Category Archives: Marriage

Posted on

On Letting Go & Moving Forward

I have never been particularly good at letting go, especially when it comes to people or experiences.

In my heart I have equated it with giving up. I love finding potential in people, I love dreaming about what’s right around the corner, and once I’ve seen what could be I hold on tightly. This isn’t a new phenomenon in my life. In fact I have been known to stay in groups, friendships and other unhealthy relationships much longer then I should have. In high school I stayed on the basketball team with the dream of getting off the bench. It wasn’t until the very last game of my senior year that I realized it wasn’t going to happen. I stayed in an unhealthy relationship, a high school boyfriend, through most of college even though I should have just let it go the first time we broke up. But instead I held on to a dream that should have died.

Posted on

Book Giveaway

linda dillow

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Posted on

How a chicken sandwich taught me I don’t like change.

Military life, parenthood, homeschooling, and ministry all hold fast to some very important truths.

  • Expect the unexpected
  • Everything will change
  • Enjoy today because it wont be here long
  • Embrace the roller coaster ride!

Are you picking up on the theme? Change. It is inevitable. Avoid getting comfortable because that’s when it all hits the fan. So that’s my life. Everything changes.

So why did I find that chicken sandwich so upsetting?

Posted on

Why the day he deployed was a good day

So it has begun. The long nights, the waiting anxiously to hear from my husband. It feels at times like the challenge is just to get from this day to our reuniting. The in-between is just what we endure as we wait.

That’s not good enough for me.

If he is gone 1 day or 500 days each one is still a gift. I refuse to allow those days, weeks, and months to be stolen by worry.

Each and every day I want to awake in the morning and lie down at night knowing that today… today was and is a good day.

Posted on

Starting fresh? Don’t do it my way.

I’m staring down at a blank pad of paper with this foreign object called a pen in my hand. The past 24 hours has taught me a few things.

  1. ALWAYS back up your hard drive
  2. A piece of paper and a pencil are sometimes the safest way to write
  3. A fresh start may be frightening but brings with it new opportunities
  4. When we are passionate and called to a specific task defeat is not an option
  5. And thank goodness for my techy husband

Today he was not half a world away!

Posted on

10 Years of marriage. Is there more to come?

John and I celebrated 10 years of marriage this past May.

While the road has not been easy (laced with grad school, and cancer, and unemployment, and deployment) it has been well worth it. There is no one I would rather have made the journey with and no one I would rather spend the next 50 crazy years with.

C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity (in fact I think the whole book should be read by everyone debating the “sanctity of marriage” and then we can all just come back together and talk some more, but that’s a blog for another day, for now here is what he said) on Christian Marriage and falling in and out of love.

““But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from ‘being in love’ –is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”

Posted on

A little about me, a confession and a pledge to do better

As a working mom in part-time ministry (with full time hours), a military wife (who is learning some crazy flexibility), and a mom of a cancer survivor (which requires being on the road often for follow up doctor visits three states away); scheduling our home life can be challenging.

Posted on

What’s it like being married to me? And other dangerous questions.

As a summer study the women at Sunrise Baptist are reading Linda Dillow’s book, What’s It Like Being Married To Me? And Other Dangerous Questions.

The book is an amazing eye opener into what life must look like for my husband, and let me tell you its not all rainbows and unicorns. (I guess if we are truly talking through his eyes I should say, it’s not the land of the ewoks.)

If you know me, you know, my house isn’t always clean, there is usually a pile or two of laundry screaming at me from the couch and clutters of paper and art work amidst piles of books. But this book isn’t really about external clues is it. It’s deeper. While the externals do contribute to my husband’s overall feelings of being desired and adored, what is essential to our marriage is my attitude.