Depth chart

If you know my husband you know he is a big sports fan. He loves football more than the rest. So we are driving home the other day and the conversation goes something like this. As I am driving, I say, what ya reading? He says the depth chart for the Seahawks. (Only the best football team in the league if you ask us.)
I digress….I get my smart allec pants on and say…I wish you put as much time into studying me as you do the Seahawks. Without missing a great her says if you had a depth chart I just might. My honey is seriously quick witted. Anyway, it got me thinking….what if I had study aids? What if I could give him a real look at my depth?

So my love challenge accepted. I have decided to put togther a book for him that is all about me. I guess there is no better way to get down to just who I am. So I talked to my mom and she is sending me some photos to digitize and I will be posting my progress  as I go.

My question to you….what would you include in a study aid for your spouse?

The disrespectful wife strikes again!

Just when I think I am getting better, take a major stumble. This morning we woke up late.  We have found new church where we are planning to move and we had planned….more correctly, I had planned to finally make a visit.  I woke up and we had an hour to get out the door.  It was important to me that we finally make the trip down there.

So I say to my wonderful husband that we have 45 minutes to get into the car.  That gives me the 15 minutes extra that it seems to always take to get out of the house.  Out the gate, I am showing so serious signs of disrespect by not trusting that if he was going to come that he couldn’t be trusted with the true time frame. He informs me their is not enough time to get out the door and get there on time.  So he would rather not go. He doesn’t want to feel rushed and start out in a way that he wouldn’t give the church a fair shake.

So what did this disrespectful wife do? I pushed. I had been asking all week to go, I mentioned it yesterday.  So I push. So I go wake up the girls. I get Guin up and dressed.  I even have her in her shoes and at the table eating breakfast.  I go back and get Abby out of bed and tell her to get a move on we only have 30 minutes to get out the door.  So I head up to our bedroom.  My husband is laying in bed in his underclothes.

Oh….no he didn’t…this disrespectful wife wasn’t having it. So I nag again. I inform him again that the little one is ready, it will take mere moments to get myself dressed and Abby is getting ready. He tells me that he won’t have enough time to get ready. So I go to the laundry room and get my shirt, I get dressed iron my shirt and make a pot of coffee.  I go back upstairs.  There is progress…well kinda. he is sitting on the bed and he is still in his undies.

This disrespectful wife isn’t done yet.  She once again informs her husband that he needs to get dressed.  The coffee is done and since I am driving he can do his hair and use the electric razor in the car.  I nag a little more as I get my shoes on….then this disrespectful wife admits defeat.  I say it out loud.  I say you know what you are a grown man. I am leaving in 10 minutes and if you aren’t in the car I will just go with out you.

Trying the new church wasn’t a huge priority for his day. Not only that he is a grown man.  Why am I acting like his mother? It was clearly important to me.  So I had the choice. I could rush me and the kids and get out the door or I could stay at home with dear husband.  Man….it is hard.  The worst part is that I felt justified because it was church.  I can push my husband for God right. Man do I still have a lot to learn about being a respectful and trusting wife!

 

Trust, you say?

The definition of trust is a Firm reliance on the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing.

Seems like trust should be so easy. For this disrespectful wife it seems to be the central issue.  The question I have been asking myself for a while is; Do I trust that God gave me my spouse? Really it is a series of questions. The next question quickly follows, If I trust that God has chosen my husband for me, why am I not trusting in him? I have found honor, respect and submission are all a result of trust. Meaning, if I trust my husband, it is easy to esteem and respect him. When I have trust and respect for him it is much easier to submit than if I do not.
In the past, I have focused on submission. I have read a number of books about biblical submission. They have run the gamete. While I do believe that God gave me the set of skills I have and he wants me to use them, I  can’t do use them to usurp my man! So if I am to take the word trust and break down the definition, maybe I can find good reason to trust. This might seem like an odd exercise but follow me. Does Dan have integrity, ability and character that should lead me to have a firm reliance on him?

Let us start with his integrity. Although, I know he has lied about things in the past, It is very rare. He is a pretty open book.  He is honest in his dealings. He is polite to most people. He has a good heart. He trusts in God. He leans on God. He doesn’t steal, he abhors porn, hasn’t cheated, puts God first and thinks of his family as he makes decisions. While there are a few things like sarcasm as a mask for pain, and joking as a way to get out his feeling in a ha ha not so funny way. The great preponderance of the evidence shows that his integrity is GOOD and I should be able to have a firm reliance on his integrity.

So what about his ability? I think he has it is spades. He is well liked and respected at work. Not just at his office but across the state. People ask to work with him on complex problems. You may be asking how does this apply to the house? He has great problem solving abilities. When he runs up to a problem at work he works until it is solved. This sometimes means he has to be creative, which to be fair is needed when you have a wife like he has.  He makes enough money for me to stay home with the children. This makes him a great provider. He pays our bills on time. The children mostly like him but always love him. He is a GREAT dad. He took on being a parent when Abby was already 7. Which by all accounts is a strange place to start. Honestly, I can’t find anything lacking in his abilities. He is constantly amazing me with the things he can do!

So what about his character? Well aside from his sometimes hurtful humor, he has exceptional character. Although, I wish he apologized more, there isn’t a lacking in his character. I can depend on him 99 times out of 1oo. He calls when he says he will call. He shows up when he says he will. He is honest, and forthcoming. He is loyal to friends and family. He always speaks well of me to others. So overall his character seems to lead me to believe that I can have a firm reliance on him.

One of the things that I learned while in a group for my anxiety, was that you have to dissect a thought. When something makes you anxious, you have to break the thought down. What you do is you say this is my thought, it makes me feel a certain way, is this a reasonable thought? So as I am looking at the thought that I can’t trust Dan, I need to dissect the thought. Is it reasonable to believe that Dan is untrustworthy? Well as you can see….Dan is trustworthy. I can have a firm reliance on his integrity, ability and character. If I can have a firm reliance on his attributes I can have a firm reliance on him.

So while this doesn’t guarantee that Dan will be 100% reliable. It does mean that I am doing more harm to our relationship worrying about the tiny amount of times he will let me down.  The fact is that most days, I feel loved and understood by Dan. Why am I treating him with such distrust? This disrespectful wife really needs to take a leap of faith and trust that God did indeed plan to have Dan and I together. I need to believe that Dan is deserving of my trust! Maybe I will just start with a very granola, Washingtonian thing and make it my daily affirmation. I might just start off each day saying, I will trust Dan. I will trust Dan.

Just trust me.

This blog post has been sitting in my queue of drafts for over a month. It was three-quarters of the way done. I would like to say thank you to April at Peaceful Wife’s Blog. Click here for a link to the blog that gave me the courage to finally dust it off and finish it. It also has me writing another one. So again thank you April!

Jeremiah 29:11

New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

There are a few things that Dan and I have been looking at lately. I have a hard time trusting in things. I am a planner and need to know exactly what is going on. Dan has what I  would call a broad idea of what he sees and wants. He is more likely to look at next week than next year. I am trying to plan for the next ten years. Dan has no need to plan. He has complete faith that God has his back. He doesn’t go messing with guessing what his plan is. I trust in God but I long for direction. I want to have a family mission plan or statement.

I think that one of the biggest issues we have in our relationship is the different opinion we take on planning. The fact is that this difference takes me way out of my comfort zone. I squirm and I stress and I just want to be let in on the plans. Not just from Dan but from God. I know that they both have my back but I want in. I want to know where I am going and when. I don’t know that I would want to change the plan but I just want to know. I am sure if I saw it all I would think the plan a crazy one. That still doesn’t seem to curb my fears. Maybe there are others who know what I mean.

Dan takes what comes and deals with what is at hand.  He doesn’t want to be caught boasting of his plans for tomorrow. I on the other hand, don’t want to boast but what to at least have a general direction laid out. I love Dan’s faith in God. I love that he has comfort in knowing that God has each step laid out and he shouldn’t worry. I was trained to worry.

My life has taught me to have a plan for as many possible outcomes as you can. My life hasn’t had consistency. My life has been filled with chaos. In the midst of it I learned to worry.  Once I get to know someone, I can often see what course of action they will take. People rarely surprise me. I have learned to read them and I get most people. Unfortunately, because I have a long history of seeing the cliff people are running full speed toward, I have a hard time trusting anyone. Poor Dan sure has to deal with a lot of my trust baggage.

While I admire Dan’s ability to run straight ahead towards what appears to be a cliff; while trusting that God will catch him if it is a cliff or will keep him from it all together, I am completely afraid of it. It has me afraid to trust in Dan. In all truth, it has me afraid to trust in God. God has never let me down. He has always come when I have cried out. I have myself wondering….why is this trust thing so hard!

Feeble and Severely Broken

It has been crazy in our house as of late.  Abby has been out of school and Guin is well two and quite a Houdini. I am always listening for my door to open with that one. I am shocked the neighbors haven’t called the cops to report my two-year old roaming the neighborhood unsupervised! On top of having children and starting to get some of the schedule kinks worked out for teaching Abby and getting her to want to do work outside of the school type setting, we have been getting the house ready to sell. On top of that we had Grandpa come to fix one of the cars. That took longer than expected in part because Dan is at his new job and may I say doing an absolutely great job but can’t take leave till it is all in order. (I am pretty sure that the last sentence wasn’t grammatically correct but not sure how to change it.) With Dan having longer days a lot of extra work has been put on my plate including painting each room in the house and prepping and painting the exterior. The house is a horrible yellow. I have been over loaded with things.

As the weeks have gone on I was feeling stressed.  So I knew what I needed to do. Put God at the center and the rest would fall into place. So when I get up in the morning with Dan so I can make him his coffee and talk a little to him, I take time to read the Bible a little when the kids are still asleep. I have also started taking a run a couple days a week to help me focus better and relieve some of the stress. All that being said, my husband, loves Psalm 37. It gives him courage, hope and comfort. So I read it myself but I kept going onto Psalm 38. When I got to this passage:

Psalm 38:8 I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart.

That from the man after God’s own heart? This has made me decide it was time to do a thorough study on King David. That verse has given me such comfort when I feel like a failure because I am not doing enough. Or when I feel like a failure because there are days that I don’t make enough progress or days when kids have me taking a step or two back. God loved David. He chose David over Saul. I know that I am feeble and severely broken, but God used David when he was feeble and severely broken.  I know that my God can see past the broken person I am and use me as well.

Well I hope you all have a blessed day and I am glad to start getting back into the writing habit again!

What’s that you say? Don’t blame others?

Isaiah 58:9-10

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
and your night will become like the noonday.

If you are the parent of a tweener, you have heard all of the blame you can stomach for a life time. Mom I used the word because the kids tease me at school is I don’t use curse words. I didn’t take my lunch because you didn’t wake me up on time. I hear it all and the one thing I have come to know that it is never Abby’s fault! My tween isn’t the only one that I hear the blame game from. She provoked me, is one I have used. My husband has blamed his share of things on me or his boss or you know someone. The only one who doesn’t blame yet is the two-year old. She has the truth on her side I guess.  She wields it often. It seems like the blame game is learned!

It isn’t just my family though. Society has gone to a whole new level of the blame game. I killed because my parents abused me. I am rude because my parents never taught me better. All of which can be true but the other part of that sentence is missing.  People may have never been taught to be anything but rude and they haven’t cared to find out how. Your parents may have abused you but you chose to kill. Sure there are many contributing factors and we can justify anything.

We live in a world where people are suing fast food companies for providing them food. We choose not to use self-control and we are fat because McDonald’s fed us the food. When I was getting a divorce I certainly wanted to point the finger at him.  If I am honest there were many things that led up to the marriage failure. When I talk to other people who have divorced I see a lot of finger pointing. Trust me there is plenty of blame to go around. You won’t grow as a person if you are busy pointing finger instead of looking at how you can improve! The Bible says as long as we are blaming others, out light won’t shine for the world to see.

Oh what a crazy thought, as long as we put ourselves as the victim and center on ourselves then we won’t be able to share God’s light fully!  I am not saying that God can’t use us. He can use the most broken but we won’t shine his love when we are the victim! So where do we begin?  When you start to blame others, we can start with finishing our sentences. Yes they provoked me and I chose to lash out in anger. Yes you didn’t wake me on time but I have chosen not to use an alarm.  When we only use half the truth we often find ourselves pointing the finger.

 

 

More from the disrespectful wife

Oh it never seems to fail for me.I post about speaking the truth in love and what happens?  You can guess, we get into an argument and I loose that self-control of my temper and the truth was not said in love! Nope it was the truth but it was the ugly truth.  It is so easy to speak with love to a stranger.  So much easier when you are trying to look good to the world.  How often we forget that we should be show the same care and concern for those in our home. Not only that what example am I setting for my daughters. Am I showing them that it is okay to disrespect their husband as well?  Oi what a mess  can make.  It is so much harder to say things in a loving manner when you get to see all of the junk that a person has.  We always feel like others have it so much more together than we do.Well I know what I will be doing today. I will  be apologizing and working on not being the disrespectful wife!

Speaking the Truth in Love

Ephesians 4:15

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

Alright fellow Christians, just because you stand on a truth doesn’t give you the right to say it any way you want.  The way we talk about things certainly has a lot of people turned off. Why would anyone want to join a church that spoke so harshly and venomously as some of us Christians do. Since I talked about some lies I have believed, I want to talk about truth a little.

There are two places in today’s political climate that I just see us Christians failing to speak the truth in love. Abortion and Gay marriage are all over the headlines.  I also see a church who holds signs that say God hates you and little old ladies with pictures of aborted babies outside abortion clinics and planned parenthood. I don’t know about you but that isn’t speaking the truth with love. While yes if you read the Bible both are sins, but so is lying, cheating, stealing and adultery. God also isn’t a fan of divorce. So why are we so cruel when it comes to these things.

Abortion

Yes abortion is murder.  Last time I checked though we should not be the judge of others.  While I am saddened by the choice people make to kill their own children, The fact is that in judging these women we are saying that all we care about is the baby and no one cares about your soul. They do need to hear that it is wrong but is shouting murderer at them going to help them find Jesus? Is telling them they are going to hell going to make them receptive to God’s word?

Matthew 7:1-5

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Let us not forget as Christians that “God so loved the WORLD.” Good thing that he said WORLD and not spotless and sinless or we would all be spending a long time in hell! I have always found the door into someones heart isn’t through judgement and condemnation but love.  So have some compassion,  Why not talk to the women and invite them to lunch. Hear their problems and reasons. Help them solve the real problems that have gotten them where they are. Maybe they just need support. Maybe they are homeless, give them a home! My point is that love will go a long way in saving the mother and the baby.

Another small point I would like to point out that is lacking in our fight again infanticide, is that we talk women out of an abortion and then we leave them hanging.  We don’t do anything to save the souls of the baby and mother.  What good was saving a babies life if we don’t care to save their soul. Just saying!

Gay Marriage

This one is a much more touchy subject to me. I have met some wonderful people who are gay. I would never treat them any different than anyone else. I have had co-workers that were gay. The fact is that we all deal with sin in our life. For me the sins are relational with my husband and living in that relationship in a way that pleases God. I want to be in control and at times try to usurp my wonderful man.

Do I think as a church we should be condoning and permitting marriage that is outside of what God had planned take place in our walls? No. At the same time, I don’t think we should be making a whole group of people be treated as they are second class citizens. The fact is that our nation was founded on freedom principles. In our country, people have the right to divorce easily, have sex outside of marriage and look at porn. These are all different types of sexual sin and the Bible speaks firmly on these. So why is homosexual behavior treated as a worse sin.

My point is that the way we are treating this group of sinners is so much worse than people who look at porn or have extramarital affairs. I don’t completely understand the hate speech and venom that comes out of Christians mouths when it comes to homosexuals. The fact is that me telling them they are going to hell isn’t going to change anything but make Christ look like he isn’t the God who loved the WORLD. I can say that I don’t agree with the behavior and leave it at that. It is much more loving than taking the Bible and hitting someone with it. The only thing we can do is love on them and be honest and kind when asked about our beliefs in this.

I would just like to remind all the Christians out there that the Bible tells us to speak the truth with love.  We need to remember that how we deliver the message as important as the message.  We just need to remember that we are trying to be Christ like. So as corny as this may sound think about what Jesus might say and how he might say it!

The lies I’ve believed part1

In life we are fed lies. Some came from a marketing wizard, others. From friends and some from even your parents. I have noticed a theme in what I have been writing lately, it became clear in church service this morning. I have been itching to get to a keyboard since. All of the things I am working through are lies that I have bought into. The enemy has used every person he can to help me buy these lies. The lie I am going to start with is that I don’t need my husband.

I find myself thinking from time to time that I can do it all myself. I don’t need Dan. I believed this lie when it came from my mom. e told me never to rely on a man. That everything I needed in life I could do for myself. Yes technically I could almost get through life without the need for a man….oh wait….I couldn’t have a life without the sperm from my father. Turns out men are NEEDED!!!

The fact is that God wanted me to rely on the man he gave me. God wants me to need and want Him. Dan is important to my life. He is there for me when I am sick or for mental support. He is also needed for my daughter’s. Study after study is showing the importance of a father in children’s lives. It has become apparent that a two parent household delivers the best child rearing results. We have as a society man a joke of fatherhood. We make dads look like fools in commercial after commercial and show after shoe. We have demeaned or men and put. Mothers on a high pedestal.
We have made it appear that men are useless and not needed. When in fact they are needed today more than ever. We need good Godly men in our lives. Our children need them in their lives. It turns out my mom was wrong I do need a man to live my life. It also turns out that I WANT the rest of my life to have MY man in itinerary need myDan!