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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

How to Discipline Your Child

Last week, I had the opportunity to go to a Mommy’s Drop-In with my church and hear a seasoned mother speak on discipline.  Can I just tell you that before this point I had never been taught specifically how to discipline my child by a mother who has children who are grown up and have chosen to continue their walk with the Lord?

I had been given tips.  Oh, so many tips.  By new mothers, by mothers with young kids, by mothers with teenagers, by mothers with older kids, and finally, I’d been given a few tips from seasoned mothers who emulated Christ to their children and their children chose to follow after Christ.  How do we make sense of all these tips?

Then there are books.  Oh, so many books.  Some books say to spank your children, some books say not to spank your children.  Some books say give your children choices in order to avoid conflict, some books say your job is to be their parent not their friend, so bring on the conflict!  I’m not sure about you, but I get some mixed messages from both Christian parenting books and the rest of the parenting books.  Why can’t they agree?

After hearing this amazing woman of Christ teach about discipline, I don’t feel confused any more.  I feel that the Bible is clear on how we are to raise up our children.  We too often look to momma tips or to books for the answers of how to discipline and we don’t go to God’s Word.  Let me spend some time taking you through what my new wise friend, Toma, shared last week.

How to Discipline Your Child

Discipline Is Training

Discipline is consistent and continual. […]

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 […]

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 […]

Seeking Excellence

Seeking Excellence | Boholistic Mom

“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.” – Philippians 3:12-15 ESV

There is no beating around the bush with this one.  In fact, I’m going to come right out and ask you.  Are you seeking excellence in your life due to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus?  Are you pressing towards the goal to win the prize?  Or you hoping to just sneak by unnoticed?

I’ve been in both places before.  I have muddled through life simply checking the boxes.  Check!  I went to church.  Check!  I prayed with my kid before bed.  Check!  I read a devotional online.  Check! Check! Check!

Dude!  Does that sound like a relationship or a fulfillment of a regulatory contract?  This Boholistic Momma doesn’t like to be fake, inauthentic, or insincere.  When I live like I’m checking off a list, I’m not giving my best to Christ and I’m not being the person that I was created to be.

I am created in the image of God.  He made me to reflect Him.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord […]