important things we can do is make sure that our husbands feel loved and appreciated when they get home from work. My husband is a neat freak so one of the ways that I try to show him that I love and appreciate him is by having all of the clutter picked up in the living room and our bedroom before he gets home. When it was colder outside I would even light some candles to give the house a nice smell and ambiance for when he walked in the door. Now that it’s warmer outside and still light when he gets home I try to have the windows open for fresh air rather than the candles burning. I also try to have dinner ready or almost ready by the time he gets here. That way we can all sit down and eat dinner together and he doesn’t have to wait long if he’s really hungry. In your home this may look completely different. You just need to figure out what would make your husband feel loved and appreciated and then do that.
The really cool thing about all of this is that when I started doing all of these things my husband didn’t actually see me doing most of them since he’s at work but he did notice all the little things here and there and I could tell he was happier and more relaxed all the time. It really did make a difference between us – for the better.
Another thing they talked about in this lesson was meal planning and grocery shopping. Many of the things they talked about were things I already put into practice but I did learn a couple of new things. One important thing to do is always have a menu and meal plan. Even if you don’t think you can stick by it every day, if you have it there to consult it makes meal time go so much smoother. One of the ideas that was new to me was using 3×5 index cards and listing breakfast, lunch, and snack ideas on them. I did that and hung them on the fridge and now I can look at those to get ideas for those meals when I’m not sure what to make.
One more area that really helped me in this lesson was chores for my kids. They suggested a wonderful idea of having zones for the kids. I broke their room into seven zones and each day they are responsible for cleaning that zone. That way, when their room is really messy, they don’t get overwhelmed at the thought of having to spend hours and hours cleaning their room. If they tackle each area a day it only takes a little bit of time and the room never gets completely out of control. I will say that I can see a big difference in my daughter’s room on the day that her zone is her floor! She definitely doesn’t take after her daddy.
Body Clutter
Posted by: | CommentsI just finished reading the book Body Clutter: Love Your Body, Love Yourself
I’ve been doing a Bible study at my church called “Keepers of the Home” and we are learning how to improve ourselves in so many different ways. That’s one of the reasons I was inspired to read this book and I’m so glad that I did. If you’re looking for more ways to improve yourself and your life I would also highly recommend A Woman After God’s Own Heart®
So, if you’re looking for a couple of good, life-changing books check these out!
