On the Road Again!
And…my husband and I did it!We packed up the RV and we headed out for our first HUGE trip. We’re driving from Belleville, where we live in southern Ontario, to Indianapolis where I’m speaking at the MOPS convention, and then heading up to Winnipeg for a retreat I’m speaking at, and then home. It’s 19 days, 5000 miles of close quarter togetherness.
And I’ve got some other little trips planned, too. I’ve got two more Girl Talks I’m giving–one in Terre Haute, Indiana on the 18th and one in Clare, Missouri on the 21st (you can see all the details on the sidebar on the blog, or on Facebook under “Events”.)
So last night we hit the border and got stopped for an hour because we had tomatoes in our fridge. Note to self: throw out the produce next time before you cross the border.
But we made it to the KOA campground anyway and had a great sleep, and now my husband is making me eggs and sausage while I type this.
Life is good.
Here I am with my laundry basket beside me and my breakfast half eaten. Oh, yeah, baby. That’s real life.
Okay, so here’s what’s been big this week at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, along with a few more thoughts I’ve been having:
What’s #1 at To Love, Honor and Vacuum?
#1 NEW Post on the Blog: On the War Room, Prayer, and Fighting for Your Marriage
#1 on the Blog Overall: My Husband Doesn’t Want to Make Love!
#1 on Facebook: 20 Even-You-Can-Do-It Ideas for Initiating Sex Tonight
#1 on Pinterest: Why Do Teenagers Rebel
Looking Through Pictures of Our Life
Last weekend I was alone for four days. My husband went on call on Friday morning for the long weekend in a different city from where we live, and he didn’t come home until Tuesday afternoon. And my kids, of course, are all moved out.
So I was alone.
And I did the most fun thing I’ve done in an ABSOLUTE AGE.
I took every single family photo I could get my little grubby hands on, uploaded them to my new Mac using the Photos app, tagged everyone’s faces and added keywords to everything, and now I have several thousand photos there and I can browse through our lives.
Of course, we still have so many photos that are just in albums, not in digital files, and over the next few summers I’m hiring Katie to scan them all and tag them all, etc. But we have a lot now.
And so, even though I’m missing my girls I was able to look through the photos and realize–we had a good life together. We really did. We had so much fun! I’ve been second guessing myself lately a lot as a mom–did I teach them everything I want to? Did I spend my time well? But after looking through all the photos of everything we did, I just felt better. There were so many moments I had forgotten!
One of the tags I use for the photos is “faces of Katie”, because she really does make the most unreal faces. Here are just 3:
It’s just been so fun taking a walk down memory lane.
But question for all you photo people: I’m trying to figure out if I should be using Lightroom instead of Mac’s Photos app (not iPhoto; their new Photos app). If anyone knows anything about this, can you comment? Thank you!
Rebecca is Finished Her Book Proposal
And there was much rejoicing in my house!
I’m so excited about this one.
Last year Rebecca (my oldest) wrote a blog post about how she didn’t rebel. that went the most viral of anything I’ve ever written (she beat me totally) about why she didn’t rebel. She’s been working at turning it into a book–interviewing a ton of other young people, doing a literature search in psychology journals, etc. And she’s got it done! We’ll be sending it off to my agent next week. So I’m ecstatic for her. She wanted to get it done this summer but with the wedding it was just rough. But she was determined to finish it before school began, and she did.
I really hope it gets published soon, because she’s got some important things to say. She’s really expanded on that original post, and it’s going to be awesome.
Okay, So I’m a Proud Mom
I guess that’s a lot of bragging about my kids this week, but I’m still in OH MY GOSH MY KIDS HAVE MOVED OUT AND WE’RE EMPTY NESTERS AND I MISS THEM!!!!! mode. Seriously. I’m just glad they text several times a day.
A 9 Thoughts Review…
Jennifer Ferguson wrote a great review for my new book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage!
She lists 9 things she loves, including:
Scriptural truth: There is an abundance of scripture in this book and Sheila tackles some of the trickiest passages. What does it mean to submit? “It does not mean that when there is a tie, your husband always wins.” What does it mean to have peace in your marriage? “There is a difference between being a peacekeeper and a peace-maker. Which one are you?”
Read the whole thing here. And, of course, check out the book here!
A Little More on Prayer
I had a bit of pushback on Facebook when my post about The War Room went up. People were accusing me of not believing that prayer works.
That’s not what I’m saying at all. It’s ironic really, because right now I’m seeing more immediate results of prayer in my personal life than I ever have before. I’m actually walking through a “War Room” type experience, and I hope one day I’ll be able to share it with you, but it’s not primarily my story to tell.
Anyway, I absolutely believe that prayers CAN work immediately and dramatically. I’m just equally sure that prayers don’t always.
And, in fact, I’m really uncomfortable with that whole phrasing: that prayer CAN work. Does that mean that prayer doesn’t work if we don’t get the answers we want right away? No, of course not! Because sometimes the work that prayer does is on your own heart. And sometimes the answer God wants to give isn’t the answer we want.
Here’s a tiny example: I started praying for a rather specific outcome for something in my life almost a year ago now. But as I’ve been praying more intensely, the focus of my prayers has really changed. It’s been less about that specific outcome and more about God catching a hold of a few people and using them for wonderful things in His kingdom. It’s more been about God’s kingdom than it is about the kingdom I was trying to build. And it’s just so freaking exciting, if you’ll pardon the rude language. When I started praying that I started looking for it more in my own life, too. And I started seeing so many amazing answers. And the goal of my prayers has really changed.
God changes us when we pray. The movie actually showed that really well–Elizabeth’s motivations totally changed when she started to pray. And that means that prayer’s primary work is always to make us look more like Jesus.
I just don’t us getting a simplistic view where God always does what we want immediately. That doesn’t make God the creator of the universe; that makes him into our errand boy. And it makes me uncomfortable, and it has the propensity to make people feel as if their faith isn’t good enough if they’ve been praying and not seeing results. And that can be really hurtful.
The Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle is Happening NOW!
I read through the first Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle back in 2013. It seriously changed my life. I stopped eating a lot of the things I was eating. I started figuring out how to cook with real foods more. I stopped buying canned goods. And seriously, a lot of my health problems that I’ve had over the last few years have gotten significantly better (and I’ve dropped some weight!) But the biggest change is that I FEEL better. When I eat crap at a restaurant now I feel sick for a few days. My body isn’t used to it.
And here’s the neat thing: it was seriously tiny changes. It wasn’t anything huge. It wasn’t like I threw out all of my sugar and never ate any chocolate again (I discovered sea salt caramel dark chocolate instead; awesome!). I substituted some oils. Made more stock. Figured out how to wash my produce better. Just little things–tips I picked up from the books.
And that’s what you get in the new Ultimate Healthy Living bundle, the 2015 edition–$1900 worth of ebooks and ecourses for just $29.97, but only for 5 days! You get around 100 resources that you can browse through, glean what you want, and make those tiny changes.
Check it out today! It will be gone on Monday–
Instagram Update
Okay, so this week my Instagram update is from Katie’s feed. My homeschooled baby had her first real day of school this week at university!
