Do you ever feel as though God speaks directly to you?

Clearly, God did not come down and actually talk to me in person, but I feel as though He has used a lot of different avenues this week to speak to me.

If you remember, I vowed to better myself this year. Quality, not quantity.

So...I try to find ways in which to better myself. I was "involved" in a women's Beth Moore bible study this fall. I say "involved" because I was only able to make two meetings due to illness. Same this semester. I finally just pulled out, but I am trying to catch up on the study at home on my own. I was reading all about agape love and how we must strive to love others the same way God does. We studied several verses in Proverbs. After reading the "assigned" verses, I let myself read on and that book really caught my interest. Here it is, 10:30 at night, and I am sitting in my bed, reading a verse that make me want to cry, and then read the next verse and makes me laugh out loud...all by myself, in my bed.

I have been complaining A LOT lately about how sick my kids are and how it puts a damper on our social lives. I realize that we could have it a lot worse, but it doesn't change our day to day. The night that I was really losing it, I sat down and read this verse:

Proverbs 21:19 "Better to live in a desert than live with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife"

HOW FUNNY IS THAT!!

Then I read on....

Proverbs 21:9 "Better to live in the corner of the roof than share a lovely house with a crabby wife"

Now..I was reading the Life Application Bible, so they used "crabby", most versions use "quarrelsome". However, I liked crabby better!! Because..I sure have been crabby lately :)

So that lead me to last night....

Side note: There are several people that I know and love and LOTS more that I hear about who are really struggling in their marriages right now. I still have scars from my own parent's break up, and subconsciously fear the same will happen in my marriage.

Now, before you all go and get concerned about us......OUR MARRIAGE IS GREAT!! I really couldn't ask for a better husband and mate. Not only does he tell me he loves me, he shows me all the time. He tells me how happy he is and I am happy as well. Still....if Satan lets my mind wander, I worry about what "could be". Yes..I am a worry wart. :)

So...back to last night. With my head held high, I asked Brent if there were things that I could work on that would make him a happier husband, daddy, etc. He looked at me like I was crazy and pretended to fall asleep :) I honestly wanted some constructive criticism, and he finally gave it to me. I was so happy to hear of a few things I could work on. He was so sweet. They were all very minor things, but I was glad that we could have a healthy discussion about how we could make our wonderful marriage even more outstanding. I told him about the verses I had read in Proverbs and how I didn't want to be that "crabby" wife and make him want to sleep in the corner of the roof.

Then, today at church, we studied a lot more verses from Proverbs. We learned about how to hold our tongues in certain situations. It was a great lesson. There was an astonishing statistic that Preacher Mark told us about today. He said that a psychologist studied 100 couples for the first decade of their marriages. He learned that couples who (in the first year of marriage) spoke less than 5 negative or degrading comment out of 100, to their spouse, would end up staying married and happy. He also found that if 10 or more degrading comments per 100 would lead to divorce. That is amazing.....and sad. We must use our tongues to build our spouses up not put them down. I know that I have to watch it, because sometimes I find myself spatting off things that Brent could work on, all the while knowing how great of a husband and father he is. He needs to hear those things more.

All this to say, it is amazing how God uses scripture and sermons, and all kinds of other venues to speak to me.

I VOW TO BE LESS CRABBY THIS COMING WEEK!!