Archive for the ‘Family Life’ Category

The People on Facebook are Real (Synchronized Prayer)

Monday, May 14th, 2012

synchronized-prayerAre the people on Facebook real? I’ve had so many people tell me that virtual friends aren’t real people. Well, I have a Facebook friend that I’ve never met. She lives in an exotic country I’ve never visited. But one day she was going through a crisis in her life and was asking prayer over Facebook. I began praying for her every day.

Suddenly God woke me up in the middle of the night to pray fervently for her; then I went back to sleep. The next day I told her on Facebook that God woke me up to pray for her, and another Facebook friend said God had woken her up at the same exact time. The odds that this would happen is impossible. This woman I was praying for was making a major life decision at the exact moment we were praying, and since the country she lived in was on the other side of the world, God used two American women to pray for her in the middle of the night by waking us up. We had synchronized prayer. The woman we prayed for decided to recommit her life to Christ, after having gone through an agonizing decision.

You see, God considers my Facebook friend a real person, or He wouldn’t have used me spiritually in her life.

This is not to justify spending hours upon hours on Facebook, neglecting the flesh and blood people in our lives, especially our spouses and children. Facebook can be idolatry just like anything else. The key is to ask God what you should be doing at each moment. If you feel guilty that you’re not doing something, for heaven’s sake, get up and go do the thing that you know you should be doing.

Exercise and Fitness Articles

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

exercise-and-fitness-articles

These exercise and fitness articles reflect personal struggles and ways I have overcome different areas of exercise and fitness as a wife and mother.

General Exercise: These articles will inspire you to get fit and find an exercise that you love. They will also show you how to fit exercise into your day and how to maintain your current fitness level.

Zumba: These articles will give you an overview of Zumba, why it’s so fun, and the benefits of dancing to get fit.

Running: Running was something I tried briefly and decided wasn’t for me. Some people love the adrenaline of running and like it better than any other exercise. If you try it, make sure you have the proper shoes, because I ended up with blisters for being a cheapskate with my running shoes.

Weight Loss: Sadly, losing weight requires some form of sacrifice. I realized that reducing calories makes a bigger difference in weight loss than exercising does. Sometimes you gain weight when you exercise because muscles weigh more than fat. The only way to get rid of fat is to eat less. To not make your suffering go to waste, you might try fasting and prayer as an alternative to reducing calories. At least you’re accomplishing something spiritual by drawing closer to God at the same time!

Sleep and Rest: Make sure you get 8 hours of sleep a night if you want to live a healthy life where you feel fully awake. You also need to build margin into your schedule: time to rest and have fun.

How Exercise and Fitness Affect Marriage: Taking care of your body is the same as taking care of your husband. How you feel physically affects your marriage.

Exercise with Children: How to exercise when you have kids with you all day.

A Rebuttal to the Courtship Movement

Friday, April 20th, 2012

courtship-movementI’ve listened to many, many hours of workshops about the courtship movement in homeschool Christian circles. The premise is that young people should not date. When they are ready to get married, they “court” a pre-approved person (that the parents have checked out thoroughly), and the young people are never alone together. They never kiss until their wedding day. The parents of the young people seem to be orchestrating the entire thing from beginning to end, to avoid any emotional pain on the part of the daughter or son.

At first I just soaked it all in, having no opinion. I highly value purity before marriage, so the topic appealed to me. But the more I listened, the more uneasy I became. I couldn’t put my finger on why I was disturbed. I talked to my husband about it, and he basically said that he trusted our kids, and that he didn’t want to micromanage who they were going to marry. My husband and I did not court. We dated. We kissed. We were alone together. I wouldn’t trade those days for the world. I was walking on air in anticipation of becoming his bride. Those pre-marriage kisses were absolutely fantastic. We both remained pure before marriage.

Scripture only gives two commands concerning future marriage: no fornication and not being unequally yoked. To add lots of rules to what God has written is sin, especially when you are putting those rules on other people. It causes people to feel like they have an anvil too hard to carry. That’s because God never intended compounding rules to weigh down His commands. Young people who can’t stand the suffocation of the situation end up breaking a real command of God, which has been lumped in with the artificial rules. This is a recipe for disaster.

A better thing to do as a parent is to have a deep, rich relationship with your kids, where you trust them. Realize that the Bible says to leave father and mother in this process. The person should pray about his or her spouse and feel peace from God that this is their soul mate. The man should lead the woman in the relationship; the parents should not be leading the man like a puppet. Otherwise the woman is submitting to the man’s parents, and this horrible, unbiblical interference in marriage is established as a habit.

People who court still break up and have emotional pain. That is not avoided unless you’ve not involved your heart.

No, people need to be accountable under God. Presumably if they’re Christians they care about purity. Other than that, they’re free. If they want to sit down and have a 3-hour conversation about God without having anyone else in the room, they should be able to do that.

The Best Banana Bread in the World

Friday, April 13th, 2012

best-banana-breadMy husband’s boss asks for my banana bread every year for the annual brunch, but when I arrive with two loaves, he whisks both of them off the table and hides them. When I start laughing, he says, “Oh, we have too much food anyway.” He says this every year. Because he wants it all to himself; that’s why.

This is the very first recipe I ever baked when I was a young girl, and I’ve continued to make it all these years. My mother gave me the recipe on a card, and I laminated it because I use the recipe so much.

Turn on the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two small loaf pans. Mash 3 very ripe bananas. In another larger bowl, cream together ½ cup of margarine (softened), ¾ cup of sugar, and 1 egg. Dump the banana mush into the larger bowl. Now add 3 tablespoons of milk, 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Stir. Divide equally into the two small loaf pans. Bake for half an hour.

If your bananas are small, you might need to add a little bit of milk to compensate. If your bananas are enormous, you might need to add some flour. If it’s your first time to make banana bread, just buy normal-sized bananas.

Don’t try to bake the two small loaves in one loaf pan. My best friend keeps asking me, “What is your secret to your yummy banana bread? Mine doesn’t taste the same, and furthermore, it doesn’t bake in half an hour. It takes way longer.” And I answer every time, “Use two small loaf pans instead of one big one.” And she says, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. I don’t have enough space in my cupboard.” The next year, like clockwork, we have the same conversation…

Some day I will buy two small loaf pans and mail them to her. When she opens the package, she will probably laugh.