love to paint

On my last post, I mentioned a book by Debi Pearl about marriage. I didn't realize that I had gone on such a tangent in my review until two people mentioned it to me. One gal emailed me and asked me what my concerns about the book are. I thought I would post my concerns here. It was a few years ago when I started reading Created to be his  helpmeet. I wrote this review on Amazon at the time... "I was very discouraged by this book.  To summarize briefly what this  book is about--Ms. Pearl addresses what it means to be a submissive wife and how one would live that out. What I read didn't sit with me,  t hough I do agree with all that I've read in the Bible--that wives are to  submit to their husbands.  When I read Created to be His Helpmeet, I began to get very upset and my husband suggested that I stop reading it and just read the Bible. I  stopped at that point. But, I picked it up recently to try and understand a woman I knew who had been...

About two years ago, a friend of my husband's asked if I had ever read God, Marriage, and Family by Andreas Kostenberger.  At the time, I hadn't.  I looked it up and it sounded interesting.  When a revised edition was published this summer, I was excited to read and review it.  Mark Driscoll recommended this book some time ago in a sermon series that he did at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  I can understand why.  It seems as if our convictions about marriage and family as believers are attacked every day--whether through television, or what we experience at work or school, or by what we overhear at the grocery store.  We have to be prepared to defend them.  We need to know what we believe and why or else it will be easy for false teachers who twist the truth and the world we live in to convince us otherwise. That is where this book comes in.   From the first page of this book, it is very clear that it is different than other Christian ...

My girls crack me up.  We have many interesting conversations.  Sometimes Autumn tells me that she doesn't want to become a Mommy when she grows up because it's too much work.  I explain to her that being an adult is work.  Being a Mommy is a good thing.  Sami then asked what surgery you can have so you won't have children.  I asked her why?  She said that she wants to be a construction worker and she can't have children if she does that.  I explained to her that she could, but that she'd have to take a break while she is pregnant.  So, then the conversation switched to who they would marry. Sami said she would someday marry her brother Eli.  I explained to her that she couldn't.  She asked why.  Well, because you can't.  You're not supposed to.  It's wrong.  None of those explanations worked.  So, finally I said.  "Because God didn't plan it that way.  He has another man for you to marry someday...

One of the things that reading so many books this year has made me do is to look closer at what I read and what messages it sends people about the culture we live in.  I read a book in which everyone in the book lived with other people before marriage and it was inferred that they had sex outside of marriage.  But, all of the characters went to church and it was never stated in the book that it wasn't a good idea to live with people or have sex outside of marriage.  Does this book send a message to people that it's okay?  Yes.  Do we all sin?  Yes and I didn't expect the characters to be perfect. But, in a Christian fiction book, I do expect for there to be lessons learned.  And to not address that particular issue at all made me very sad about what it would convey to readers.  When we see something in the culture around us over and over, we begin to think that it is normal and okay. When Jennifer Knapp was interviewed by Larry King, I remember ...

Yesterday, I got to pick up my husband after his long trip. I am so thankful he's home. It's interesting, but it feels like this trip has given me more of a taste than his other trips of what a long deployment would really be like. I had so many crises come up that I had to tackle on my own during this time. It was strange easing back into things and attaching myself emotionally again. I hadn't realized how much I had detached myself emotionally. I had to. --I had to cope with everything going on here. I saw in that moment why deployments can spur on so many divorces. My husband and I were at peace with our relationship and each other when he came home. Whenever we've had conflicts during our phone calls, we've talked it through and not let things be. I worked hard not to resent him not being here to help me through all the stuff I had to tackle these past 2 1/2 months (between the blizzards, sickness, family issues, water in the basement, etc.), but remi...

Tonight I picked up Intimacy Ignited by Dillow and Pintus. The wives wrote the book with input from their husbands. (They wrote a book called Intimate Issues which I highly recommend. It is a book with questions women struggle with about sex and their answers and explanations are very wise.) But, back to what I was reading tonight =) It was funny to say outloud that I chose this book to review and that I would be reviewing it after I read it. It is a book that walks through Song of Solomon and what it says about sex and God's design for relations between man and wife. They take a literal view of the book rather than an allegorical one (which would mean the book is talking about Christ and the church). I'm not sure what I think about that. I've never felt strongly one way or the other. Even so, it is a good book. The first chapter was very dry =s , but after that the tone changed and it got a lot better. The chapter I just finished is what I want to write really ...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m3TQ7D9KX5Y3ZY We watched this clip last night on Amazon. It really was funny. It's from a movie called He's Just Not that Into You. I didn't want to want to watch it when it came out because of the title. I just didn't think I'd like it. But, it turned out that I loved it. There is definitely a lot of language I could do with out and a few scenes (hold onto the remote), but I LOVED the end! In the middle, my husband (who I actually got to watch it with me and he enjoyed it) turned to me and asked me if it did end okay. I told him--yes--the end is my favorite part. A few weeks ago, while mired down amidst taking care of the kids, Molly, our house, and my husband, I was just getting through each day. My husband came home and told me about how he had related the story of our engagement/proposal/dating to a gal and I could tell that he (and the gal) thought it was a great story. At the time, I couldn't see it. It di...