About 2 months ago I had a real restlessness for ministry. I can’t pinpoint why, but I was feeling like the ministry we do was neat and pretty. I was feeling like I wanted to get messy in ministry. I don’t think I wanted to go looking for mess, but I more wanted to let masks down and get real with anyone we are in ministry with. I wanted to be uncomfortable.

John and I talked about adoption…and foster care. To me foster care seemed “messy” and really uncomfortable.

But we never felt we got the green light from God for either of those things.

So we just kept at the newlywed class, having people in our homes, and being sensitive to God’s calling.

Then God started growing a friendship with a friend who was walking through a dark season in her marriage. 

God started crossing our paths…daily.

Then God allowed us to walk through this messy, ugly pit with her and her husband. Not from afar, but right next to them every painful step of the way. 

The last 2 weeks have been some of the most emotionally and spiritually draining for me and my husband. We’ve spend time in prayer. I’ve cried (not sure if John has), we’ve sought God hard, we’ve gotten advice from others who have walked the path my friend and her husband are walking, and we’ve watched God move a mountain.

Honestly, I don’t know how their story will end. Today I have hope for this marriage.

But as I’ve “gotten messy” in ministry there’s a stirring in me to be even more bold as God directs. 

See satan is crafty! He causes people to drift towards isolation in their sin and pain. They think they are the only ones who have walked this path of pain. So we put on pretty smiles and pretend everything is okay. When inside we’re dying and our marriages are falling apart.

I will also say my bubble, my nice Christian bubble, has burst. This isn’t a bad thing, just a smack of reality has hit me upside the head!

I look at the world with a new set of glasses.

This blog is to plead with you, let the masks down! If you have pain in your marriage don’t sit on it. It may be stage one cancer that left untreated will be stage four in a couple of years. Don’t think your problem is an isolated account. Ask God to bring others in your life who have walked ahead of you. You’ll be amazed as you open up this private pain that God will bring others to walk along side you. He’s a God of details!

I plead with you to teach your sons about the danger of porn! Oh goodness…how I wish I could not even think this is a problem…but my bubble has popped. Protect your sons eyes with the seriousness of a lion and her cubs. Get radical in protecting them! It’s a slippery slope! Don’t be naive. Speak to your husband about it, openly and freely! If this is an area you feel like you can’t talk about with your husband…why? Break the silence! 

Also, if you’re married have nothing that is password protected from your mate! All emails, facebook, twitter, iPhones, and any other accounts should be open and free to your mate. Walk openly with your mate!

My heart is just pounding writing this knowing some of you may laugh this off, or read and think, “Heather’s being silly or over reacting.” That’s okay! If no one responds in action to this blog that’s okay because I am obey God in writing this!

All glory to God!! 

So June of last year was when my plateau really started. I felt stuck. 

Then at the end of January I read: Made to Crave.

I felt that God asked me to give up my trigger foods…sugar and chips.

I kept hearing the phrase, “Not one bite!”

So I’ve been sugar and chip free (okay one friend gave me a piece of chocolate from Finland and it would have been really rude to not take it, so I had one piece, but told John and my accountability group right away) for a month. I’ve not even had 1 chocolate chip when making pancakes for the boys. I’ve not had any sugary cereal. I’ve not had a donut or anything. Last night we had chips and salsa…and I almost ate one, but no “Not one bite”.

In one month I’ve lost 7.5 pounds.

Not only have I lost 7.5 pounds I’ve noticed that I tend to not overeat. I have seen that sugar is indeed my biggest trigger food. When I eat (well, when I used to eat) sugar it would trigger my body to crave more food.

I had no idea it was that big of an issue for me.

With Weight Watchers I was “tracking” my trigger foods…but feeling a fall out with food once the cycle of sugar eating began.

I have no idea when I’ll start eating my trigger foods. I don’t want to feel as if not eating sugar is what is controlling my weight loss, but I also don’t want to start the overeating cycle. I want to know I’ve broken that stronghold!

As of this morning I am down 70 pounds from my top weight in October of 2009. 

After 12 years of marriage Sam and Kathy sit at a resturant with hardly a word crossing their lips.

Kathy plays with her salad and shifts in the hard seat.

Sam checks his phone and replies to a text message.

When he sets his phone down Kathy mentions that Tommy, their 10 year old son, has a ball game that Saturday. Sam asks when, and then checks his phone to see his calendar. 

They go back to silence as the main dish is served. 

Kathy wonders, “How did we get here? This man is a stranger.”

Most evenings at home Sam and Kathy hardly talk, so this “date night” isn’t that different. Sex is pretty infrequent, maybe 1 time every other month. They watch TV when they eat dinner and most nights they are running one of their 3 children to a sporting, school, or church event.

Their church friends have no idea that they are just living as roommates. Even some of Kathy’s closest friends haven’t gotten past the smile she puts on to know the loneliness she feels. Her heart aches. Secretly she is addicted to romance novels and soap operas. The fantasy land in her mind allows her to numb the pain and rejection she feels. But that pain goes back to high school when a boy she liked physically went too far with her…an event she’s never shared with Sam. 

Sam, well, he’s pretty disconnected emotionally from the family. He figures he is the bread-winner, so he’s providing for his family. Work is stressful, church commitments keep him busy, and he likes to play basketball on the weekends with his buddies from church. He figure he works all week and the weekends are “his” time. No one knows that he’s lost really all interest in his wife. “Taking care of himself” is easier than connecting with Kathy, she never really liked to be physically intimate with him anyway…so he figures he’s doing her a favor. His world pretty much revolves around him.

They both wonder privately, “How did we get here and how do we get back to where we were?”

(This story is NO ONE I know!!! Just patterns I’ve seen.)

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Does this sound familiar? 

When couples get married, they don’t set out to be strangers 12 years down the road. 

But they don’t set out to be intentional in their marriage either! 

So there’s one mis-step…maybe a deep hurt that is never addressed, or a hidden secret that one is unwilling to share. It could be that children start to consume their time and they forget to take time for their marriage. Or maybe a childhood pain is “buried”, but impacts the emotional well-being of one of them. It’s easier to let TV, computers, ministry, friends, other activities, or work be more important than connecting with their mate. Or maybe there’s some tension in the marriage that overtime becomes just an elephant in the room. 

Whatever the mis-step, whatever the misunderstand, whatever the pain…the brick wall is built. Brick by brick the couple builds a tall, thick wall between them. They don’t talk, they resent, they get mad, they seethe, they may try but don’t understand each other…so they stop trying. They turn on “cruise control” thinking, “If we just stay busyness enough we don’t have to deal with this marriage.”

Then it’s easier to just be self-focused so they don’t tap into the pain they’re causing. It’s easier to stay disconnected than take energy to focus on their mate.

But does this resemble Christ and His Bride, the Church, at all!? 

God created marriage to share the gospel, yet we’ve twisted marriage and the beauty of the covenant into a self-serving union. We look to be “happy” and to have our needs met. We’ve let satan sell us the lie that busyness is the norm. We don’t remain teachable, so we get stuck in our pattern of treating each other as roommates and not as husband and wife. 

These patterns I have seen have welled up in me a passion so deep…a passion for God-honoring, Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-filled marriages where the husband and wife are serving one another selflessly. A marriage that screams the gospel to all who come in contact with this couple!

A marriage that thrives requires revived hearts to be directed under the mighty hand of God, where there is no thought of self, only the promotion of the gospel!

The man would be the servant leader in his home, willing to be teachable and be 100% emotionally and spiritually plugged into his wife and kids. Where his number 1 goal is to protect and provide, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. His thought life is pure and there is not a hint of immorality. He lives with no hidden sin and full of integrity! 

The wife would willing serve her family selflessly, being the helpmate she was created to be. She would embrace biblical womanhood and the freedom that comes from that. She would know that she sets the emotional tone of her home, so she would be intentional to work through past pains and hurts, so she is emotionally free to lavish love on her family. She is a life giver to all she comes in contact with. 

If more non-believers saw these types of marriages…the more hands-on the gospel would seem! But when they see no difference, what is the need for a Savior?

One way to safeguard your marriage is to ask: Does this create oneness with my mate?

“The two shall become one flesh” Matthew 19:5

Shall become…I read that I think: Is there is a process of becoming one flesh.

In my own marriage I believe there has been a processes, one we’re still in. We’ve been intentional to ask: Does this create oneness? That intentionality has helped us filter out and include in activities in our life. (Oneness is not sameness….men and women are created different!)

Some of those areas we ask this question would include: work, ministry, hobbies, TV watching habits, vacation, extra-curricular activities, how we spend money, church involvement, raising our boys, and even what time we go to bed.

Using this question as a filter helps us figure out what is best for us and what are things we can set aside. We also have come to realize there are seasons where one thing may cause oneness and in a different season doing the complete opposite will cause oneness. 

Praying for you and your mate to experience oneness today in a new and fresh way!

I guess I’ve been out there with my weight loss journey, sharing photos, sharing my mental process, and sharing the bumps along the road. 

At the end of November I broke up with Weight Watchers…it was a good thing.

I felt ready to handle weight loss without that program I wasn’t even following (I am doing the old WW program, not the new, new program)

For about 6 weeks I sorta…well it was the holidays and I just enjoyed, I tracked some days, I weighed in weekly, but I didn’t stress.

I gained 3 pounds. I was okay with that. 

Then the new year came and I felt refocused, but was still fighting.

Then some girlfriends talked about this book, “Made to Crave”.

Our pastor shared about how serious are we about sin, are we serious enough to get radical. Another sermon was about the power of the Word to battle sin.

This was all swirling in my brain.

I’ve always felt overeating and being greedy in my eating is a sin. No matter the food…carrots or carrot cake…if it is eaten with wrong motives then it can be sin.

I ordered the book and when it came I devoured it!

Now I’ve done two other bible study weight loss books…I sorta didn’t expect anything “new” with this book, but it was a fresh perspective on eating and my walk with God. 

There are a couple of main things that jumped out to my heart from this book. 

1) She talks about how foods are not the problem, but we have trigger foods. (It’s our hearts that the core of the problem lies…what we’re craving) However there are foods that can send us in a downward, out of control eating cycle. For me I have notices sugar and chips do that for me. To be a living sacrifice I’ve felt that God has asked me to not have one bite of those foods until I am not mastered by them. I don’t know how long I’ll go without, but when I am tempted I hear “not one bite”. For some this won’t make sense, for others this will make complete sense. I have cut off those foods, not in a legalistic way, but in a way to lose the pull of those foods…I want to crave God more than chips or sugar. 

2) She talks about how she viewed her stronghold of food like a tall tower and when she was tempted to overeat, eat with greed, or eat something she had felt she wasn’t to eat to show she wasn’t mastered by it; she’d envision taking a brick off the tower and building a pathway to prayer. That image has stuck with me. 

Eating, food, being overweight, losing weight…is more than just a number on the scale or a size of jeans…but a heart attitude of contentment.

I’ve lost those 3 pounds and hope to lose the last 25 in 2012!

Obedience to God can be like dominoes. 

We feel pricked in our heart to do something….make a phone call, invite someone over, turn down a different road, listen the radio when we don’t normally, go out of our way to talk to someone, or some other small twist in what we were doing.

We look back and we see how that one step was a domino that sent other chain of events to unfold. 

We realize had we not done that one small thing, all these other things wouldn’t fall into place.

It’s always exciting to look back and realize God choose to you use, as one domino, in a much larger picture! 

I don’t believe with God anything is a coincidental.

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time you’ll know I’ve been pretty intentional about trying to simplify my life, my home, and my calendar.

My journey started one middle of the night feeding when Clark wasn’t even 5 months old. As I rocked and nursed him I had this thought, “What would it be like to go through every corner, cabinet, box, shelf, and closest of my house to organize and purge?”

That thought excited me! 

So John and I said that in 2010 we’d spend the year doing just that. 

It did take me awhile, and looking back I wasn’t that aggressive in purging, but did a lot of organizing.

Then in the spring of 2011 I started feeling this overwhelming suffocation of stuff in my house. A friend wrote a blog about a book she read and I knew it would be right up my alley. I tore through “Organized Simplicity” in about 1 week and started right in.

(I did blog about it: I can breath, Family Vision Statement, We’re ready to move, Things I’ve noticed, Want to organize your home)

The last area that need a fine tooth purge (or so I thought) was my Christmas stuff. This year I purged 3 boxes of Christmas stuff. 

Last week I decided to do another round of purging through my house. Started in the boys room and I ended up with 7 boxes of items to give away from my entire house!

So this has been on going for 2 years. Two years of intentional simplifying and I feel like I am finally seeing the fruit. 

In 2012 we’ve had about 20 days of company (dinner parties, movie night, play dates, drop in company). In having all this company we’ve noticed that having a simplified home makes having company over easy! If my dishes are done, I can clean or pick up my whole house in about 15 minutes! No joke!! Even my upstairs stays “company ready” (you know what I mean!)

Everything we have has a “home”, everything belongs somewhere…even chapstick, rolls of tape, and every toy. So when we go to clean up, since everything belongs somewhere, it all gets put away easily. 

Now before you think I have this huge house, with tons of space…guess again! (Here’s a blog tour of my house from a couple of years ago: Tour of my house WOW things have changed! Makes me want to take the same pictures in the same spots to compare! And I also know to some people our house is HUGE…it’s all a matter of perspective!)

Not only have we been more intentional about simplifying our home, we’ve been even more intentional about NOT buying what we don’t need! That has helped!! 

So if you’re thinking about simplifying, know it’s taken us two years to really see the fruit of our intentions! Hope this blog encourages someone to stay the course and give it time…purging, organizing, and simplifying doesn’t happen over night!

This week on facebook I asked what people think when they see: OMG. 

Most agreed they think God, so they try to write out OMGoodness or OMW (for oh my word), or OMGosh.

The discussion lead to why some of us don’t use the word gosh.

Before I share why we don’t use the word, let me say that this is a personal conviction. Some may say it’s a biblical conviction, but I am just not totally sure in my heart I can say that. I do think many don’t know the origin of the word gosh and that’s why I am sharing my thoughts.

On Dictionary.com is states that the Origin: 1750–60;  euphemistic alteration of God

An euphemism is: the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.

An alteration is: the process of modifying

So I see the word gosh as taking the phrase “Oh my God” and modifying it so it’s not as offensive or harsh.

This is why we don’t use the word gosh. 

What are your thoughts about this word??

After writing my post this morning I realized I need to get a bit more serious about destroying my stronghold (in the area of food).

So I created these verses, just figured if someone else wants to have some temptation cards, here’s the work done for you!

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12

 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ  2 Cor. 10:4-5 

 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.1 Cor. 10:13

 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Hebrews 12:11

 But he fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Gal. 5:22-23

 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints Eph. 6:13-18

This week at church one of our pastor’s preached on the power of God’s Word in the battle for your heart and mind. It was a powerful reminder of the invaluable resource we all have at our fingertips to please God in word, thought, and deed. (Take Every Thought Captive by Jon Wizarde)

One very practical way I’ve found to use God’s word in the battle for a stronghold in my life, is to write out bible verses on 3×5 cards and either carry them with me, or post them in my house. Then I find I am being reminded often of the truth and not the worlds lies. I have also found this a great way to memorize scripture.

This also can be a tool you can share with others. The first time I ever wrote out verses for a friend was about 14 years ago, she was battling bulimia and I wrote out about 15 verses for her to keep in her bathroom. I’ve also sent 3×5 verse cards to friends going on mission trips or friend walking through a difficult season. 

(I don’t share as a way to see what I’ve done…this was something that was shared with me to do as a way of encouragement to friends and my own heart in times of spiritual battle.)

What are ways you use God’s Word in the spiritual battle of life?