I Pledge Allegiance...To My Marriage...

As Americans, most of us take a lot of pride in the flag of our country; we place our hand over our heart and pledge allegiance to it, have ceremonial raisings and lowerings of it, fold it in a precise manner....even go so far as to never let it touch the ground lest it and our country be dishonored.

Interesting how many of us don't hold our marriage in such high regard; no protecting one another, very little honoring, and allegiance....what's that? Allegiance to self is more like it. Holding one another with fingers widely splayed so that our spouse can slip through and other things can slip in causing both to slip up.

No standing up for the covenant we made.

We say, "one nation, under God, indivisible..." How about, "one marriage, under God, indivisible..."? Isn't that what we have? One marriage under God? And shouldn't it be indivisible? After all, almost all wedding ceremonies have some variation of, "what God has joined together let no man tear asunder". I daresay that often times that "man" is...us.

So. Where does your allegiance lie?

Natural Is Best...

OMG...two Wellness Wednesday posts back-to-back. That's just crazy people! I will relate it to marriage restoration in that Michael absolutely listens to my heart by completely indulging my craftiness in all it's many forms and praising everything I make - my Proverbs 31 husband!!!

So, I love trying homemade skin care recipes and this is my most recent find and since our skin is porous and what we put on it get's absorbed into our bloodstream, I think what goes on our bodies is just as important as what we put into them. Just like the natural deodorant that I make and use. Have I mentioned that yet? It's awesome!

But today, I have a handmade lotion for you so let's get right to it. I don't remember exactly where I found the recipe but the ingredients go like this:

• 1 cup filtered water
  
• 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tbsp grated beeswax
  
• essential oil (optional)

As always, I changed it up. I replaced 1/3 of the water with rose water (you can use rose water, orange flower water or brewed tea like peppermint, chamomile or hibiscus - the latter will give a delicate pink color). Instead of evoo, I used a mixture of organic coconut oil and organic avocado oil and I added about 6 drops of tangerine essential oil.

Heat the oil, sans essential oil, in a double boiler using a glass bowl. Add the grated beeswax to the oil and mix until completely melted. Carefully remove the glass bowl from the double boiler and let cool for about 5 minutes.

Put the water into your blender and turn it on. While it's whirling, take the plastic center from the top of the blender lid and slowly pour in the oil and beeswax mixture. It will immediately begin to emulsify. Blend about 30 seconds more then add any essential oil you may be using. You may have to stop and stir/loosen your lotion a couple of times but that's normal and it mostly depends on the strength of your blender.





This lotion is wonderfully creamy and smells soooo good. I use it everyday, even on my face as a mask to moisturize my skin and it's also a great makeup remover!

If you have a local farmer's market that you go to and there's a honey vender there, they probably sell the beeswax. That's how I got mine. This is a whole food product and should last about 3 months at room temp. I don't expect ours to last that long but if you make it and aren't going to use it right away just be sure to refrigerate it.

Tomorrow is Michael's birthday and he's asked for an hour-long back rub. Guess what I'll be using?

The Blood Covenant of Marriage

I really enjoy listening to Pastor Creflo Dollar and I usually do so once a week. Lately, he’s been talking about the strongest covenant known to man as being a blood covenant. This makes a lot of sense to me and, of course, the bible is filled with this type of covenant with the most important to us being that Christ shed His blood for us that we might have fellowship directly with God the Father. Not only that, the bible is divided into two covenants: the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

Covenant in Hebrew means a cut-where-blood-flows. The purpose of covenant was to create a binding agreement, more powerful than a contract or agreement. This was to be forever - the life span of the participants, it was to be holy, sacred, to violate the covenant would mean death. The blood covenant was the ultimate insurance of loyalty and fidelity. Marriage is the closest agreement to the blood covenant in modern society and, sadly, marriage is today closer to a contract than a covenant.

Being involved in marriage ministry, I began to wonder about how a blood covenant would apply since we westerners don’t cut each other when we’re taking our vows. Simply put, it would be virginity. When a bride and groom consummate their marriage on their wedding night, as virgins, there would be a showing of blood; from her and onto him. Here’s the sad part…I had to think about this for a moment. Why? Because I wasn’t a virgin on my wedding night nor was my first husband, in fact, he wasn’t even the first man I’d ever been with sexually. And, having been previously married, there would be no physical way for there to be a showing of blood on my second wedding night and Michael and I had already been intimate with one another prior to that night. How sad it is that most of us, even Christian men and women, no longer hold fast to the sacredness of this most intimate of covenants. If we haven’t had at least one sexual partner before we get married then most of us have at least sampled the fruit with our affianced partner.

Now that Michael and I are finding our way through our marriage as God meant it to be for us, I sometimes find myself wishing that our marriage covenant had been one begun with the blood of virginity, if not literally, then lived out and treated as such.