Preacher’s Wife Teaching Life

My friend asked how Jarrod and I keep from getting our feelings hurt all the time. Well, my feelings DO get hurt. They get hurt less often now than in the past but not because of a hardened/calloused heart or walls I’ve built up around my emotions but because of Jesus. Jesus has healed the pain caused by others and replaced the wounds with love, peace and patience. When someone hurts my feelings, I’ve learned that MOST of the time the offender is dealing with his/her own issues and has taken it out on me as an easy target, OR they’ve taken their issues out on me because I resemble the person they really need to forgive. HOWEVER, when someone has attacked me and I’ve been offended, that means there is something that needs healing inside me. So how on earth would I know whether I’m an easy target or if something in me needs to be healed? The answer is found in prayer to Jesus. When you feel the familiar pain from hurt feelings, for the sake of your spiritual well-being, go to the...

My husband told this story last Sunday about our house and how anyone is welcome inside it. We've got a nice big open kitchen/dining/living area that we keep picked up and clean and a beautiful guest suite where people can stay the night. But there's this other part of our house that we usually keep shut off. It's our master suite...which is a mirror image of the guest suite but it's ours. We keep it shut off because of guns but also mostly because when people come over, we shove all the clutter (mail, purses, dirty socks, random shoes, etc) into our bedroom. I also have a repulsion to putting clean laundry away so I have stacks of clothes I dig through until I get fed up enough to put it all away. Hey, don't judge me...we all have that clutter drawer/room in our lives. Our bathroom stays pretty clean except for the laundry basket and maybe some pajamas on the floor. Well recently, I've felt a deep desire to remedy this dirty room. I hate that I'm embarras...

You know that kind of dirt that is just old and crusty and doesn't yield much growth? It takes patience, rain, plowing, love and care to change the chemistry of that soil. After it has been healed, the soil is moist, dark brown and smells like earth. But it didn't get to that point without a little work. Think of yourself as the old dirt. God wants to plow up the old crusty part of your life that isn't fruitful anymore and replace it with new, moist, healthy soil to plant good seed. God wants to take you higher than you've ever been before but you have to want it. The process may be painful but the fruit will be delicious. I want to encourage you to come into the newness of the spirit but you'll need the strength of God to get your through, not your own strength. Last week, my husband and I had to take his truck in because it was like riding Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. For whatever reason, the tires we received a couple months ago shredded and needed to be replaced...

My dad and I have been working together for a long time, illustrating his sermons with words and pictures in a way that others may understand. I remember being a little girl and helping my dad at this new found contraption called a computer by using words, shapes, and clip art to articulate what God was telling him. I think its kind of funny that as an adult, I sort of do the same thing for my husband in the form of a blog. He hears from God, I listen through a God filter and try to write, in more simple terms, what his sermon means in the form of a blog post. I add pictures to my posts, not to make my posts more appealing (although it helps), but to help the reader's brain connect what the meaning behind the words is. It might be part of my DNA...it might be a learned habit. We've learned from science that DNA stores biological information and is passed from adults to their offspring. Basically, the average person knows that DNA comes from our parents and it's what makes...