Cell Phone Challenge

The girls and I had a great weekend. We saw the Gateway production called Truthical, which was amazing! They always go above and beyond at putting on musicals. Saturday we visited the first brick house in Euless. It was so cool to get a tour from an 80 year old man that used to visit the house. This morning the girls and I went and volunteered at Beautiful Feet ministries in downtown Fort Worth. It was such a blessing to be able to give back to the community. Olivia found her niche in the kitchen, I’m pretty sure she was running it by the time we left. 🙂 Harli was stuck to my side the entire time. Not because she was scared, she just likes to stay close to me. They are both incredible little people, and I am so blessed to be lucky enough to be called their Momma. ❤

Today at Beautiful Feet I met the sweetest lady named Jen. We were talking while greeting and she told me about her parents. She said her Dad did heroine, and then she proceeded to tell me that she didn’t know when she was a kid, but later on she realized it. I wanted to tell her about my ex-husband and that she is basically a living example of what my kids are going to have to walk through. I couldn’t talk to her about it because my daughter was standing there with me. I got very emotional while she was talking to me though, and it made my heart break for my kids. When people do drugs, or anything that is an addiction, they don’t realize all the pain they are causing other people. They think they are just doing it to themselves, but that my friends is a big fat lie. They are doing it to everyone that loves and cares about them. It sucks!

While I was volunteering, I realized I hadn’t looked at my cell phone in several hours. As you know that is a huge accomplishment, because who doesn’t check their phone at least once an hour? Has anyone else noticed that besides me? People cannot even go on a date without their cell phone sitting on the table, just in case they get a notification. We think we are in control of our phones, but we aren’t. As soon as we see a notification, we are quick to check it. Man has become a slave to technology. We all know our great-grandparents would roll over in their graves, realizing how much time we actually spend on our cell phones. Think about it…. how many times today did you check Facebook, just to scroll? How long were you on there?  What about Instagram? Twitter? Farmville? Have you feed your animals today? Imagine all the time we waste on senseless things, instead of connecting with people around us. Those people will not be in your life forever. Why not be intentional with the people that care about you enough to stare at your phone cover more than they are starring at your mouth move.  I challenge you and myself this week. I challenge us to keep a little list of how many times you get on your phone for anything other than to call someone. Calling someone would be connecting with someone, but anything else you do on your phone, is not actually connecting with someone. You may be communicating, but you are not making an authentic connection. Just notice how often you are on your phone doing pointless things. Are those things going to help you today? Are they going to help you see the bigger picture? Let me know how your challenge goes. 🙂

Love your friend intentionally today. Who says its not good to love someone too much? Define too much. ❤

Empathy is Powerful

I love this season because on the outside everyone is typically happier and more cheerful. It’s the fake snow on the trees and the Christmas lights on the houses. It’s a whimsical time of the year, where you can wear strange red and green sweaters and blame it on the Holidays. It’s the idea of giving to others and having that blessed feeling afterwards. I love this season. 😉

This season also brings lots of pain for people. It’s the end of the year, so with that comes a year full of “What ifs” and  “I wish I had”.  People get very depressed around this time of the year. I have been thinking of that for the past couple of weeks, because I too have thoughts of things that I wish had gone differently or I wish I had not done. I have been walking around for days looking at peoples faces, wondering what their thought bubble is actually saying. I saw ladies all standing around talking and from the outside they looked so put together, perfect makeup, perfect clothes. On the inside I wondered what they are really thinking about…. their drug addict husband, their son that slammed the door and stormed out last night, their argument with their sister? Imagine if we all had thought bubbles over our heads, wouldn’t it make it so much easier to empathize with each other?

Empathy. Definition: Sharing someone else’s experiences and emotions: the ability to share someone else’s feelings.

There are several things I want to point out about empathy.

1. Empathy has to have more than one person in order to happen. (God did not intend for man to be alone.)

2. Empathy can only happen when you share your feelings, emotions and thoughts with someone else. (Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another)

3. In order for empathy to work you have to be first willing to open up to someone and speak. No one knows what you are going through if you never first say it with your mouth. (Death and life are in the power of the tongue.)

Empathy is powerful. To understand that someone else in this great big world, can feel the same way that you feel, that is life changing, it is powerful. You never know, maybe that is just what you needed to get past that issue you were facing all alone.

Make it a point to talk to people this season. I challenge each of you to ask someone how they are doing, and then stop and actually listen to what they say. Don’t let them say “Fine” and keep walking. Stop and look them in the eyes, and ask again, how are you really doing? It may be just what they needed. 😉

Love intentionally people. ❤

Return to Sender

When I feel love I get scared and sometimes don’t know what to do with it. Give it away? No, what if I get hurt. Keep it, no what good does that do for me? Then give it away, but….. What if it gets turned down. What if it gets rejected. What if it’s not enough. That would hurt more than just keeping it to myself, so I think I will hold onto it for a bit longer.

When I want to love should i go full throttle and let loose. Should I give it time to see if someone screws it up first. Should i just send it over text, so that i do not actually have to witness the rejection but can just read it.

Wait why am I so scared of rejection? If I am scared of rejection does that mean that person isn’t the person after all? So maybe I should just leave it alone. Let it lay dormant and see if it just goes away, like water evaporates. But wait… The water cycle, remember….it’s a cycle. So then love cannot evaporate and go away completely because it will condensate and reappear. So now what….

Love is too complicated and I don’t think I want to be a part of it right now. When would I prefer to be loved then, you ask? Hmmm…. I didn’t think this through. Can I start again?

Love just hurts sometimes and it makes me not want to keep fighting this fight. So if it hurts does that mean it isn’t good? Or is it that it hurts so good that it’s a good thing? Why is this so difficult one second and makes perfect sense the next? I am pretty sure I am the only one that has ever felt this way. Otherwise there would be a self help book on falling in love. Or maybe it would be a self help book on the law of love and rejection.

What if we play telephone and I told you my feelings, but by the 5th or 6th person it got all scrambled up? No, that won’t work. What if you loved me back, but you don’t know how to show me? Then do you actually love me, or is it all talk and no action? And if that was the case, why would I stay?

What if love is blind? What if I am wrong and I really don’t love you? No, that cannot be it….But what if I really do love you and never told you? Would we miss out on something extravagant?

What if I just sent my love through the mail, and you loved me back? But what if I get it back, return to sender?

Sucker Punch

This weekend has been great from the outside looking in. The girls got some new clothes, we watched movies and drank hot cocoa. We hung out and talked about feelings. 🙂 It’s been great…from the outside.

If you were on the inside of this story you would know that I have a cold that has now become a sinus infection and I have had a migraine for the past 3 days. My kids talked about their feelings because they have not heard from their Dad, and they are trying to process it. The issue is several things, but the number one thing is that they are girls. Girls need their Dads, and not just because they need to feel loved, but because they need to know how to act and be around boys. My oldest daughter said something to me that has been on my prayer list since the day I got a divorce. She said, “Mom, you know how you and Dad got a divorce? Well, I’m afraid that I will get a divorce when I get married because I don’t know how to be around guys. Dad doesn’t live with us, and we hardly see him. I don’t know how to act around boys.” Those words coming out of her mouth were like a sucker punch into my ribs. OUCH! I’m pretty sure I have some cracked ribs and I’m going to need to seek medical attention after that. What do you say to a sweet innocent child, who is completely speaking the truth? I hate divorce, and I hate that I was put in a place that needed me to leave their father. As much as I am passionate about that statement, I am even more grateful that I am out of that marriage and not living in such an unhealthy environment. What my girls do not know, is that their father is an addict. He still is to this day. It hurts me to see that he is still choosing dope over living his life the way that I know God intended him to. God gave me amazing visions and words over him while we were married. He is such an amazing person and has a charismatic enthusiasm that is undeniable.  He is fun to be around because he is always keeping you guessing about what is going to happen. He is truly a great human being. That is one side of him. On the other side of him is fear, torment, lies, rejection, regret, unbelief, and a broken man. He doesn’t believe any of the good things I wrote about him. But the sad part is they are all true. Many of my friends that meet him ask me why I divorced him? I just laugh and say you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Because in all honesty they wouldn’t.

So back to my sweet daughters statement. I told her that she will date many people, and she will decide who she is and who she likes in a man. She will know when it is time, and she doesn’t have to rush into being married. I told her it is best to be friends with him before she marries him. She agreed and told me she thinks I should do the same. We talked about it for a bit and she ran off like she didn’t just sucker punch me. It is amazing to me how unfiltered kids can be. Society applies filters for us to put on, but while they are kids, thank God they are unfiltered. Imagine a world of adults who are unfiltered. Wow, what a difference that would be.

So not only am I sick on the outside with a sinus infection, now I am sick on the inside. My heart hurts for her, and her thoughts of marriage.  If you would, please say a prayer for God to change her thoughts on marriage.

Just wanted to share that. Love intentionally. ❤

Thanks Guys!

Have you ever stopped and thought about what happened yesterday that shaped your decisions for today? Probably. But have you ever stopped and thought about what happened years ago that wasn’t all that great and realized how it shaped your decisions today?

I was singing in the shower (I’m actually quite good – thankyouverymuch) some sad song that makes you think about all the crappy people that you have spent time with, and I was thinking about my past. Now, if you have read any articles lately you will know that your past is not where you should be using your brain power, but rather in the present or future. However, while I was singing I came to a realization! I have never thanked those people for helping shape me into the pretty amazing person I am today! If I had not spent my precious time with those people, who knows who I would be today? Maybe I’d still be living with those people, wishing I wasn’t me. Wishing I was anyone else, as long as it wasn’t me.
So, without further delay, I present my past thanking it for my future. (see what I did there)

Thank you for showing me what it meant to love for the first time. Thank you for being kind and gentle with my
mind, spirit and soul. You were really good for me in the beginning. But after we got older, we realized we did not have the same life plans. Thank you for allowing me to see that I needed someone who was not settling for a casual, straight forward life. I need someone who is willing to change, willing to do something that makes them uncomfortable if needed. Without you I would have never known what it was like to be truly and delicately loved. Thank you.

Thank you for showing me that I am attracted to crazy. It makes me laugh and I’m not scared of it. Thank you for allowing me to see how crazy I wanted to be. I now know how far on the crazy train I should go, and when to return to the station. Thank you for allowing me to see that I cannot live with a control freak. That’s just not my thing. I gave it a whirl, and I realized I like to mess up control freaks thoughts and processes and believe me that’s not good for either person. Thank you for showing me how to let lose and party, and when to stop.

Thank you for loving my hair, smile and my eyes. I never realized how much I disliked those things until you loved them. I now know that I have amazing eyes. If anyone is lucky enough to gaze into them in the future, they can tell me what colors they are that day, because they change. I now know that I think it is romantic for you to take the time to look into my eyes.

Thank you for showing me what money looks like in abundance and then what it looks like to be completely broke. Thank you for pushing me beyond any level of anger that I ever knew existed. I now know when to decide it’s not worth the fight. I also know what I do when I am overwhelmed with anger, I shut down. I don’t like that side of me, so I have learned to not bottle it all up. I have also learned to seek wise counsel about any issues that I feel like I cannot talk to my person about. It’s important to get those things out of my hamster wheel. Thank you for introducing me to the world of addictions. I had only heard about it in movies before you. I learned so
much about the human body and what addictions can do. Before I learned this I had no empathy for these people. Now I realize it’s a disease and a choice. You have to choice to feed it. Thank you for allowing me to learn tough love. That has been one of the hardest lessons I have learned. I am the type of person that loves you completely and I believe that you can get past anything. I also learned that while they are going through their stuff I need to be in a healthy place. Tough love. They dont call it tough for nothing. Thank you for teaching me that I am a strong independent person. I had no idea I could raise two amazing girls on my own. Now I know I can do it, and I don’t NEED a man. I WANT a man. I WANT to love and be loved, but I can survive without. Thank you for making me realize that speaking any negative word over a marriage is harmful. Thank you for teaching me that if I am going to say I will only divorce you if you cheat, that I actually did leave. I learned that I can say something and actually follow through with it. But most importantly I learned to never say those things. All it does is puts those words into the atmosphere for them to come to pass. On my next marriage I will never say those things. So thank you for teaching me so much about myself, that without you, I may have never discovered.

Thank you for allowing me to give to you. Thank you for allowing me to love you in a way that I felt comfortable. Sometimes loving someone doesn’t have to be a relationship, sometimes it’s just loving someone for a season. Thank you for allowing me to be crazy with you. Thank you for removing yourself and then reappearing back into my life randomly. Not only do I enjoy a random person but I enjoyed learning that I don’t like that. I don’t like it when someone I care about slowly disappears from my life. I now know that I need you either in or out. It makes me feel rejected when you disappear because it makes me feel like you cannot be trusted with my heart. So thank you for showing me how to keep my heart locked away from you. Because if I had given it to you, I would not know how much I could respect myself and be glad that I didn’t sleep with you. Instead I stayed friends with you. That is a true accomplishment and I like that about myself. Thank you for keeping your distance and going when you had to go. I now know that I dont like to share. If you are talking to someone else, I need you to tell me, because I was never good at sharing my toys. I need to know if you are talking to multiple people, because I need to remove myself from that list. I learned a lot from you. Thank you for helping me see these things about myself.

I have plenty more but I cannot write about everything from my past. It is too vast and we would be here all night!

So thank you to my past, to the good and bad, to the amazing and frightening, and to the glory days and the gloomy days. Thank you for teaching me so much in such a short timeframe. I am one lucky lady to learn all of these things and be able to apply it in my future relationship.

Cheers to my past! Join me in a toast to my future. Knowing my past, my future is going to be amazing, and I’m ready for the ride. 😉

Love intentionally. ❤

Invisible Girl

I have walked the past 7 years of my life feeling invisible.
I cannot tell you how many times I would say “Hello” to someone passing by and they not even look up. Yes, maybe they were preoccupied, maybe they were having a rough day, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe to them, I was invisible.
I don’t know if you believe in prophetic ministry, but I do and I received a word years ago. It went something like this, “You are being protected right now, you are being put on a shelf for safe keeping. You need to go through healing and God wants to protect you while you are going through this…” Basically that was the gist. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was exactly what was happening.

I was so invisible to people, that even my closest friends stopped keeping up with my life for a while. We were still friends, but they weren’t in my daily circle. It was like I was invisible to them for a certain part of my life.

If you have never felt invisible, you have no idea the torment and lies you can tell yourself about yourself. Being in a crowd of people and not one person noticing your existence, is not a joyful feeling. In fact, you start believing lies about yourself. You start saying no one cares about you, no one even notices you, there is no point in doing that, they won’t acknowledge you anyways. There is no reason to keep living because no one notices you anyways. Lies. All of them.

Sometimes it crossed over into my relationships. If I wanted to date someone, I would start talking to them more, thinking that we both thought the same thing. Then, and this happened several times, they would just disappear. What was even stranger is that they would check back in with me weeks later to see if I wanted to go out to dinner or to catch a movie. It was like they had no idea that they fell off the face of the earth for weeks at a time. I attributed these things with me being invisible. Who wants to date an invisible girl? And how could they be concerned with an invisible girls feelings? Does an invisible person even have feelings?

I know you guys think I’m making this up, but I will tell you a story that is true and has happened on a number of occasions. I will be out with a friend and I will say something to someone. Guess what happens? That person doesn’t acknowledge me. I’ll say it again and again getting louder and louder. My friend and I usually end up cracking up at the fact that the unknowing person is completely oblivious to my voice. Then my friend will say the exact same thing, one time and the person will respond. Ha! It’s so annoying sometimes.
I hate feeling invisible. I don’t like to be the center of attention either, but not invisible.
So what is an invisible girl to do about this? Get louder? I’m pretty loud as it is. Be more rowdy at gatherings? I’m pretty social at gatherings.
For the past year, I don’t feel as invisible, but sometimes it will hit me. When someone doesn’t acknowledge me when they should have or when I am in a room full of people and not one of them see me.
Here’s what I think. I think sometimes I don’t need to be a part of their group, maybe God is keeping me from certain people or groups and maybe he knows that if they don’t see me the way I actually am, then they will go on with their life and not try to be a part of mine. Maybe God has been putting me on a shelf for safe keeping. It makes me feel special and adored that he would do that.
So in the end, I guess it’s okay to be invisible sometimes. God knows what he is doing, even though I don’t know what he is doing. I will trust him. He seems to always have good plans for me. ❤
Cheers to being invisible! Please check out my picture below! See it? 😉

What 10 Years Can Do

My birthday was this past weekend and I celebrated it with my sweetest friends. (Thank you from the bottom of my heart for spending your precious time with me. I love each of you dearly.) I had a great time, but it is so strange thinking that one day can make me a year older. I never realize that I am getting older everyday, but rather only on that one day does my age change. It’s a strange thought process for my brain. (Is it just me?)

Over the past couple of weeks my emotions have been all over the place. Not for anyone one reason and no I am not PMSing (for those of you that immediately go there). I have just had things bubble up over the past couple of weeks that I apparently swept under the rug, that I now need to deal with. It is not easy to deal with my past. It’s not that it is so tragic, it is just stuff that I don’t know why I did it, and I really wish I hadn’t. So now I am having an emotional roller coaster trying to figure things out and deal with those things. Life just sucks sometimes, and that’s okay. I will figure it out, but you are more than welcome to send up a prayer for this lady. ❤

Let me take you on a journey.. when I was 6 (starting here because I am now 36) I was in Kindergarten. It was the year my mom had my baby sister Rebecca, which she delivered with a mid-wife in my bedroom. I still remember hearing the noises and then the sweet cry of a new born baby. Me and my brother kept getting in trouble because we wanted to see what this baby was doing to our momma. It was a good year. I remember meeting Erica, a girl who later lived with me in 7th and 8th grade.

Fast forward 10 years and I am 16. (Wow that makes me giggle and turn red actually) I was in 10th grade, attending Trinity High School and working at (probably) Kroger as a cashier. 🙂 During this year I ripped my ligaments and tendons playing softball and had my first surgery, wore a cast and crutches the first 3 weeks of High School. I was dating a sweet guy that I dated for about 4 more years. It was a good year, lots of love, friends, and humorous times.  For the record, I quit the Kroger job over my answering machine. I was too scared to call and quit over the phone, so I figured they would be calling to see where I was when I didn’t show up for work, so it made perfect sense for me to leave it on my answering machine. However I did not calculate all of my friends calling looking for me and hearing the message. haha It went something like this, “Hi you have reached 817-545-4544, you know what to do, do it at the beep. Oh, and if this is Kroger, yeah, I quit! BEEP” Haha. That makes me laugh.

Fast forward 10 more years and I am 26. Gesh. New baby that was one year old in October. I’m pretty sure I lived at my parents house with her, and had just had her first birthday at McDonalds, where my husband actually showed up. (I don’t think he was high that day, so that was a relief) I wanted to complete school, where I had started right after high school, but stopped when I kept failing Psychology. (who needs that class anyways?!) I worked at Nokia Mobile Phones out in Roanoke, life was very hard, but I kept on trucking, knowing something had to change.

And finally we are here, I am 36. I obtained my Masters degree in May of this year, I had another daughter, and I live back at my house that I had purchased before I even met my ex. I teach which is a passion of mine, and I’m loving my life right now. I enjoy loving on people that don’t think they deserve it, but I know they do. I’m in a good place right now. And as I knew 10 years ago, I have to keep on trucking, because I know things will change. I look forward to the change, because it keeps you alive.

Love intentionally. Be intentional. ❤

People Watching at It’s Best

This week was busy. We had a football game to cheer at then a volleyball game, then my kids school Fall Festival, and then back to volleyball for my practice. Ugh. This time of the year is my busy season, and I’d imagine it is most everyones. Holidays, friends and family take over these last three months of the year. 😉

People. They make me laugh, and cry, but mostly they keep my hope alive. Have you ever just sat back and watched people? It’s so relaxing, kind of creepy, but very interesting. I love seeing someone and wondering what their partner would look like. The best is when their partner shows up and I am usually completely off. It doesn’t cease to amaze me that I am almost usually always wrong with my assumption of what they would look like.

Do you ever see the flames that some couples produce? Are you surprised that two people are so crazily matched but they seem so happy and real. Their magnetic connection looks completely authentic. I love it. It makes me realize that it doesn’t really matter what your type is, or what group you look like you belong to. When you find the one you love, the one you cannot stop thinking about, the one that you wake up thinking of, you go to bed hoping that they are thinking of you too. When you find that person it doesn’t really matter what they look like. What matters is that they love you with the same fierce love that you give them. If you are one of these people kudos to you and to your partner. I love looking at you two, wondering what amazing connection you two share. I love to watch you whisper sweet nothings in each others ears and then giggle when one tells a sweet joke to the other. I love watching you move her hair away from her face, and then kiss her gently on the lips. I love the way you two gaze into each others eyes as if no one is around you for miles. It makes  me smile when you hold hands walking down the street. It makes me laugh when you two are hugging for an extra long time because you don’t want to go your own way yet. Lovers. There is something amazingly attractive about them.

So if you are one of these people, and you see me staring at you in the future, I’m just happy to see two people in love. It makes my heart happy. Thank you for loving another person that you don’t have to love, but you choose to everyday. Thank you from one hopeless romantic to another. ❤

Love Intentionally. 🙂

Harli

Today was a good day at school, no one was too rowdy and most of them listened the second time. (notice I did not say the first time – they are first graders…come on!) Today was also my oldest daughters birthday! I told my class this morning in our Morning Crew time (which just means morning meeting) that I had a secret and can they keep it? They were so excited to know what the secret was when I finally told them. I was going to have a surprise party for my daughter today after school. They all smiled and giggled with glee. They swore not to tell her, and they were so excited. 🙂

11 years ago today I was in the hospital for about 18 hours in labor with Harli. After those long and dreadful hours of pain, we found out she was breach and her butt was in the birth canal instead of her head. Immediately after this discovery they rushed me into an emergency c-section. I came to about an hour later and my little baby was in the nursery and I was surrounded by friends and family. I was so confused, I remember thinking, oh my gosh what did these people do with my baby!? 😉 I started asking what she looked like and they all told me she had red hair. I was like, “You guys are looking at the wrong baby.” I was actually convinced the entire 4 days I was in the hospital that they were all crazy and that her hair was just brown. It wasn’t until I was getting in the truck to go home, and the sunlight hit her hair, that I realized it indeed was red! I remember that being the strangest realization for me. (hehe) My husband at the time was in jail, so I got home and was completely alone. I remember it being the weirdest feeling, going from all these people at the hospital with me and this new born baby, to no one around me in a house, except this little unknowing baby. She was the best baby, always happy, always smiling and laughing, and I have to say not much has changed. She is so sweet, caring and has such a huge heart. She will do anything for anyone, they just have to ask.

I thank God for my little red headed baby everyday, and this day more than most. So onward to the Surprise Party. It wasn’t a big shin-dig, but I figured I would invite her cousins to a cheap and quick restaurant for cake. To my surprise, everyone was able to make it before she got there. It was so sweet when she walked in, she immediately began to cry happy tears and walked over to me and just stood there hugging me, crying. After about 2 minutes I pushed her off me, and made her go say hello to everyone. She was so happy and kept asking me why I didn’t tell her. 😉 So if so silly. It turned out great, and everyone had a great time.

Thank you to everyone that came, and Happy Birthday Harli!! I love you!!

Love Intentionally.

Honeymoon Phase

Friday and Saturday I went to a seminar that helps people understand their natural talents and their desire to serve and puts them together to help people understand what their own personal identity is. No one has the same identity because we are all so uniquely created. (which is super amazing!) Anyways it was a really cool seminar and I would suggest you check it out if you are interested in what you may be called to do with your natural abilities. 🙂 Click here for more info

While I was attending this seminar I was naturally people watching. I mean lets face it, anywhere you go, there you are surrounded by people. (unless you are in the woods by yourself…but thats an entirely different story and ending – focus.) So I was noticing certain people and there was this one lady, whom I will call the “I did it!” lady. Seriously, every question that the speakers would ask, she would raise her hand. Every. Single. Question. It was so ridiculous that I had to watch her every single time they asked a question because I was placing bets in my mind that she would stop raising her hand. Guess what, I lost, because she seriously raised her hand for every question. 🙂 Fun times.

Then I noticed this older couple who were so very sweet to each other. Well I take that back, the old man was so very sweet to his wife. Everytime I saw them he had his hand on her back and would sweetly graze her back. It was the sweetest thing. I mean I like to be touched, but I really want you to either rub my back or touch me sweetly and then stop. But this lady sat there the entire time, while her husband continued to graze his hand all around her back. It was sweet. I promise.

Lastly, I noticed a younger couple, maybe around my age, in their mid to upper 30’s and they looked so in love. Everytime she would move, he would move. She would reach over and rub (actually rub) his back for like 10 minutes and then he would rub her back and play with her hair. (okay yes I may have been envious of this) She would lean over and whisper into his ear and he would smile so sentimentally back at her and lean over and give her a kiss on the cheek or on the lips. (So I may not have even heard a single word during the seminar because I was seriously studying this couple, apparently. HA!) She even leaned over towards him and then leaned her head on his shoulder for like 5 minutes.

The point I am trying to make is that it was overly sweet and I wanted what they had. During one of the breaks I was talking to my friend and we discussed that couple. I was saying how sweet it was and how it made me want that, and my friend said, “They probably just got married, it’s their honeymoon phase!” We both kind of smiled and wondered if it really was. Then something happened inside of me that made me say, “I have been married twice and have never had the honeymoon phase.” Which shocked me and my friend because I never talk about my first marriage. I never talk about it because to me it meant nothing. Let me explain before anyone gets all bent out of shape. In my first marriage, I was legally married only to help a friend receive their green card. They were here for school but their school visa had run out and we were dating at the time, so in my not very sober state, in my early 20’s, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to “marry” this guy for a little while until he gets his green card. I actually thought I was doing him a favor, almost like I could mark it down as some sort of community service. (in my mind that is) But the reality of it was that as soon as I signed my name on a marriage certificate, I was legally married to this man. It freaked me out and something inside flipped out. How could I do such a stupid thing that I will have to tell my real husband someday. So needless to say about 2 months (if even that long) later I filed for a divorce. He wasn’t happy about it, but let’s face it, it was a really bad idea in the first place.

So why did I even tell you this story about the honeymoon couple and my two failed marriages? Well because marriage is an important union that should not be taken lightly. It is a very serious commitment that two people should take to heart and never let go of. I, on the other hand, acted like it was not a big deal and married someone that I barely knew, and honestly no one even knows about. In neither of my marriages, did I or my husband ever act like that sweet couple this morning.

Is it wrong for me to want the honeymoon phase? Is it too much to ask I wonder? No, I don’t think that it is and I know that I will have that someday. You can also mark my words and hold me accountable that my third marriage (I seriously cannot believe I have been married twice – I’m telling you I never even think of that first one, so it’s weird to say third marriage) will have a honeymoon phase. It will be sweet, loving, touching, whispers in the ear, leaning my head on their shoulder, a perfect honeymoon phase. And I am looking forward to it. ❤

Have a honeymoon phase everyday! Be intentional about it! 😉