Inspire To Love Again Ministries
Issue #11
September 2012
Credits Founder & Editor
Content August 2012
Kimberly Borst
Writers
I’m my Husband’s Girlfriend
4
You are my Delight
6
Good Grief!
8
So what do you do?
10
Uniquely Designed and Mixed
12
Have a Little Faith
14
Copyright © To Love Again Ministries 2012. Photos © very
Sarah Williamson Kimberly Borst Mary Corey Michele Peterson Chrissie Hasenöhrl Leilah Wright
Editing Allen Porter
Photography Cover Indicated
Design Kimberly Borst
To Love Again Ministries Pick of the month This month we are highlighting a website for you home school moms. My oldest son, Cody found this website last year. It is called the Khan Academy; it’s a math program from kindergarten all the way through high school. We have been using it for a year and the kids like it. The teaching videos really help and it’s fun.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
I’m my Husband’s Girlfriend Sarah Williamson
I remember when I first started dating my (later to be) husband Jordan. Each date we went on was so special no matter how extravagant or ordinary. I had continual butterflies and was up for anything new as long as he was with me. I find it rather unfortunate that the excitement behind dating becomes diminished once marriage comes in to play. What tends to happen is we get used to the routine of life and leave some of the spontaneity spontaneity
behind that once inspired the butterflies. One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard about keeping marriage fresh and exciting was given to me by my father. He told me the secret was to never stop being your husband’s girlfriend. This idea sounds so simple but when you really dive in and think about what this actually means it becomes so complex.
When I think back to my dating experience with Jordan, I think of
Kam Salisbury
wanting to know absolutely everything about him. He was really into football so in the spirit of filling the girlfriend position I suddenly wanted to know what a snap count was and how many points were rewarded for a touchdown. In return, he quizzed me on my haircut sectioning and patiently listened while I explained the complex world of cosmetology. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t into football; it mattered that he loved it and that was a part of something that made him who he was.
When the ring is on our finger, the “I do’s” are said, and the excitement seems to be taken down a level, it is difficult to want to reach out and actively be interested in the same way we were before. I don’t believe marriage should be that way! Imagine our marriages if we continued with the girlfriend mentality! I’m not saying the role of a wife is not powerful or needed, because it absolutely is. All I’m saying is that when we are keeping the same spirit of dating alive in our marriages life tends to be a little more adventurous, mysterious, and yes FUN.
If there is one thing Jordan and I are pretty awesome at, it is taking time out of our lives to enjoy our dates. Life gets so busy, but it’s important to intentionally make time for inexpensive, fun dates. Sometimes the less money we spent the greater the memories! We do things like pack a blanket and some ice cream and go lay in the park to watch
the sun set. We kiss, laugh and hold hands. We talk about life; we tell each other about our days and just focus in on being together.
We don’t have to go out to dinner and a movie. We don’t have to go spend a hundred dollars on fondue. Hopefully as couples we already have that deep love for each other, so let’s go put it to use by being that girlfriend that he initially fell in love with. Hold his hand in public, have regular make out sessions, don’t be afraid to step out of our comfort zones and try something new. The best dates aren’t about the money spent, they are about the deep connections that are set into place. It’s about busting out those old feelings and basking in their light.
I know how busy life can get. I have more going on now in my life than I ever have, but I have really come to learn that there is nothing in my day to day life that is worth letting my love life go up in flames for. Take time every week to just date. You don’t even have to leave your house, have a picnic in your room or on your deck and just talk. No matter how long you have been married there is always something to learn about yourself and your spouse.
You Are My Delight Kimberly Borst Children are so amazing. It’s such a miracle that we have the ability to bring forth life. All the intricacies that make up a human being are astounding. We truly are fearfully and wonderfully made. Children are a blessing from the Lord!
Having seven children was an For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. Psalms 139:13,14 (NLT)
unexpected journey for my husband, Michael and I. We had to lay down a lot of preconceived ideas about children and life. In a self-centered society it is hard to always see children as blessings. We wanted children but our way. By God’s grace He led us to His plan for our family. I would never have thought it was possible to raise that many children, let alone school them all.
It’s amazing how a newborn baby has the power to change our lives. They need us to fill their most rudimentary needs. The love we can feel for them and the drive to care for them is so remarkable.
As a family we work together, play together, grow together and enjoy life. My children are a joy and my delight. Their first word, first step, “can I take the car?” watching them grow up and
take on life is a pleasure. Each one is a precious treasure to know, to value, to polish, and to refine. Life is a gift. Children are made in God’s image to value. They bring our greatest joys and trials. If we don’t learn to trust and rely on God in our marriages, we will with our kids. God has a unique plan for each of us. He has a plan for our families. All we have to do is ask and He finds a way to lead us. God is good. In the end He turns all things for the good, for those who love Him.
Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. Psalm 127:3-5 (NLT)
Good Grief! Mary Corey . Then later this year I lost another cousin and my dearest friends’ husband.
As my relationship with God has Good grief, how life has a way of catching you off guard. In the past six years I have experienced loss plus some; one horse, a baby goat, four dogs, and not to mention a divorce. 2012 was going to be my best year which started out with a bang. January began with the death of an uncle, a first and second cousin and two very dear friends.
grown, so have I. I’m giving myself grace and permission to grieve outwardly through tears and no longer stuffing the pain away, not allowing it to surface. I call this “good grief” grief that carries us through sorrow to a place of healing. Through my pain and loss God has put me in a position to give comfort and support to others who are in the midst of great loss. I now know that this is part of my calling, to love and support others in their grief. I pray God gives me the right words to love and support them the way my friends and family have supported me. Grief is good as long as we allow ourselves to feel it for a season, and then come out of it stronger and with more compassion to help others. It’s God that gives us hope in all things and sees us through.
Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5 (amp)
Finding the Current Grief… a way of expressing internal pain. From the outside no one can detect your state, for there is no bandage, cast or cane. Only from within, I must endure this fate. Like being dropped in the ocean, with no direction for which way to row. Feeling lost and numb without motion I struggle to find the current of flow. My loss, my struggle, my broken heart; Who can see or understand? I feel all alone on this course to chart, who will lend a helping hand? Then I hear a soft, still voice; “I will never leave you or forsake you” and I know to make the choice, I must trust that God will see me through! As I pry open the door to my heart, amidst the pain of a rising tide. The fear and loneliness slowly depart, I shall surely reach the other side! Debra Lilly
"So, what do you do?" Michele Peterson husband through many tearful goodbyes and tearful hellos.
I am not criticizing working
Mick Stanic
If you are a stay at home mom like me, you may inwardly cringe when someone asks you, “So, what do you do?” I take a deep breath before I answer, never knowing the response I will receive but usually it’s not positive. Our society has made us to think that our worth and value is in what we do for a living not who we are. God wants us to remember that our value is in who he created us to be, no matter what we are called to do. As a stay at home mom and military wife for 16 years, what I do matters very much even though the pay is less than I would like in my bank account. I have opportunity to teach and train my children, as I support and love my
women as long as they don’t put their value in what they do for a living. So, separate your "who" from your "do" and remember that first and foremost you are Gods creation - special and unique. So when society tries to tell you what you should be, remember God created each one of us with different gifts and talents for a reason and for the season you’re in.
I put no confidence in the flesh or on outward privileges and physical advantages and external appearances. I put my confidence in Jesus Christ and I glory in Him. Philippians 3:3 (NIV)
Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away and enjoy to the full what is promised. Hebrews 10:35 (AMP)
God made you
With a purpose! In His image (Beautiful)!
Fearfully and wonderfully!
With a hope and a future!
To worship God! As more than a conquer! To be in a relationship with God!
To live life to the full (abundant)! Because He loves you!
Uniquely Designed and Mixed Chrissie Hasenohrl I thought I would introduce myself! My name is Chrissie Hasenöhrl; I married my hunk of a high school sweetheart and I am the mother to three incredible young men of God. My husband and I married at the young age of 19 and 18, joined the Air Force and very soon thereafter, our oldest son was born. Within 3 years after he was born, we were blessed with two more boys! We eventually moved and settled in Washington state. We now have been here long enough for our oldest to find a girl to call his own!
As I grew up, I was a shy girl who was more of a homebody. As I grew into the pre-teen years, the fights with my mom started. Unfortunately, they just escalated and I grew so resentful of her and her ways that I couldn’t wait to move out of the house. After I met my husband (and various other circumstances that occurred) I finally was able to live my dream of getting out of my parent’s house.
Thankfully, over the years, the Lord has healed our relationship and my mom and I are now BFF’s! During that healing, He has shown me some incredible things about the way He made us as humans. He has shown me how to relate to my husband and my boys as well as my parents. There are so many facets to each individual and how they function in
this world with other humans, I wanted to share what I have learned about relating to people with you!
Each person in this world is designed in a way that is different than any other person. As a mother of boys, I have sat back at times and just been astounded at the three separate, distinct hair colors, shapes, personalities, likes and dislikes, preferences, actions and attitudes of these guys! They came from the same set of parents, same set of values, and the same way of being raised. When they were little, I started to realize what the Lord had given me. On one end of the scale, I had my oldest. He was unique and distinct and wonderful! Then 14 months later, I had my second son. He was the opposite in almost every sense of the word. He was at the opposite end of the scale. The Lord had given me balance. Then two years later, He decided I needed shaking up and along came our third. As he started his growing process, I tried to fit him in the mental scale I had built. As it turns out, did you know that scales have 3 ends? Yes. Hmm. Now what do I do? He didn’t fit anywhere on my scale and I now realized scales have three arms. Wow.
Now, you may have seen personality typing in different references such as sanguine, choleric, melancholy and
phlegmatic, the DISC system, Color Code or True Colors, even the popular animal definitions from Leading from Your Strengths by Trent and Smalley. When my boys were a bit younger we read the book The Treasure Tree by Gary Smalley and John Trent. That started us on the path to discovering each other and learning that decisions we make or words we say aren’t necessarily intended to offend. We learned that each of us handles successes and crises in different ways and that those ways aren’t necessarily bad.
After that book, it became a game with the boys and I to discover who we were. For instance, since the easiest person to diagnose is you; I started looking at who I was. I realized that I needed to look back at things in childhood to get a full picture, not just consider things about myself now, so I started remembering my shyness, my homebody-ness. I realized that learned things are not personality traits, they are learned. The ways we acted in childhood were actions that came naturally most of the time. I also started to realize that God didn’t make us a sterile, single personality. He gave us four personality traits, but as humans we tend to act in only two to three of them. One is usually our biggest trait with a second following closely behind, and sometimes a third can poke its head into the picture.
In the slow examination that followed (it took several years) I discovered I am Phlegmatic first, Sanguine second and Melancholy third. I will explain all four of them in some depth later. As I
discovered this, I also discovered that I was raised by a Choleric/Melancholy mother and had married a Choleric/Sanguine husband. I now had a Sanguine/Phlegmatic son, a Choleric/Melancholy son, and what I thought was another Sanguine/Phlegmatic son. Wow! What a discovery!
We’ll look at these in more depth next month. We’ll start at the top and I will reference as much as I can so you can begin your own journey to discovery. It is so freeing! Though we will cover each of these personalities allowing you to identify and improve relationships with all members of your family, I want to emphasize that the intent of these articles is to learn how to become that help-meet that our wise Lord God designed you to be! A quick note: personalities are flexible. As a person matures, their personality will morph with them. I believe this is one way God grows us up into the people He needs to fulfill the role He designed for our lives. Sometimes we mature into the personality God has placed in us, sometimes as we mature the personality will dim a bit and another aspect may become more prominent. We’ll examine each personality type and its characteristics next month.
Have a Little Faith Leilah Wright We're going to look at Matthew 16:5-12. Before this passage of scripture, the Pharisees had just tried to trap Jesus again. After being foiled by the much wiser Jesus, they left and Jesus, with His disciples, got into their boat.
When they reach their destination the disciples realize that they forgot to pack any bread. Then Jesus said to them, "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." And the disciples started talking amongst themselves that Jesus was upset with them for forgetting the food!
Now, we can all have a good laugh about that and say, "Poor little clueless disciples. Weren't they paying attention?" But we have the advantage of looking at this from beginning to end, and have heard this taught about time and time again.
Jesus goes on to remind them of how He fed the five thousand and then again another group of four thousand.
Now, as most of you probably know - I LOVE food. So if I had been there when they saw Jesus miraculously multiply the food, from then on I probably would have been asking for lots of snacks. Yet the disciples were worried about not having brought enough food.
Luke 12:22-31 says, "22 And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29 And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. 30 For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you."
We obviously don't need to worry about food, our home, or clothing. But for some reason we DO still worry. Just like the disciples did. They had
had just seen Jesus make all this food and yet they were worried that they didn't have food for the day. So many times God provides for us in unusual and wonderful ways, yet with every new problem we worry.
What does verse 31 of Luke 12 say? "Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you." What are "these things"? Look at verse 22 again. "These things" are: your life, what you will eat, your body, what you will put on. This is not a guarantee that you will have everything you WANT, but if you seek God and His will in your life you will have everything you NEED.
Let's pray together. Lord, help us to trust in you no matter what the circumstances are. Help us to be like Job, to be able to say ‘blessed be the name of the Lord’ whatever we're going through. Remind us all the time of the things you've worked in our lives so that we will trust in you to provide for us again. And keep us from the leaven of the Pharisees, from disbelief and hypocrisy like theirs. Bless each of these wonderful ladies this week and let them glow with love for you!
Art by,- Chris Bearing