Keeping Your Joy...

I'm the first one up today. A rarity in our house. Not because I'm not a morning person - I am; it's just that I usually wake to the sounds of cereal scavenging and cartoon network. But this morning....peace. Which is good because I really needed the solitude today; a slice of quiet carved out for a few moments to process the thoughts in my head. I thought about calling a couple of friends who would totally get where I am right now and I know they'd be there for me but I wanted to just sit here and type before I get muddled down in the intricacies of conversation.

Several years ago, shortly after Michael and I were married, we found ourselves in the middle of a full blown crisis involving accusations, detectives, mistrust, lie detector tests...it wasn't pretty. The pastor we sat under at that time counseled me to, "keep my joy" which was not the advice I was hoping for. I sat there with the phone to my ear and listened in disbelief. Pissed off. Was that seriously the best he could do? Hadn't he just heard what I'd told him? deTECtive! LIE detector! YELLing! Where the F does keeping my joy fit in? He had no idea what I'd been living with.

It reminded me of my best friend telling me not to lose hope when Jeff was dying of cancer. I'd never been more angry with her. What did she know? She didn't have to see him fall and never get up again or feel new tumors under his skin practically every day or receive test results that mocked everyone's best efforts.

Last night, I found out that the husband of a dear family friend was diagnosed with a rare malignant abdominal tumor. He starts chemo today. They're both young with two small children...like we were. She said it's going to be a difficult time and she's right. Difficult and scary and precious and happy and uncertain and lonely and incredible and fucked up and surreal and hollow and beautiful. They will feel small and enormous at the same time; pulled and stretched in ways they never dreamed of; tested and refined over and over and over again.

I totally understand what they're getting ready to face and while I may not know a lot I do know this....when someone is living in an abusive marriage, or facing the uncertainty of health issues, or staring at the lid of the coffin that contains a child, or wondering how they're going to feed their family of five with their last $10...hope and joy are barely a blip on the radar and it's easy to stay in the darkest and blackest of places.

This is life. This is marriage. Messy. At times it sucks and you just want to get in your car and start driving in the opposite direction and still....it's always amazing. If Michael and I hadn't been on the brink of divorce we may never have gotten involved in marriage ministry and if Jeff hadn't gotten sick he (and others) may never have accepted Christ. Jeramiah 29:11 says that God has a plan and a purpose in our lives; to prosper us and not to harm us. Were these things part of God's plan? I believe so - not at the time I didn't...I so didn't. Now I know that hope and joy are part and parcel with hurt and sorrow. You can separate the two but will never feel the fullness of either without them being together.

It's a paradox, a conundrum, an oxymoron.

Keeping my joy and not losing hope? I get it now. I really do.

Do This With Us Today....

Are You Thinking About Coming To Our Marriage Intensive? Here's Why You Should Go...

Can you believe we're actually posting a video?!? We know...we know...it's been a while, it's just that we haven't had access to a video camera for a loooong time and our son has graciously let us use his for a bit so we're taping like crazy over here!

A lot of couples We wanted to talk with people about why they should go to one of our Marriage Intensives; you know...things they may be struggling with, how their marriage may look (or not look) right now, the kind of help they may or may not be getting and how that plays into their relationship. Then we talk about what they'll receive at our workshop, the biggest plus ~ in our opinion ~ is being taught by a couple who's actually living out what they teach.





We recently read that about 75% of couples who go to marriage counseling end up worse than when they started or divorced. That's a troubling statistic and one that we can attest to being a part of. Nothing at all against counseling, though the reason this often happens is because counselors treat the couples as individuals instead of as a couple. Interesting.

We hope you'll watch and be blessed by what we have to say and that to know that you can experience change in your marriage. Oh! And please be sure to click the Facebook "Like" button at the end of this post to share this with all of your friends.

Blessings!

Why Go To A Marriage Intensive...

We recently heard a surprising statistic; that 75% of marriages get worse or end in divorce in spite of marriage counseling. We can definitely say that we fell into that category despite two years of secular and non-secular counseling. We literally spent thousands of dollars trying to get help for our marriage only to watch it free fall towards hopelessness. What we needed was a biblically-based alternative to counseling that didn't address us individually but as a couple and we found it at a Marriage Intensive.

Couples who attend have relationships that suffer from many of the following reasons:

• they're engaged and experiencing problems with their fiance
• there's a lack of affection
• they have issues that always seem to resurface without any resoltuion
• they're secretly miserable
• they've become roommates without benefits
• their needs are ignored
• they're hardly ever have sex
  
• there's been physical or emotional adultery
• they're feeling controlled and manipulated
• they resent one another
  
• they have discussion that escalate into arguments or screaming sessions
• they're struggling with addictions
  
• they're experiencing verbal, emotional, physical or spiritual abuse
• they're bored
  
• they're staying together because of their family, social pressure, the church, financial reasons, etc.
• a lack of appreciation
  

In our bad days, we could lay claim to just about every one of these issues and we were completely battle scared when we stepped into our Intensive on that first day. By the end...we both went home with a sense of hope we hadn't felt in years!

Marriage Restoration Intensives aren't large counseling sessions. You won't be asked to participate in small groups, break-out sessions or have to take homework back to your room each night. Instead, you will receive marriage-transforming principles, based on God's word, that you can take home and apply to your daily lives that will strengthen and renew your marriage.

If you're feeling drained and frustrated or are dangling on the edge of divorce, we urge you to consider attending our next Intensive....it's time to learn how to transform your marriage.

Join us for the next Marriage Restoration Intensive which takes place June 9-12 in Anaheim, CA. Just connect with us to find out more information and to sign up.

It's time...

Coconut Oil Deodorant...

I absolutely love handmade spa and beauty products; making my own face masks and body scrubs....it's fun, wonderfully economical and I love the herbal smells that fill my bathroom and shower when I use them. There's also the added benefit of actually knowing what the ingredients are that I'm putting onto my skin and since I've heard a lot about the aluminum salts used in many deodorants (to block the pores so you don't perspire) can get into breast tissue and has a potential link with breast cancer. This, in my opinion, makes the use of a natural deodorant even more appealing.

Knowing this, I've tried several over the counter natural deodorants (won't name any names here) that haven't worked for me at all ~ not as far as odor is concerned anyway and who wants to be dry but still smell? "Not I," said the Little Red Hen.

Okay, segue into my journey with raw foods and using coconut oil in my diet for it's many health benefits and I find that it's also used as a beauty product and.....as an ingredient in natural deodorant which you can easily make yourself.


There are recipes all over the net for making this but the recipe is generally the same all around:

4-5 tablespoons of melted virgin coconut oil
1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup cornstarch or arrowroot powder (I use cornstarch)
10 drops of your favorite essential oil (I like lavender, tangerine and lemongrass)


Mix everything together (it will have the consistency of thin pancake batter) and pour it into a re-purposed deodorant container or into a small lidded jar. That's all there is to it! Just be sure to keep your deodorant in the refrigerator as coconut oil liquifies in warm temps. When I'm going to need it, after I shower for example, I simply take it out before I get in so that it softens up a bit and goes on easily (be sure to put it back into the refrigerator when you're done). You could also just keep it in a jar in your bathroom, scoop out a small amount when you want to use it and rub it on.

A couple of things to note:

* you may need to rub it in a bit before you get dressed
* a bit of white may get on your clothes if you don't rub it in
* this deodorant works so wonderfully that you can easily go longer than a day without using more. I know this may gross you out but it's totally true.
* it smells WONDERFUL! I remember having my husband smell me several times throughout the day when I first started using it - I was SO amazed by it!


Add a pretty label to your container and make some for yourself to feel pretty and healthy and make some for your friends who will be just as amazed as you are by how well it works!

p.s. a little side note. i've been using this for about two years now and i'll never, ever, go back to store bought - even store bought natural deodorant. they just don't work as well as this. serious!