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Filled To Overflowing
Filled To Overflowing – The Next Step When You Are Running On Empty If you are anything like me, being around people revives your spirit and gives you energy. Married life has been wonderful for this part of my personality. I now have a live-in person who is “expected” to talk and connect with me on a regular basis, especially when I’ve had a hard day or have to get my word count out. But this tendency to need people around, and my desire to connect on a deeper level can also be a challenge. You see, sometimes I find it hard not to expect or require too much from the people…
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Mini Musing – A Change In Perspective
Recently my daughter, Laney, and I were discussing what she had achieved in a maze book she was working on. In the definite fashion of a 4-year-old, she informed me that she had completed 3 mazes but when she came to a wall in her way she had just gone over it onto the next-door path. It was evident that to her this was absolutely the most logical and obvious way around the issue she had come across. Later that day she was at the park and a couple of bigger boys were mucking around on the slide she wanted to go down. Rather than avoiding the slide or getting upset she…
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All Locked Up
All Locked Up – Unlocking the Grid on Perpetual Problems Does it sometimes feel like you are in the middle of a type of “Ground Hog Day”? Repeating the same argument over and over. The words, and specifics, may look different, but ultimately you are fighting about the same thing, again and again. So Many Problems! John & Julie Gottman, renowned leaders in relationship research, have found that 69% of a couples arguments are what they call “perpetual problems”. This means that the same type of issues will keep coming up. And to make matters worse, they believe that this type of problem is not truly solvable! They explain that this is…
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Mini Musing – Spiral Up
Do you ever feel frustrated when issues you thought you had dealt with seem to rear their ugly heads again? Doesn’t it feel demoralising when you find yourself responding to a situation the way you used to, even though you have worked so hard in that area? As I was struggling with my thoughts on this recently, I was reminded that when we come to Christ we come as we are, in all our messy brokenness. But He doesn’t want us to stay that way – do I hear a “Thank you Jesus!” However, He also knows we can’t deal with everything all at once. One step at a time,…
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Discovered in Disappointment
Discovered in Disappointment TRIGGER WARNING – Subject deals with miscarriage and infertility. Have you ever felt disappointed at God? Not just upset, but angry, confused and deeply disappointed. Maybe you felt like he’d spoken to you, taken you on a journey, was directing and leading you, but then it all looked lost and you wondered if you got it completely wrong? Or, is it that life has handed you some big curveballs and you wonder how God can turn it around? Disappointment is certainly not a place people talk about much in Christian settings. But what do you do when these are your feelings and this is your journey? When Disappointed Is…
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Sorry – a not so simple word
Sorry – a not-so-simple word If you are anything like Mike and I then you have probably found yourself in the middle of a fight, or ten, and you aren’t really sure how you got there. All of a sudden one seemingly harmless comment or observation blew up in your face and now you are knee-deep in a big pile of angst, hurt, and aggression. But, now that you are here you have to find a way to wade your way through it, ideally without too much fallout. Here enters one of my husband’s favourite words – Sorry. They say it is one of the hardest words to say. However, in our house, Mike…
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The Truth Of Trust
The Truth of Trust The saying “trust takes years to build, but seconds to break” is one that resonates with many of us. We have all been victims of broken trust at some point in our lives. In my experience, though this statement isn’t the complete story. You see everyone is trustworthy in some area/s of their life, but no person is trustworthy in all. So if we are to get through life without a trail of broken and hurting relationships we need to learn how to rebuild after trust is broken, and how to set the right expectations of people in the first place. Mike and I had a…
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The Purpose of Pain
For all the wonderful things about life; loved ones, adventures, the beauty around us, and great experiences we look forward to, this life is also full of a lot of pain and challenges! But if we don’t face the pain head-on and continue the journey of working through our feelings and responses to it, pain and its unhealthy fruit, can rob us of the life God wants us to live and impact how we relate to those around us. Through my journey to healing I have found three truths that have helped me move forward.
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Marriage Myth – I Can Change My Spouse
Debunking Common Marriage Myths We all have assumptions and beliefs that we’ve picked up about what a marriage should look like, and about how our spouse is supposed to act. Some of these will be correct and helpful. However, others can be completely, or at least partially, incorrect. Often they are common and widely accepted myths that we have heard and then believed. Mark Twain once said, “It’s not the things you don’t know that will hurt you; it’s the things you know for sure that just ain’t so!” Over the coming months, join us as we explore and debunk some of the more common myths about marriage.
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What Is He Thinking? – Disagreements
What Is He Thinking? He keeps shutting down or walking away when we argue. If you’re anything like me, there are very few things worse than arguing with your husband. It often seems like everything is going along really well and then “BAM” all of a sudden you’re in the middle of a disagreement. Not to mention that what you are fighting about is often pretty trivial and gets blown out of proportion by poor responses and heated emotions. What can really make everything feel even worse is when your husband, who is generally committed and loving, either stops responding or gets up and walks away, effectively putting an end…
