Week 4- Pray for Him Every Day This Week

Whew. What a week to come to a challenge that actually required me to remember things. It's VBS this week and we're babysitting the director's little boy in the afternoons and life has just been absolutely insane.

But I can say that it is Wednesday and I have successfully remembered to ask my Hubby what he would like prayer for before bed each night, and then to pray for those things the next morning during my quiet time. Besides that, a tip from the blog I got the ideas from was to mentally make my wedding ring a symbol/reminder of my promise to pray daily for him, and to let that trigger, at the very least, a 'breath prayer' for him. I did well on this on Monday and okay on Tuesday. Today, my brain is mush and I'm struggling with it.

I've been writing down Hubby's prayer requests in my new little notebook, and have even, already, been able to record some answers to prayer. On all three days so far my husband has asked me to pray for him to have the stamina to get through his work days. Monday and today were, in fact, pretty good days at work. Tuesday he asked me to pray that he would do his best in the 5k we ran last night. He ran it in nearly the same speed as the last one we did a month and a half ago, and this time he didn't even have a pacer! He did in fact do a fantastic job. Monday he asked that he would have the drive to get ahead in his school work, and right now he only has two assignments to finish before Friday. Fantastic! It's amazing to see prayer and accountability working together here. I know that God has his hand in everything we do, and I also see how mentioning the things you want to get done in someone else's presence can inspire you to get them done.

I also have been praying over various things as suggested in the book 'The Power of a Praying Wife.' I've read through the book before and now am just using the list of topics as a starting point to figure out areas where I believe there is needed prayer and praying over it.

Praying for one's husband can be such an eye-opening thing. So often when I pray over something that is happening or something I'd like to see change in our lives, I can feel myself being guided mentally toward a solution that does not involve my husband changing, but myself. In fact it's striking how often, when I bring my problems to God before yelling at my hubby, I realize I'm being picky, or the issue is not as big as I had thought, or at least I can get a handle on my emotions and explain to him how I feel without accusing or heaping on the guilt.

I hope to have an even more eye-opening week as I go. The blog post about this week's challenge even talked about fasting, so we will see. :)

Week 3-Wedding Day!

Oh, we were so young! I cannot remember a day that was overall as happy as the day we got married. My mother tells me I was quite stressed, and maybe I was, cause I can be kinda type 'A' (Stop snickering at me!!). But I don't remember being stressed. I remember many times thinking, 'oh, isn't this just so much FUN!'

We were married in the church my hubby grew up in, and which we still attend today. Both our brothers, his two sisters, and a couple friends stood up for us. My sister, who was only 11 at the time, did the guestbook and read our scripture verse. And no, I can't remember what the verse was or what the pastor preached on! Far, far too excited, as everyone is.





My Grandpa sang 'Amazing Grace' for us, which was so incredibly meaningful to me. He and my other Grandpa were planning to sing 'Sunrise, Sunset' at my wedding, but my dad's dad passed away when I was 16.

The pastor who married us has also baptized our 3 kids and walked with us through journeys of cancer and everything else.
It was an amazing day filled with our best friends and biggest supporters. I loved every minute of it, even if I had my moments! :)

We had such a simple ceremony, which I like, and while there are things I would change, like having the reception somewhere besides the church we were married in, I cherish the joy I felt that day. Looking back on the pictures makes me smile so much!

I still marvel that I got to marry the man who is the person I am most at ease with in this entire world. The fact that God brought us together so early was an amazing part of his plan, as without God and my husband by my side, I sometimes don't know how I'd have made it through the years of sickness and treatments for Hodgkin's.

Just remembering the way I felt that day, getting ready, putting on the dress, having my future husband see me in the dress for the first time, exchanging vows, rings and kisses, and then celebrating with our friends and family, is amazing.

Week 2-Dating Days

This week's writing prompt is to talk about our dating days and/or post pictures from those days. Our dating days were fairly short compared to what we had planned at the beginning of our relationship, as we had both planned to go to college after high school, but that was put on hold. I do not regret where our life has led, and am exceedingly glad that I got to marry the most incredible man!

(Our first picture together. My mom ambushed us before our very first date.)


We were literally high school sweethearts. We started dating his Sophomore/my Junior year. Most of our dates consisted of Band functions! We met through band class. He was a drummer and I played trumpet. I have no idea what attracted him to me, but I know I liked his chivalry and sense of humor right off the bat. And the fact that he was and still is very good looking was an incredible plus!

(Our first dance)
The thing that strikes me most about those days when I think back is the fact that it was so easy for us from day one. In spite of the butterflies and nervousness from having our first real relationship (yes, we were each others first 'official' boyfriend/girlfriend), it seemed so easy to get to know each other. I think I knew very early that he was the one I was to marry. I'm hearing chuckles and snorts, as we were only 16. But looking back now, I've never wanted to try dating anyone else since the very first day of our relationship.

I've always felt very cared for by him. I've never felt disrespected or like he doesn't care about my opinions. Quite the opposite, in fact, I feel like he seeks my opinions on almost everything. He listens to my rantings (which, sometimes, are many!), thinks I'm beautiful, and is still very chivalrous, opening doors and everything. I find him easy to respect in return, and I find that I want to show him how I love him as often as possible. And, he is still the most handsome man I've ever met. Not only is that last sentence true, but he reads this and I know it'll embarrass him. hehe.


We dated almost the way through high school and were married soon after. True high-school sweethearts.

The last picture is my all-time favorite picture of the two of us from our dating days. I don't like many pictures from my high school days, but this is one of them. I love this picture.

Completing Him Challenge

Okay the picture doesn't go anywhere, just FYI.

I've been exploring stay-at-home mom blogs and such looking for encouragement and back-up, if you will, in my role as a SAHM. One of them I found is called Women Living Well, and it is doing a challenge over the summer. The challenge is to become more and more of the helpmeet that our husbands need. This has intrigued me for a long time. I was going to write, 'since the day we got married,' but that isn't true. As much as I have loved my husband through our entire relationship, I was very immature and selfish when we got married. God has taken our relationship a long ways from the 18-year-old kids we were when we married. 

Anyway, here's the schedule of the challenge:

Here's the Topic Schedule for those who want to link up each week:

June 7 - announce to your readers you are participating by posting the button on your site and leaving your link below. Optional: Embed the HTML from this video in your blog post!

June 14 – Post Pictures from your dating days (or tell us all about it!). Think about one thing you used to do or have as a couple that you have lost in the shuffle of life. How can you regain it?

June 21 - Remember Your Vows - post pictures of your wedding day. We will review the sacredness of this day.

June 28 - Ask your husband every morning how you can pray for him that day. Bonus: Fast and pray for him one day this week.

July 5 - Admire Your Husband. Write this post and then show it to him! He will smile!

July 12 - Make a list of 5 things you currently do and ask him to prioritize them for you of what is important to him. For example - a clean home, home cooked dinner, coupon clipping, service at church, having friends over for dinner, watching/doing sports with him, etc.

July 19 - Make him a priority. Ask him what his favorite dinner, dessert and drink are. Be sure to serve him all three one night this week. Bonus: cook his favorite dishes all week long!

July 26 - Support his vision. Discuss his vision for your family. Where does he see your family in 1 year, 5 years, and 10 years.

August 2 - R-E-S-P-E-C-T! No complaining, criticizing, rolling your eyes, nagging, or giving him any friction this week. Enjoy a week of peace in your home!

August 9 - Kiss Him Like You Mean It (and be sure the door is locked!)

Well, I won't be linking up to her today, but I'll be following these ideas. They are fantastic, and I do these sorts of things occasionally, but I think the onslaught of these sort of actions will be really good for our marriage. Plus they all sound like fun. 

whoa.

'They' say that this is nothing. My life is only going to get busier. Well, good grief, I don't know if I can handle busier. I already find myself looking around the table when we've managed to find a night where we can actually eat around the table and going, 'when did we last do this?' And my kids are 7 and younger.

I now have a third grader and a kindergartener. I'm going to be 'home-schooling' C everything she needs to know for Kindergarten next year, so I don't really call her a preschooler officially because it's going to be so casual. She already knows the alphabet and most of the letter sounds, counts to 25, and can say her address and spell her name. So I'm not going to sweat anything with her, she picks it up so easily.

S  is headed to camp in a couple weeks, she'll be sleeping over the last night. This will actually be her first sleepover by herself that wasn't at her Grandparents' house. She's stoked and her sister who shares a room with her is not. A is very dependent on S and is NOT looking forward to that week.

We have friends coming up from Ohio next weekend. That will be incredibly fun but my brain is already thinking on what needs to be cleaned. Everything, of course, but I need to have a list, that just being the way I am. :)

We just put up a new swingset, and C, the fearless child that she is, climbs the climbing wall. Y'know the kind with the rocks, like a professional climbing wall? Well we have one of those that goes 5 feet straight up and she now climbs it with no help. We've taken to calling her our little monkey.

Here's a link to our YouTube video of her.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm7yvqM7z5Q



A has also learned our address, and passed the Kindergarten screening with flying colors. I think that because her birthday is so early in the year, thus missing the cut off dates and making her one of the oldest in her class, we will actually need to pay attention so that she doesn't get bored in her classes. Once a teacher asks her to do something she's off and running, and I don't want her to get ahead and get bored. I'm ready for her to be in Kindergarten, she's so eager to learn and I think she's going to love it.





S is finishing up another season of softball and thrilled to be a third grader. She's really looking forward to summer. I think she's really ready for that break. Now that school is really getting into some challenging things, she doesn't get overly excited about every single day anymore. She still likes it and gets along well with teachers and classmates, I'm glad she still has such a good attitude about it.




I have discovered the benefits of running with a barefoot stride instead of heel-striking. Those of you who know me on FaceBook are probably sick unto death of me talking about this, and Hubby keeps teasing me about being an evangelist about it. But that's okay. I have a pretty new pair of Nike Free Runs and I love them and running like this. You strike with the mid-foot, as you do when barefoot, instead of the heel, as you do when wearing rigid running shoes. It strengthens muscles in the foot, ankle, leg, around the knee, and in the hip. It also keeps you from putting so much shock on all the joints. The heel, people are discovering, is not built to take hard shocks, even when walking. So, running and landing on the heel like most do, sends shocks through the heel and up through all the joints of the legs and into the back. Hence, knee injuries, hip troubles, and back problems, all of which are higher in those of us who wear a lot of shoes (us Europeans/Americans), and especially in those who use expensive running shoes. Shocking, huh? The expensive shoes that people are using are actually making their injuries worse and happen more often.

Well, that was long. I can't blame you if you skipped most of that last paragraph. You did, didn't you? That's okay. I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and maybe now that I've put it on here I'll be able to shut up about it elsewhere. ;-)

I found out from my ENT that I need to have another (very minor) surgery to have my vocal chord put back into place... I'm not looking forward to it. I get so nervous before surgeries, even this one that is so minor. The last time they forgot to give me the 'feel-good' IV before and I had an emotional moment in the operating room. Ugh. So if you feel so inclined, send up a prayer for me. I'll try to get a date up here soon. I just have to get daring enough to schedule the appointment, and find a date that I actually could do it.

It's raining like crazy here now and I love it. I always have loved rain. Perfect way to end the day.