10 Marriage Tools for a Thriving Relationship

Let me be clear ladies.  Our marriages are under attack by the enemy of our souls.  The good news?  God is bigger, stronger, and has every intention of helping us through any hurdle that the enemy presents.  However, we need God and we need tools.  Why do we need tools?  Because God has given us a base of Biblical wisdom and teachers who have walked this path before us.  We do not need to come to the battle empty handed, but rather equipped by God’s power and with tools that work because they are a part of His plan.

Marriage tools are a part of God’s plan.

While you could gain these tools through years spent hammering the grindstone with your husband figuring out what works and what doesn’t, God’s intention is that you form relationships with other couples who can teach you to be a better wife.  For men, being a part of a relationship with another couple that teaches you to be a better husband.  You are NOT intended to be in marriage alone without support.  If you are hiding your marriage troubles from other couples, you are not experiencing the support that God has for you.  Reach out and get a mentor.

I’ve been in situations where mentors aren’t available.  I’ve even asked couples to mentor me and my husband and the mentorship relationship did not happen.  This is not meant to shame these people, but for us all to realize that this isn’t an ideal world.  We live in a world with busy people who are focused on many different things.  If you cannot find a mentor, you can still find tools for your family.  Beautifully wise people have written books with marriage […]

By |June 22nd, 2018|Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Natural Lifestyle|0 Comments
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Foster Parent – Our Life Thus Far with Foster Care

My Life as a Foster Parent

Foster Parent – Our Life Thus Far with the Foster Care System

While I have blogged about many topics, for some reason, this one has been much too personal.  Training to be a foster parent and taking a child into our home has been something I have kept to myself in many ways.  I have shared with my friends and family that my husband and I were embarking on this journey.  I have even shared with friends about some of our joys and struggles with fostering, but really I’ve kept so much to myself.

I internalize much of my life while sharing windows in, but they are selective.  Today, I’m opening one more window a little wider.  My hope is that you will know a little more about fostering, a little more about how God is blessing our family, and a little more about how God is faithful even in the hard places.

Training to Receive

We began our training to become a foster parent in January of 2017.  As my husband was still unsure of the process and his feelings about being a foster parent, we were planning to do the training in order to find out if fostering was a fit for our family.  I was praying the whole time that God would stir my husband’s heart toward accepting a child into our home.  In honest, our infertility has left a place that I was willing to use to bless a child who needed a home.  I sincerely wanted my pain to become a blessing rather than a curse.

Packet Mayhem

During the training, we received a packet of forms.  This thick packet was to be filled […]

By |April 2nd, 2018|Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Heart|0 Comments
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Social Media Challenge – Pulling the plug

In July of this year, I decided to give myself a new social media challenge.  I didn’t accept a social media challenge to post a blog a month, share on Instagram daily, or become the mama blogger of the year, instead I accepted the challenge to avoid social media for an entire month.

Why would I do this?

Because I realized that I was overcome.  I was making choices without thinking and I’d find my phone in my hand without having ever consciously picked it up.  My subconscious mind, eyes, and hand were conspiring and my time was being sucked away.  Something had to change.

I decided that July was just the right time to dedicate to avoiding social media.  Our habits are often formed in around 20-28 days and I needed at least that long to break this habit.  I chose to use the fruit of self-control that I have and take back the control that I had been casting away.

Social Media Challenge

My Personal Social Media Challenge

In July 2017, I decided to:

  • stop posting regularly in Facebook
  • stop surfing my Facebook wall
  • stop posting to my Facebook pages
  • stop posting to Instagram or checking Instagram
  • stop posting to Twitter or checking Twitter

I chose to keep checking my Facebook messages to maintain relationships and stay involved with those who directly interact with me personally (not just to the whole of Facebook).

What I Gained Through This Challenge

We do social media challenges to gain something.  Sometimes money, sometimes followers, but this type of challenge has a completely different pay off.  What I gained isn’t very tangible, yet I feel that perhaps it has been more valuable.

1.  I learned who my friends are.

I do not […]

By |August 7th, 2017|Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Mind, Social Media|0 Comments
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The Spiritual Battle for Your Health

Health and Faith.  What does real food, doctor’s visits, and exercise have to do with our spiritual life?  Many people insist that there is no correlation, saying that our faith is compartmentalized to the church, to the spiritual, and to the supernatural, while our bodies and health are a part of the flesh, the natural, and the physical world.  If this is true, then why does God tell us to worship Him with our strength?  I assert that, in fact, there is a spiritual battle going on for our health and especially for our strength.

Spiritual Battle for Your Health

The Spiritual Battle for Your Health

Recently, I have been spending time reading Priscilla Shirer’s book, Fervent.  She talks about the most common areas of our life that Satan tries to attack.  I honestly haven’t gotten to the chapter about strength yet, but just reading the first few chapters has stirred my thinking.  With the health of so many children and adults declining due to poor dietary choices, “bad genes,” and health problems that are plaguing people from birth, how can we not attribute this to the work of the one who steals, kills, and destroys?  Satan is more than happy to covertly steal our health, kill our hopes for living without a disability or health issue, and destroy our body.  And he’s using us to do it.

In Luke 10:27, Jesus tells us that the two greatest commandments are “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  We focus greatly on worshiping God with our heart, soul, and mind, but we contentedly allow […]

By |July 24th, 2017|Body, Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit|0 Comments
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What Does the Bible Say about Modesty?

This post is actually a troubleshooting post for my post titled “What Does the Bible Say about Boobs? over at Blissful Moments Doula.  You can find that post >here<.  I know many ladies will have so many questions about the assertions that I made, but many of those have to do with modesty rather than the Biblical passages on breasts.  So I decided I would continue the discussion here on my blog.

What Does the Bible Say about Modesty?

I’m sure many of you have read the post on “What Does the Bible Say About Boobs?” and have come up with many rebuttals.  I will attempt to address the most frequently asked questions here.

Modesty and the Bible

Modesty in I Timothy 2:9

In the New Testament, we often see I Timothy 2:9 as the ultimate verse relating to modestly.  Why is this verse used so often?  Because the Greek word for modesty is only used twice in the New Testament.  Both times they appear in Timothy and the other one is most often interpreted as ‘respectable’ or ‘good behavior.’  The Hebrew word for modesty is also less about external appearance and dress, but rather about humility.  Tsana (or צָנַע) is to be humble, be modest, be lowly.  Biblical modesty had to do with being humble and modest in heart (Proverbs 11:2).

It isn’t just the word modesty that has been used mistakenly throughout the years of our Biblical heritage.  The entire verse is most often pulled out of context.  Read I Timothy 2:1-10 for the full context, I’ll summarize below.

In the first verse, we are talking about the four basic kinds of prayers that we are called to pray for all people.  […]

By |October 16th, 2016|Bohemian Style, Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Mom|5 Comments
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2nd Grade Homeschool Curriculum for 2016

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Homeschool Choices - Boholistic Mom

Choosing a homeschool curriculum can be a daunting decision.  There are so many choices and tons of options.  Many homeschool mamas are so passionate about their family’s choices that they will swear to you that their way is the only possible option for homeschooling well.  Take a deep breath.  And find a few homeschool friends that are a little less passionate about their own decisions and more passionate about helping you find the correct decision for YOUR family.

I will gladly tell a new homeschool mama about the choices I have made, but if I give you the impression that any other decision is the wrong decision, smack me.  I do not intend to give that impression and in this post I will share what I am doing.  If you find my path beneficial, join me.  If you find your path elsewhere, I hope my path helped you to clarify your path.  We are all in this journey together.

Our 2nd Grade Homeschool Curriculum for 2016-2017

I am a creature of habit.  I find something I like and I stick to it.  Especially when it comes to education.  I am leery of switching curricula regularly, because I want to provide a cohesive education.  That is one of my reasons for homeschooling is so that my son will not be uprooted from his schools every single time we move.  I want him to have stability and learn to see things through as much as possible.

Below is the list of my curriculum choices for our family.  I have been blessed with one son who is entering the 2nd grade.  We hope […]

By |July 21st, 2016|Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Home, Homeschool|0 Comments
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Missing Grace – Missed and Misunderstood

Ministered

These past two weeks I had the privilege of being ministered to by Life Action Ministries.  I think that they are a great ministry and what I find most amazing is how sometimes the simplest truth is the most life changing.  I grew from Life Action’s ministry because they ministered to my spirit, my family, and my needs.

Salvation

Before they even came to our church, I had no doubts that I was a Christian and that I had committed my life to Christ.  I knew that by faith in God’s grace alone through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross that I had eternal salvation.  Life Action had even explained that the point of this summit was a “revival,” which is reviving . . . you can’t revive something that has not already had life.  I have had God’s life, but something was definitely missing.

Squeezed

On the first or second day, Steve from Life Action Ministries explained that an orange, when squeezed, squirts out orange juice.  However, if you take out all of the juice out of the orange, inject ink into the orange, then squeeze it, the orange will squirt out ink not juice.  Our lives are like the orange.  If we are living in Christ and we are filled with the Holy Spirit, when squeezed we pour out the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  If we are living in disobedience and not according to the Spirit, when squeezed we pour out fear, despair, anxiety, bitterness, hostility, hypocrisy, selfishness, harshness, and rage.  It was as if Steve held up the mirror of God’s Word and it didn’t look like the mirror I had been using.  My mirror had a special […]

By |January 31st, 2016|Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Spirit|2 Comments
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Holistically Love Jesus

Honestly, most Christians hear the word ‘holistic’ and they begin to run in the opposite direction.  We envision people doing yoga and Ohmmmmming and we quickly add on a mental image relating to a “new age” lifestyle.  I was one of those people.  Wow, I have come a long way from being so quick to jump into one idea (at least I hope I have).

Being holistic has nothing to do with yoga, ohmming, new age, or voodoo.  I assure you.  It has everything to do with realizing that God made you as a whole being.  Remember that verse about loving the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30)?  Everything that God has given us should work together interdependently to love Him.

Merriam-Webster defines holistic as “relating to or concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts.”  The example offered by the dictionary is “holistic medicine attempts to treat both the mind and the body.  When describing our walk with Christ, holistic means looking at our life and body as a complete system rather than pulling our life and body into parts.

Let me ask you a question.  Do you find that we as Christians tend to dissect ourselves when we seek to love God?

  • Have you ever spent tons of time using your mind to read the Scripture, then forgot to involve your soul and heart?
  • Have you ever used your strength to serve Christ, but forgot to pray to find out if your chosen service was God’s will?
  • Have you ever worshiped God with your heart and completely left out worshiping Him with your strength because you were too timid to move?
  • Have you ever given God […]
By |July 5th, 2015|Body, Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Heart, Mind, Spirit|2 Comments
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Are You Too Busy?

Are You Too Busy | Boholistic Mom

Did you know that there is an epidemic spreading across America at an overwhelming speed?  The symptoms include a racing heartbeat, stressed mind, and a lack of focus.  This condition affects 3 out of 4 adults.  In fact, it affects men and women alike.  No one is exempt from this epidemic.  Children are even catching it from the adults.  They are “late,” “running behind,” “don’t have enough time,” and “can’t catch up.”  The condition is spread mentally through words.  “I’m too busy.”  “I don’t have time.”  “I’m swamped.”  We are all infected.  We are all “too busy.”

I have begun to read a book written by Danny Silk.  The book is called Keep Your Love On.  Why, you might ask, would a book on love have anything to do with being too busy?  Well it’s his first chapter that really caught my attention.  He stated that many people are powerless.  Things happen to them.  They are affected by the things around them and believe they have no control.  When we are powerless, we become too busy.  We don’t have control over our schedules, our time, or the events that occur in our lives.  They just happen.  We are at their mercy.

Then Silk writes about powerful people.  They make choices.  Things don’t just happen to them.  They have situations and they make new choices.  They are in charge of their time, their schedules, and the events that occur in their lives.  When they have something unexpected happen, they are not powerless.  They survey the problem and they make a choice.  They are […]

By |July 15th, 2014|Brooke S., Faith: Heart, Mind, Body, & Spirit, Mind|1 Comment
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The Unsettled Mom

The Unsettled Mom | Boholistic Mom

Settling.  What an interesting word, right?  Settling down, to settle, unsettling, or settling up.  As American’s we are even familiar with the term “settler”; the American pioneers who settled in the land west of the original colonies.  The original German work setle was literally a place to sit, a seat.  Yet with all these perfectly adequate definitions of the word settle, we have a definite malaise when we think of someone settling for something.  Such as a women settling for a guy who doesn’t treat her right or someone settling for second best.  It appears that taking a seat and settling can be a bad thing.

I think that we need to become unsettled moms.  Not because settling down is bad, but rather because we’ve been settling so long for things that are not God’s best that we do not even recognize what his best is.  The reason that I bring this up is not to forcibly upset your norm . . . but because I realize that my norm needs to change.  I need to become unsettled to follow God’s will for my life.

I want to talk with you about a trend in parenting that I’ve been seeing lately.  It’s parenting by excuses.  Not only that, it’s parenting by excuses and other mothers helping you feel excused by offering their own failures as examples to ease your conscience.  So really, you end up deciding that you are doing a good enough job because you’ve heard all the ways other people have done worse.

What a load of CRAP!  Do we really want to parent […]

By |May 29th, 2014|Brooke S., Home, Mom, Spirit|0 Comments
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