Announcing: It's a...

It's a girl!

We are having another girl - due at the end of August. Her name is Katelyn Rachelle. Reagan will have a little sister. And I can re-use all the baby clothes from the first go-round. Yay!

I'm now 25 weeks and everything looks perfectly normal, which is quite a blessing. I'm feeling good too, except that it's getting more uncomfortable to sleep at night. And this one may be a little more active than Reagan was. If that's even possible.

Just the other day, Reagan felt Katelyn kick for the first time. She usually won't hold her hand still long enough to feel, but this time Katelyn kicked her right away. She's been hearing for a few months now that mommy has a baby in her tummy and she will point to my stomach and say "Baby." But I think she was a little surprised to feel her little sister kick. Now if I say that Katelyn is kicking, she wants to put her hand on my tummy.

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In other news, we are moved into the new house and enjoying the bigger space tremendously. Our old house was about 700 square feet. We've approximately doubled that and we also have a garage/workshop (which is heaven for my husband), a 700+ square foot guesthouse/schoolhouse/science lab (a homeschooling dream come true), and several sheds. These were things we wanted, and hoped to eventually build once we got a place of our own. But they're already here. There is no way we could have afforded to build all these buildings for what we paid for this place. God has blessed us immensely.

I haven't been posting lately because pregnant mama + active toddler + moving in = no time for blogging. However, the worst of the moving in is over now. There are still boxes to unpack and projects to do, but they're things that can wait a little. So, hopefully, I'll be back in action posting more things for you to read. Stay tuned.

Linked up with NOBH.

Anniversary

Today is the one year anniversary of this blog! One year ago today, I posted my very first post answering the question "What are Inalienable Rights?" Since then I have received almost 18,000 pageviews from people all over the world. It's pretty cool to me that people all over the place are reading my thoughts.

Today is also another anniversary. Three years ago today, on top of a mountain in North Carolina, my then-boyfriend presented me with a diamond ring and asked me to marry him. It was the perfect moment. The day was beautiful - the first day of spring. We hiked up the mountain and found a special place that was isolated and had a great view. He gave me a book containing photos from our dating journey and snippets of emails we had sent to each other. It had many memories. The program from the conference where we met. The looms from our first few dates (seriously, we kept seeing weaving looms everywhere we went - it was freaky). The words to our song. Pictures from our various hikes. And at the end he wrote out a special note to me. When I got to the last page, he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. Of course, I said yes. And I've never regretted it for a moment.

In honor of these two anniveraries, I'm posting some of my best and most popular posts from the past year. Some of them had a lot of pageviews and some were simply ones I thought were very important. So, for a quick overview of my main posts for the past year, take a look at these:

What Are Inalienable Rights?
I've already mentioned this one above (my first post), but it starts a 5-part series on inalienable rights. Everyone should know what inalienable rights are and where they come from, so this series is some of the most important material on my blog. You can read all the other posts in the series by clicking on the links in this one.

Items to Discuss Before Engagement
This post seems especially appropriate today considering that it's the anniversary of my engagement. Here I give a list of questions that my husband and I asked each other during dating in order to determine if we were compatible for marriage. I highly recommend that all dating couples discuss these issues (among others) before becoming engaged.

Characteristics of a Biblical Dating Relationship
This is the first part of a series on Biblical dating which is still unfinished. I do intend to finish it eventually. However, the posts that are finished are all quite popular. Learn what dating should look like for a Christian and avoid some of the common pitfalls that lead relationships away from a Biblical foundation. You can get to all of the posts in the series from links on this post.

Opposite Sex Friendships After Marriage: How to Guard Your Heart
This one is the most popular post on my blog and gets lots of regular pageviews (including a lot from Google searches), which tells me a lot of people struggle with this issue.

How to Settle Disagreements Without Arguing
Assuming the Best of Your Spouse
Both of these posts deal with resolving conflict in marriage. The first one gives a plan for settling disagreements without arguing (which has worked for us, since we still haven't had an argument). The second is a newer post that deals with your view of your spouse and their motives and how that affects the way you communicate.

The Art of Writing Love Notes
Here is another of my most popular posts which gives tips on writing special and memorable love notes for your spouse. Writing a short note or a longer letter can be so encouraging to your spouse and will remind them of your love and bring you closer together.

Cohabitation is Not Practice for Marriage
This post is another one that is very popular and gets a lot of traffic from search engines. Here I give several practical reasons not to cohabitate before marriage.

Sunday School Fairy Tales (or Why the Bible Should Be Taught as History)
This post explains how the Bible should be taught to children as history instead of making it sound like fictional fairy tales. The Bible needs to be real to our kids if they are to find it believable. In this post I identify several ways that people inadvertently make the Bible sound less realistic and thus undermine the authenticity and historicity of the Bible in the eyes of others. Every sunday school teacher and parent should be aware of these pitfalls in order to avoid them.

Why the United States is a Republic
Back on a political note, this post contains a short video that explains the different forms of government and why we have a republic (not a democracy). All children should know this before they leave middle school. All voters should be able to explain this. Unfortunately, many cannot.

The Difference Between Liberalism and Conservatism
Also on a political note, this post explains the major difference between the worldviews of liberalism and conservatism. It's probably not what you think.

The Good Thing About Guns
With all of the recent controvery about gun laws, this post is very relevant. Here I argue that guns are actually good. In a world without guns, the weak are defenseless against the strong. Guns allow the physically weak to defend themselves and thus provide protection for themselves and others from those who would harm them.

Demolishing Pro-Choice Arguments
Why We Need a Secular Case Against Abortion
Both of these posts deal with abortion. The first debunks many of the popular arguments for abortion while the second explains why we should be arguing against legal abortion using science and logic rather than the Bible.

I hope you find these posts thought-provoking and helpful. Please comment or share if you find something especially noteworthy. Thanks for reading.

Linked up with NOBH, WLWW, WFMW, and To Love Honor and Vacuum.

Assuming the Best of Your Spouse

One of the things that often causes friction in a marriage is when one spouse assumes the other has wrong motives. In many cases, this happens when they take what the other person has said in a way that was not intended.

Of course, all of us say things that can be taken in a different way than we intend from time to time. For example, I remember a time several years ago when my mom was trying out a new vacuum cleaner. She really liked it and exclaimed “Wow, this thing really sucks.” My brother immediately quipped “Mom, isn’t that what it’s supposed to do?” Of course, we knew what she meant, but we immediately saw the other possible meaning as well. She was referring to the suction of the vacuum and saw it as a good thing. But it would be really easy for someone to misinterpret what she said as saying that the vacuum was no good – the exact opposite of what she meant. When she said it, she didn’t even think of how it could be interpreted until we started laughing.

The same kind of thing happens to all of us. We say something slightly wrong or in a less than clear way. We use the wrong word. Or maybe we say something that is perfectly fine on the surface, but could easily be misinterpreted. Think how awkward it would be to have people always assume the worst possible interpretation of our words. Yet that often happens in a marriage.

The problem arises when one person says something and the other assumes a hurtful meaning that was never intended. We women are especially prone to assuming the worst or reading between the lines (when there might have been nothing there), although both sexes do it. This often leads to strife and hurt feelings that could have been avoided. A good many marital arguments could have been avoided entirely if not for this kind of misunderstanding.

She says that they need to sit down and look at the finances. He hears that he’s not providing properly and needs to step up. Thus, he’s defensive and wants to avoid talking about it. But she didn’t say anything of the sort and may not even have thought such a thing. She may have just wanted to have his involvement and help with an issue that she finds difficult to navigate. She should be able to count on him to work with her as a team, especially in something as important as finances. But he’s too busy hearing wrong motives and insults in her words to be the help she needs.

He says that he’d like to spend more time alone together. She hears that she’s not giving him enough sex and starts defensively talking about how busy she is all day and how he should help more with the kids and the housework. But all he was doing was sharing a need for more time with her. She is too busy being defensive (and perhaps feeling guilty) that she isn’t hearing the need of his heart.

These kinds of situations are common. At their root, they are a failure to communicate. When you assume hidden motives and interpret the other person’s words accordingly, you are effectively silencing what they are really trying to say. And usually it leads to reactions that aren’t warranted. Then the other person gets defensive while trying to explain what they meant, and they’re aggravated that you so obviously assume the worst of them when they love you and didn’t mean what you thought they meant. It can become a vicious cycle of misunderstanding and hurt feelings that tears couples apart.

In one way, it’s understandable that we get in this habit of assuming the worst. After all, in this dog-eat-dog world we live in, we can’t assume the best intentions of everyone. It would be dangerous and foolish to assume that everyone out there has only our best interest in mind. It’s easy to get a little cynical in order to protect ourselves. But if there’s anyone in the world we should be able to count on to have our backs and be on our side, it is our spouse – the one who vowed to love us forever. If our heart should be safe with anyone, it should be with our one true love. So why do we so often assume that our spouse is hiding an insult in their words or trying to hurt us? Why do we assume they have wrong motives? Why can’t we instead assume that we are misunderstanding if it seems that their words are hurtful or insulting?

When your spouse says something that sounds hurtful or accusing, the first words out of your mouth should ask for clarification. Don’t jump to conclusions and react. You should immediately assume that you heard wrong or that you are misinterpreting their words and that they didn’t mean what they said the way you took it. Remain calm and ask what they meant by that. If it turns out that they are insulting you, there’s plenty of time to get mad then. But most of the time that isn't the case. Assume the best and it will save both of you a lot of needless heartache and stress.

I’ve found that this approach works in my marriage to avoid arguments and it will work in yours. It just takes some time to train ourselves to see our spouse as a teammate and supporter rather than an opponent and to learn to ask for clarification rather than jumping to erroneous conclusions.

Linked up with Yes They're All Ours, Time-Warp Wife, To Love Honor and Vacuum, More of Him, Mom's the Word, What Joy is Mine, WFMW, Messy Marriage, The Alabaster Jar, WLWW, and NOBH.