Who is driving your bus? You or the passengers? This day’s chapter is all about fighting fair. The voices in my head do not fight fair and since this is a SELF-Love Dare, today I focus on the cowardly voices echoing my chamber. It is happening right now. Most days, I take my oldest son to a coffee shop so he can focus on online school and I focus on writing. With smaller children running around the house, it is hard to get 5 minutes without interruptions; so we seclude ourselves. This morning I made a poor choice. Since ...

Some days I would like to soar off without a care in the world I know plenty of men that will say their family prevents them from taking great adventures each day. But what if I told you the issue may be stubbornness and not obstacles? Let me explain. Today in The Love Dare I read that many marriages dissolve not because of the big things, but little arguments like loading the dishwasher or painting a room a certain color. In a post I wrote almost 6 months ago, ‘Does Stubbornness Reign?‘, I address how this looks in my ...

This past week cherish was not on my mind In starting this Love Dare turned inward challenge, I swore I would be open and honest to my readers. Well, that makes this cherish post pretty hard to write. This past week, you may notice, my posts have been few and far between. Okay, they are non-existent. I just checked the dates. Yes, seven days passed since my last post. I want to say life got in the way, but back to the honesty thing, I didn’t want to perform today’s reading or challenge. “Husbands ought also to love their ...

I understand this concept in a normal relationship, but unconditional love for myself is a foreign concept. On day ten of my self-love journey, we explore the different types of love. According to the Bible, we have three different types of love; eros, phileo, and agape. The first two types of love are to describe erotic attraction to an individual and a friendly love respectively. The last, however, describes an unconditional love our God has for us. The Love Dare challenges us to love our spouse with this type of love. To put it into terms I can understand, ...

Let’s be honest, how often do you look in the mirror each day? Believe it or not, I have gone several days not looking into the mirror and no, I am not talking about when we go camping. In our lovely 100-year-old home, we have 1 bathroom with little to no ventilation. This means that often after a shower the mirror is too fogged up to be of any use, but I don’t have a habit of looking anyway. The chapter today is not about looking yourself in the mirror, but about how you greet the one you love. ...

Application on this one might be interesting… Jealousy and forms of being jealous are not foreign concepts to me. Whether it be Saturday morning cartoons talking about the green-eyed monster or Bible stories discussing the differences between envy and righteous jealousy, my childhood is inundated with memories of teaching me how to share. But now, trying to learn how to love me, I have the challenge to not be jealous of myself. This might be getting a little confusing. Think about it for a second. Jealousy means wanting what others have or achieve to a degree you hold hatred ...

Would you rather be in a room with positive people or negative people? Strictly from a literary perspective, this is one of my favorite days in The Love Dare. The imagery Kendrick paints in this chapter hits home with me each time I read the chapter. The author sets the scene by describing 2 rooms. Each is very similar in design and construction, with the only difference in wall decor. In the first, which he calls the Appreciation Room, the walls of positive words that you would use to describe your mate decorate the walls. (I guess for my ...

Let’s be honest, aren’t we all a little irritating to ourselves? This chapter really annoys me. I understand that if everyone is irritating to me that it will foster bad relationships, but I live like being irritating to myself is a form of self-improvement. If you read my last post about having manners for myself, then you know this compounds the challenges of my journey! Does this sound familiar? You’re dutifully going through your honey-do list hoping to finish before she returns home. Third on the list is to hang the new picture she wants in the living room. ...

What do my manners say about who I am? I don’t have good manners on accident. Early on in life, whether it was my father or mother, I remember being corrected for having poor manners. It wasn’t until years later that I understood why manners are so important. Fast forward 20 years and people will say that I am one of the most respectful people they know. But why is this so important. In today’s reading of The Love Dare, Kendrick emphasizes that if we don’t have enough respect for our spouse to practice good manners, then how can ...