RESPECT

Okay, so I am back to my marriage study notes. Tuesday night we talked about respecting our husbands. This marriage study is showing me how truly different men and women and are more specifically how different me and my husband are. It is no wonder that we are all messed up at time. There are a few points that were made that I think are worth sharing.

Here is one example of how I say we are completely different: "A wife needs love like she needs air to breath." "A man needs respect like he needs air to breath." When we first started talking about these two statements I kind of thought it was silly and that really wasn't true. But then it all kind of made sense to me. Think about when you are in an argument with your husband. At some point in the argument what do YOU end up saying to him? Something to the effect of "Well, you don't act like you love me." Right? You need love right? I do! I don't know if I have ever heard my husband say "You don't respect me" but when I think back to some of our arguments, that is essentially the bottom line.

There was a diagram in our workbook that is a circle with words written all around it, so show how behaviors can feed off each other. There is a healthy circle and an unhealthy circle. I am sure you can figure out which one is which:

Without love she reacts without respect.
Without respect he reacts without love.

Her respect motivates his love.
His love motivates her respect.

Is there really much to comment on that? It's a fantastic reminder of how we feed off each other and it is really easy to get trap in a circle. Hopefully we get trapped in the healthy circle and not the unhealthy one!

Melody (the woman who wrote this study) gave a great every day example of how to respect your husband. So, your husband is changing the baby's diaper and when he is done you see your kid walking down the hallway with the diaper halfway falling off. A disrespectful response would be something like, "Honey, don't you know how to put on a diaper. Do I have to do everything around here to get it done right.? A respect answer would be, "Jonnie (little kid), we need to march right back in here to daddy so he can fix your diaper. Those things can be so tricky some time."

I know that is silly, but it makes complete sense. Yesterday morning Jayme came down the stairs with mismatched pajamas and I thought to myself, "Alan, your killing me." But I had to change that thought to be grateful that he put the kids to bed last night so I could stay at church to lead a small youth group.

My challenge for you this weekend is to speak all words of respect to your husband. I will have a hard time with this I know, but I think it'll be rewarding for me and hopefully you too!

Teaching your children

So, I have finally gotten a chance to read another chapter in Plan A Mom in a Plan B World.

This chapter really showed the importance of teaching your kids daily about God and His love for us. In our house we sing Bible songs (Bible Book Bop is one of our favs right now) and say our prayers and Jayme asks about God and Jesus some times, but there is not a time to sit down and read a Bible story together and really learn. I think I may change that.

Do you sit down with your kids daily and teach them? If you do, PLEASE share with us what you do with your kids. I would love to know!

High Impact Parent

Okay, so I feel like every single Monday I tell you about our sermon on Sunday. I feel like I am totally cheating, but some of the stuff that was said was so powerful that I have to share it with you.

This week our pastor's dad spoke about being a "high impact player" in parenting. He talk about Joshua from the Bible and how he was a high impact #2 player for 38 years and then when he finally went to the #1 spot, he continued to be a high impact player.

He talked about 2 ways to be a high impact player in parenting.
1. What our families see us do has an affect on them.
2. How we live with our families have an affect on them.

I knew these 2 things before listening to Mr. Thomas speak today, but he really drove the point home.

I wrote some bullet points down in my notes that I want to share with you (and I may go off on a tangent on some of them.)

*Very important what our children see in our lives - AMEN! I need daily reminders of this. When I see a behavior that I don't like from our kids I immediately try to figure out where they learned that behavior. I look at how I act around them and also am observant of how other kids they are around act. I want to make sure my kids see the best in our lives.

*Joshua consistently pursued a relationship with God - I try to do my Bible quite time in the mornings before the kids get up but that never seems to work out. Jayme just seems to get up earlier and earlier each morning. But when she asks me what I am doing I tell her that I am having quite time with God and learning more about Him. She may not really understand that, but one days she will.

*What you do impacts your family - This one scared me a bit because it is so true that e.v.e.r.y s.i.n.g.l.e a.c.t.i.on affects your family good or bad.

*The power of your life is a very influential thing.

*The most influential people in a child's life is mom & dad - no pressure, huh?

*The most critical need for your children is a strong sense of connection - Our children thrive off of emotional connections. I totally see that in my kids. When they can show you how they did sometime and you pay attention to that and tell them how proud you are, they beam like they have a light blub inside of them.

*Interacting is the most important thing in your kids lives - amen & note to self.

I wrote all these bullet points down not to share with you, but as a reminder for me. I want to be the highest impact player parent to my kids and I need daily reminders of how to do that.

Have a great week!

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Have a great weekend!

Love Language

Tuesday night we had our "Bliss or Miss" Bible study. So, here I go again with my 3 pages of notes.

We talked about how you act when you feel loved. We talked about ways to make your husband feel loved. The lady teaching this class made a fantastic point. She said "Your husband knows you loves him, He wants to feel your love."

That took us into talking about the 5 Love Languages. I am sure most of you have heard of that, but if you haven't, check it out and take their online quiz. 5 Love Languages

I think Melody really nailed the hammer on the head when she said that 99% of the time we show our spouse love by doing the things that would make OURSELVES feel loved. So, learning what makes your spouse feel loved will show you how you need to show him love. Alan hasn't taken the test yet, but I am most definitely going to ask him to.

I study this book in a religion course in college and I am going to have to go back and see if I have the results from when I took the test then to compare them to what they are today. I think they have totally changed. So, here are my results:

1. Receiving gifts - This really doesn't surprise me because I LOVE to give gifts. I love to see the excitement on peoples face or to make them feel special by getting a gift they wanted. The biggest thing that made sense to me in the explanation of this love language is that we (people who have this love language) really appreciate the thought that goes into buying or getting the gift. It means that someone took time out of their day to think about what would make us happy.

2. This was a tie between Acts of Service & Words of Affirmation - This really doesn't surprise me either. Just yesterday my cousin comment on facebook "cousin you are SO TALENTED!! I absolutely love your gallery." Melanie - if you are reading this, YOU MADE MY DAY and gave me a little more confidence to keep doing what I am doing!!! Acts of service is something I like to do to. I'll go mow the yard for my husband even though I am highly allergic to grass just so he doesn't have to spend his entire weekend working on the lawn. I don't know if he really cares or not, but that is how I show him my love. (I guess it would help to know if he feels loved that way because if not, it is hard work..haha!)

4. Physical Touch
5. Quality Time

So, those are my love languages. Melody made one other good point that I think needs to be shared. She talked about learning our kids love languages. Obviously my kids can't take the test yet, so I just have to observe what they want throughout the day. I have never really thought about this until Tuesday night, but my kids have a love language too and a "love tank" that needs filled up just the way they want it filled up. Just like I need to speak my husbands love language I really need to speak my kids too. The last thing I want is for them to feel unloved!