Be sure to make plans to give your hubby a little extra love this holiday season. Here are some ideas I posted in the past. I hope you won’t mind this cheater’s post, with such an emotional time this week, with my father’s passing and memorial service.
Please click over and read the ideas. I hope they will help you make your plans for your beloved.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
My dad was 79 years old and in relatively good health. He still had semi-annual check-up with his heart doctor because they were watching one of his ?somethings?. The first part of the month he and Mom both came down with covid. It affected them differently.
Nearing the two week mark, Mom was starting to feel a bit better, not good, just better. However Dad did not. Mom had been sleeping in the recliner in the living room because it was easier to breathe and thus sleep AND because she was coughing during the night and didn’t want to disturb Dad’s sleep.
Finally, she decided to sleep in the bed to tend to Dad throughout the night. She gave him ice chips and helped in any way she could.
I remember her telling me that one night, he reached over and held her hand. That just makes me cry; his tenderness and wanting to hold the hand of his love while feeling so miserable.
I believe it was the next morning that Dad was really struggling to breathe and wasn’t getting any better, so my brother-in-law, who was also sick with covid, ran him (with my mom) to the ER. Mom said that on the way back my brother-in-law was so sweet, he tried to keep things lighthearted. 
Thus began a ten day stay in the hospital in the ICU. We had NO CLUE that he wouldn’t return home. I’ll always remember her telling me about him holding her hand that last night. 
(You can read more about what happened here.)
All this to say, you never know what will happen. Make every day count!!!
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
Lori Byerly, The Generous Wife, posted a wonderful reminder this past week. She challenged her readers to consider what your first thoughts are of your spouse.
I know she challenged me. I’m taking it to heart and intend to practice thinking of Michael’s good qualities any time I find myself focusing on something negative.
I hope you pop over to her blog post and read it for yourself. It is a quick read, like this is.
I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week!
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
Well, if you haven’t begun already, it is definitely time to start your holiday planning! It is such a crazy year, you may need to re-think your holidays.
Members of my extended family have come down with covid over the last couple weeks. We are hoping all will be well in time for Thanksgiving but Lauren and I did talk about a back-up plan, just in case. 
I always get and bake a turkey; usually I bake it on the day after Thanksgiving but can easily change that over to Thanksgiving Day if it will end up just being our immediate family.
Of course, I’m on the lookout for a ham too. I’ve already gotten the little turkey ham for Michael. Those things can be hard to come by, so when I saw one at WinCo a month or so ago, I picked it up and put it in the freezer.
We’ve also pinned down our family light viewing trip. I heard they’ll have ice skating this year. Hmmmm, I wonder if we will try that.
I’ve got the majority of the gifts purchased and the week after Thanksgiving I will get them all wrapped.
Tiffany and I have been watching Christmas movies already. We don’t usually do this but we didn’t watch any in July this year, so we started watching them already. (In case you are lost, during Christmas in July we frequently pull out our favorite Christmas movies but this year I read more books instead.)
It’s important to get input from your family to ensure that you are not spinning your wheels doing things that just aren’t important to the rest of the family and to ensure that you are doing the things that are important to your husband too.
If there are too many and it will overwhelm you, have him pick the ones that are the most important or if he can’t decide, put it up to a family vote. Be creative. Remember the season is meant to be enjoyed, not simply survived.
The week after Thanksgiving I will begin my Christmas savings for NEXT year. I like to have all my gifts purchased by Thanksgiving, so that means I need all the money by then too. Sooo, I have my budget go from the week after Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving week. It really benefits us to have planned like this. It has taken away any financial stress normally caused this time of year because I’ve already dealt with it.
I encourage you today to sit down and write down the activities you like to do and have to do and maybe even some ones you think might be fun. Ask your spouse and kids to do likewise. And then talk about it over dinner or a special dessert night. Get the calendar out and be realistic about the things you can do and what just will not fit into the time allotted. (Is it possible to do some of them the week after Christmas or even up to Epiphany, which is January 6th?)
I hope this post gets you excited for the holidays and gets you planning too. I’d love to hear about your favorite activities for the holidays.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
So have you ever wanted to send your sweetie a suggestive message but don’t want any chance of others seeing it? When a text is received, it can be seen on the locked screen of the phone, unless you’ve already selected a different setting.
Well, there is a way around this but unfortunately it works for ALL messages.
On an iphone you:
This keeps your messages private.
I’m looking into other methods as well, like sending through Love Nudge. I thought this worked but then it didn’t seem to be private (before changing the preview setting) but upon further inspection, it isn’t in the usual text message app but completely located in Love Nudge.
SO all that to say, selecting no previews will notify you that you have a text on the lock screen but not give you the message there. You have to unlock and view the message in the message app.
I’ll update you one the Love Nudge app’s messaging, if it works completely privately (i.e. not putting the message in the message app but only in the love nudge app).
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
PS. Be careful about linked devices, as you wouldn’t want a family tablet to have those private messages showing.
I love that Lori Byerly, The Generous Wife, reminds us on the first of each month, to pray for marriages. I have to admit before reading her posts, I hadn’t thought about praying for the marriages of my friends unless I knew their marriage was struggling.
I also never thought to pray for my pastor’s marriage. It makes so much sense though! I’ll definitely be praying for our pastors’ marriage on a regular basis.
Lori also gives a few ideas of how to pray/for what to pray.
I hope you will also pray for the marriages of people you know and love.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
I’ve not been feeling well this weekend. It doesn’t happen often to me but when it does, Michael works hard to help me feel better.
I was a so stuffy! I got a tad bit dizzy too. So Michael picked up a variety of herbs and supplements as well as a blood pressure monitor and blood sugar monitor. I was pleased to find that my blood pressure was okay, not great but not bad either.
He’s been so attentive, getting me tea and vitamins and whatever else he can think of to get for me. As I was thinking about what to write today and looked at all Michael was doing for me, it made me wonder if I am as attentive to him when he is not feeling well.
I know I’m a blessed woman and not everyone is as blessed as I am, which is just another reason for me to be honest about how I treat my sweetheart. So as I sit here sniffling and being miserable, I’m thinking about how I can be just as attentive to Michael as he is to me when I’m not feeling well.
I hope this encourages you to stop and think about what you can do to/for your hubby.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
Things change. Some things change for the better and others are more difficult to handle. Some changes are tough emotionally and others are tough in other ways.
It is important to find your worth in Jesus! Don’t find your worth in what others think about you or things you do. You’re always going to disappoint someone, so don’t set yourself up for depression by letting that dictate your worth.
God thinks you are worth all His sacrifice. Work on your relationship with Him and find what He thinks about you and know that you are loved.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
I’ve come to the conclusion that I am opinionated and mouthy, especially to my husband. This is not a trait I’m proud of and one I am ready to confront.
You may recall that we are looking for a new church home. Between that and our middle son moving out of our home (but still on our property), I have seen the error of my ways.
The other night a situation arose where I would have normally jumped in to referee between hubby and son but instead, I just shut my mouth (for the moment). Of course after Sean left to go back to his home, I blew whatever progress I had made by erupting at Michael.
In my defense, it had been an emotional day for me and don’t want to lose my grown children. But that is no excuse. I need to grow up and put everything in God’s hands . . . and pray about these situations.
Sometimes the best thing I can do is shut up. But of course, pray too.
I hope this encourages you today. If you are in a situation where the thing you SHOULD do is not say anything, know that you are not alone. God will help us! We just have to ask Him to. Of course, when I pray, I also pray for God to change me where I am wrong and change the other party (be it Michael or one of my grown children or even any other person) where they are wrong.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº
My daughter was on facebook recently when she saw this post and read it to me. It reminds me of something my friend told me quite a few years ago. You see I was struggling with my relationship with Michael. Don’t get me wrong, I love the man dearly, but it was that stage of life where I just realized we’d been having the same problems and arguments over and over and over again. I felt like he still had the same problems/faults he did when we first got married–ones we both thought he’d work through.
At this point, some nearly ten years later, I cannot even tell you what was frustrating me so badly but I asked God for help and wanted a ‘mentor,’ as such, to counsel me in my situation. There was a lady at church that really worshiped God with all her might AND I noticed that she seemed to ‘hear’ from God. So I asked her to come for lunch the next week and told her that I believe she is a woman of God and is led by Him and told her that I was hoping she would be able to speak into my life in regards to my marriage.
She came. We had a lovely visit. I think God had other things in mind for our day but before she left we did talk about what I wanted to. Her husband had passed away a few years prior and she missed him. She said the only advice she had for me was to think about how I would feel if Michael were gone. That is a sobering thought. And it fits in with the story Tiff read me on facebook.
Make the Chili
By Pam Berg
A good friend of mine unexpectedly lost her husband. A couple of months later we were going for a run together, chatting about nothing. She asked me what my dinner plans were. I told her my hubby wanted chili, but I didn’t feel like stopping at the store. We ran on for a few more minutes when she quietly said, “make the chili.’
It took me a few minutes to realize we were no longer taking about dinner. It was about going out of your way to do something for someone you love because at any moment, they could unexpectedly be taken from you.
So today, I’m sharing with you the wisdom handed to me by my dear friend. I’ve thought of it many times since that day. The next time someone you love wants you to go for a walk, watch some football or play a board game, just put your phone down and give them your undivided attention. Just do it. Make the chili.
1 Cor 10:24
No one should seek their own good, but the good of others.
(copied from Glen’s Story Hour on facebook)
I hope this encourages you to keep things in perspective and do what you may not really want to do just because.
Until next time, God bless,
Michele ºÜº