~~A special Valentine just for you~~ The prince is stately, unrivaled, yet the peasant girl is common, plain. She is sometimes “sullen and sour, even cranky.” Not the type you’d want to spend the rest of your life with. “His attraction to her is baffling.” Yet, he cannot live without her, so he proposes to her. Soon afterward, he leaves to build their future home and take care of his father’s kingdom duties. He promises her that he will return for her as soon as everything was ready. In the meantime, she forgets that she is betrothed. She lives as …
Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places
Valentine’s Day. It can be a mix up of emotions for many of us, especially if we end up looking for love in all the wrong places. You know, the love we read about in romance novels or on the Hallmark channel. Let’s face it, we’ve bought into the hype that Valentine’s day is the one day of the year that we go over the top to show our love for that special someone in our life. You know how it goes, it’s the day where we spend more than we should and stress about getting everything “just right”. For …
104 Date Night Ideas instead of 50 Shades of Gray
My mother thought if she loved my father enough, he would change. He didn’t. Instead, I watched my father love my mother to the best of his broken abilities. I watched my mother become less of a woman, and I watched my heart break into millions of little pieces as my mother would clean up the glass from one of my Dad’s anger fits or hold an ice pack to a broken nose; deep down I knew this wasn’t real love or healthy. Flash forward fifteen years later. I am raising two girls and one precious boy. My fifteen year old …
Four Foundations for a Happy Marriage
I think it’s time to really just get real about marriage. Marriage isn’t always easy and you don’t always like each other. But there are four things that can help you have an amazing marriage no matter how tough things may get. So…in light of the upcoming “Holiday of Love” I thought I’d share some thoughts on love and marriage in a rather exposed, up-close and personal kind of way. My husband is my best friend. But it hasn’t always been this way. However, now…after 28 years, I can say we are more in love now than the day we said “I …
How to Make Your House a Joyful Home
‘Wives should feel that home is their place and their kingdom, the happiness of which depends mostly upon them.*” Ouch. You mean the happiness of my family depends mostly upon me??? As much as I would love this responsibility to fall on someone else’s shoulders, the fact is I am the one with the responsibility of constructing a joyful home. So how do we intentionally design our “place and kingdom”? Fashion a home which glorifies God and as a natural result love, joy and rest fill each room? This will not come naturally. By nature we are …
Teach Kids to Welcome Dad Home
How do you greet your husband when he comes home from work? When he walks through the front door is it just business as usual? Or, do you celebrate his return with a hug or a kiss? Better yet, how do your children treat him? My dad worked long hours as a truck driver. When he came home at night my sisters and brother and me made a beeline to the front door to greet him with arms open wide. As much as I’d love to tell you we were just an incredibly loving …
How to Thrive When Life Would Be Easier If…
“That was easy,” the red easy button’s mechanical voice intoned. And that is how we want life – easy. That is why articles titled 25 Great Life Hacks continually make their rounds in cyberspace. We all want the easy way: the easy way to lose weight the easy way to finance furniture with no money down the easy way to raise children the easy life We all have a list too – an It Would Be Easier If list. It would be easier if: My kids would get along. My kids would obey the first time every time. My husband …
Five Tips for Moms of Flower Girls and Ring Bearers
Many people get a chuckle out of the flower girls and ring bearers at weddings. I have been to many weddings where the ring bearer would start saying something silly or the flower girls would dump out all their petals right at the end of the aisle. They always look darling in their nice outfits and they are a sweet reminder of how Jesus loves us. But, if you’ve ever been the mother of a flower girl or ring bearer, you know how rewarding and difficult it is to have your children in a wedding. My brother recently got married …
5 Tips to Help Wives Speak the Language Our Husbands Will Understand / By Kathy Howard
It’s no secret. Men and women are very different. But God not only created us differently on purpose, He also made us for each other. So “different” can definitely be compatible. We just have to know the “secret.” Recently, I got the chance to sit down with author Pam Farrel and chat about her and her husband’s latest book The Secret Language Code of Successful Couples. The “secret language code” is based on men and women’s core needs. Men’s core need is “success” and women’s is “security.” These core needs reflect Paul’s directive in Ephesians 5 for men to love …
15 Ways to Encourage Your Man
So many changes going on in the Riggleman household and one of them is the way God is working on my heart about my husband. You see, that’s because I haven’t always been the best wife. I haven’t always been the best wife. Click To Tweet When we first married, I wasn’t a follower of Christ and I was raised to believe a woman needed to be strong, fierce, and independent of her man–if she had one. My parents broken marriage left example after example of reasons I thought I needed to be a modern woman with my own ideas and …