Preparing for a Future Valentine

“Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” –Ephesians 6:13-17 The Armor of God, spoken of in the 6th chapter of Ephesians is something most Christians have heard about. But for me it wasn’t until my 20 th year, when I was dating the man who is now my husband, that I heard of the idea of actually putting on this armor. Until then it had been a nice concept, and I more just thought of the different pieces as almost another set of things a believer should have or use; Faith, the Word, Salvation, Righteousness, Truth, and th

If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably begun to see a new hashtag popping up on my posts; #frugalliving. This has been my life ever since I got married, and honestly even as a child I grew up in a family that by necessity was frugal. It is not by any means a new season in my life, but it is once again the season I am in. The level of my frugality has had a certain ebb and flow to it since I got married almost 4 years ago now, but there is almost a certain humor for those of us in this place, as to what one must do to make all the little ends meet. You may have heard stories, for instance, of people digging through the couch for change in order to buy something small. Well...the stories are true. One of my favorite ways to laugh with my husband about how we are definitely not as poor as we used to be is in the area of change. When we were first married, we lived in this apartment where the whole building shared one washer and dryer. And in order to use that utility, yo

Welcome back to my story! It has been a couple days since I last posted, and I apologize. My husband was out of town, so my children required my full attention this past weekend. For those of you who hurt with me in my first part of this series, and learned of my spiritual surrender in part two, this is the part where you get to climb to the top of mountains with me!! This is the part of my story I am ecstatic to share, as God started immediately working in my life after I surrendered to Him. If you have not read the rest of my story, I encourage you to start back in part one  here . May 10th, 2019. It is a day that I know I will never forget. I hope that it will become a day that I even celebrate along with birthdays and my wedding anniversary. This was the day I told about in my last post where I completely surrendered my life and especially my marriage to God. Where for the first time in my marriage, I truly understood what it might actually take to love, honor, and obey my

I want you to know that there are lots of great tips and tricks when it comes to marriage. There are lots of techniques and things that you can try that may very well actually help your marriage get better and grow into something beautiful. But I also want you to know that there is no assurance in these techniques. None of these are a foolproof way to fix your marriage. Now you are probably wondering if I am incredibly cynical or am just of the opinion that there is no sure way that people can stay married till death do them part. And the answer is neither. Because these techniques with no surety that I am referring to are the ways of the world. They may even be recommended to you by a Christian counselor or therapist. But if they do not include ultimately giving your life, and thus by extension your marriage, over to God, they are not going to get you anywhere.  Why do I know this? Because this is my story. It started with the deepest valley of my marriage(read about that  her

I have told a select few my story from the last few months. And so far every one of them has praised God with me, and my fears of certain specific ways that they might respond to my story have not come to fruition. So without diving into what those fears are, and in response to the nudging of the Holy Spirit in my life to share my story in this format, I will trust that those fears will also not come to fruition in the minds or words of my readers. For those of you who read the second post in my War Room series, you know that my marriage was in a really bad place a couple months ago.  85 days ago on the 10th of May, I wrote this:  I always thought because I wanted marriage so much, that the hardest thing would be being single forever. Instead, I found the hardest thing was watching that marriage I had always dreamed of falling apart around me. It was hearing my husband say that he only stayed married to me for the kids. It was knowing that the very attributes my husband knew I