Dying to Ourselves

 "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." John 12:24

This verse has been running through my head a bunch just lately and so I thought I would share it with you.

Are we truly dying to ourselves?
Are we submitting to God's will for our lives?
Are we allowing Him to produce fruit in us?

Those are some of the things that I want to see happen in me more this coming year. I just thought I would share with you too in case that is something you should be thinking about as well.

Happy New Year to you!!!

Loving My Marriage

Ken and I got to celebrate 19 years of marriage yesterday. I feel very blessed to have a husband who loves me, provides for our family and is a great dad.

  Our marriage hasn't been perfect (does anybody truly have a perfect marriage??) but God has been very good to us. There are some times that have been more challenging then others with one of those times being earlier this year. Ken's business was causing him quite a bit of stress earlier this year. Stress has a tendency to permeate other areas of your life as well and so he was often coming home stressed as well. That caused some stress for me and then I simply wasn't as patient as I should have been.

   Thankfully God has a way of helping us grow and He also works in many other ways as well. He has truly been working in our marriage and I am so very thankful. During the stressful time as I learned to be more who God wanted me to be there were many verses in the Bible that encouraged me as well as different articles that people had written. I don't remember all of them just now but I did want to quickly share with you some habits that I worked on making (some were developed earlier during other harder times and I continued to work on them) that were helpful during stressful times as well. I hope these thoughts/ideas for strengthening your marriage will be encouraging to you.

• Pray for your husband. This should be a given but are you truly doing in on a daily or maybe even more often basis? I tried to pray for my husband regularly but this year I have worked to develop the habit of praying for him as I am drifting off to sleep each night. It has been a great way to end each day.
• Work to understand your husband. At first I was frustrated about Ken being so stressed but as I worked to understand the reason why (he isn't super quick to share so sometimes you have to pull info out of him) I was able to be much more patient and empathetic.
• Thank God often for your husband. Be specific about why you are thankful for him.
• Follow 1 Corinthians 7:5 faithfully.
• Make time for your husband. Play a game with him, go on a walk or canoeing. Maybe even watch a football game with him. 
• Pamper your husband. Make his favorite meals, clean his car, etc. How can you show him that you love him?
• Respect your husband and trust his decisions. This is something that I would like to say I am great at but honestly I struggle with this from time to time. When I do truly respect him however life goes much better.
• Affirm him with your words.

Do you have other ideas that you would suggest for helping to build up your marriage?

Hello!

 I just wanted to pop in quickly and let you know that I am still alive and actually doing very well. Life has just been full of other stuff lately and after nearly blogging every day in October I took a huge break in November. I hope to be back a bit more this month! :-)

 Here are a few things that have been part of my life lately.....

• Our family hosted a craft sale. Most of my November was insanely busy getting things ready for it. I wanted to do the best job that I could and knew that there was an end date in sight so I got up early and stayed up late getting ready for it and used every available moment. Considering the amount of people that came and the amount of sales that were made it was not a successful event. However it was a learning experience so that is worth something and I am incredibly thankful that we didn't lose money on the venture. We just spent a lot of time.
• A wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday with family and friends. God is so very good to us!
• Starting a new music group class for 8 children. It has been a lot of fun and prompted me to practice some unused instruments again (to introduce them to the children) and to learn more about various composers. I have also been able to explore new and fun ways to teach various musical concepts. I am loving it!
• Preparing for teaching Medieval Music at our homeschool co-op this week. I am loving learning more about it and diving into a different music then I have truly tried before.
• Megan bought herself a zither. We have all enjoyed learning to play it and I am so enjoying seeing her take of on it. It has been so neat to watch her learn how to write out music for it which has made her learn more about music. Can you tell that we are just really enjoying God's gift of music an extra lot right now?
• Getting to help my sister Martha and her family unload their possessions in a new home that is about 6 hours closer to us then their last one (though still 2 hours away but that isn't bad). We are very excited about having them closer! They are the new camp caretakers for the camp that our children go to.
• Having fun going to a Christmas concert (more music!) with Ken.
• Having my sisters Martha and Keren and their families over for supper tonight. So fun to get to spend time together!
• Experiencing hail, sleet, rain with thunder and lightening and snow all in one day. That was today.
• Loving a beautiful sunset over a frozen river.
• Butchering (well helping - we were so thankful that my parents were able to help us!) 2 deer. The boys went hunting for the first time this year and they both got one. What a neat blessing! We have been enjoying the venison.
• This week, following our craft sale, I have been enjoying getting some fun reading in. I haven't read to many books just for fun for a while and now I have gone through several this week.

Oh boy, it is time to get to bed. I hope your December is off to a good start!