Please Don't Try To Emasculate My Men...And Ladies, Don't Allow Women to Do It To Yours!

It happens daily.

The emasculation of American men by women.

Some women do it to their own men.

Some are brazen enough to try it with men who belong to other women.

I'm going to climb up on my soap box for a minute. It won't be long, but I do hope it will get the point across.

I am (gleefully!) a woman under submission. 

I am crazy, madly in love with my husband. I consider the privilege of submitting to him as my leader one of God's greatest gifts in my life.

Submission in the Greek is a military term which simply means to place oneself under one's rightful authority.

Is my husband my authority?

You can BET YOUR BIPPY he is! 

Scripture tells me that when I submit to him, I'm doing it as unto the Lord Himself.

Here's where the real beauty comes in, though...my husband loves me in a way that I truly never knew ANYONE ever could, or would love me.

He loves me to a degree that I never dreamt I would be worthy of.

He serves me in love. 

He speaks to me in love. 

He considers me in love.

He treats me as the weaker vessel, in love.

He is also AMAZING at helping me set healthy boundaries for myself, and sometimes he just SETS THEM FOR ME!

So when my husband sets a boundary for me, his wife...within his rightful role as the head of his household and another woman tries to blow right through it...we have an issue.

A BIG ONE!

And if your husband sets a boundary for you and another woman completely dismisses it, you should see that as a big issue too...and defer always to your husband's leadership.

When my husband, who leads an entire office of brilliant men and one very amazing woman, is treated by any other woman within MY sphere of contacts like he needs to bow and beg their permission...we have on our hands a MAJOR PROBLEM!

Ladies, please...hear my heart. 

DO NOT stand for another woman handing your husband his manhood on their clipboard!

If you find yourself in a group where the men have been relegated to floor sweeps and are not welcomed as respected contributing members, run for the door!

That is not a group that is set up according to Biblical principles. 

Period.

And unfortunately this mindset can be rampant in the homeschooling world.

Before I step down from my soap box, I have to add one more thing.

We emasculate our YOUNG men in this country every single time that we treat a teenager like he's a boy and not a young man.

Our son will be 14 soon. He's not a boy anymore. He's a man!

If we were Israelis, he'd be just 2 years away from being conscripted into the army.

By the time he was a teenager, Brother Andrew was sneaking around his town filling Nazi gas tanks with sugar in order to protect his village from their impending infiltration.

Benjamin Franklin was an apprentice learning a trade by the time he was 12.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was being trained by his father to not just rattle his lips at the dinner table, but to fully develop his thoughts before he allowed them to escape his mouth. Is it any wonder that            at age 28 he was equipped to break away from the Reich Church to start the Confessing Church in Germany and parts of Europe?! 

And he did so against the advice of several of his mentors, because he could discern the situation of the day and KNEW what action was needed.

He knew that any church that denied the Jewish people, ceased to be a church.

Praise GOD that his father hadn't waited until he was 20 to train him to be, and treat him as a man!

I'm SICK of the mentality in our country that believes that our 13 year old sons are still children.

They're NOT!

Or at least, they're not supposed to be.

Did you know that Daniel was 15 when he was taken into captivity in Babylon? Remember him...he stood for truth and righteousness among pagans...and I've heard the silly argument that says he was schooled in all the ways of the Babylonians, therefore he was mature and wise.

That's garbage!

He had FIFTEEN YEARS of training in the Law of the LORD!

And Daniel 1:17 makes it clear that God gave Daniel and his three friends "...knowledge and intelligence in every branch of literature and wisdom..."

Daniel 1:4 has a time reference that is key. It lets us know that these young men showed intelligence in every branch of wisdom, were endowed with understanding and discerning of knowledge, and had ability for serving in the king's court...AND THEN they were taught the literature and language of the Chaldeans.

See, their training in truth and wisdom came from God's Word, which they'd had poured into them for 15 years! It DID NOT come from the Babylonians!

Job 28:28 tells us that God Himself said "...the fear of the LORD is widsom, and to depart from evil is understanding."

It was God's WORD that grew Daniel into the MAN that he was at 15! 

Do I want my son to have fun and enjoy the next years while he's still under our roof?

Without a doubt, I do!

But I'll tell you this...our amazing young man would lay his life down in a hot minute for me or his sister. He wouldn't come running up to me in fear, hiding behind me trying to figure out what to do if danger threatened.

He would do what a MAN would do!

He would defend! 

He would fight to protect us! 

And when the lies of the world come hurling at him, he stands for TRUTH!

He's not afraid to call sin, sin.

He is compassionate, and gracious, but he is very black and white about what is Godly and was is not, and I love that about him. 

Is he perfect?

No. He comes from two very imperfect parents, so I suppose imperfection is in his genes.

Is he manly? 

Absolutely!

Is he still learning?

No doubt.

Does he make his Momma and Dad so very proud to call him ours?

With all of our hearts.

We dearly love our young MAN!

Ladies, I pray this post will be a beacon call to all of us.

NO woman should ever have the right to emasculate our husbands or our sons. None!

And we better make sure we don't ever do it ourselves.

Let's let our speech and actions toward our husbands be edifying, encouraging, respectful, appreciative, and God honoring.

Come to think of it, let's apply the same toward our young MEN.

Much love to you tonight,

Jes

It seems like yesterday that Caedmon was the little baby on the floor...now he's 5'9" and solid muscle!

Caedmon's Godly example, my beloved husband. 

Caedmon at TeenPact Tennessee in February.

I'm proud to say that he wrote a resolution in favor of Medical Marijuana, and it passed 8-5. 

OK, so in truth....I was pretty much in shock when he told me what his resolution was, but truly was impressed with the research he used and argued in front of an ultra conservative group...well enough so that his resolution was passed!

Now we just need to send him before the TN State Legislature to speak on the topic! :)

My 5 Year Long Health Journey from Wizard to Warrior

My doctor is amazing.

The first time I met him he sat back in his chair, smiled and said, "You're a warrior."

I asked him to elaborate and he explained that another doctor friend of his says that there are two types of patients...warriors and wizards.

I understood the warrior part, but needed explanation on the wizard, to which he said something along the lines of, "Oh, those are the ones who want ME to fix them. They don't take any personal responsibility. They're just looking for the magic pill."

I understand wizard patients. I was one for many years.

Many of you have asked for information on how to treat MS and other auto-immune diseases through diet, lifestyle changes, and supplements.

This post (and perhaps a few to follow) will be my personal testimony to the above.

It's likely going to be a long read, as there's much to share...so grab a cup of tea and pull up a chair.

Or, print it out and save it to read when you have time.

Here we go...

After the birth of my daughter, I never lost the baby weight. I also didn't eat well for many years. I tipped the scales at 192 pounds, which is quite a bit for someone who only hits 5'5" if I'm in traction!

I'd wake every morning wondering how quickly I could get downstairs to guzzle 1/2 of my 2 liter of Coca-Cola to start my day. As soon as breakfast was over, I'd be planning what I was going to eat for lunch. As soon as lunch was over, I was wondering what dinner would be.

At the time, we lived in a master planned community and my kiddos were little. We spent countless hours at the pocket parks in our neighborhood and my husband would often drive straight from work to meet us at the park. Then we'd all pile into the van and head to Denny's, or the Mexican food restaurant, or Subway for dinner.

Fried chips. Fried fish tacos. French fries. 

Fried.

Fried.

Fried!

I didn't KNOW...I had NO idea what those horrible oils were doing to my brain and to my cells.

I didn't know that the optimum ratio for Omega 3s to Omega 6s in a cell is 1:2, and that my diet was so creating an horrific imbalance of 1:50!!

One day a friend of mine and I were talking about the prevalence of adultery in our churches, and she shared that she had been really thinking about the sin of gluttony...and seeking God about it in her own life.

God used her words to PIERCE my heart about the sin in my own life. I was drowning in gluttony! 

That night I cried out to God and confessed my sin, and asked Him to please give me an undying hunger for His Word. I told Him that I wanted to wake in the mornings thinking about dining on Scripture, and I wanted my last thoughts at night to be a longing for His Word as well.

He so graciously answered that prayer and within no time, and truly by no doing of my own, I had dropped 20 pounds. 

When people would ask me how I'd lost the weight, I always told the truth...that I confessed gluttony in all sincerity, and God in His lovingkindness removed 20 pounds and changed my cravings.

It always amazed me that even after hearing those words, people would inevitably say, "But you had to be obedient. Good for YOU!"

Bless their hearts, they either just didn't GET it, or didn't WANT to get it.

In 2005 I had a surgical hysterectomy that took FOREVER to heal from.

In 2007 I had sinus surgery that took TWO FOREVERS to heal from.

I truly didn't heal from the sinus surgery. It was terrible! 

In 2008 I got terribly sick with what we thought was the flu, but we never did get a clear diagnosis. We flew to Denver to visit my brother and his family that summer, and the higher we went into the mountains, the sicker I got.

We returned home at the end of July and I was sick ALL. SUMMER. LONG!

I took antibiotic after antibiotic and nothing helped. Finally, I was put onto Levaquin and within a day I took myself off it because the side effects were so heinous.

The very next day, Shane packed me into the car and we drove to the ER because we thought I was having a heart attack. I didn't THINK I was dying, I KNEW I was!

The whole way to the ER, I was telling Shane through my tears what to look for in his next wife. I was begging him to make sure that she was totally in love with Jesus, and that she'd be a tender and sweet Mommy to our babies.

I didn't know it then, but I do now. What I had was a terrible reaction to Levaquin. 

ALL of our medical files now say, "NO QUINOLONES!"

If you want to know more about how horrid these drugs can be,  just do a Google search on them...or Google the word "Floxing."

From that point, around September 2008 through June 2009 when I was diagnosed with MS, I saw a Naturopath and just tried to get healthy...but I felt HORRID!

(To be continued. My Sweetheart is ready to hang out with me!)