Yes.. I am alive!!!

I received a very sweet email from another blogger Suzanne (her blog link) today, and it has come to my attention that someone actually misses my blog! I am shocked at this, didn't think anyone noticed I hadn't blogged for awhile! I know it has been quite awhile and I would apologize, but I don't feel that I need to. I don't want to have excuses for while I haven't blogged, but simply put my heart hasn't been in it to blog. I have been going through quite a lot these past few months and as much as I would have loved to share them with you all, I really needed to deal with things on my own. It may have very well been one of the most difficult times I have been through as an adult. I may talk about them in the future, but for ow I shall keep them to myself.

I also have been SUPER busy. Man this summer has been crazy thus far! At the end of May we went on our honeymoon cruise! That will be a whole blog in itself! Then the crazyness began. We got back on  Sunday and I left 4 days later to go to Indiana to be in one of my best friend Jessica's wedding. The weekend after was a bachelorette party for another best friend Beth. The weekend after was Beth's wedding. The weekend after was another best friend Rachel's wedding shower, a housewarming party, and bonfire. The next week I actually was off and home! But ended up catching up with lots of friends! The weekend after I went up to Mackinaw City for 5 days with Rachel. The weekend after I was in Traverse City with my family. Then last weekend I was in Chicago for Rachel's bachelorette party. And this weekend I will be in Cincinatti for Women of Faith! So excited for that! And next weekend is Rachel's wedding! So as you can see my summer has been insanely crazy! And next friday (10th) is my dun dun dun 25th birthday! I may need a whole post just dedicated to that! Phew I am tired just typing that all out! So I have lots of pictures and posts on my list! 

On another note, I was concerned because I was working out so much and I wasn't losing weight. I knew I wasn't pregnant and I was starting to freak out and get really pissed and unmotivated to work out because of this. So I went to the Dr. and found out I had a low thyroid. And this was why I was gaining so much weight! So part of me was glad to know the problem, but part of me was also upset that it was going to take a few more months to straighten out before I could even lose weight! It was a very frustrating thing for me, but I knew it could be a lot worse. So my thyroid is all straightened out now, and then I got bronchitis for 5 weeks. So needless to say I have not seen the gym in ages and my weight has been highly affected by this. But this week I have been back to normal and we started working on our diets again and working out. So hopefully some weight will start peeling off finally! 

So this is my quick update of things that have been going on! I have some exciting news but I can't talk about it yet!! So stay tuned and I will try to blog more regularly now that I am around more! I miss all of you and hope to hear from you as well! Let me know how you are doing!! Anything happen since I have been gone?? 

Also the olympics are taking up my other free time, so if anything just blame that! ;) GO USA!!! 

Where is your heart in your blog?

Hey all. I know it's been about a week since my last blog, and I would like to apologize but in thinking about it, I really don't know why I should. The purpose of this blog was for myself. I am not getting paid to write this, or have thousands of followers who rely on reading my blog every day as a source of entertainment. Which is all fine and dandy for those who enjoy to use their blogs however they please. But my blog is not to serve anyone else's purposes. It is for mine only and if along the way people enjoy, are moved, get inspired, and learn something new from my blog than that is a bonus. I am not writing for anyone else and I think a lot of times I feel guilty when I don't blog daily or at least a few times a week. And really, I think that's just silly, why should I feel guilty for something I want to do for myself? It's like feeling guilty for not writing in your diary/journal.

The blog world is quite a different world than every day life, but like all things, there are pressures that come with it. And it is hard to not fall into those traps. To not want to make your blog bigger and better every day. To not want 1000+ followers or get 30+ comments daily. To not want to have the best page and all the accessories to go with it. It is strange how we can have blog envy and how we can start comparing our blogs to others like our blogs are us. If my blog doesn't look like this it's not pretty enough so therefore I am not good enough, etc. If I don't have enough followers, no one must like me or want to read my blog more than once. If I am not an ambassador or guest poster or something along those lines than my blog isn't good enough. If I don't have give aways or link ups to weekly blog themes other bloggers must not want to be associated with my blog. It is so easy to think these things and let them suck you in.

I find it funny how we can take our worldly perceptions and habits and throw them into a different world and conform them to that world to make them work just the same. And if you are not a blogger, these woes would not apply to you nor would you understand what I mean. But in taking this break for a week and thinking about things, and going to therapy to deal with my past rape (read about it here), my mind has been opening a lot. I am able to view things differently and recognize patterns in certain behaviors and I am learning how to look past them and view with a new light. To view myself as an I, not an it or a comparison towards others constantly. I am learning I am an individual and when I do things, regardless of what they are, they should be for myself. Not as in I am going to be completely selfish and forget everyone. But I am not going to hold my standards for others to make them for me. And I think that takes courage and gumption and confidence to do. And it's a process we all go through and come to at some point.

I am not better than anyone else and have struggled with this for so long. So if I don't blog every day or read other's people's blogs and comment, I am no longer going to feel guilty about it. This is not my job although it has a tendency to feel like a part time job, and I don't owe it my time. And therefore I will not apologize if I don't write daily or comment daily. And I challenge other blog writers to really look deep into why they started blogging. Did you do it just to get a fan base? Do you really want to share your love of fashion or cooking? Was your goal to share your life with your family so they could see how life was treating you? Or were you like me and did this for yourself? No matter how you started this blog, the question now is, are you still following that?

Or do you find yourself writing just for others to read and to keep them coming back? I challenge you to be true to yourself, and your blogging self and re evaluate your blog and see if you are writing for your initial reasoning you began the blog. Maybe you have strayed so far you have forgotten why you started this in the first place. Don't conform the real world into blog world like so many tend to do. Be unique, be different, be you. Don't let your blog be a popularity contest, it's not. Let us see the real you, the beautiful you, the smart you, the funny you, the happy and sad you, the hard working and sometimes lazy you, the creative you, and the you that gave you the courage to start blogging. You deserve to love yourself and this blog without all the pressures that come with it. To know that even if 1 or 0 people read your blog, you are still happy with it.

So bloggers, I ask you honestly, is your blog true to you? Or has it become something lost in the blog world conformed with real world standards? Where is your heart in your blog?

A little real life wife talk!

Ok this post isn't just directed towards wife's! I am just speaking from a wife point of view and some things may apply more to wives than other things I talk about! Ok now that we have that out of the way let's move on.

So I was thinking about what I wanted to post today as I was doing our mound of dishes. And I had a few things come to mind and my first thing was about blogging and wifehood. Now I love to read other people's blogs as much as the next person and I have come to see a pattern recently in many blogs I see. If you are a blogger I think you will agree with me that you tend to see a lot of the wive's blogs posted seem to be almost too perfect. All you hear about is how they cook a daily recipe with their amazing pictures on their perfectly decorated tables. Or that pretty much every day in their lives seems to be amazing. They never have anything bad happen to them, maybe a broken nail or a hair out of place. You never hear about their kitchen being dirty *gasp* ever. You never hear about their husbands leaving the toilet seat up and they fall in the toilet in the middle of the night, or once again your husband forgot to refill the toilet paper roll and you are sitting there wondering how you can maneuver to get the extra roll from under the counter without dripping pee all over the place. Their blogs are so peppy and happy ALL the time. I feel as though people think they need to post things so people think you have it all together all the time. Uhm hello, are you alive? This is such crap to me.

It is one thing to post about a really awesome few days or something. But I feel like I am not good enough when I read these oh so perfect blogs. I am sure they didn't even make a mess creating their daily blog masterpiece meals! In all actuality they kind of annoy me. I know their intentions are not to say hey I am better than you, I think they just want people to like their blog and see their superwoman powers they contain. Which as a woman we all have those! I just know my superpowers tend to work when they want to, which doesn't happen every day! I mean my mother is super woman, I am convinced of this. She gives Martha Stewart a run for her money and I don't think Martha would stand a chance! But even my mom's super powers take a break and she has bad days. So what I am getting at is as wonderful as those blogs are, for myself, I want real.

I am tired of women having to live up to these perfect persona's of having to do it all. I want to hear about people's struggle's and how they over come them. I want to hear about trials in your marriage that you found a way to work through. I want to know what pushes you through a bad day or a good day. I want to know how you deal with our raging hormones or a bad hair day. I want to know how falling in the toilet at 2 am was for you. I want to know that saying hey, I need a break is OK. I want to know that not having superpowers 24/7 is normal. I want to know we are all the same and just human.

I love hearing about new recipe's and how to remove stains from my carpet as much as the next wife, but I also want to grow and learn as a person. Being a wife is new territory and I don't think you can ever know it all when it comes to that area. I think helping other wives and women is a blessing. I think most people want to hear the real stuff. If you have gone through something you can laugh and say oh yes I have been there, this is my story. Or hey here is my advice on that. People who never have any problems are complete fakers in my opinion. If you are married you know it isn't easy. So as wives why aren't we trying to help each other more often? Because admitting we aren't perfect is a big scary step. I honestly have more respect for the women who keep it real and aren't afraid to say my kitchen has been dirty for 3 whole days! (oh no!!) There are days I want to scream because I am at the end of my rope! But heaven forbid I say marriage is hard or things aren't going so well. There are other days where marriage is like a heavenly dream and we have a great night. I also like to hear about those things!

I feel like there are so many little secrets to making a marriage work and I want to know them. I am sure I am not the only one who wants to know! And I am sure there are too many proud women who refuse to go buy a self help marriage book because they will figure it out on their own. Come on really? Why make your marriage suffer because of your ego. There's a reason you were not born into wifehood. You have to learn how to be a good wife, it isn't just natural, sorry to burst that bubble. And I don't understand why people are afraid to talk about it. Just because things aren't great doesn't mean you are a failure. If anything find a way to fix it! I was talking to my friend about this and she hadn't mentioned anything to me about her marriage except it was great blah blah and then I suggested a book for her to read and it was like a lightswitch went off and she opened up to me about how they were going to counseling and things were so hard. And I thought why do we need to put up such a front about things. We don't have to sit there and explain in detail how things are going but isn't it wrong to sit there and lie about things as well? I told her if she ever wanted to talk about marriage I am here, I will not sugar coat things and I will be real about it. And if you are mad over toilet paper, I am sure I have a similar story.

You would be amazed at how many other women are going through the same things! Even beginning my blog I thought I will only put things up that show how great of a wife I am so everyone thinks things are great! I now realize that I may have been real about other parts of my life but maybe not so much my marriage. So I am here to promise I will be real to an extent and will not be a "perfect blog," I am here to help in any way I can! If you are having a bad day and want to talk, let me know. If you have a question, let me know. If you want prayer for your marriage or yourself let me know. I want women to know that we don't need to be alone during all this. And it is ok to have dirty dishes in the sink, dirty clothes in the hamper, and a messy place for more then 24 hrs. You are not a bad wife!

I also have a book that I HIGHLY recommend any woman to read that is in a relationship! Whether you have been married 20 yrs or engaged or just dating. This book in phenomenal and it has changed our marriage dramatically! Not to say ours is perfect now, it is daily work. But I feel as though this has given us huge tools and knowledge to work with! It is called Love and Respect.

via Google images

This book is not just for the woman it is for the woman and man to read. It basically tells you why women act a certain way and why men do. And you not only learn about how you act and why you act that way, but you learn why the man does too so you can recognize certain things when they are happening. It talks about the crazy cycle. When wives feel unloved they don't respect their husbands. When husbands don't feel respected they act unloving towards their wives. And so the cycle becomes a circle on repeat till someone jumps off. 

Now as important as it is for a woman to feel loved, it is for men to feel respected. When they feel respected they feel loved. As women when we feel loved we feel respected. So you may think because you are showing love in your way to him that he should be responding lovingly, but that is not the case. You may think you are doing something loving but if he feels disrespected in any way he shuts down and becomes unloving. This was a huge revelation to me. I thought back on all our fights and thought about them. I thought showing my concern over something was the right thing to do. But in the midst of it I never realized what I was saying was being disrespectful. And basically anything to bring him down or make him feel like less of a man or unsupported makes him feel disrespected. I had NO idea! It made so much sense why when I was trying to express I felt unloved he felt like I was saying he wasn't good enough which in turn made him feel disrespected. So why would he be loving after that? So now I understand I have to analyze things I say and make sure I am expressing why I feel how I do without being disrespectful.

It also talks about how men and women see things completely differently. Women wear pink sunglasses and pink hearing aids. Men wear blue sunglasses and blue hearing aids. So you could say the same phrase to both the man and woman and they hear two completely different things. That made so much sense to me! And he gives examples of this. 

He also shows biblical reason as why wives need to respect their husband and why husbands need to love their wives. As women we are wired to love unconditionally. So when we hear unconditional respect we are like whatttt??  What is that? How do we do that? Men are wired to have unconditional respect so they hear you need to love unconditionally and they are like whatttt?? What is that? How do we do that? So you see ladies, men and women are QUITE different. So when we talk to them we can't expect them to understand how we feel or to just get it. Cuz trust me they won't! 

He talks about ways you can show respect to your husband and ways husbands can show love to their wives. Because they have no idea what you like and you have no idea what they like. Our view of respect is completely different then their view! There are SO many other great things in this book I can't even begin to tell you! And it WORKS. I am living proof here to tell you this works! It is REALLY hard to not be prideful and selfish and to say sorry. But when things are done right, the end results are amazing! You will find your husband showing you love in your way not theirs. Like cleaning the kitchen, bringing home a card and flowers. When they feel respected they want to show they love you more! It is quite amazing to watch it right in front of your eyes! So if you have not read this book, PLEASE buy it and have your spouse read it with you as well. I promise it will change things!

The second book I would recommend is the 5 love languages. This book talks about how we all have 5 love languages and you figure out your top 2 and your spouse figures out their top 2 and then you are able to know how to show each other love.

via Google Images

For example my top 2 are quality time and acts of service. So ways I show love are like cleaning the kitchen, making dinner, having food on the table when he gets home from a long day of work, etc. Or watching a movie together, date night. Just having time alone together and having fun. His top 2 are physical touch and words of affirmation. Which are on the bottom of my list. So I may be showing I love him buy making him dinner, but to him it's just food on a table that he doesn't have to make. If he walked in the door I could have no food on the table and I could tackle him and kiss him and hug him and tell him how much I missed him and how much I love him and he would be happier then if I had food on the table when he walked in. It is odd to me since it's not my love language but it's what makes him tick! So learning the others love languages helps you realize you may think you are being loving but they are not receiving that love because they love differently! 

The third book I recommend is Wild at Heart.

via Google Images

This book is about discovering a man's soul. It helps you understand why they do certain things they do and that you need to let them be "men." Like why they play video games, work out, play sports, paintball, need to own a gun, etc. It also explains their need for physical touch and what happens when they don't get it. Why so many men are addicted to pornography. It is quite insightful and I think your man would enjoy learning about why they do certain things!

The last thing I would like to mention is a lesson from our church that was on marriage. It is about an hour long and it brings up many other points that are not in any of these books that are also quite helpful! Remember when you said I do, you said I do for forever. There is no word like divorce in your vocabulary and you need to do everything possible to make your marriage work. You need to be willing to do whatever it takes and admit you are wrong! http://northridgechurch.com/talks/nrc12/the-notebook%E2%80%A6-choose-to-be-a-good-mate/

So here are a few helpful tips! And I hope these can help someone else as they have helped me! I am not perfect and I will mess up all the time. But I want to be with Antonio for the rest of my life, and it is my priority to make sure our marriage works! If you have any tips, advice, books worth reading, I would love to hear about it! So here is to being real, and I hope as a woman you can know you are amazing whether dinner is made or not! Getting married is a huge step and you are worth being praised for doing so and committing to forever and making it work! Don't give up and know there are so many more out there struggling too! 

"She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future." Proverbs 31:25