3-4 years...

Last night I was scrolling through Pinterest and came across an interesting statement. It said that in order to really know a person you have to have known them for 3-4 years. And that if you take that time to get to know someone prior to being married you have a better chance of your marriage lasting.

Well, first of all, that was interesting to think about. I believe that it does take serious time to get to know someone and that it is important to take that time, especially if you are considering marrying the person. 

Josh and I dated for 5 years before we got engaged and knew each other for a year prior to that. Now it wasn’t in our plan to wait that long but that’s kind of just how it ended up. And I am grateful for that. I do feel that we have an incredible relationship and understanding of one another and that kind of stuff takes time. So for us, the time spent dating was important to our story.

But I want to tackle the part of that original statement that I don’t agree with.

I do not believe that if you didn’t wait the 3-4 years that your marriage is going to fail. I firmly believe that if you want your marriage to last that it will. For a marriage to end is a choice, and people who knew each other for less than 3 years or more than 3 years can all make the decision to end their marriages.

What it boils down to is the importance you place on your marriage when you enter into it. If you take divorce off the table and commit to placing everything you have into your marriage and ask God to help you, I believe you will have a long and happy marriage. Obviously, there will be times of struggle but, if you don’t enter marriage thinking there is a way out, you will be able to survive anything.

Another move on the horizon

My husband and I are moving again. That’s right, it’ll be 3 moves in less than a year. Woo.

He was offered a job at a law firm about an hour north of Milwaukee, so we will be relocating after he finishes school. Come the end of May we will be on to our next adventure.

When I was younger I used to dream about finding an apartment or house, someplace that I could call my own. Well, now that I am doing exactly that, I realize just how horrible the process truly is.

There is nothing fun about pouring over websites and home listings. Especially if you want any kind of say in the place. While there may be over a hundred places listed in any given area, as soon as you plug in your criteria (for us: dog friendly, washer/dryer in-unit, 2+ bed, 2 bath) the search narrows down to 5 if you are lucky. For me it’s a stressful and frustrating experience.

Thankfully, I am not in this on my own.

Josh is way more patient and has a much more positive outlook on our ability to find a place we will love. So I have decided that I need to take this obstacle and use it to practice allowing him to lead.

I need to give up my desperate need to figure things out the instant they come up, and trust that my husband is going to handle it. And I know that he will. So I am going to instead, focus on helping him in the search process as much as I can, and try my absolute best to not stress. I will follow his lead, and in the end God will guide us to be exactly where we are meant to.

Plus…. This will give me plenty of time to contemplate furniture, decorations, and the rest of the fun stuff. 

Spring Cleaning

The weather is finally changing! According to this week’s forecast, we should hover around the 60’s! For those of you in warm climates year round, this is exciting news for those of us who have been trudging through snow and slush with frozen noses for the last several months.

There is the tradition that as Spring approaches people take the time to go through closets, drawers, and cabinets to clean out the junk that has accumulated over the winter. Spring cleaning is a project I thoroughly enjoy, and think it should be done more often than just when the weather turns. (I love clean and organized home!)

This tradition of cleaning out the messy and gross part of our home has gotten me thinking.

Shouldn’t we take the time to clean out the messy and gross parts that have accumulated in our lives?

I think that answer to that is a resounding, YES!

I think that while it is important to take inventory of the state your home is in, it should be of greater importance to take inventory of the state you yourself is in.

Taking the time to evaluate where you are at and recognizing areas that maybe aren’t super healthy is a great way to start making the necessary changes.

I shared in yesterday’s post that I am a people-pleaser. That is one of the things about myself I discovered while taking inventory of the state of my mind and heart. And I fully intend to make the changes I need in order to enhance who I am as a person and not be weighed down by the desire to please others.

I believe that as I continue to reflect on the things and circumstances in my life, I will be able to refine them and in turn clean out the junk that I have allowed to seep in.

So enjoy this time of renewal and while you dig through the junk in your home, don’t neglect your mind and heart.

People Pleasing

I am a people pleaser. And at this point in my life this trait, that I never really noticed before, is driving me crazy. I am in a constant struggle trying to make sure the people I care about are happy with the choices I am making. And if I am really honest with myself, there are many times that I even give more consideration to the people I’m not fond of than I do myself.

I began having the epiphany that I am a people pleaser around a month or two ago, actually it probably got to be really obvious around the holidays. There was so much going on and it felt like there was a decision to be made for every moment and often times there was conflicting options. Which stresses me out because I hate telling people no. I have this fear that my “no” will cause them to be mad or disappointed, even if it’s over something small.

It's gotten to the point that I can recognize myself changing my behavior before anything even happens because I anticipate the most negative of responses to my decisions.

That is obviously no way to live and I am on a quest to stop being a people pleaser. I am afraid that if I don’t make the change now I will never be able to make decisions for myself based off of my needs or wants. I will always be drawn to the choice that makes someone else happy with me.

What I really need to do, is be able to please God. I need to make sure my decisions are in live with His plan for my life and stop putting other people above Him. At the end of the day, that will be the only way I will truly be able to stop please people. I need God to be my first priority.

So I am making the effort. I have adjusted my prayers and am diving into books on the topic. This week I should be getting Joyce Meyer’s book, “The Approval Fix,” and I cannot wait to get started. I know that my efforts will not be in vain and God will deliver me from the trap that is “people pleasing.”

If you struggle with my need to get your approval from others, I want to encourage you to go on your own journey to freeing yourself from this struggle. No one should have to live their life walking on egg shells in an attempt to make another happy.

Taking care of yourself

Have you seen the show, Parks & Rec? To be honest, my first impression of the show wasn’t great but Josh enjoyed it so I gave it a chance and it is actually really funny.

If you have seen the show you more than likely are aware of the characters Tom and Donna. These two individuals have a day set aside every year that they call, “Treat Yo Self.”

I’ve seen the episode several times and today it got me thinking.

The first thing that came to mind was, WE SHOULD DO THIS! Of course on a less expensive and lavish level, but we should set aside a day to really take care of ourselves. The people I know generally spend more time focusing on the needs of others than taking care of themselves. This practice is of course selfless, but can lead to harming yourself in the long run. It’s important to have a balance between caring for your own needs and those of the ones you love.

By setting aside a day each year to do just that, I think it would be a great way to recharge and get into a great head-space to continue caring for your loved ones.

The next thought I had was, WHY SHOULD IT ONLY BE ONCE A YEAR? It is so important to meet your own needs that by limiting yourself to a single day out of 365 just isn’t enough. I think that making time for yourself on a regular basis should become a routine.

Now, in the show their day is focused on buying things they want, taking salon visits, and other lavish things, which are awesome. But treating yourself could be as simple as taking 30 minutes to read a book you’ve been putting off, or grabbing that ice cream cone you’ve been craving but refusing to cave in on. The simple and loved things in life are great and make life more enjoyable. Every once in a while I think it’s important to allow yourself to do something you would enjoy.

Submission

Something that God has laid on my heart is to become a submissive wife. 

Now before you react like the term submissive is foul, it’s important to understand why being a submissive wife is important and what that even looks like. To be honest, I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be working on myself to become submissive. I have a lot of opinions and I always believed that being submissive would mean being someone’s doormat, and that was not something I was into.

But, like I said, God has put it on my heart to make the change. So I have spent a considerable amount of time researching what that meant because the term “submissive” has a bad rap and I wanted to have a solid understanding.

I read Bible passages (1 Peter 3:1-6, Colossians 3:18, etc), articles by top Christian leaders, and I still didn’t understand. In fact, a lot of the articles I read were conflicting and confusing. One actually made me cry because they walked through “the day in the life of a submissive wife,” and it was horrible. They portrayed the wife to be completely at the beck and call of her husband and her only purpose in life was to ensure he was never stressed. It freaked me out and I thought that if that was what I was being called to do, I would surely fail on an hourly basis.

Thankfully, I have been able to find other sources that break down the good ideals that come from being submissive and weeds out the bad ones.

It turns out that God’s design for marriage is for the man to be the head of the household and when a woman, much like myself, doesn’t submit the marriage can suffer. And that is simply because if the wife takes over the role of her husband, she will grow to resent his inability to lead and he will not know his place.

Now submission does not mean not having an opinion or any influence.

From what I have learned, being a submissive wife means that I am the helper of my husband. It is my responsibility to share my thoughts on things with my husband and help him make decisions. I am my husband’s partner. I am not called to bulldoze him and take over control of our household. I am called to work together with him and ultimately encourage him.

Granted, this is an on-going shift in thinking for me, and a topic I am still trying to completely grasp. But I believe that if it is God’s design for our marriage, it will beautiful.

Prayer Journals

My spiritual life is very important to me. I am a Christian and am actively trying to live my life according to what the Bible teaches.

I’ve mentioned before that I have not been super great at bringing my concerns and problems to God because I have a natural tendency to take care of things on my own. And after many emotional and trying times, I have come to realization that I need God to intervene in my life way more often than I ever imagined.

Upon that realization I decided that I needed to get my prayer life in check. At that time, I was only praying if I remembered and that wasn’t very often. So I decided to work prayer into my routine so that it would become second nature to me. I figured that praying before bed would help ease my mind and relax me, so I chose that to be my prayer time.

As you can imagine, that didn’t work out well for me. Most of the time I would go to bed without remembering to pray and on the nights that I did remember, I would fall asleep mid prayer or lose my train of thought. It was basically an all-out failure.

I knew that bettering my prayer life was going to be crucial to my relationship with God and would ultimately bring me closer to Him, so I was not willing to give up.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a love of writing. I have started short stories, novels, this blog, and my fair share of journals. So I made the choice to combine my love of writing with my prayers. I got an old notebook that I hadn’t even begun to use and made it my prayer journal.

In the beginning it was incredibly difficult for me to remember to use my prayer journal, and I eventually would make time for it in my daily planner so that I wouldn’t forget. But as I continued to get better at using it, I realized that I was actually starting to seek it out, outside of my scheduled prayer time.

Now, I (just about) daily write down my prayers to God. It keeps me focused and engaged and the act of writing allows my brain to completely communicate my thoughts with God in a way I was unable to do when I wasn’t using the journal. Plus, there is the added bonus of being able to go back into your old prayers and see where God has given you answers.

It’s an amazing experience.

Of course, this is just my experience and personal preference. If enhancing your walk with God is on your priority list, take some time and find a way that works for you. Understand that there will be trial and error, but your diligence will pay off.