I vividly remember house shopping with my husband. He wasn't my husband at the time, but we were planning to get married the following summer, and we began looking for homes. The house we chose was the second house we viewed that day – it felt like home from the minute we got here. We still looked at other houses (seven in total) due to our realtor's insistence; yet, all day, we kept thinking about this house and after deliberations, made an offer on it. A few weeks later, Eric signed the papers, and we began moving his stuff into his new place, and my future home. Other than a lack of … [Read more...]

Do you remember a time in your life when you sacrificed something important to you for someone else? How about for yourself? Maybe you lost sleep for months working several jobs to make ends meet or maybe you gave up eating foods you love to support a friend or family member who needed to get healthy and exercise. Perhaps you have never had to sacrifice time, fun, or possessions that are important to you, but you have seen others sacrifice for you. How did that affect you? Did you realize the weight of the sacrifice? Understanding the importance of sacrifice in marriage is … [Read more...]

Planning a wedding can be both stressful and exciting. For the months preceding it, it may seem like all plans revolve around cakes, centerpieces, picking music, premarital counseling, and deciding between having a meal at the reception or just hors d'oeuvres. While there is some time spent picking a place to live and moving into it, the bulk of the plans revolve around the actual wedding day. Yet, after the wedding day is over and you come back from your honeymoon, your homestead will be waiting for you. A little more time spent planning your move-in before the wedding will cause less … [Read more...]

Many of us are guilty of taking people for granted. We tend to think we will always have our loved ones and friends around… until something happens that takes them away from us. The saying is true that you never know what you have until it's gone. We all can probably think of someone we've lost, whether to death, quarrels, or life circumstances, that we would love to have back in our lives. Yet, how many of us think about that person we've lost and determine in our hearts to treat everyone else we love with extra special care? A friend of mine recently posted a plea on Facebook for us to tell … [Read more...]

The older I get, the more I realize that my parents are intelligent. When I was twelve, I thought they knew so little about life… and then, when I turned twenty-one, they suddenly knew everything. Perhaps, could it be that I was a know-it-all when I was twelve and realized quickly how little I knew once I was grown? Sometimes it takes life experience to realize how little we really know – and that only comes with the passage of time and experience-building. For example, when I was a teenager and long before I was married, I knew a ton about marriage – or, at least I thought I did. After … [Read more...]