Marriage.

A Successful Marriage requires falling in love many times,

always with the same person.

-Mignon McLaughlin

This weekend we went to a little marriage seminar held here at the school for all the married students. The focus was on marriage in ministry. What does that look like? How do we balance ministry, our marriage and future family and give each aspect every bit of love and attention it deserves? We walked away from the day determined to set our selves up for success, not failure.

But what qualifies a marriage a successful? Simply that you've not divorced? Hardly. What if you're both old and have been married for 50 years, does that qualify as a successful marriage? I'm convinced that success, in many fields, adds up to quality, not quantity and inevitably, if you have good quality, quantity usually flows. In 50 years time, when I look at my hubby, white haired, wrinkled and pathetically cracking jokes trying to make his grand kids laugh, I want to not only be proud of the many years we have behind us, but of the many times we've fallen in love. The many years of amazing memories, adventures and journeys. The many years of giving our marriage to God and living to see each others dreams come true. We want to look back on our marriage and be proud of who we've become.

I believe this means putting your marriage above all else. Above your career, above your kids, above your social life, and even above your ministry. Please understand that I am not implying that we neglect those things, by no means! ByI do believe that marriage should be the center. If your marriage and relationships with God are not strong and well nurtured, it will infiltrate into every aspect of your life. My goal is that our kids (future kids) will view our marriage as a model for their own. I want them to be constantly aware of how much we love and value each other.

There's nothing like being sick that shows your true colors. Since we've been married, I've not been sick. Sure, I've had some unfortunate bug bites and infections but nothing like the flu. The flu just takes over your life. When I had an IV in my hand for 4 days, and both feet swollen to twice their size, I was still determined to be independent. "Matt, It's fine! I got this." was my catch phrase. But there's just something about having a head the size of a hot air balloon, a nose that no longer works and a body temperature that changes from one extreme to the other in less than 5 seconds that completely sends all determination and independence out the window. The other thing that goes out the window is your desire to be attractive and cute. My mother would love me no matter what I look like. That's what mothers are supposed to do. But when your husband rolls over in bed to see your un-showered self propped up with a million pillows, breathing through your mouth, dressed in your favorite tattered and worn sweater with blood shot eyes wads of tissue shoved up your dry cracked nose, and still loves you.... that's love. When he goes to Wal-mart just to get you more DayQuil and gets out of bed at 4am to get you more water---there's just something about that unconditional love of someone who chose to love you that makes you fall in love again.

A successful marriage requires work, much work and much sacrifice. Laying down your life for the other person. For their needs and their dreams. It's common, before you get married to hear " but, you'll never fall in love again."...

I guess they've never been in love.

love, life and food

I admit… we're not the best bloggers around. We really want to be.

We really do want to share out lives with you but I guess it's just so easy to get caught up in life that you forget to pause and think about it.

I could recap the last 3 months…. But I'm sure you have somewhere to be in the next few days...

So we'll just skip to the present.

So we are currently a month in to the Spring semester. It looks different than last. Matt only has 3 courses this term so he's focusing more on his music and working on the campus grounds. This also means he only has to get up for classes one day a week, which, I've discovered, makes it much more difficult for me to get out of bed. I haven't decided yet if it's because I don't want to leave my husband… or if I'm just jealous. The former makes me look better… so we'll say it's that.

We're also both working on our Pastoral Internships. Our campus pastors are a married couple; they're awesome and have taken us under their wing . Matt's internship is primarily focused on music and mentorship, which really couldn't be more perfect. And I'm set right in my niche working with an organization called Tattered Tiaras (Click here to learn more) which strives to encourage, equip and empower girls to influence the world by promoting healthy mind, will and emotions (yes, I copied and pasted that). I am primarily in charge of organizing the Global Challenge program. We take teams of girls overseas for a two week trip to open their eyes to the world and show them that they can make a difference in their world. I get to organize and plan the trips. How fun! ( I'm serious!)

Speaking of trips, I am planning on going on two of these trips this summer! To both Thailand and Malawi! Matt will also be going to Thailand this summer to complete an Intercultural internship for his program. So needless to say, fundraising is also on our minds this term.

So between classes, internships, fundraising, working, tending to our marriage, and everything else that comes with life, it's quite the busy term. So naturally we had to come up with a few time savers and ideas to manage our stress (okay, okay… my stress). I've done many things including a homework schedule and putting more value on getting a good night's sleep. I've also been setting the timer on the coffee machine to help me wake up a half hour earlier to spend a half hour in the silence, mentally preparing myself for the day. I never would have thought that this would help so much. But it turns out that it does!

BUT… the most exciting time saver is this: ---FREEZER MEALS!

Relax Mom, I'm not talking frozen TV dinners, you've taught be better than that.

This is a genius idea I discovered off of mammaandbabylove.

For our wedding, we were given one of my favorite appliances… A crock pot/slow cooker. You see, I LOVE cooking. But it has become more of a stress lately trying to make a good supper every night. So, I do all my cooking for a couple weeks in one day! Yesterday I spent about 6 hours in my kitchen cooking. It was such a great day! I made 2 loaves of whole wheat, oatmeal, cinnamon raisin bread (Oh SO good!... and surprisingly easy!), Cranberry Chicken, Orange Beef Stew, Mango Chicken Curry , apple pie pork chops (had those tonight… delicious!) BBQ pork and BBQ Chicken. I put all the chopped vegetables, meat, spices and sauce into a large freezer bag. Last week I also made a mass amount of meatballs and cranberry turkey burgers ( a healthy alternative). So our freezer is full. Now, each morning before I head to class, I just put the frozen cube of food in my slow cooker and 8 hours later… voila!!! A healthy, delicious dinner is ready. I've also discovered how to make egg muffins for a healthy, protein rich breakfast (eggs, milk, onion, garlic and chopped spinach poured into a muffin pan and baked in the oven. 20 minutes later, I have a weeks worth of breakfast. I just nuke it in the morning and add it to an English Muffin! Mmm!!).

As you can tell, I'm pretty excited about this. So excited that I'm gonna show you a picture... or two.

Isn't that just the best thing you've ever seen?

(My apologies to those of you who have no interest in this an have been reading about my freezer cooking for the past few minutes...i'm just soo excited! )

Much Love!