January 12, 2017

Greetings My Friend, For most of my life I have felt it is important to take care of my body and I come back to a verse in Ephesians 5:28 "In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself." When my children were born I entered into a journey of attempting to feed my family in healthy ways. We used to have a garden in the back yard and I often found myself telling my children if they were good they could go pick, green beans, cucumbers or tomatoes for a snack and they loved it. My son asked me often as a youngster "Remember me if I like this?" My answer was always yes even if I knew he did not like it the last time he tried it. It worked because both of my children liked to eat fairly healthy until they were teenagers. Later they seem to have went back to eating healthy, both of them have had a love of cooking as well. I often hear people say "you are what you eat", I believe this also. I was in a marriage where my ex took great pride in overeating, eating whatever pleased him and enjoyed abusing his body. It upset me that he had such little regard for his health. After we divorced I met Junior who tries hard to take care of his health, he exercises, eats fairly well and I see the results of this in his life. I also see that he encourages me to care for my body, when we first were married he used to put supplements by my plate for me to take and because we work at being healthy with our bodies I see that our marriage is healthy, our concern for each other is healthy and I even see that our spiritual growth is healthy. We always need to be open to growing and rethinking bad habits that we enter into but in general we work at being healthy as a team. I appreciate this very much. After we were married for awhile Junior got into the habit of running everywhere in his work clothes that were stained, ripped and looked like work clothes. Even has gone to church in his fairly dirty clothes and I found myself asking him to care enough to be clean and wear unstained clothes when we go out. I felt he did not care for me and when I questioned him, I discovered he did not truly care what he looked like. We went to a seminar onetime where the husband did not care what he looked like, he discovered if he did not care then he could dress to please his wife. I reminded Junior of this and he has been gracious enough to go out in public clean and neat for me. Neither Junior nor I are "suit" wearing people. I like a casual style more than a restricting style of dress which I find dressing in business attire to be. Junior goes to church in jeans and a tee shirt these days and I am good with this. He used to wear a suit to church but he purposely changed to casual so that if anyone came in that could not afford expensive clothes they would not feel bad. I would say my style of clothing for church is along the lines of business casual a little less than that really. I wear a skirt now but I used to wear dress slacks and a knit top. Now I wear a skirt and the same kind of top. I have switched to skirts or dresses due to my balance issues and down the road when I am not able to care for myself these will be easier for Junior to dress me in. Junior takes care of himself and I see it in the way he works, kind of. The finished product is done well, he does leave things scattered about when his work is done each day. I have gotten used to this quirk but the finished product matters to me more so. I do have to ask him to pick up things that hamper my walking or I will go behind him and make the path manageable. I have learned he does not do this to irritate me but he sees nothing wrong with his approach and can't see what hampers me. May God bless you and keep you, make His face shine on you. Love Janet