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Discussing All Things on Relationships and Faith (Video)

By Our Grit and Grace Life Videos / Faith, Relationships

We believe relationships and our faith are some of the riches parts of our lives. We wanted to make it easy for you to get to some of our favorite articles on relationships and faith. 7 Things to Look for in a Man 5 Important Things to Discuss as a New Couple How My Husband and I Survived My Affair How to Know if Your Boyfriend is a Charity Case 5 Things I’ve Learned in a Decade of Wifing From Pregnant Widow to Single Mom, Building Faith: Growing in Your Relationship with God, Battling the Mind Monster: A Letter to My Mom This is Your Brain on FOMO Family Devotions Can Hurt For The Fatherless On Sex and Faith and Marriage, Comforting Thoughts […]

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2-Minute Read on How to Create a Wedding Registry

By Ashley Johnson / Life & Culture

The engagement season is full of decisions and deadlines. Juggling details, proper etiquette, timelines, and relationships is a lot to handle all at once. For many reasons, creating a wedding registry was one of the most intimidating tasks to me. However, I received a few pieces of advice along the way, each of which was a true gift of relief. Here are 8 tips for tackling a wedding registry: 1. Dreadin’s Worse Than Doin’. Any time I feel overwhelmed by a big project ahead, I recall my grandmother’s coined phrase: “dreadin’s worse than doin’!” It’s so true. Have you ever noticed that once you start chipping away at a big project, it’s oftentimes not nearly as difficult as you anticipated? And once you finish—or even make

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How to Have a Beautiful Wedding on a Budget

By Catie Welvaert / Life & Culture, Work & Money

Did the new year bring you a new ring? Or, maybe your Valentine surprised you with a proposal for life-long love. No matter when or how it happened, congratulations! Engagement season can be full of anticipation and lots of growth, but for many couples, finances and the lack-there-of can be a heavy weight anchoring you down from head-in-the-clouds love and bliss. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always end after the “I do” either, sorry. But there can be freedom! Money does not have to be the dream crusher! Your wedding can be beautiful, even better than you imagined in your head, and still your best day ever while staying within your budget, I promise. Plus, wise budgeting for the wedding can prep you and your soon-to-be husband for conversations

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From Pregnant Widow to Single Mom

By Ashby Duval / Faith

This is part two of Ashby’s story. Read Part 1 here! Shortly after Spencer’s death, I drove out to Immokalee to the place where we used to live. Standing on the grassy bank of Lake Trafford where our Airstream once gleamed in the sunlight, I stared at the water with my hands on my swollen, pregnant belly genuinely not knowing what to do next. This empty space made my loss even more real. Every fiber of my being ached to go back and climb into our cozy home with my husband again, but this empty space was a very visual reminder that he was no longer here and there was not a home to come back to. In the Heartbreak and Confusion, What’s

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We Need a Wife—a Working Woman’s Challenge

By Darlene Brock / Life & Culture, Work & Money

It was a weeknight and our family was sitting over another thrown-together meal from whatever I could find in an almost empty refrigerator. The laundry was mounting, the house a mess, and my calendar in hand as I reviewed every event scheduled for the next week. Knowing I had to pack that night for yet another week-long business trip, I was on the verge of a meltdown. It was then that I looked across the table at our two daughters and husband when he calmly made this profound statement to me, “We need a wife.” I knew what he meant: we needed help on the home front! It’s not that he was looking to become a polygamist, adding another female to his household. He wasn’t

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Are You a Wife in “Machine Gun Mode?”

By Kitti Murray / Relationships

There is something that happens to me during the flurry of activity that accompanies anything I’m in charge of. Like hosting people in our home. Bill named this setting on my dial “machine gun mode,” and I think it feels good. Things need to be done, and I do them and check them off. Ahhhh. I am a list-maker by nature; the rat-a-tat-tat of ammunition firing is a beautiful sound to me. A list in motion! Here’s what I’ve learned about machine guns: if I am not careful with mine, it can create carnage. I can drastically reduce the collateral damage if I aim the gun only at myself, but I do better if I put down my weapon altogether. But I am addicted

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How the 5 Love Languages Can Change Your Relationship

By Teresa Christian / Relationships

After 30+ years of marriage, you think I would have figured out a long time ago what is the best way to interact with my husband. But apparently I’m stubborn and sometimes selfish and would much prefer to keep doing things the way I’ve always done them, yet expect different results (wait … isn’t that the definition of insanity?). I tried every method I could think of to attempt to get Mike to act how I wanted him to, only to wind up frustrated and confused. How many times have you done the same thing? Your way makes sense to you, so why shouldn’t it to your guy? If communicating with him through text seems convenient, shouldn’t he realize you’re pushed for time

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5 Simple Prayers for Your Husband

By Clare Marlow / Faith

After the movie War Room came out in December 2015, many Christian women raced home from the theater and set up prayer rooms in their homes. These are little spaces—wherever you can seek one out—where you can pray, alone and in peace, and paper the walls with Bible verses and prayers. I did the same, but it wasn’t after I saw the movie. It was about eight months later, one morning last summer when I was reading my Bible and a particular verse struck me so deeply that I went scrounging in the office for a 3×5 card and wrote it down. I was about to tuck it in my Bible when I suddenly heard God whisper, “It’s time. Go create your

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Building Your Marriage on Rock

By Kitti Murray / Faith

We used to have a chalkboard in our kitchen. From time to time I’d scrawl a phone number or date on it, but usually I wrote things like Happy Birthday Jesus (a message that remained from Christmas until almost Easter) or Esse Quam Videri, because I love that phrase. Esse Quam Videri means, “to be rather than seem to be” which makes it a ridiculous thing to broadcast on a chalkboard. Sadly, over time, our board got harder and harder to erase, so that Happy Easter was barely visible, written as it was on top of every smudged message since Thanksgiving. Not long after cave walls became obsolete as memo boards and well before the invention of the chalkboard, early mankind scratched

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After Years of Dating, Should You Keep Waiting?

By Darlene Brock / Relationships

I recently had lunch at a wonderful lakeside restaurant where my server was a cute, incredibly perky girl in her mid-twenties. Looking at her, I thought about what a great stage of life she’s in—one that so often brings the beginning of new life roads. Because I just have to know about every new person I meet, I asked her what keeps her busy when she isn’t working. Her answer was looking at bridal magazines. The obvious response from me came next, “That is so great! When are you getting married?” Her response, “My boyfriend and I have been dating for three and a half years and he hasn’t asked me yet, but I’m sure he will. So, of course I am thinking about a

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On Sex and Faith and Marriage

By Annie Leigh Edwards / Faith

Jamus and Annie sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Jamus, (my husband) and I started dating in college and I thought about him all the time. There was texting, phone calls where we would talk for hours, and just making up random excuses to be near one another. One night I called him because it was “unsafe” to run by myself and I needed an escort. Let’s just say I didn’t have to twist his arm. As we spent more and more time together, I became increasingly infatuated with this Aston Kutcher look-alike with a country accent who loved Jesus with all of his heart. We got engaged after a few months of dating and were married within three and a half months. A

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Can You Have a Fairy Tale Love?

By Darlene Brock / Relationships

Life’s fairy tale—fact or fiction? I hear the clamor of female voices saying, “Disney lied! There are no princes! There is no happily ever after!” Dreams dashed, fantasies destroyed. In many ways they are correct; you will not walk through life singing with the birds while fish harmonize and other woodland animals dance in time. Unless your career is that of a park ranger… There are males out there who can indeed be princes, yet they are just as likely to be frogs. A real-life man is often some of both. Expecting the dragon, evil queen, or bad-lipstick octopus to be defeated for your rescue, is probably not going to happen. But, that doesn’t mean you need to give up on some of

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One Thing That Will Improve After Your First Year of Marriage

By Kitti Murray / Relationships

I’m going to tell you about one thing that will improve a lot after your first year of marriage… “I know you were exaggerating,” Bill says, smiling across the table from me at one of our new favorite pubs, “but did I really make you cry every day of our first year of marriage?” We’d ditched a party after an hour for our own after-party date night, a practice that I, an avowed last-to-leave-extrovert, have come to love. Bill remembered something I’d said earlier to a newly wed couple. “No,” I answer, “you didn’t. But I did cry a lot and almost always because you hurt my feelings, which, to be accurate, is what I said you did every day.” This, I

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Rules for the Introvert Vs. Extrovert Fight

By Kitti Murray / Faith

This is the post in which I am the grumbling Israelites and my husband, Bill, is Moses. Not because I’m especially humble, but it’s just that this phrase in the Old Testament stood out to me recently. Three or four times in Leviticus and Numbers, during a heated exchange between Moses and the Israelites, Moses up and “walked away.” I wondered about that. “Walk away” is telling, don’t you think? You can walk away without moving a muscle. You can simply refuse to hold up your end of the conversation. Just like an introvert. As an extrovert, I place a high value on the spoken word. Unspoken words, I abhor them. But sometimes it is much safer to unspeak words, to let

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Nagging Your Husband? Try This Instead!

By Julie (Graham) Bender / Faith, Relationships

First, I’m no expert, but I’ve learned a thing or two in my 10 years of marriage. Namely, it takes a LOT of prayer. And I don’t mean praying as a couple. What I am saying is that instead of complaining or nagging (which we all do), pray for your husband as part of your daily or at least regular routine. It will be a worthy investment—not only for him but for you too. But why? There are several reasons every woman should do this. (And I don’t mean only if you’re currently married! If you have a desire to be married one day, or at least are open to the idea that you may get married, I encourage you to begin

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Our Marriage Motto

By Chelsea Stamer / Relationships

I’ll admit it—I’m terrible at choosing favorites. Whenever people ask me questions like, “What’s your favorite movie or song?” I truly cannot offer one answer because I feel like I am leaving too many other good choices out! However, when it comes to my marriage, both Michael and I firmly hold true to one motto: “Love Flourishes in Freedom.” And the second part of our motto, “Control Breeds Contempt,” coincides with the first. This motto helps us keep our marriage balanced, but it also guides us in putting the broken pieces back together after we’ve allowed our messy humanness to get the best of us. We first heard this core relational truth, “love flourishes in freedom and control breeds contempt,” from our premarital counselor, wedding officiator, and Psychology

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Stay Connected With Your Husband

By Katie Zamot / Relationships

“Take it easy luck-luck!” is something my husband said to me about a month into our marriage as I started to lose my cool one afternoon. I had never heard such a weird statement. I honestly have no idea what had me quickly coming unglued, but as the words escaped his mouth I began to laugh. The situation was diffused just like that. That very phrase has been spoken in our home many, many times since that day, usually as a joke. My husband is typically the one saying it to me because, if I can be honest, I struggle in moments of overwhelming chaos (like getting two little ones out the door when we’re already fifteen minutes late). My words can

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