Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 162

10 Ways to Make Your Evening Less Hectic–So You Can Have Fun Later!

Does your marriage suffer because by the time the kids are in bed, you’re just exhausted?

Today Jessica from Life as Mom and I are switching places to blog on this theme! Jessica writes amazing stuff about how to get organized and how to get your priorities straight, so I asked her to come on over to To Love, Honor and Vacuum and give us some pointers on how to stop feeling so exhausted at night–how we can put new habits in place earlier in the day so that we’d have more energy later.

And I’m joining her on Life As Mom on 5 Ways to Make that Transition from “Mom” to “Wife” at night!

Here’s Jessica:

Today’s the day to make a change. No longer will you drag your weary body to bed, exhausted and stressed. No longer will you be the only one to clean up after dinner, or worse, be the one to wake up to a sink full of dirty dishes. No longer will you be too strung out to enjoy time with your husband after the kids go to bed.

It’s true that family life is busy and sometimes hectic, but it doesn’t have to be! In fact, with a few simplifications, you can enjoy some downtime in the evenings, like a normal person.

Okay, it might not all happen in one night, but if you dedicate yourself to taking charge of your evenings, you can make them less hectic and so much more enjoyable.

Feeling exhausted every night? Learn 10 tricks to have more energy when evening comes!
Click To Tweet

10 Ways to Make Your Evenings Less Hectic
1. Know what’s on the schedule.

Whether it’s hockey practice, the big game that your husband does not want to miss, or simply your family’s favorite TV show, know what’s on the schedule so that you aren’t surprised when someone says he needs to be carted somewhere, resists coming to the dinner table, or balks about an early bedtime. The “with-it” wife and mom can avoid so many hassles when she knows what’s on her people’s schedule.

Take a peek at tomorrow am, too. What will you need to prepare for the next day? No one wants to be reminded of snack day or a science fair or baked goods for the office, as she’s tucking the kids in bed or slipping into the tub.

2. Have a plan.

Have a plan for your evening. And yes, it’s even okay to map out a little schedule. Since the time change, the minutes just seem to FLY by and we’re all going to bed later than we should.

Know what you want to do tonight to make the most of family time without wreaking havoc on your house or your mood.

3. Start earlier than you think it will take.

Whether it’s homework, housework, or getting dinner on the table, start early. So often we put off what we can do now, thinking we have plenty of time. Later we feel rushed. Start early and be ahead of the game!

4. Plan — and prep — your meal in advance.

Meal planning is a big part of how I keep my cool, feeding a large family. Don’t shrug it off. Everyone meal plans. It’s just that some of us meal plan while we’re in the drive-through line. Plan and even prep tonight’s dinner at least a few hours in advance. You’ll be surprised at how much heat it can take off.

5. Practice freezer cooking.

Want to chill out even more? Spend a few hours on a weekend and fill your freezer with some premade meals. A full freezer is a beautiful thing, especially when it means you don’t have to worry what’s for dinner or even have to make it.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t even need to invest hours of time. My current favorite method is to double (or triple) dinner every night for a week or two. In no time, I have the freezer full and can take a night off cooking whenever I like.

6. Do a quick tidy up — in the afternoon.

Household management books are rife with the suggestion to do a quick tidy before bedtime so you can start the day more easily. You and I both know we’d rather spend that bedtime time doing more interesting things than picking up toys and vacuuming.

Involve your family in an Afternoon High Five, five tasks that they do every afternoon. You get to decide on the tasks. The important part is that the heavy lifting in terms of cleaning and tidying get done before dinner. In this way, everyone can enjoy those final hours before bed, and YOU won’t be the one burning the midnight oil cleaning up after everyone else.

7. Take a nap.

For years, I shunned naps, claiming I didn’t have an extra 3 hours to invest in daytime sleeping. Learning about the power nap was a game changer. A 20-minute snooze is more invigorating than a cup of coffee and gives me energy to tackle the evening routine as well as enjoy time with my husband.

8. Divide and conquer.

We moms sometimes play the martyr card a little too often. I have to do this all myself, you think. No, no, you don’t. Ask your husband and/or older children to help with the household tasks that need to be done each evening: dinner prep, dinner clean up, finishing up laundry, taking out the trash, etc.

No mom is an island. But, no one can read your mind, either. Be specific about what you’d like help on.

9. Help your kids relax.

Kids who are stressed or riled up will have a harder time sleeping, let alone go quietly when it’s bedtime. Find ways to set a relaxing tone for your family: play quiet music, light candles, turn on the diffuser with some essential oils, enforce a device curfew, read stories.

Taking a few minutes to talk to each of your kids in a relaxed, hey-how-are-you-way, is not only a valuable investment in your relationship, but it’s also a great way to get everyone settled for the evening.

10. Find a way for YOU to wind down.

The life as mom is filled to the brim with good things and lots of activity. It can be hard to switch off the brain at night as it buzzes with all there is do tomorrow or the next day or the next. Yet, motherhood is kinda like self-employment. There’s ALWAYS more to do. We have to take time off intentionally because “free time” isn’t going to miraculously appear.

Time for some self-care, sister. Find ways that help you relax in the evening: drink a glass of wine while preparing dinner, take a bubble bath, trade your devices for a good old fashioned paperback, ask your husband for a massage. All these lead to a more relaxed you, a happier you, and most assuredly, a less hectic evening.

Do you suffer from exhaustion at night? Let me know what’s your best tip to stop feeling so exhausted when night time comes!

Jessica Fisher is a cookbook author and freelance writer, specializing in food and family. She writes about life, liberty, and the pursuit of a clean house at Life as Mom, and shares delicious ways to act your wage at Good Cheap Eats.

Get her free organizing ebook, Organization for Normal People, here.

 

The post 10 Ways to Make Your Evening Less Hectic–So You Can Have Fun Later! appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Reader Question: What does it even mean to be “Sexually Compatible”?

What does it mean to be sexually compatible?

Every Monday I like to post a Reader Question and take a stab at answering it. Today’s is from a young woman asking about how important sexual compatibility is–and how can you tell if you’re sexually compatible before marriage?

Having grown up in the church and believing that it is important to wait until marriage to have sex, I have never heard anyone talk about sexual compatibility or whether it’s even important. On the other hand, among my non-Christian friends, it is standard to have sex while dating to find out if you’re sexually compatible. I have a very high interest in sex and I am sometimes concerned that I will marry someone who isn’t as interested, or doesn’t really care about figuring out what makes me happy in that area. My questions are — what does it even mean to be “sexually compatible”? How can you tell if someone is a good match for you in that way without being sexually active before marriage?

If you don't have sex before marriage, how can you tell if you're sexually compatible? An…
Click To Tweet

Great question! Let’s look at a couple of broad truths and then I’ll try to give my answer.

Usually when people talk about sexual compatibility, they mean “does sex feel good for us”?

Do we turn each other on? Do we bring each other pleasure?

But here’s the sad reality, as Andy Stanley shares in his book The New Rules for Love, Sex and Dating:

You are sexually compatible with far more people than you are relationally compatible with.

I elaborated more on that point in my post on Andy’s best dating advice ever, but it’s worth noting again: just because you feel good sexually together doesn’t mean that you’re a good match. And often physical intimacy overshadows other forms of intimacy, and then we think we’re better together than we actually are. And soon the sexual fades, too. That’s why God wants us to wait for marriage for sex!

I’ve written before about sexual compatibility once you’re married; but today let’s look at how to think about sexual compatibility before you’re married, especially if you aren’t having sex.

A sexual relationship isn’t static over time

Here’s what people don’t realize when they talk about testing for sexual compatibility: sex changes over time. You may fit together great now, but what happens when she loses her libido right after she has a baby? What happens if he gets stressed at work for three years running and loses his libido? What happens if she goes through menopause and suddenly things that felt good for her once don’t feel good anymore? What happens if he experiences great healing in his life and suddenly becomes much MORE interested in sex now that he grasps real intimacy?

Changes in our health, our work situation, our age, or our kid situation will all make changes in our libidos and in our desires. They’ll even make changes in how our bodies react! That’s why this concept of  sexual compatibility is fundamentally flawed, because it assumes that two people will always stay the same. We won’t. My husband and I have switched places at times on who has the higher libido. We haven’t always found the same things or positions fun. And that’s okay, because we change together.

That’s why:

Sexual compatibility is about giving grace to one another and being generous to one another

The whole idea of sexual compatibility, as it is usually framed, is essentially a selfish one. It’s asking:

Will this person meet my sexual needs?

But God made sex primarily to be relational. It happens between two people. So the essence of sexual compatibility is not finding someone who meets your needs; it’s deciding, together, that you will both be generous to one another and give grace to one another.

The concept of sexual compatibility is fundamentally flawed, because it's essentially seflish.
Click To Tweet

If you’re the lower drive spouse, you decide that you will go out of your way to meet your spouse’s desire for more sexual contact.

If you’re the higher drive spouse, you decide that you won’t withhold affection if your spouse isn’t able to make love as often as you’d like.

If your spouse has hang ups because of past abuse or because of shame in his or her background, you work through healing with that spouse, you don’t get angry.

If your spouse has chronic pain, or suffers from pain during sex, you become patient and make allowances for that.

You view sex as something which should bring you together, and you never use it as a weapon against each other. You don’t pressure your spouse to do something which makes your spouse really uncomfortable–or that your spouse thinks is gross.

Which leads us to this point:

One’s character is a far better signal about whether you’re sexually compatible than one’s sexual prowess

When you marry, there will be times when you need some grace. Being with a spouse who expects you to always meet their needs is a recipe for a marriage fraught with tension. Being with someone who loves you and is willing to put your needs first, though, means that your marriage will thrive.

Focusing on whether you match sexually, then, isn’t the right question. It’s really: is this the kind of person who will make demands of me that I’m not comfortable with? Is this the kind of person who will withhold sex if they’re angry or if they don’t feel like it?

But aren’t there things we SHOULD be worried about when it comes to sexual compatibility?

Yes, but likely not the things you think.

There are issues like: what if his penis is too large or too small? But honestly, you can deal with these things. Different positions can make you tighter if he’s on the small side. (lifting your legs above his shoulders; rear entry). Similarly, different positions can help if he’s on the large side (traditional missionary position; using lots of lubricant).  Most people never really encounter many problems in this way.

And most things, like sexual skill, can be learned over time. You shouldn’t expect someone to know everything all at once, and it’s okay if it takes a while to get things right! Most women take a few years to reach orgasm during intercourse, and that’s okay.

The biggest causes of sexual incompatibility are not about how you connect physically when you have sex. They’re about what you demand of each other, expect of each other, and expect sex to be.

We think of sexual compatibility as primarily being a physical thing, but it’s actually more about one’s spiritual condition.

As I went to great lengths to explain in The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, sex isn’t just physical. It’s about feeling like you’re one. It’s emotional and spiritual intimacy, too. And it’s these things which are most likely to mess up a sex life.

For instance, one commenter recently wrote that for the last twelve years her husband has been insisting on tying her up during sex, because that’s the only way he’ll feel loved. That’s not loving. That’s a sign that he has totally misunderstood what spiritual intimacy is.

If a man (or a woman) has used porn in the past, their views of what they want during sex are likely to be highly influenced by pornography. They may insist on things that make their spouse feel uncomfortable, because porn tends to objectify the sexual partner and feed into this idea that sex is impersonal, and all about getting my own needs met.

If a woman (or a man) has grown up thinking that sex is somehow shameful, then they may end up thinking that sex isn’t important in a marriage, and think that their spouse is “an animal” for wanting it too much.

If a woman (or a man) has been sexually assaulted or abused, or has been exposed to porn, they may find certain sexual acts so revolting that they can’t do them, even if they’re relatively run of the mill.

If a woman (or a man) has sexual confusion, they may want to get married so that they feel that the confusion is behind them since now they’re in a heterosexual relationship. However, that’s unlikely to affect their libido or sexual preferences.

All of these problems are caused by either sinfulness or woundedness. Some can be dealt with by a very loving and patient spouse who is willing to give the person time to heal. Others are a big red flag that marriage should likely be off of the table.

But none of these things is about how you physically fit together. They’re all about a sinful, or a broken, heart.

So how do we know if we’re sexually compatible?

Once you’re with someone you’re really interested in marrying, have some honest talks about sexual expectations. Talk about what you’ll do if your libidos don’t match. Talk about how sex is likely a learning curve, and it may not be great right off the bat. Talk about how you’ll decide what’s okay to do.

I know those conversations are hard to have before you’re married. You don’t want to make it harder to wait! But I think they’re important to have. Just do it outside, while you’re taking a walk, and not inside while lying on the couch alone.

Be frank about pornography. Make sure that you both have access to each other’s phones and search histories. Certainly we want to respect each other, but if you’re thinking of marrying someone, there can’t be secrets. If your beloved has used porn, make sure they’ve worked through how that has affected their sexual expectations.

And here’s a tip: if you’re in love and thinking of marrying, and your beloved is obviously NOT struggling with trying to stay pure, that’s a serious sexual red flag. You SHOULD be having a difficult time keeping your hands off of each other. If that’s not a struggle, then that’s where you have to question whether there’s an underlying sexual problem.

I hope that helps! Now let’s talk in the comments: What do you think the keys to sexual compatibility are?

 

 

The post Reader Question: What does it even mean to be “Sexually Compatible”? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

How to Get Stains out of “My Husband is a Hottie” T-Shirt

I love two things: cooking and not being frumpy.

Okay, that’s really bad grammar and bad parallelism, so let me try that again: I love cooking and looking good.

And as I’ve tried to impress on this blog a lot, we SHOULD be looking our best for our husbands, not for random strangers we see in the grocery store. Which is why about 15 minutes before my husband is coming home, I try to put on some makeup and a decent shirt, if I’m not already wearing something decent.

Here’s where the cooking comes in. That means that I’m usually wearing something nice when I’m cooking, and I usually forget to wear an apron, too. And I can’t tell you the number of nice shirts (including some I wear for speaking!) that I have wrecked with grease stains.

So when BlogHer asked me to partner with them to review and test Resolve Gold® In-Wash Stain Remover Powder, I said “sure!”–especially when they said it got out grease.

It’s available in powder and gel form, and can be bought virtually anywhere, like Wal-mart or other big retailers.

So here’s what I did. I took this awesome T-shirt that my friend Kathi Lipp sent me that said, “My husband is a hottie.” Now, I didn’t want to wreck that T-shirt, because my husband IS a hottie, but I decided to trust Resolve with it.

And I poured way too much olive oil on it, and some tea (because I drink tea a lot, too), and some hot sauce. That ought to do it.

Seriously, I put way too much oil on. And too much tea.

Then I took the Resolve Gold In-Wash®, and just mixed about half a scoop with maybe 1/3 cup of water, and soaked the stains for around 30 seconds.

The paste bubbles a bit (that’s the Oxi-Action), and seriously–it makes your hands super soft, too! Unlike other stain removers, it’s honestly not harsh on your skin (or on the clothing material). It’s really ecologically friendly.

Then you just rinse it, and put about another scoop in the washing machine and wash as usual. It’s easy peasy!

And you know what? It got it all out, too. Even the huge amount of oil!

So now I can wear the “my husband is a hottie” shirt and I haven’t wrecked anything at all. It makes me think that I may go back and try some of the blouses I stained ages ago to see if it could try to get the stains out (it says it works on stains as old as 7 days, but it’s worth a try!).

Whether it’s grass or blood or coffee or oil, or anything else that you spill, Resolve Gold In-Wash® really does work. And the bubbling is kind of fun.

So thanks for letting me try it! And thanks for not wrecking my favourite T-shirt, too.

The post How to Get Stains out of “My Husband is a Hottie” T-Shirt appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Wifey Wednesday: When You’re Angry at God Over How He Sees Marriage

Have you ever been angry at God over how He sees marriage?

What about words like “submission”? Or what about verses like “do not deprive each other“? Have those ever gotten your back up?

Today’s Wednesday, the day when we always talk marriage! And today I want to share with you a powerful story of a young wife’s journey through anger at God towards understanding and peace.

At one of the Girl Talk events I did last month I met Anna. She had driven quite a way to come and hear me, and after the event she emailed me her testimony to let me know how much of a role I had played and how God had used me to help her find peace in her marriage. It brought me to tears. And I want to share it with you today, because I think many of us have walked roads similar to Anna’s.

Here’s Anna:

It all began on a Sunday towards the end of September. Our pastor said,

There are sins in marriage other than cheating on your spouse.

…say what?! I immediately thought. What is he talking about?

Any normal person would have gone up to their pastor after church and asked him what he meant by that. Not me. I didn’t go to anyone about this. Not even my husband. It ate at me. I had questions.

To me it’s hard to speak to men. I’m just not comfortable. And I think because our pastor is…well, a pastor and a man, I was unconsciously actually afraid to speak to him on it too. So what did I do?

I googled it. “Sins in Marriage” I typed.

I hit search…

Oh boy. It led me to an article, written by a man, claiming women have to ‘give it up’ every time to their husband. No matter how they felt. No matter if they were on their period. Were sick. Exhausted. If the man wanted it, she had to give it to him. This man also felt there was no such thing as marital rape. This man went as far as to use scripture about submission to try and support what he was saying.

Now I hated the word submission.

To me it meant that I’d be taken control of and used as a slave, without a say in anything. And this article only confirmed what I had originally thought. I was fuming. It couldn’t be right, could it? It made me feel dirty and used as a woman, as if I was only created to be used for pleasure by my husband.

Did God really make women just to be servants of men? A woman wrestles with the question:
Click To Tweet

So, what do you do when you don’t agree with what someone else has to say? You read it for yourself. So I pulled my bible out and turned to these verses. And it didn’t help me. I only understood it through the lens of the faulty article that I had just read. I became SO angry with God that He would make me only for a man’s jollies! I kept this anger inside for a time. I was so distanced from God it hurt so much.

But I really couldn’t tell my husband or anyone at that point. I didn’t want to tell my husband I was angry with God. He is a man. More importantly he is my husband. I was afraid he would feel the same as the man in the faulty article. So I stayed silent while dying inside.

Desperately seeking a positive valid Christian answer, what did I do again?

I googled my question in the search engine box but this time I type “Christian point of view“.

Sheila Wray Gregoire’s marriage blog post “29 days to Great Sex” popped up.  As I read, I felt as if it were speaking directly to me. There are things mentioned in there that I didn’t even know about myself as a woman and how my body works.

For instance, I seriously DID NOT KNOW that I had to be warmed up and loved on first before I’d be in “the mood”. Or that women are “list makers“, constantly thinking. Easily distracted. And our libidos really are mostly in our heads. ( men… Not so much).

I often felt broken because things did not always go in my favor in intimacy, while they were always so easy for Josh. But this blog helped me realize why and showed me how to address issues and allowed me to start seeing that sex with my husband is not all about the physical. It showed me it is for me too and not just my husband! It is also showed me that sex is spiritual!

Now, I did not discover all of this in one evening or over night. Before I read completely through this blog I was still fuming upset inside.

One day we both got off work and found ourselves at his parents’ house. We were getting ready to leave, and obviously something was wrong and he noticed. We were walking the babies out to load into the car and he asked me. “What is wrong with you?”

I was scared…but I knew I finally had to tell him what had been going on.

I reluctantly began to tell him…from the very beginning. I told him from the Sunday that brother Danny mentioned sins in marriage, and how I read that article and how I felt so so dirty.

His answer was a blessing to me. He said, “Anna I don’t know much about those passages but let us read it ‘together’.” So we got our family bible out, turned to 1 Corinthians chapter 7 and read out loud.

At that moment, I was released from the Devil’s grip. The way I had understood it reading with my husband was not the same as  the devil had made me believe reading it by myself.

Why was it so hard for me to come to my husband in the first place?

In this moment the Lord opened a doorway of communication for Josh and I that we never had before.

Over the next little while I started reading Sheila’s marriage webpage and reading more books, and I started to realize things and make changes about myself. There were a few deep rooted issues I had picked up  from watching my parents’ marriage. My mom used to always say she had to “walk the line ” around my dad. That was exactly what I was doing in my own marriage. I had been “walking the line” for my whole marriage and I did not even have to! From watching my mom around my dad growing up, I carried that with me into my own marriage thinking I needed to do the same with my husband. I had unneeded fear.

One Wednesday, in October, I was not feeling myself. I still despised the word submission. I got to church and the speaker was talking about being yoked with Christ. He asked what the definition of submission meant to us. No one answered. And with his joking personality, and no harm meant, he said, “oh, I bet you women should know what submit means,” and he quoted Ephesians 5:22.

Now he DID NOT know what I had been dealing with spiritually. It really was a joke. But it really sat with me wrong.

Brother Danny finished his lesson, I was really upset. On the way home I prayed, “Lord, I am so tired of being ANGRY!!!” And I pleaded with him, “Please take this from me!”

I prayed to God, how can I be submissive and not be taken control of? If I don’t agree with something I should be able to say so. We are a team I am not my husband’s slave!

I then remembered God opened up a doorway of communication for me and my husband. So we sat down for dinner one evening and I asked him what he thought it meant for me to be a submissive wife. He looked at me confused a little… But surprised me with what he replied.

Oh, I don’t know. I guess an example would be…last night. Before bed, I asked you to put a load of clothes on to wash. And you did.

I thought about the night before for a moment. Thought about how exhausted and ready for bed I was too. Kinda jealous he was going to bed before me. But how I still washed his clothes. No second thoughts about it. I replied to him,

But I did that because I love you… And I wanted you to have those clean clothes.

As we finished eating dinner it hit me.

Submission is not about being told what to do. It’s about Service and Love.

Submission is not about being told what to do. Let's reframe how we see marriage!
Click To Tweet

So submission does NOT mean control over the wife. It does NOT mean the wife has no voice. Submission ACTUALLY means serving another out of love. With a joyful heart. (No second thoughts).

This verse has been misused, my friends. I figured out in that moment that I was already naturally a submissive wife. Even though I despised the word before. I was already doing what I was supposed to.  And in this moment of  open and honest communication with my Husband, I found FREEDOM in my heart and my soul!

So let’s look at what God did for me on this journey.

He took fear away
He opened my eyes to deep rooted issues caused from my past.
He gave me completely  open and free communication with my husband. Something I never knew I didn’t have already! Wow!!! Let me just say Communication is POWER!!!
He showed me I can TRUST my husband. And go to him about ANYTHING.
He answered a prayer…immediately…yet taught me a lesson at the same time.
He showed me that I should always pray for discernment when searching for answers in the bible. (The devil knows the bible better then man ever will and will try to make us believe lies if we are not careful. This is what happened to me.)
He led me to the right sources to help guide me in finding answers about myself that I never knew.
He has shown me His amazing grace and LOVE.
He has forgiven me.
He took heavy chains of bitterness that had been placed inside of me and freed me from it!!!! That burden is GONE!

Have you ever been angry at God over how He made marriage? So has Anna. Hear her story.
Click To Tweet

Isn’t that beautiful? I’m so glad that Anna shared that with me, and I love her conclusions at the end.

I want to add one more that was reinforced to me when I read her story:

It’s okay to yell at God when you’re confused. He’d rather that we come to Him in honesty and brokenness and wrestle with Him than that we just quietly retreat. Let Him fight for you–because God will!

If some of you are still struggling and are still confused about submission or angry at God because of it, I’d also encourage you to read these posts:

Why One-Size-Fits-All Marriage Advice Doesn’t Work

I Am a Christian. I Am Not Just a Christian Wife.

And, of course, my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage deals with this at length, and hopefully can bring some of you out of the fog that Anna was in!

Let me know in the comments: Have you ever been angry at God because of someone’s interpretation of Scripture? How did you get out of the fog (or are you still there)?

 

 

The post Wifey Wednesday: When You’re Angry at God Over How He Sees Marriage appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

What Can We Do About Sex Trafficking?

This is holy week.

We are in the middle of a week of waiting, leading up to the most holy day of the year.

And as we do that, I’ve been thinking about the first two lines of a song we sung on Sunday,

Light of the world,

You stepped down into darkness…

What must that have been like? To leave somewhere perfect and holy and come down to this earth where there is so much darkness and distortion and evil.

Sometimes we don’t see the darkness. We live in our own bubbles, which can be pretty good. We love our husbands. We love our kids. We’re involved in church. We try to make the world a better place.

And we don’t always see the darkness that is around us.

I’ve talked at length on this blog about the negative effects of pornography, but what I’ve been learning a lot in the last few months, as I research more and more, is that I’ve been “depersonalizing” those effects. I’ve been thinking in terms of how porn makes guys lose their libidos for their wives; how it makes sex solely physical and often objectifying; how it makes them desire acts other than intercourse as the main event in their sex life.

Those are horrible things and really hurt a marriage.

But here’s something worse: pornography fuels sex trafficking of real, live human beings.

Pornography fuels sex trafficking of real, live human beings. It is not harmless.
Click To Tweet

It doesn’t just hurt your marriage. It causes women and children to be horribly, horribly abused.

Here’s how it works: a porn addiction isn’t like an alcohol addiction. With an alcohol addiction, a person starts needing more and more alcohol to get a buzz. With porn, it’s not about “more”. It’s about “different”. The addict needs different types of images to get the same arousal response.

That’s why someone can dabble in porn when they’re 13 mostly looking at Playboy-lite, but after a number of years, they could need hard core stuff that involves children or something really disgusting. Few people start out in porn looking at children being abused or women being mutilated. But it can progress there because of this constant need for “different”.

That is how pornography fuels sex trafficking.

It fuels the desire for children and women to be brutalized on camera. But it also fuels the desire for real-life sexual encounters, and thus fuels the prostitution industry.

Here’s an infographic I found from Desert Solace, a sexual addiction rehabilitation center in Utah. I wanted to share it with you:

See more about this infographic here.

Don't miss this infographic about sex trafficking in the United States--and what we can do.
Click To Tweet

Jesus stepped down into darkness–He stepped into this dark world in order to redeem it and bring it to Himself, because He loves us.

Maybe we need to take a little step into darkness, too. Maybe we need to open our eyes to what is going on around us, and do something to help.

Action Steps to Help Stop Sex Trafficking

First, make sure that your sons and daughters (because girls use porn, too!) aren’t falling prey to porn. Most kids get addicted in their early teens. Once your children hit 10 or 11, really think seriously about getting filters on your computer. We can protect the next generation from fuelling sex trafficking!

Second, give generously. So many organizations are involved in stopping sex trafficking both here and abroad. Here are the links to the organizations in the infographic above:

OperationUndergroundRailroad.org
SharedHope.org
ChildrenoftheNight.org
PolarisProject.org
Enditmovement.com
Thecode.org

I’m also good friends with a woman who works for Life for the Innocent, which has an international arm rescuing children and girls in South Asia, but also a domestic arm engaged in rescuing those in the sex industry, educating people on what is happening here, and educating youth to prevent them falling prey. You can even volunteer and get involved in bringing some educational events to your area! Here’s more info.

Third, spread the word. Pin this infographic. Share it on Facebook. Let other people know what is going on right in our neighborhoods!

As my regular readers know, I’ve started a program where faithful readers can support me with a small monthly donation, and then they get tons of rewards (like chat sessions, free ebooks, weekly emails with what I’m thinking, podcasts, and more!), and then I use the money to hire help for this blog or to fund some marriage missions trips.

I’m almost at my first goal of $480 a month, which will cover the cost of hiring two university students to help me. But last month I didn’t spend all of that money. So I want to take that money and send it to help sex trafficking. So here’s what I’ll do: for every 100 shares on this infographic on Pinterest, or on the post on Facebook, I’ll donate $10 (with $5 going to domestic initiatives and $5 going internationally). So please share! And use the links above so I can trace it.

And if you want to help support me, you can do it here.

I’m trying to create a win-win for everyone, and find a way to help this community pool together to work towards healthy sexuality around the world–by supporting marriages, and also by fighting against pornography.

Fourth, talk to the men in your life about this. Talk to your pastor. Talk to your sons and your brothers. And talk to your husband, especially if he’s struggled with porn in the past (or is struggling now). Most men who use porn are good men. They’ve been tempted, and they’ve fallen, but they’re not too far gone yet. And they want to stop.

One of the best ways to get them to stop is to open their eyes to what the pornography industry is doing. Bring your husband in on this conversation. Show him the relationship between porn use and the desire for child porn or the desire to act things out in real life. Help him to see the lives that pornography eventually ruins.

Here’s the good news: Jesus stepped down into darkness, but He didn’t leave this world dark.

Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness,

Opened my eyes, let me see,

Beauty that made this heart adore you,

Hope of a life spent with you.

He gave us hope. In this holy week, can we share that hope with those who desperately, desperately need some?

Please share. Please give. Thank you.

 

The post What Can We Do About Sex Trafficking? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

How to Fight the Frump When Choosing Glasses

As my long-time readers know, I’m a big proponent of fighting the frump! When we take care of our appearance, we feel more confident. And that comes out in the way we treat others and we treat ourselves.

I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 16. My vision’s not that bad–when I’m at home I don’t wear anything at all–but I need glasses when I’m driving or when I’m in church and I actually want to make out the expressions on people’s faces. I turned to contacts early on, because I felt I looked better with them. But contacts are a pain. And they’re expensive.

And the worst thing is this: Now that I’m in my 40s, if I have my contacts in, I can’t read a thing. I need to put reading glasses on too. Without contacts I’m fine on my computer or when I’m knitting or reading; with contacts I need the glasses. And when I’m out at restaurants I can’t actually see my food.

So I’ve decided that I need to start wearing glasses more, because then I can take them off when I need to see something up close. I started wearing my old faithfuls for about a year, that I’ve had for maybe 7 years, and then the lenses popped out. So I rummaged around in a drawer and I found some silver rimmed glasses that I bought when Katie was a baby (my prescription really hasn’t changed much). And I’ve been wearing those for the last few months. Who cares if they’re 17 years old?

The only thing is that they’re seriously unfashionable. So I decided it was time to start feeling better about glasses!

Pearle Vision is a one-stop shop–you can call or book an appointment online, and then you just choose your eyewear after that. I booked online, and then they sent me a text to remind me of my appointment and even set it up in my Google calendar and sent me a map of how to get there (though my hometown only has one mall. It wasn’t that hard!). Considering I’ve forgotten doctor’s appointments before, it was actually super nice and automated.

I went in and the staff was very friendly and we joked around quite a bit. They tested my field of vision and my pressures (I’ve got a serious family history of glaucoma, so I have to get my pressures checked every year).

And then the optometrist did my eye exam.

The doctor was super thorough, and I was really impressed. I’ve gone to some other optometrists in my hometown, and they haven’t done as much testing, and they didn’t pick up my slight astigmatism (someone out of town picked it up a while ago, too). He picked up everything. And he talked to me at length about my concerns about my high pressures, and even told me what my daughters should be doing at their ages based on our family history.

Then I headed over to check out glasses. The optician helped me first try some ones that were AWFUL. (I think she liked picking those out for me!) You know–the kind that would look really good if you had a certain personality and you were 70. They just weren’t me!

Round glasses are in. But not on MY face.

And my mom would love these purple ones–but to me they look like a grandma.

So then we turned to ones that would look good. First she showed me a pair in my comfort zone–the total metal frames.

Not bad, but too much like what I’ve been wearing for 20 years. I always chose them because I wanted them to be invisible.

Then we went to more modern frames. A little dark–but I thought they were actually interesting:

These had a purple hue that I liked, but I was afraid they wouldn’t go with everything:

After texting a pic of these to both of my daughters for their approval, this is what I chose:

Totally different from what I’ve always worn!

One thing I learned was to ask the optician for advice. She works with the glasses everyday, so she knows what looks good on people. She made me try on stuff I NEVER would have chosen, and that’s what I ended up going with! It’s kind of like how I just let my hairdresser do whatever she wants. (I think that’s why I’m one of her favourite clients!)

So we did the paperwork, and I came out with new glasses and renewed confidence that my pressures are still in the normal range (even if they’re on the extreme high of normal).

The whole thing took about 40 minutes, and that was with some serious chatting with everyone who worked there (they were all super friendly.) And Pearle Vision is great at direct billing your insurance if you have it, too. My exam was so thorough, and he explained the problem of high pressures to me better than any other doctor I’ve ever seen. So I’ll definitely go back! You can find Pearle Vision on Facebook and YouTube, too.

Tell us:  Do you wear eyeglasses? How do you care for your eyes? Comment below for your chance to win a $100 Visa gift card. 

Entry Instructions:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to residents of Canada (other than Quebec) who are eighteen (18) years of age or older and located in Canada (other than Quebec). Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the sweeps@blogher email address. You will have 2 business days to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 3/21/2016 – 4/17/2016

The post How to Fight the Frump When Choosing Glasses appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Whose Opinion Matters Most? God’s or Your Husband’s?

Do you care most what God thinks of you, or what your husband thinks of you?

Every Friday I like to run a short inspirational 400 word piece about marriage–with one little thought you can chew on over the weekend. Today I want to talk about reputations.

Sheila’s Marriage Moment: When You Care Too Much About What Your Husband Thinks of You

On Monday morning I took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and geared myself up to talk to the IRS about an ongoing issue. Before I called, I prayed and asked God, “Please, let me not embellish to make myself look good. Let me just be honest.” God’s been convicting me lately that I have a habit of trying to show myself in the best possible light.

I wonder: does this tendency affect our marriages?

I recently heard Canadian hockey legend Paul Henderson say this: “Don’t give a second thought about your reputation, but be ruthless about developing your character.”

Don't care about your reputation, but be ruthless about developing character - Paul Henderson
Click To Tweet

So brilliant. What’s important is not what others think of us, but what God thinks of us.

How do we live this out in our marriages?

When we want our husbands to think the best of us, we can stretch the truth. We can make excuses for ourselves. We can concentrate more on winning an argument than on growing intimacy.

When we want our husbands to think of us in a certain way, we can act like a martyr–like we’re the one who is always put upon, and he’s the one who is always wrong. We can rely on pride in our identity as the “longsuffering wife” rather than on humility before God.

Or then there’s the flipside: when we want our husbands to think well of us we may follow them into sin. We may not say “no” to things we know are wrong.

We may become enablers rather than the strong helpers that God made us to be. We may become so scared to rock the boat that we say nothing as our husbands degrade us. We may say nothing as they fall deeper into addictions or into laziness.

But what happens if we are ruthless about developing our character? We’ll become humble before God, which will make us honest before our husbands. We’ll be able to accept blame for things we’ve done, without taking blame for things that he has done. We’ll be able to see clearly to deal with longstanding conflicts. We’ll be able to find the win-win in marriage, rather than only trying to make him lose so that we look good.

Loving our husbands does not mean valuing our reputation in front of them. It means always, always valuing first what God thinks of us. That’s the only way to properly love anyone.

The most loving thing is to care more about what God thinks than what your spouse thinks.
Click To Tweet

What’s #1 at To Love, Honor and Vacuum?

We almost have all spots filled with #1’s this week!  But I had to shake things up with something new to add to the mix.  This week, a theme we haven’t looked for a while has popped up and it’s an important one: submission vs abuse.  Also check out some ideas on how to spice things up!

#1 NEW Post on the Blog: Top 10 Way To Not Be A Miserable Mama

#1 on the Blog Overall: How To Initiate Sex

#1 from Facebook: Submission Doesn’t Mean Lying Down And Taking It

#5 from Pinterest: Top 10 Ways To Be More Adventurous In Bed

I Need 92 people to get to 50,000 on Facebook

As of right now, I need less than 100 people to bring my Facebook fan base to 100,000. If we’re not connected there yet, could you go like that page? I post great older posts, new stuff I’ve found around the web, questions for posts I’m writing that help give me ideas, and more! I’d love to see  you there.

Find me on Facebook here.

Why I’ve Been Feeling Convicted

Sometimes someone says a little pithy thing and it just sticks with you. And then it starts to really make a difference.

I hope that sometimes I say those things for you. That truly is my prayer.

But I just love that saying that I heard from Paul Henderson at that marriage conference: Don’t give a second thought about your reputation, but be ruthless about developing your character.

God really spoke to me through that. How many times have I been in knots about commenters saying mean things or about people disagreeing with me? And yet, ultimately, all that matters is that I’m faithful before God. That will make me humble enough to ask, “does anything they say warrant me reconsidering?”, but it will also make me confident enough to disregard it, to shake the dust off of my feet, if I know it’s wrong.

But it’s also made a difference in really little things. I was doing some of my end of the year accounting this week, and I’d be transferring numbers from one place to another. And if I forgot whether it was $509.42 or $509.24, I’d double check. Normally I’d just go with what I thought I remembered, but I didn’t want to write $0.42 if the expense was actually only  $0.24. Such a silly little thing, but I couldn’t let it go just because of that one sentence that Paul Henderson spoke!

So I don’t know if I should be grateful or not :), but I think I am. I do want to be more consistent and more confident with my worth in God, and I pray that this will stick with me.

Don’t Forget My Giveaway from Yesterday!

You can enter for a bundle of goodies here.

I’m Almost Finished the Scarves!

I’ve been knitting up a storm over the last two weeks to knit scarves for some of my “patrons“–people who support this blog with a regular monthly contribution, which helps me hire some staff to free up time so I can do more webinars and videos that I’m planning for this year, and which will hopefully (it’s my prayer) raise enough money to expand the marriage ministry into some missions trips to Africa and Eastern Europe.

I’ve got 5 scarves to knit for some of my bigger supporters! Here I am knitting at the marriage conference:

and here’s what my coffee table looks like right now (I finished a third scarf last night; one more to go!)

When I was in Colorado last week, I met up with one of my patrons and hand-delivered her scarf to her! So fun to meet with Amy:

I send an email out to the patrons every week with links to what I’ve been reading and thinking and questions that they can help me with. It’s like a my own focus group! And they’ve been helping me brainstorm new ways to explain what my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage is about, and I’ve been sending their feedback to my publisher. So helpful. (Oh, and they get rewards, too. I’m not the only one who benefits. )

It’s just a way that I can get to know some of my readers better. So if you’d like to join us, come on over! But if you don’t–I’ll always be here and on Facebook, and I’m not going anywhere!

My Happiest Instagram Moment…

…this week wasn’t actually from my instagram. It was from my daughter Katie’s.

I just like the status update from this. Nice to know my girls still spontaneously get together, even when they don’t live at home anymore! Although I’m appalled that Katie didn’t order the crunchy chocolate chip. Who goes to Laura Secord and doesn’t order crunchy chocolate chip? When I would take them when they were little girls they both always got crunchy chocolate chip, but now that Katie’s out on her own and spending her own money she has left the fold and ventured further afield. At least Rebecca got her order right. #geneticsbaby

I texted her, “Wanna go on an ice cream date? I’ll buy.” and she was like, “YES”, so we did. #sisterthings #laurasecord

A photo posted by Katie Gregoire (@katielizg) on Mar 16, 2016 at 1:58pm PDT

Have a great weekend, everyone!

The post Whose Opinion Matters Most? God’s or Your Husband’s? appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Let’s Celebrate Today with Two Giveaways!

We hear a lot these days about how the world is horrible and all is lost and the political system is broken.

And you know what? That’s largely true.

But it’s true because our citizenship is not of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, and this is not our home! And at many other times in human history life has looked really bleak. Think England in 1940. Or The Netherlands in 1941. Or Europe during the Black Plague.

Or think Ireland before St. Patrick!

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and maybe, in the midst of all our gloom and doom about the present circumstances, we should be reminded of his story:

(share that image on Facebook here! Or pin it by clicking the button above).

There were other times in human history when it looked like all was lost–and in every case, the answer was Jesus. God did amazing work, and people had hope again.

So today it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and I think that’s reason to celebrate!

And this is a BIG St. Patrick’s Day, because it follows PI Day–3.1416. Seriously, that’s a once-every-hundred-years event. This is a big deal! And a big week. Woo hoo!

I’m going to do 2 flash giveaways on my Facebook Page today–bundles of ebooks that you can win that can help your world be a little less bleak, and a little more hope in Christ.

Keep a watch on the Facebook Page for those flash giveaways–when I announce them, you’ll have about 2 hours to comment and then it’s gone!

And hope in Christ is an amazing thing, because it permeates all of life. God wants to redeem EVERYTHING.

Not just your prayer life. Not just your church. But your family relationships, your home, and even your bedroom!

So we’re going to do a little giveaway here on the blog as well! I’m heading back down to the U.S. next Thursday because we need to drive our RV (which is currently in Houston) back home for the summer. And that means I can ship things to Americans cheaply! So I’ve got a lot of freebies that different companies send me, and I’d like to put them together in a celebration box to give away.

Also, my Patrons (the people who support me on a monthly basis so that I can raise money to expand the marriage ministry into Africa and eastern Europe) are getting some extra goodies today to celebrate, too–some audio downloads! If you become a supporter, you’ll get special goodies throughout the month, too. Find out more here.

I’ve got two packages ready to go.

Both Packages have:

9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage – my new book that looks at 9 common lies that we often believe about marriage (and often think that God even wants for marriage), and then 9 new thoughts that will change everything!
ArginMax sexual support vitamins–with all the minerals and vitamins you need for great sexual performance and libido enhancement! So fun. And the vitamins are just plain good for you, too.

Package 1:

Loveology: God, Love, Marriage, Sex by John Mark Cormer
SASMAR ConceivePlus Fertility Lubricant (I have a few ConceivePlus products I’ll throw into this basket!

Package 2:

The Gift of Friendship: Stories that Celebrate the Beauty of Shared Memories by Dawn Camp
Reading Your Male: An Invitation to Understand and Influence Your Man’s Sexuality by Mary Farrar
Some fun SASMAR Condom-friendly lubricants!

And I may throw in some other goodies, too!

Just enter via the Rafflecopter below. I’ll pick two winners next week, on Friday. And go have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Let’s Celebrate Today with Two Giveaways! appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

5 Biggest Mistakes A Couple Can Make in the First Year of Marriage

Every couple makes mistakes–but some marriage mistakes are worse than others!

It’s Wednesday, the day when we always talk marriage! And today I want to talk about the 5 biggest marriage mistakes a couple can make in the first year after the wedding.

Last week my husband and I were in Colorado, recording two shows for Focus on the Family. While there we decided to go hiking on some of the gorgeous trails around Colorado Springs.

We headed down to one in the middle of nowhere–Akin Canyon. It was a 4 mile loop, and we thought we’d give it a try. But as we started on the trail, it got harder and harder. Trees blocked our way. Rocks were everywhere. Sometimes we even had to climb through rocks to get to the trail!

After about a mile we gave up, retraced our steps–and found that we had missed the actual trail. We had gone off on a sidetrail that wasn’t really cared for. Once we found the real trail, all was easy going!

It’s a lot like that in marriage. If you get off track in the early days, it gets harder and harder to travel together. Things will trip you up or knock you on the head.

And while everybody makes mistakes, as I’ve talked and listened to couples for the last few years, I’ve found that some mistakes are worse than others. Some start you on a really difficult road that will be harder and harder to come back from. So don’t do any of these five things!

Marriage Mistake #1: Giving Only One Spouse Access to Money or Knowledge About the Finances

In my personal life I have known six couples where the wife did not have a bank card or access to any joint bank account. She had to ask her husband for money. He controlled it; she didn’t know much about it, even if she asked.

Every single one of those marriages has now ended–or is in serious trouble.

Sometimes when one spouse (usually the wife) doesn’t work, couples think, “Why set up joint bank accounts or joint credit cards when they marry if it’s all his income anyway?” But this sets up such a terrible dynamic. First, the money isn’t seen as “theirs” but “his”. She is almost like a child having to ask him for money.

Then, if something were to happen to him, she wouldn’t have access to the family’s money to pay the bills. Or what if he wasn’t responsible with money? She’d have no way of knowing until the electricity is cut off.

Other couples I know keep completely separate finances, and each pays a portion of the household bills. Again, that sets up a strange dynamic where you have “his” money and “her” money but not their money. It makes planning for joint retirement or joint vacations hard. And what if one of them scales back his or her job to care for kids?

Marriage Mastery: From the very beginning of your marriage, share finances. Make a budget together. If you want to keep separate accounts for just a small amount of spending money, I don’t see a problem with that. But on the whole, combine your finances and then save, invest, and spend together.

Marriage Mistake #2: Letting Yourself Get Ticked Off

This may sound like a weird one–if your husband ticks you off, he ticks you off, right? Why is that your fault?

But, as I showed in my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, you don’t HAVE to get ticked off.

And here’s something scary: Researcher John Gottman, who has studied marriages inside and out and who can predict, with amazing accuracy, after only seeing a couple interact for 15 minutes, who will divorce in the next 10 years, has found that showing contempt for your spouse is the #1 sign that you’ll split.

Here’s what he means: when you start rolling your eyes when your spouse speaks; cutting him off because you think “he’s just being stupid again”; or in other ways disregarding his opinion, then you’re showing contempt. And if you do this long enough, you devalue your spouse in your eyes and you find it easy to justify leaving.

It’s that first year of marriage that often brings the biggest disappointments. You thought his jokes were funny when you were dating, but now he’s not serious enough when you want to have a conversation. His dedication to studies was admirable, but now he’s become boring. He said he wanted to be partners, but he never does laundry. And we see all our unmet expectations, and we get ticked off. And then we start sighing. And rolling our eyes.

Marriage Mastery: We’ll always have things that disappoint us in marriage, but it’s your choice what you will focus on! Instead of thinking about all the things that tick you off, make it a habit to thank him for two different things he does a day. Concentrate on catching him doing good, and you’ll notice more good things than bad things!

Marriage Mistake #3: Spending Your Leisure Time Goofing Off Alone

Before you were married you likely went out and did things. But now you’re married, and you don’t need to go out. So at night you tend to goof off. You go on your computer; he goes on his, or he plays video games. At first it’s fun–you have all this time to unwind! But soon you find that you’re not spending time together anymore or sharing experiences.

But if you say, “what do you want to do?”, he often doesn’t have an answer. So you retreat back onto your screens. Then, when kids come, it gets even harder to carve out time for each other, and soon your lives revolve around children and not around each other.

Marriage Mastery: Create a habit of “connecting time” when you share with each other, even if it’s just for twenty minutes a day. Go for a walk after dinner; play some 2-player board games every night; just do something on a daily basis. It doesn’t need to take the whole evening, but schedule time to connect into your day.

Marriage Mistake #4: Not Going to Bed at the Same Time

Night time, as you’re getting ready for bed, is the perfect time to catch up about your day, figure out what’s happening tomorrow, snuggle and talk about your dreams or concerns, pray together, and, of course, make love with your husband!

But if you don’t head to bed together, you’ll miss out on those natural times to connect. And soon you’ll start feeling much more distant. You’ll feel as if you’re living separate lives, under the same roof.

Marriage Mastery: Unless shift work is involved, create a bedtime routine when you both head to bed together, without computers, TVs, or screens. Make the last thing that you do everyday together cuddling with each other.

Marriage Mistake #5: Not Talking About Things that Bother You

Maybe you don’t want to rock the boat. Maybe you have this idea that a good marriage doesn’t have conflict, so you’d rather keep the peace. Maybe you’re just embarrassed and you don’t know how to address something that’s bugging you.

If we don’t talk about the things that bother us, we build up walls. Over time, those walls get bigger and bigger, and then it’s even harder to dismantle them. So whether it’s that sex doesn’t feel very good for you and you’d like to figure that out; you want more help around the house; you feel lonely when he goes out with friends–talk about it! Don’t bottle it up; it will lead to more contempt (see #2, above).

And here’s something else: Ask for help. If there’s something you want your husband to do, then ask him. “Can we spend more time on foreplay, because I feel rushed during sex.” “Do you mind doing the dishes?” “I’ll get the trash ready, but can you take it out to the curb?” He’s not a mind reader, and he doesn’t know what you want. And especially when it comes to sex, guys often appreciate knowing what you’re thinking.

Marriage Mastery: In those times when you catch up everyday, mention the things that are bothering you. Own your feelings–“I feel lonely when…”, not “you make me lonely when…” Problem solve together. When you keep short accounts with each other, you learn how to deal with conflict well. That puts  you in good standing for a long life together!

Obviously there are other things that couples need to do to make marriage work, like not nurturing relationships with co-workers of the opposite sex, properly separating from one’s parents, and big things like that. But we tend to know those things already. I wanted to talk today about the very little habits that we can easily slide into that can be toxic a few years down the road. Aside from #1 about money, most of these are little things. It’s easy to get ticked off. It’s easy to stop spending time together. It’s easy to stay up later than your spouse. It’s certainly easy to bottle things up inside.

The 5 Biggest Mistakes couples make in their first year of marriage: steer clear of these things!
Click To Tweet

But if you want a great marriage, stop these things that are easy to fall into, and be more deliberate! You may just find that instead of being rough, the next few years of marriage are actually much smoother and easier than you thought.

What do you think? What’s a big mistake that couples can make in those early days of marriage that sets them on a bad path? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

The post 5 Biggest Mistakes A Couple Can Make in the First Year of Marriage appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

Top 10 Ways Not to Be a Miserable Mama

Why does our culture think that it’s inevitable to be a miserable mother?

Today Lisa Hensley from Delighting in My Days is here to give us a pep talk!

Here’s Lisa:

I do a lot of reading about motherhood. This is both because I am a mom and because I write about motherhood. However, if I believed a lot of what I read before I had kids I would have run as fast as I could from being a mama. There are some scary stories out there. Once you get past the worst-case scenario labor stories you start in on the I-didn’t-shower-for-two-months-and-didn’t-wear-real-clothes-for-two-years stories. None of that sounds appealing to me.

I don’t want to be the woman who is so consumed with surviving her children that she forgets herself, her relationship with God, or her husband. I don’t want to be the woman who cloaks her sob stories about how miserable life is with “but I’m so grateful for my children.” Of course you are. We all are. But wouldn’t it be better if we weren’t miserable mothers?

I don't want to be a woman so caught up in my kids that I forget my husband, God, or myself.
Click To Tweet

There are miserable days, miserable weeks, miserable months even. But just because we feel miserable doesn’t mean we have to act miserable. We don’t have to put on a show to get the sympathy of the world. I’ve been told “good luck!” just leaving the doctor’s office with my three kids. Is that what we want to tell the world about motherhood?

I’m not so far ahead that I look back on mothering small children as being all giggles and baby kisses. I have three boys. My oldest will be six this spring and he has a rare metabolic disorder. I’ve been through a lot of twists and turns in mothering. But overall I enjoy it and I think people can tell. My kids aren’t perfect and my mothering certainly isn’t but I do love our life.

How to Not Be a Miserable Mother:
1. Keep the right attitude about motherhood.

Motherhood is not martyrdom. Mothering is hard work and sometimes it seems like menial work but it is not the hardest thing that anyone has ever done. I realize that we tell our society this in an attempt to elevate the efforts of motherhood but it’s backfired because now we believe it and we feel sorry for ourselves. There are a lot of jobs that I wouldn’t trade for even on my most trying days as a mom.

Motherhood is also not all we are once we have a baby. At no point does the Bible make motherhood the supreme achievement of womanhood. A blessing and a work, yes, but never all we are. When we lose everything else to mother, we sink into misery.

2. Be a woman first.

You can take time to fix your hair and not be a bad mother. You can teach your children to play quietly while you talk to your husband and not be a bad mother. You can teach your children to get their own cup of water while you call your mom and not be a bad mother. It’s not wrong for you to paint or read or write or build alongside your children or even away from them. When your children have grown up and left you will still be stuck with you. Grow during those years so you don’t bore yourself.

3. Have a plan.

Working different jobs and going to college before I became a mom helped me so much. I learned how to manage my time and plan out my days. Have a plan for what you’re going to eat. Plan out what days you’ll go to the grocery store or run errands. Plan out when you’ll bathe the kids and what time you’ll start on dinner and when you’ll pick up toys. Keep books in the diaper bag to read at the doctor’s office. Learn some fun games or songs to occupy them while you wait in line. Your kids will learn your rhythm and know what to expect.

4. Get up before the kids.

Now this isn’t always practical. If you have a newborn you sleep as much as you can. But as soon as you are sleeping more, get up. Give yourself some time before they get up to wake up and pray and prepare for your day. Read your Bible. Do something that fires you up as a woman. Be ready to greet them with a smile instead of wishing that they wouldn’t bother you.

5. Dress for work.

Treat this mothering as work. Show up to your days as if you were filling the position of the President or the Prime Minister. If you slouch around in your sweats you’re going to feel like sitting on the couch all day. Dress for the day you want to have.

6. Train their behavior.

Of course this is a never-ending project; none of us ever “arrive.” But start somewhere. Teach them to stand in line, to speak kindly to one another, to be nice to you. The cooperation of your children will go a long way in making your days brighter.

7. Don’t mix work and family if at all possible.

I blog and stay home with my kids. It is a rare occasion that I try to do anything with the blog while my kids are awake and not in quiet time. Attempting to do quiet work that requires thought while chaos erupts around me is my ticket to becoming a crazy mama. This might not be possible for your stage of life but if it is, try it.

8. Start earlier than you think you need to.

Getting out the door with little kids can be a circus performance. Give yourself more time than you think you need to do it. That buffer in your schedule will be a sanity saver. Start breakfast earlier. Pack the diaper bag the night before. Lay out their clothes and socks and shoes. Do as much as you can beforehand.

9. Practice gratitude.

We see what we look for so often in life. Look for the beautiful parts of motherhood and your days. Thank God for the child that whispers, “I like you, Mommy” and the growth that your children are showing instead of concentrating on what’s not happening or what goes wrong.

10. Mind your friends.

If you have hang out with women who don’t appreciate motherhood or who complain about their children all the time your attitude will be colored with their negativity. Cultivate a group of friends that can share the problems of motherhood without dismissing the importance of the work. Be that type of friend for someone else.

Please don’t think that I’m never stressed out. I don’t lay around on the couch drinking coffee while my children play quietly at my feet but we do laugh. We do get places on time (most of the time). I am wearing real clothes and a real smile. I enjoy being with my boys.

You don’t have to be a miserable mama. Show the world a different version of motherhood!

Let me know: What did you do to overcome the tendency to be a miserable mother? Let me know in the comments!

Lisa Hensley is a wife, mama, and creative who helps other women know Christ and embrace their work so they can live with purpose and passion. She blogs at Delighting in my Days when her three boys are sleeping. You can also find her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

 

The post Top 10 Ways Not to Be a Miserable Mama appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.