Tag Archives: family life

Scored

Emotions, Grateful, Inspiration, Joy, Love, Marriage, Parenting, Spiritual, , , , , ,

Today God has so kindly allowed me to experience more fully what it is like to LOVE my family, instead of seeking my own good. I totally suspect God did it. I know he did.

I was sitting at the table playing a game with my husband and son. I was frustrated with the noise of the younger kids, irritated by my husband’s drumming fingers and my son’s exasperated noises. I felt like I didn’t want to be with them. And then I remembered how I had been choosing love with my husband, especially in moments where I was NOT inspired. And so I decided to choose love at the table in this moment. I started thinking, what would they want right now? I decided to play quietly, to speak kindly. It was like a gentle battle, of going back to my selfish ways, then choosing love. God made it easy for me.

Then at the end of the game, which I have played hundreds of times with different people over the course of my 42 year life, something happened that had NEVER happened before. The three of us ended up with identical scores – 195 each. We were all in disbelief. My husband took a photo and texted it to my dad, who also loves the game.

Afterwards I felt that the scores were a sign. A sign related to my choosing love. By choosing love, the three of us ended up level, equal. By choosing love, I did’t stand above in pride or judgment. We ended up all winning.

As I came upstairs and sat at my desk I was full of joy. Light, refreshing joy (not happiness). It just flowed through me, effortless.

I am so grateful to God for this experience. I long to remember to live this everyday. I know I need to practice it. New things take time to learn. And I know God will continue to give me the grace to learn this. He knows how much I long to live fully from love, not self ambition.

The Best Time for Sex is…

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Gone to lunch2

C’mon married peoples with kids. The best time for sex is after lunch. There I’ve said it!

Late afternoon and evening it’s all about the kids, dinner and household jobs. I feel like writing a long ‘to do’ list to boast how involved it is, but all you parents out there already know. And everyone else will be bored, so I’ll spare you. Suffice to say that come 8pm, the couch is looking pretty cosy for one person and one person alone, with a good dose of silence, or headphones if the older kids are still around. It takes a while to come down from all the hullabaloo. Then if you’re lucky enough to have timeout, rather than doing more work while you’re kid free, unfortunately it doesn’t last forever. 9:30pm and it’s time to start the before bed ‘to do’ list. The husband’s list is pretty easy – hop into bed. The wives know that their list is long – you’ve probably read it before on an internet meme – so I won’t bore you. Then 10pm comes and you really need to go to sleep, cos it’s up at 6:30am and you need all the sleep you can get.

Sleep is looking good. Just one problem… Sharing the same bed with your other half lends itself to snuggles, and snuggles lend themselves to… um… yes, well there’s lots of things that can happen after snuggles. Sometimes the energy rises to the occasion and sometimes it doesn’t. We could call that one sleepy sex. But as my husband says, even bad sex is good sex.

But if one doesn’t want to live in sleepy sex land for one’s entire child raising season, then I vote for ‘after lunch sex’. Surprise dates during the week are awesome. Lunchtime trysts during a work week. Or weekend creativity. Our kids call it DVD time, we call it something else… Win win!!!