What you need to know

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I am a mother of two beautiful, grown women. I believe sarcasm is the sixth love language and I read like it is my job. I read close to 200 books a year and I love talking about what I read and great authors I find. I usually don't go for the books everyone else is reading. I love authors that are funny, but can be serious when they need to be. Romance is my favorite genre, but fantasy romance is not for me. I love building things and repurposing old furniture and building materials. Sometimes I just need to be creative. I'm also extremely ADHD and neurodivergent, but that just makes me more fun and interesting. As long as you can keep up. I am extremely honest and am not afraid to share my opinion. I try to do it in a nice way though. Constructive criticism is good, being flat out mean when you share your opinion is unnecessary.

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Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Where's the love? Its not enough!

Time and again I meet couples who have been married 7, 10, 13 + years and they tell me that the love has faded in their marriage. First off let me say this is totally normal. That new love feeling in the first few years of a relationship does not last. As great as that feeling is it can't last. That love is a chemical reaction in our bodies, an adrenaline rush, but over time our body adjusts and no longer releases the adrenaline from that feeling. So then what? Is that the end of the marriage? For some people yeah it is, but it does not have to be.

When that love fades we can choose to continue to love our spouse. Each morning I get up and choose to love my husband. It is easy to do now, but a few years ago I didn't even understand what that meant. I had to make it a habit.

Have you ever tried to stop a bad habit? Whether that habit was smoking, not exercising, or eating poorly that bad habit did not go away over night. In most cases you have to replace that bad habit with a good one. The same thing holds true with marriage you have to replace the bad habit of just expecting to feel love with choosing to love. The first few weeks of making that choice it can feel awkward, unnatural even, but the more you do it the easier it gets.

So what does choosing to love look like? Well, it is not getting up each morning, looking at your spouse and going, "love you" and going on with your day. . Choosing to love your spouse is putting them before yourself. This can mean husbands watching the kids so your wife can have a girls night out once a month. Or wives this can mean making a nice food spread before he watches the game with his friends. It obviously varies with each couple. What shows love to you and your and your spouse is going to be different than what another couple does. The key here is that you are making an effort to show love, not for what you can get back in return, but because it is the loving thing to do.

Now you may be asking yourself, but what if I don't feel like I love them anymore? You may have heard the expression "fake it till you make it" well that is sometimes what you have to do when you are choosing to love. When my husband and I nearly divorced a few years ago, he asked a friend of his what he was supposed to do since he didn't feel any love for me. His friend asked him if he had asked God to give him that love back. My husband said he had never thought of that before, but he started praying that prayer and choosing to love me and eventually he was able to find that love again. Before i started choosing to love my husband, I pretty much took him for granted. I loved him, but didn't really take any time to let him know that I loved him. According to him, it didn't even show on my face. However, once we went through our "junk" I was so sure of my love for him that I began to make the effort to choose to love him everyday. Before that you probably could have asked him if he was sure of my love for him and he may have said no, but now you would get a definitive YES.

So take the time this week to choose to love your spouse. Stop waiting for those feelings to be there and replace a bad habit with a good one. Don't expect things to improve over night and don't expect immediate love returned from your spouse, especially if your marriage is in a slump season, but just see how it affects your marriage. God can and will show up and show off.


Friday, January 1, 2010

Just sayin

After having facebook for a few years I have begun thinking in status updates. It is almost like I think people care that I need to refill my water bottle or something. Honestly I don't think that, but I still think to myself, "Beatlemom needs to refill her water bottle." So to indulge myself I decided to start a new blog. Can't really say what it is going to be about yet, but once I figure it out I'm sure it will be must read.
So I thought for this blog I will start with my favorite way to communicate, status updates.
Lazy days are the best
Football all day is great, but only if you care about who is playing
why can't my 6 year old do anything by herself?
why can't the girls put themselves to bed
why am I up at midnight on New Years day?
Not a fan of the creepy Coldwater Walmart
I love my new heart rate calorie counter
I'm scared of salt and the bloating it creates
my chiropractor is the bomb
can't wait for school to start back
wanna see Blind Side
My husband is worth forgiveness
I know I should cherish my girls at each age, but I'm tired of needing a sitter
I still blame my pregnancy for why I have belly fat
January is gonna be a crazy busy month
not sure this is the blog I wanna create, but just feel like writing right now
I have so much to say, but can't always get it out
The Marriage Playbook is awesome, hope we get more support this year
I can't believe this shy little girl can now speak to audiences Thanks God and Ace for helping me with that
I really should go to bed
I'm glad tomorrow is saturday, really hope my children let me sleep in
hoodies are the most comfortable shirt ever
I have $50 worth of Kohls gift cards, what should I buy?
I want a set of weights why doesn't Kohls sell that?
I like Tebow, but so glad he is done playing for Florida, maybe Tennessee will stand a chance at beating them now
my husband is amazing
I am blessed
I need to remember what I have instead of what I don't
time to recommit
really wish I had a free maid, oh wait I do if only the children would actually help
blogging made my heart rate go up 5 beats a minute, imagine if I were in a rant
I haven't ranted in awhile am I mellowing
wonder if my college friends still think of me as the b word cuz I really was back then, but it was all my depression that I really needed help with
thank God I finally got on meds for depression, I hated me like that
I've missed working out this week, I hope I get to go back to it next week, if not I am going to the Y, my butt is finally showing results
my husband can't get the computers to sink up and we are all frustrated by it, I just wanna print
just sayin