marriage

Book Review: Everybody Fights

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I am so excited to share with you the book “Everybody Fights: So Why Not Get Better At It?”

If you haven’t heard of Kim and Penn Holderness, it is likely because you have been living under a rock or possibly because you aren’t on social media. Whatever the case, you really need to check them out. They became social media sensations because of their funny and creative videos that poke fun at the normal everyday things of life. The best thing about their videos, is that they are family friendly, and often even include their own family.

I was incredibly excited to have the opportunity to review this book, and after having read it I was not disappointed. This is a marriage book unlike any that I have ever read (and I have read a lot of marriage books). Kim and Penn do not proclaim to be experts at marriage. However, they do get real and raw about things they have struggled with and how they have learned to fight better in the process. They use real life examples of fights they have had in their own marriage and after each of them shares from their own perspectives what happened in that fight, look through ways they could have communicated better. The advice they share throughout the book is a combination of things they have learned in the school of hard knocks, as well as things they have learned from their own marriage coach.

Throughout the book they go through so many practical topics that absolutely every single person who has been married for any period of time will go through. Kim also gets real and honest about her struggle with anxiety and depression and how that affects their marriage.

This is not an overtly religious book. There isn’t a Bible verse in every chapter. However, there is a sense of dedication to making a marriage work at all costs. There is also an emphasis on working together and learning to better understand each other that every single marriage could benefit from.

If you want to check it out for yourself you can do that in a couple of ways. First, you can watch this silly book trailer here. You can also download or listen to a free chapter and purchase your own copy here.

Tough Days

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

Frazzled Mom Cartoon Clipart | Tired mom, Frazzled mom, Busy mom

We are living in a very strange time right now. I have to admit, I am a little bit of a hermit in my normal life (as much as is possible as a public school teacher surrounded by people all day). I cherish the moments I get alone with no one demanding of me, whether it is a high schooler needing help on a math problem, or my own 3 children. However, this is different. This “social distancing” isolation thing is not the same as me shutting my classroom door during the lunch period to get work done and have a few moments alone to listen to my podcasts. No, this world that we are in proves what God himself said in the very beginning, “It is not good (beneficial) for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper [one who balances him- a counterpart who is] suitable and complementary for him.” Genesis 2:18 AMP

As humans, we need each other. We thrive when we are together and able to interact. On the other hand, when we are alone we tend to struggle. That is when depression and discouragement take hold. We need others to build us up.

Today was one of those tough days for me. I am fortunately not alone in my “social distancing”, I have my husband and 3 girls who keep me on my toes. However, I do miss the “outside” world. I miss my rare date nights going out with my husband. I miss having coworkers to talk to and joke around with without staring at a computer screen to do it. I miss going to the grocery store without feeling like you are in a war zone because everyone around you is wearing masks.

Today was one of those days where I looked around the house that I have cleaned 3 or 4 times already this week that looks like an explosion of crumbs, toys, shoes, and dirty laundry…again. It was a day that I have already done two loads of dishes, and probably need to do another. Today was a day where I should have been at church hugging friends and instead, I was stuck in the messy house staring at a screen pretending like it is the same thing. We all know it isn’t.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am so thankful for the technology we do have to be able to interact virtually. As a matter of fact, I have loved getting to “attend” other churches in neighboring towns because of the fact that everyone is now live streaming their services. I have really enjoyed that. I also appreciate that I have the means to text or call someone. But like I said, it’s not the same.

So what’s the solution?

I have no idea. To be honest with you, I am only writing this because I felt like I am probably not the only one feeling the same way. I think that we all now realize how much we have taken human interaction for granted. I never valued the interruptions I had when I was trying to get work done at school like I do now. I also never valued how good it felt to go to a grocery store or restaurant without feeling like I may just be swimming in a sea of germs (even though we always have been, just never thought about it).

If nothing else, I hope that we all come out of this appreciating each other a little bit more. I know that even though my kiddos are messy, I do appreciate the fact that I get to experience more little moments with them, like today when my sweet 4 year old finally mastered pedalling a bike. I have also loved seeing them learn more about reptiles because of the lizard, horny toad, and frogs they have found while playing outside. There are definitely blessings coming out of this pandemic.

My prayer right now is for every lonely person whether they are surrounded by family or don’t have anyone else around. I pray for the depressed and the discouraged. Know that even in your loneliest moment, God is there.

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

Book Review: The Marriage Ark

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

If you have been married for more than a day, it is pretty certain that you have encountered conflict in one form or another. It is inevitable for two people to live in a close relationship day in and day out without rubbing each other the wrong way from time to time. Regardless of whether you have been married in the past to someone else, have lived together, or have been dating for a long time, when you get married you enter a new level of relationship. This new relationship is one you enter with all the best intentions to make last, yet around 41% of 1st marriages end in divorce. I have yet to attend a wedding where the bride, or groom didn’t have all sorts of dreams about the future, none of which included divorce.

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In The Marriage Ark: Securing Your Marriage in a Sea of Uncertainty, author Margaret Phillips walks through how to build a strong marriage from 30+ years of experience as a licensed marriage and family therapist. She uses the story of Noah and the uncertainties he faced as an analogy for marriage. She really focuses on first the foundation of the marriage. She talks about how vital it is to look at things realistically, not in the technicolor glasses that so many people enter marriage with.

Throughout this short book, the author give some great advice about how to avoid major conflict before they start, especially for those who are not yet married. She also addresses how important it is to have the flexibility to withstand the natural twists and turns that you will encounter as a married couple. So many of us, myself included, enter marriage with the 20 year plan of how life is going to look. News flash: that twenty year plan rarely turns out exactly like you have it planned out. I know that from experience! 13 years into this marriage thing and my life looks much different than that wedding day plan. Different is not always bad though.

This is such a great book to add to your collection, whether you have been married 30 years, are engaged, or maybe just hope to get married someday. The author has so many practical tips to guide readers on how to deal with conflict, loss, and change. I really hope you will check this book out. If you would like a chance to win your own copy, please check out my Facebook page here.

A Dozen Years Later…

/ bekoepke

I am going to take a moment and brag on my husband for a little while. I blog a lot about my kiddos, motherhood, and faith, but I don’t blog a whole lot about my husband. He really is an amazing man, so I thought it was about time to share a little about him as well as a bit of our backstory.

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Just as a little background, we grew up 19 miles apart. Our lives were intertwined in so many ways, but we never actually met until we were 3 hours and a state away from home in college at the University of Wyoming (Go Pokes!!!). We met for the first time briefly during my Junior year of college. I didn’t cross paths with him again until the next school year when we were reintroduced on the university shotgun team (oh yeah, I don’t know if I ever mentioned how much I love to shoot). I looked forward to each week when we would go shoot, because he often had to buy me a meal afterward when he lost a bet thinking he could out shoot me.

We loved shooting on our university shotgun team!

Fast forward a few months and I awkwardly asked him if he would take me to my sorority formal over email, because I had no other way of contacting him. I wasn’t even sure if he actually checked his emails because at that time email was something you might look at once a week. Much to my surprise, he called me within the hour and said he would go. Being a good guy, he asked me if he could take me out to dinner the night before the formal. I found out much later that he had been half-heartedly dating another girl in my sorority, and when he got my email he immediately broke off that relationship (that may, or may not have caused a bit of drama within the sorority over the next few months).

All dressed up for my sorority formal

From that first date on, we were absolutely inseparable and the best of friends. The thing that I appreciated and respected so much about him was how honest he was, he was never fake with me. He didn’t try to act like someone he wasn’t. He is still that way. Love him or hate him, people cannot argue with the fact that he is one of the most honest people you will ever meet. Six months after we graduated we were engaged, five months after that we were married. We have now been married for about 12 1/2 years. I have learned so much in that time, I thought I would share some of what I have learned so far.

Something that is vital and that has not ever changed, is the foundation of our relationship. Before we even started dating, we had a very long conversation about our faith and our end goals. I made it very clear to him that I was not like most girls, and that at the stage of life we were both in, I wasn’t interested in just dating to date, after all, I was just about to enter my final semester of my senior year of college. We made a priority of our faith and that has been such a blessing over the years. It has been especially important during the difficult times.

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Our Engagement Photo

When the newlywed stage wears off and real life hits, that foundation is paramount. Faith is all you really have when you hit hard times like job layoffs, tight finances, or just simple exhaustion during the throws of raising children. I can’t imagine trying to raise our children together, if our faith was not the same. I also can’t imagine getting through some of the tough times we have been through without our faith. There have been so many times that all we could do was press in and pray together that God would guide our path. I thank God that we are able to do that together. I am also so thankful that finding someone who shared my faith was always a non-negotiable for me, even as a teenager. As I think back, it took a lot of nerve for me, on our first real date, to lay it all out there and tell him exactly where I was in my faith and that I was not willing to date someone I couldn’t share that with. However, I am so glad I did. I never had to be fake with him. I could be, and still can be, exactly who God made me to be without fear of him not appreciating me following my God-given dreams. I pray all three of my girls will find that same kind of foundation in the young men that they choose to marry someday.

Secondary to being on the same page in our faith, flexibility is extremely important. I remember when we first got married and all the “plans” we made. The 1 year, 5 year, and 10 year plans. None of it has happened exactly like we planned, however, we keep dreaming together. Every decision or investment that we have made has been a group effort, but we have had to learn that it is okay for plans to change. Jobs, have changed, living situations have changed, our family has grown, and we have gotten older. One thing that has never changed, regardless of the season of life we are in is that we make flexible goals together.

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My dear husband is now the Principal of a K-12 school, so we still get to go to prom!

As we have gotten older, we have really been able to have fun with that. We no longer make hard goals with strict deadlines that will likely never happen like we planned. Instead, we changed our plans and goals into dreams. We dream together of what can be. We talk about what steps we can take to make those dreams come true. Now, don’t get me wrong, all of our dreams are not exactly the same. He and I both have separate dreams that have yet to come true. But we are able, through the process, to try our best to support each other in the pursuit of our dreams, in hopes that one day soon, those dreams will actually come to fruition.

Humor is the final piece of the puzzle I want to address. I honestly don’t know how anyone can stay married without it. There is something so valuable about being able to laugh together. My husband has always been the funny guy, and I love that. Even when I am fuming mad, he is always able to bring a little humor in to defuse the situation. In his current job as Principal, he has to be able to laugh, or he might just cry when he has to deal with some of the things that comes across his desk. When life gets hard and you are in the middle of the stinking dirty here and now, that isn’t always rainbows and sunshine, you must be able to smile together.

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Always the funny guy, we had a blast representing our team at the national shooting competition!

I don’t want you to think that every moment of every day is a perfect cinderella story. We have our fair share of frustrations, exhausting moments, and struggles. We fight and gripe at each other. We come to points in our more heated discussions ,where we have to just agree to disagree. We are both stubborn, and strong willed. There are definitely clashes of the titans from time to time. Through it all though, those tough times have made us stronger as a couple.

Although it was fun, I would not want to go back to those newlywed days. I love where we are today. I am more comfortable in my own skin that I ever was when I first got married. The scars we have earned through the ups and downs in the last 12 1/2 years of marriage, and 14 years of relationship, have made us who we are today. I use to try so hard to please everyone, only succeeding in making myself miserable and pleasing no one along the way. Now, I realize that if I have to work hard to please people, those people probably don’t really have my best interests at heart. If I have to convince someone to love, appreciate, or be proud of me, their opinion of me really shouldn’t impact how I live my life. Instead, I need to spend more of my energy pleasing God and following his plans for my future, not simply doing what I feel like others expect me to do.

I leave you with the verse we chose for our wedding. I still love this verse today, and think that we could all benefit from living this way.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Our family sure has grown over the years!

Game Review: The Rank Game

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

I absolutely love to play games. Now that I am an adult, I don’t play them as much as I use to, but when I do I always have a good time. I was super excited when the opportunity to review a game came across my email feed. When I received it in the mail, even the wrapping was fun, with a sticker set up just like the game cards.

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I was pretty excited so I roped my husband to play it with me that night. The way the game works is pretty simple. Each card has a prompt and 4 options that one player will rank in order of their own preference. The other player, or players, try to guess the correct order. There is a point system so that after 10 rounds there will be a winner. It was a lot of fun to play. There are several categories of questions, and even options for expansion kits. I played a prototype game, so I had a small sampling of questions from each category. However, the actual game will include 150 different cards from all the different categories.

We had a lot of fun trying to figure out how each other would rank the cards. On one particular card, about swimwear, my husband wanted to make sure that it wasn’t going to get him in trouble. We had some good laughs over some of the cards, and actually learned a few things about each other that after 12 years of marriage, had never come up in conversation. Sadly, I lost by two points, but we did have a good time playing.

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I think that this would be a great game for a date night, family game night, or a group of friends. It worked for my husband and I to play with just the two of us, but there are also variations that you can play in a group.

To learn more about the game you can check it out at http://www.therankgame.com. You can also find out more about them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter by searching for @therankgame. If you are interested in backing this grassroots game, go to their Kickstarter page here. If you would like to enter to win your own copy of the full game, you can enter here.

Paradigm Shift: A Challenge Update

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

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A few days ago, I shared a gratitude challenge (see my blog post Take the Challenge).  I thought I would give a little update on how it is going for me so far.

Soooo, you know the saying “easier said than done”? Yeah, that’s me. It is so easy to talk about putting gratitude into practice on a regular basis. Actually doing it is a completely different thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have put some of the things into practice. For example, I did write a few thank you notes, and made a point to thank others for things they had done to help me.

Then Saturday hit.

It’s a funny thing, Saturdays. As a young 20-something newlywed with no kids, I looked forward to my Saturdays. Saturday meant I could sleep in, watch a movie, go on a date, and pretty much do whatever I wanted. Then we had three kids. Sleeping in is a thing of the past because I have kids who like to rise early. Saturdays now mean massive amounts of laundry, dishes, and catching up on housework all while trying to keep kids from making more of a mess or massively slowing me down with all their needs. The gratitude train got a bit derailed on Saturday. Actually, in the spirit of being completely honest, that train hit a cliff and burned completely to the ground. I allowed myself to enter into a pretty negative space mentally. I started internally (and to get real honest, externally too) grumbling and complaining about all that needed to be done. By the end of the day, I was a complete grump and ungrateful to the core. I ended up going to bed pretty early just because I was exhausted. Truth be told, that’s what I really needed anyways, because for about the last 2 weeks, my 3 year old has come in during the middle of the night pretty much every night and I had been a bit sleep deprived because of it.

Now, I didn’t really realize how ungrateful I was being until Sunday morning rolled around. My church participates each year in Operation Christmas Child and my family always packs 3 girl boxes (because I have 3 girls). When I was getting the boxes ready to bring to church, my girls were looking at everything and wanting all of it. My middle child started to really complain and pitched a fit about wanting what was in those boxes. This momma lost her cool. I was appalled at how my kids were acting. I explained to them that these boxes were going to little kids who didn’t get Christmas gifts. I told them that a lot of the kids that receive the boxes are extremely poor and may not even have enough food. I felt like such a failure as a mom because of the entitled way my kids were acting.

That’s when it hit me. I had the conviction come down on me like a flood. I am the one who has taught them to not appreciate what they have. It is little wonder that they grumble when they have to clean up all their toys, when I have been their model. There is little wonder why they don’t appreciate all they have, when I don’t always show that appreciation myself. I have to have a paradigm shift to see that even though I do have lots of laundry and dishes to do, I am blessed to live in a place where I have machines to do the hard work for me. I have to realize that even though my kids make lots of messes, I have healthy, active kids who love to play. I also have to remember that even though I do have a lot of housework to do on the weekends, I have a home and don’t have to worry about where I will sleep each night.

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Learning how to see the pile of laundry as a blessing!

So, I am adding to my challenge after this weekend. I want to model gratitude for my girls. I want to show them what it is like to be thankful. I’m really not sure how I will do it, but I do know that it is so important to me that my girls learn from a young age to be thankful for what they have been given I think I will start by being more thankful to them when they do things to help each other and me.

So my question to you is how do you train up your children to be grateful? I would love some ideas from people who, like me, are in the trenches, as well as those of you who have made it through parenthood and are on the other side.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17 NIV

 

Time For A Break!!!

/ bekoepke / 1 Comment

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We live in a crazy world. Our lives in the United States are lived at a fast pace and sometimes we just can’t keep up. As a mom, I struggle with this. I struggle balancing our fast-paced lives with slowing down enough to enjoy the moments. When I am stressed out I often find it easy to snap at my husband or my kids. I also find it easy to wish that my kids were just a little older, or wish it was a different phase of life. When I find myself doing that, it is an obvious sign that things are out of balance.

I recently heard someone say that marriage teaches you how selfish you are, while having kids teaches you how angry you can be. Such a true statement. Those selfish, angry parts often come out during those stressed out times of life.  When your emotional tank is empty and you are exhausted from a full day of working or keeping a household going, it’s easy to fall into frustration and take that frustration out on the people closest to you.

There has been a theme lately in the teachings I have been listening to and the books I have been reading, about the importance of rest in our lives. Specifically the importance of Sabbath rest. The 4th commandment is the one that addresses the Sabbath:

8 “Remember the Sabbath (seventh) day to keep it holy (set apart, dedicated to God). 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath [a day of rest dedicated] to the Lord your God; on that day you shall not do any work, you or your son, or your daughter, or your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock or the temporary resident (foreigner) who stays within your [city] gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and everything that is in them, and He rested (ceased) on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy [that is, set it apart for His purposes]. Exodus 20:8-11 Amplified Version.

The ironic thing about the 10 Commandments is that we, as Christians, tend to follow a 90% rule. We have no problem agreeing with the fact that we should not murder or lie or steal our neighbor’s wife. However, when it comes to the whole Sabbath thing, we tend to think that it is an “old covenant” concept and isn’t for today or we simply don’t realize how important it is to God. Do you realize that this commandment is the longest of all ten and goes into the most detail about how exactly to follow it? It is also one of only 4 of the 10 commandments that carried the option of the death penalty if it was violated (the others being murder, adultery, and chronic child rebellion). Now, before I go any further, I want to make it clear that legalism is 100% not the answer. Even Jesus himself rebuked legalism when it comes to the Sabbath (see Mark 2:23-27).

The idea of Sabbath is made for us. It is for our benefit. God saw such importance in the concept of the Sabbath that he started the whole thing at the creation (see Genesis 2). He is God, He didn’t need to rest, but He chose to rest. He chose to pause and just enjoy His creation. The same is true of us. He could have created us not to need rest, however, our bodies require rest. We are not created to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is incredibly hard to even hear from God if we do not have real rest on a regular basis. I know even in my own life, digging into scripture is exceptionally hard to do when I am physically or mentally exhausted. I’m sure you are probably the same way.

   Sometimes we need to remove ourselves temporarily from the hustle of our lives to re-center ourselves on what is really important. Jesus did it all the time. He spent so much of his time ministering that sometimes he would just remove himself and go off to pray. How many of us do that? For so many of us, even our vacations have an agenda. We feel like we are lazy or wasting time if we don’t have every second of our lives filled. Whether it is our jobs, our kids’ activities, or even things like ministry, we fill every moment. Maybe we all need to step back and just rest. Jesus himself told us to come to him when we are burdened and heavy laden, and he will give us rest (Matthew 11:28-30).

    For God to have put the Sabbath into the 10 commandments, He knew that we desperately needed it. He knew that giving it as a suggestion was not going to work. It had to be a part of His top 10. Sadly, even the Israelites who received these laws after watching Moses on the mountain top had a hard time with this one. For the Israelites, and for us, it often is due to a lack of faith that everything will be okay if we just take a break.

   I am just going to be honest and say that sometimes for me it is a combination of a lack of preparedness or even a lack of proper boundaries. For instance, If I don’t get everything done I wanted to on Saturday, it often flows into Sunday. Or I sometimes find myself doing my school work on a Sunday afternoon or responding to work related emails because I have not established those boundaries in my own life. We feel awkward if we tell someone to not expect a response on a Sunday. 

   Now, back to legalism; I DO NOT think we need to be legalistic about this. If that was the case, I would say that we need to honor the traditional Jewish Sabbath that starts at sundown Friday and ends at sundown Saturday. Honestly I don’t think that the day of the week matters as long as we honor 1 day out of 7. Maybe you have a job where you do work on Sunday but have days off at other points of the week. Have a Tuesday Sabbath! We live under grace, but I do believe that the closer we are following what God has ordained, the more of a full life we will live.

I hope that this coming week you will have the opportunity to take a true Sabbath and really enjoy the blessing of a day of rest!

20-20 Vision Through the Rearview Mirror

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

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The end of August marked 10 full years since I had a major course correction in my life. Looking back now, it seems like an eternity ago. But in that moment, it was the most terrifying thing I had endured up until that point in my life. That moment was when I was laid off from a job I really enjoyed because the company was closing my location.

The whirlwind of emotions I experienced at that time were absolutely overwhelming. The most prevalent, of course, being fear. Fear of my immediate future, fear of the unknown, fear of failure. What was I going to do? Where would I work? What were my husband and my finances going to look like? We had only been married for 2 years at that time, and for a young 20 something who thought she had her life figured out, the thoughts of starting over can be a scary thing.

God is really amazing in the ways that he prepared us for this transition. I found out several months earlier that this was going to happen. At that time, I was even given the opportunity to stay with the company, if I was willing to move. However, we really did not want to move, so I took the option of being laid off. Because of the amount time we had between when I was informed it was going to happen, and when it actually happened, we were able to get some preparations made, mainly with our finances. We were able to make it so that we could live off of 1 paycheck (my husband’s teacher/coach wages) and my severance pay for a short while while I searched for another job.

Although I did have a little bit of notice, nothing could fully prepare me for the flood of emotions I would experience during that time. A sense of loss and, at times, depression, overtook me. The job I lost was one I planned on staying in for the long haul. I truly had to mourn the death of a dream. I also had to dig in deep to find a way to trust God through the process. It wasn’t easy, but that time frame in my life has forever marked me and has made me the person I am today.

Things are often a little more clear when you look back than when you are looking forward. So, what advice could I possibly share 10 years later? Well, it’s advice I still have to remind myself of over and over again; Trust God through the process. It’s easy to trust, in theory, but when you are in the midst of uncertainty, it’s a bit tougher. Even now, I struggle with that. I struggle with change when I’m comfortable, and struggle with waiting for a change when it is something I desire. It can be a double edged sword. One thing that I always hold onto is that God has a plan, whether or not we always see it. And it is a good plan.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

It’s Different For Girls

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

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It’s been a while since I wrote a more personal blog specifically about my own experiences with motherhood, but after a conversation I had with my husband a while back, I thought it was time.

This particular conversation happened on a date night that, until about the last six months, has been a pretty rare thing. (When you live a ways away from family and have young children, dates are rare luxuries. Fortunately our girls are finally old enough it’s easier to get away for a few hours now). I was explaining to him some of the struggles I have from time to time with feeling lonely in my role as a mom. Now, this loneliness is not because he doesn’t help or isn’t around. Rather, it is more due to the lack of close, intimate, female friendships that I have at this stage of life. I explained that women, especially once we become mothers, have very different life experiences than our male counterparts when it comes to how we relate to each other and even how friendships look. I thought I would share some of the differences I see, in hopes that other mommas out there might find a little relief knowing we are all in this together. As a disclaimer, this is in no means intended to bash on women or children, but rather to explain some of the differences in hopes of shining light in dark areas of our human experience.

Freedom

As a mom, especially when children are very little, we often find ourselves not having freedom to just pick up and do whatever we want. When you have a newborn and are nursing a baby, you can’t be away from the baby (or the pump) for more than a couple of hours at a time. You are tethered to that child and no matter how helpful dad is, it isn’t the same as what you as a mom experience. Even after nursing ends, kids have a special bond with their mom, that can make it difficult to have the freedom to get time to yourself or get time to spend with friends. When my girls were really little I couldn’t do anything, including hauling trash outside, without someone tagging along, or having a meltdown if they couldn’t. I have actually had to sneak out of my own house on occasion when I did have to leave the house without my girls. My husband, on the other hand, can come and go as he pleases without inciting a major meltdown.

It’s different for girls.

Having a night out

My husband is really good about being willing to take care of the girls so that I can do what I need to do. During the conversation I mentioned earlier, he even told me that anytime I need a girls’ night with friends, to go for it. However, I explained to him that the problem isn’t so much the freedom to go as it is having people to go with. At this phase of life we are all either in the same boat of chaotic schedules with kids and it’s impossible to get our schedules to line up, or they don’t have kids and are in a completely different realm of life where needing to be home at a decent time doesn’t yet exist. It’s funny watching all the movies with the moms going on a girls’ night out because I know so few moms that actually ever do that. Especially moms like me who moved into town after all the friendship groups were already created.

It’s different for girls.

Walls

Beyond any logistical issues that may arise with friendships in the throws of motherhood, is probably the most difficult barrier to overcome; the walls that we as females put up, and often tend to live behind. I remember when my husband was coaching football and how all the men formed a brotherhood. They were a tight group that could poke at each other and still be best friends. They were all pretty confident guys who, for the most part, never felt the need to impress anyone. They were real with each other. As a coach’s wife, all of us women were together an awful lot as well. Although I always got along with everyone, the dynamics among the women were completely different.

Women are so much more guarded with each other than men are. It is often so hard to get to know another woman on anything more than surface level without years of relationship to slowly tear down those walls. We also tend to feel a sense of competition among each other. As a coach’s wife I often felt like I was looked at as less than when my husband coached at the junior high level, but was more of the group when he moved up to the high school. I know that it was never intentional, but women can be cruel without ever realizing it. We as women also feel like we need to show only our best selves, which hinders real, authentic relationships. Social media has only amplified that problem over the last 10 years. Women like to hide their flaws, while men often make fun of themselves for their flaws

It’s different for girls.

So what can we do? Honestly, I really don’t have an answer for that. I don’t think there is an easy solution. However, I really want to challenge women like me (and including me) to try to let your guard down a little. I know that so many of us have been wounded by friends in the past when we got too real and vulnerable (myself included). Yet, we will never have an authentic relationship if we ourselves can’t be authentic. Get to know those other mommas! Be vulnerable about your struggles and shortcomings. And, for crying out loud, quit competing and comparing and lets start encouraging each other. Motherhood is the hardest, sweetest, most frustrating, rewarding thing I have ever experienced. Find someone to share your experiences with.

It’s different for girls, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.20190817_210037

Then vs. Now

/ bekoepke / Leave a comment

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Every single one of us is guilty of it. We have all made comments or remarks thinking we know what we are talking about when, really, we don’t have a clue. Let me give you some examples.

When I was the ripe old age of 20 straight out of college, I had an interview with a company and they were going to pay around $24,000/yr starting out. As someone who had not experienced too much “real life” yet, that sounded like a lot of money and a great starting salary. I mean, it should be easy to live off $2000 per month, right? Ha! I remember standing in my parent’s kitchen and my mom trying to help me understand that by the time I payed for insurance (no, I was not one of those kids who stayed on my parent’s insurance until I was 50) and taxes there wouldn’t be a whole lot to live on. You know, I actually tried to argue with her about that (sorry about that Mom). Boy was I ignorant to how life works. Thank goodness that job didn’t work out and I got a different one that paid a little better.  Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until you experience a little bit of life.

Rewind a little further. Before I graduated college and my older sister had her first kid, and then a while later her second kid. As a teenager with all the freedom in the world and no kids, I sure became an expert in my own mind on being a parent. I remember little things that I would think how differently I would do them. I would see other people who maybe had a kid having a meltdown in a grocery store, and would think to myself “get your kid under control” or “if that was my kid I’d……”. Oh boy, was I naive! What a humbling experience having three kids of my own has been.

Now fast forward to my first teaching job: substitute teacher. It’s amazing how much of an amazing teacher you can be in your own mind when you have absolutely no lesson planning or accountability. Oh, and not to mention all the opinions you can form in a teachers’ lounge about how the administrators do their jobs. When you are a person of low information like I was (simply meaning I had not experienced much of what goes into being a full time teacher yet) , you can easily think you know it all. My how life changed when I got a little experience and eventually became a lead teacher myself. Oh, and being married to a principal has vastly changed my view of administration, there are so many things that go on behind the scenes that even the most experienced teachers don’t know goes on (many of which I even have no clue about).

It is so easy to make opinions and pass judgements. As a matter of fact, that can often be easier than getting the real information and having compassion for others. As the saying goes; Ignorance is bliss. But is it really? In my opinion, Ignorance is Ignorance. When someone who is not knowledgeable about something, tries to input their thoughts, they really just end up sounding unintelligent (and let’s just get real for a second, we ALL do this from time to time). I think we could all learn from that. Especially when it comes to our opinions of others. We don’t know the backstory of most of the people we encounter. All we know is often only what we see, which is easy to misinterpret. I love how The Living Bible translation puts 1 Corinthians 13:7, “If you love someone, you will be loyal to him no matter what the cost. You will always believe in him, always expect the best of him, and always stand your ground in defending him.” The older I get the more this verse means to me. I see the value of loyalty. I see it in my marriage. I see it in my relationships. And I see it in my job. I even see it in my role as a mom. I want so desperately for others, especially those closest to me, to believe the best about my intentions, why would I not do the same for them? The world could use a little more of that. Imagine how different our lives would be if we all extended the same grace to other people that we expect and demand from them?

“Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. 15 Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.16 He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.”

Ephesians 4:14-16 NLT