Forever Beloved - Faith, Love & Truth

December 16, 2017

That Lonely Feeling

hands holding holiday present

I’ve always had this vision, this big dream, of how the holidays would be when I was grown.

I would cook a big meal and place it on a perfect, beautifully set table. The table would be surrounded by family with friends sprinkled in. I would have a house full of laughter and an evening full of fellowship and love.

Life doesn’t always go the way we dreamed of as a child, does it?

I have a confession: sometimes I feel lonely during the holidays.

It’s something I don’t often talk about at all because it makes me feel guilty. Why do I feel guilty? Because I have a husband and two kids to spend the holidays with, not to mention two amazing parents. Still, the loneliness is there.

When I was a child, holidays were spent with family. Thanksgiving at my Grandparents, Christmas Eve at my Aunt and Uncles and Christmas Day at my Grandparents. I loved it, I soaked in every single moment of being surrounded by laughter, love and the feeling of belonging. Do you remember the days when after the holidays you would go to your families house and they would show you what they got for Christmas? I know, I loved that!

Once I got married, the family we spent the holidays with doubled. Sometimes holidays even meant visiting two or three different houses in one day. I have to admit, I loved it.

Maybe more than loneliness, its’ a heart craving. A craving and desire to have things the way they used to be. I have this desire to hostess, to show hospitality by making my house warm and welcome and to show my love and thankfulness through the food I cook.

Throughout the years, the seasons of life have changed. Between people passing away, children growing up and moving out and just life changing we’ve been left spending holidays among our little family. Thanksgiving at my parents, Christmas Eve at home (with my husband normally working until 8 pm), Christmas Day at my parents and New Years Eve at home.

It’s certainly not how I envisioned my life.

But, what I’ve realized throughout this, the holidays are not about me and my feelings. The season is about Him. Thinking of Jesus’ humble, magnificent, unimaginably difficult, astonishing birth stills my heart during the Christmas Season. It helps me to align my heart with joy.

This holiday season when I feel the familiar pangs of sadness and loneliness creep over me, I will look up and focus my eyes on Him. I will be reminded that what I have is enough. I will remember that He IS the most important element in my life. He brings TRUE peace, joy, and celebration in the midst of this season. He is the TRUE reason for the season.

December 15, 2017

Ignite Intimacy | How I Started To Embrace My Sexuality – Guest Post

{It is with such pleasure that I introduce Kami Crawford. Kami and her husband Ben have a YouTube channel called Fight For Together where they post videos on fighting for the togetherness of their family. They feel family is so incredibly valuable, it’s worth fighting for! The realness, vulnerability and transparency they show is so refreshing. So many times while watching one of their videos I’ve thought “me too”! They have a real heart for Jesus that shines through their videos. I had the pleasure of meeting their family for lunch a few months ago and found their vlogs are such an accurate depiction of who they are in real life. Please give a warm Forever Beloved welcome to Kami! Show her how much you appreciate her by sharing and commenting on her story!}

ignite intimacy couple sex

How I started to embrace my sexuality:

I grew up in a religious household where we didn’t talk about much of anything, let alone sex. My parents gave me some cassette tapes when I was hitting puberty that talked about sex, I guess. I don’t remember. I was mostly left to figure out my sexuality on my own. Because it wasn’t talked about growing up I naturally thought it was a bad or gross thing. Something that needs to be hidden away and not talked about. I was not a curious person by nature so I didn’t really know what a grown man’s penis looked like till I got married. I also didn’t know where to put my tampon in. My husband had to help me figure that out. These parts of my story used to embarrass me but I don’t feel that way anymore. I mostly feel sad and a little angry that I was so ill-informed about an important part of me.

My first memories of sexual feelings were when I was ten and I liked to touch myself. I remember feeling like I needed to hide it. By the time I was twelve something would happen to me that would take me decades to recover from. I became involved in an abusive relationship with my junior high youth pastor. We never had sex, in fact, things were never overtly physical but this relationship was extremely confusing because the youth pastor would treat me like his daughter and also like his girlfriend. He was a twenty-six-year-old married man. My first sexual feelings for another man were riddled with shame and secrecy. I felt like an adulteress.

When I got married, I believed that sexuality was bad. Especially my sexuality. I heard it said in Bible studies that it was good, but never could believe it for myself. This made it so that on my honeymoon the last thing I wanted to do with my husband was to have sex and be sexual with him. This was one of the only things he wanted on our honeymoon. So you can imagine the heartbreak. I even went so far as to tell him that maybe we shouldn’t have gotten married. For the next 10 years, we fought about sex 2-3 times a week. And when we didn’t fight I would give it to him because I felt like I had to to keep the peace in our marriage. This was the number one source of pain in my life. At one point I even believed I was asexual.

A few things came into my life that started to turn this around for me. I started attending a 12 step group. I realized that I had issues that I needed to start to address. I realized I could change. My beliefs could change. I began to acknowledge that what I believed about my sexuality was damaging to me. I wanted more truth and freedom. I began to get counseling for what happened to me with the youth pastor. I began to piece together why I have such a wrong view of my sexuality: I didn’t feel valued as a woman. So how could I value my sexuality, which is apart of my womanhood? I began to reject the value was put on me, that I was less valued because I was a woman, and began to embrace the truth that I had incredible value as a woman. I am beautifully made, every part of me. My sexuality is good. My orgasms are not something just to endure but they’re amazing and something to go after. I began to take back my sexuality that I didn’t even know I had surrendered. This process took many years. Many years of not seeing any change. For us, it took having six children. And then something broke.

After years of work this past year I finally started to feel something that looked like change. I had a sexual awakening. I started to see parts of myself as good that I always wanted to hide. I cut my shorts shorter. I posted naked pictures of me on Instagram. I began to see my body as good. I began to see my sexuality not as a liability but as a wonderful thing. Not just for my husband but for myself. I no longer dread my husband asking for sex. In fact, sometimes I initiate. That never used to happen. I always had some kind of excuse to not have sex like “I’m too tired” or “we had sex on Tuesday”. I no longer feel shame about my sexual fantasies because they’re only apart of my story. They tell me something about where I came from. I see my sexual pleasure as something that God gave me not something that needs to be despised and hidden. I began to accept parts of me that I had rejected. Parts of me that I thought were disgusting. I began to accept all of me. I don’t know if you’ve been sexually abused. I don’t know if you were never taught to see your sexuality as good. But I hope through reading a part of my story maybe you’ll believe that change is possible. Maybe you’ll get angry at what’s happened to you. Maybe you will be able to embrace your sexuality a little more, or at least see that it’s possible. Maybe you’ll start to believe that you are beautifully made, every part of you.

– Kami

You can find Kami here:

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December 11, 2017

Meal Planning for Beginners {made super easy}

One thing I love doing every week, and something that has saved us lots of money, is meal planning.

There are so many ways to do meal planning. You can do weekly, biweekly or monthly schedules. You could do Sunday meal prep for the week, once a month cooking, freezer meals, bagged meals and slow cooker meals. If you are just starting out, trying to figure out what is right for your family can be overwhelming.

Let’s do what we can right now, in this season of life. Let’s figure out what will work for us and our family and not compare it to what others are doing!

Meal Planning Made Easy

Favorite Meals

The first thing to do is make a list of the favorite meals of your family, ones you know they like. These are the meals you’ll want to add in to your rotation on a regular basis.

Find a Planner

This step may be the hardest. There are so many options from pretty planners to just making a simple Word document to free printables from Pinterest. My suggestion would be to simplify this step as much as possible. Your meal planner doesn’t have to be pretty for it to be practicable and work. There are even meal planning apps you can download to your phone.

The easiest way I’ve found to meal plan is to make a weekly blog post with my meal plan for the week, but I know that isn’t feasible for everyone. If I didn’t have a blog to utilize, I would make my meal plan and display it in the kitchen either on the fridge or on a chalkboard. The easier it is to see, the easier it is to follow.

Here are a few links to some great choices:

Weekly Meal Planning Pad with Magnets – This is ideal, a weekly meal planning pad with magnets. It has a day-of-the-week section on the left with a shopping list section on the right. Make your meal plan, make your shopping list, tear the page off and take it grocery shopping with you. Easy peasy.
Meal Planning Calendar – This would be a great notebook to use to keep your meal planning organized. It has a section for meal plans, a shopping list, a note section and a section for your favorite recipes!
Dry Erase Magnetic Whiteboard for Fridge – This days-of-the-week magnetic whiteboard would be the perfect way to easily meal plan! With it on your fridge, it’s easily accessible to everyone in the family. And if your family is like mine and things magically go missing, this is harder to lose.
Barnwood Menu Chalkboard Sign – If I didn’t have a blog, I imagine I would use something like this. A cute, rustic chalkboard menu to hang on the wall in the kitchen. You can buy chalkboard markers that make writing super easy.

Start Planning

Once you have your planner, now it’s time to get planning those meals!

First, figure out how many days of the week you need to plan for. When I first started meal planning, I jumped in with both feet and planned all 7 days. If there was a day of the week I knew we would be getting take out, I would mark that on there as well.

Choose easy dinners that won’t overwhelm you. For example if you know you have to work late, don’t choose a meal that takes two hours from start to finish. The entire family (speaking from experience here) will be hangry by the time the meal gets to the table, yourself included. Check out my five ideas for easy dinners below.

If you aren’t sure where to start, take a look at the meal planning posts I have here on my blog. Most of the posts either include the recipe or links to the recipe.

Make sure to add one or two of your families favorite meals onto your meal plan for the week. If you have men in your family like the ones in mine, they prefer tried-and-tested meals over new ones I find on Pinterest.

Make Your Shopping List

Once you have your meals planned out, it’s time to make your shopping list. I would write the shopping list on a separate piece of paper, that way if it gets lost along the way your meal plan is still safe.

Try to limit how many times you run to the grocery store during the week. We’re all busy and plus you’ll save money by only going once. This also will help you stick to your meal plan and use up all of the food that you bought.

Keep Pantry Staples on Hand

Once you establish your meal planning and do it for a while, you’ll realize what your families staples are. When we think of pantry staples, we think of eggs, milk and bread. Those are definitely on my list, but there are many more items I’ve come to recognize as essential for my kitchen to be well stocked. It will make your weekly meal planning so much easier if you keep those staples on hand all of the time.

I’ll list some of our family staples below:

flour (I’m a bread machine addict y’all)
sugar
cheese
eggs
butter
instant mashed potatoes
rice
pasta
milk
cream soups (chicken and mushroom)

Five Ideas for Easy Dinners

1. Crock-Pot Meals

Oh, how I love me an easy peasy crock-pot dinner! If I know I have a lot of errands to run, appointments during the day or if I just want an easy dinner then crock-pot meals are the way to go.

Crock-pot meals (also known as a slow cooker) generally take anywhere between 5 – 8 hours to cook so prepare accordingly. You can throw something into the crock-pot and come back 8 hours later to dinner being done.

I love this because crock-pot meals tend to be comfort food. We all love yummy comfort food! You can pair it with a simple side or salad and have dinner ready to go in minutes.

Examples we love: roast, beef and broccoli, creamy potato chowder, pierogies, bbq ham

Check out my Crock-Pot Pinterest Board here

2. Casseroles

Casseroles have changed my life y’all, and they always seem to be my go-to. They are quick, easy to throw together with very little prep and super yummy! Normally, there is enough left over for my husband to take for his lunch the next day. And if there is a lot left over, it’s easy to throw in the freezer for a quick, easy future meal!

Casseroles are a great way to make an amazing meal with few ingredients. And once you have the hang of it, you could even create your own casserole with what you have on hand in your pantry. As long as one of those ingredients is cheese, a must have for a yummy casserole!

Examples we love: tater tot casserole, bubble pizza, chicken pie, chili cheese dog bake

Check out my Casserole Pinterest Board here

3. 15 Minute Meals

Where we live, the nearest McDonalds is 30 minutes away. So even eating out takes planning. When I’m short on time but need to cook the family a meal, 15 minute meals are the easiest!

This is usually the easiest type of meals for beginners to meal planning. You don’t need to prep them ahead, remember to defrost meat and there are no cooking skills involved.

Examples we love: sloppy joe grilled cheese, spaghetti, baked potatoes, oven baked chicken fingers and fries

Here is a link to Kraft’s 15 minute meals

4. Cooking Ahead and Freezing

Every time I have an upcoming surgery I take a day and cook a few different meals that are easily freezeable, put them in containers and freeze them. It makes life after surgery so much easier not only on me but on my family.

You could buy aluminum containers at the Dollar Store and get the casserole ready but don’t bake it. Freeze it and write instructions on the lid of how to cook it. You just need to remember to set it out to thaw ahead of time. And clean up couldn’t be easier!

Another thing I like to do is take a day and make homemade hot pockets and freeze them in individual bags. This makes a super easy lunch for my boys to grab on their way out the door. You can find my homemade hot pocket recipe here on my post of my favorite bread recipes.

Examples we love: hot pockets, chili, tater tot casserole, bbq pork

5. Canning

I absolutely love canning my own food! It saves me so much time and money throughout the year. I can everything from spaghetti sauce to chicken to crushed pineapple made from zucchini. I even canned all of our leftover turkey from Thanksgiving this year! It takes some time and a little getting used to but once you get the hang of it you’ll be canning up a storm. I have so many instructional blog posts that really walk you through so it’s not so scary. I’ll put links to some of my posts below.

Canned Baked Beans

Canning Chicken

Canning Homemade Chicken Broth

My 5 Favorite Canning Recipes

Five Ways to Prepare for Canning Season

And you can check out my Canning Pinterest Board here

Give Meal Planning a Try!

Using the simple steps above, meal planning doesn’t have to take longer than 5 minutes if you’re planning weekly like I do. And the best part is your kids won’t nag you about what’s for dinner any more, all they have to do is read the weekly meal plan and they’ll know! Mom win!