Mom's Time Out

Our blog has moved!

MTO — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:11:57 +0000

Visit us at http://mtoatfifth.wordpress.com/ for our 2013-2014 updates on Mom’s Time Out at Fifth Reformed Church.

Safe Haven training

MTO — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 02:49:46 +0000

Hello all! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter and Spring Break! We’re looking forward to seeing everyone again.

This coming week, we’ll be having a session with Safe Haven, a local ministry for women and children. National statistics show that one in four women (25%) have experienced domestic violence in her lifetime, which means that some or most of us have encountered friends, neighbors, or family members who have experienced abuse. Safe Haven offers confidential emergency shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence; support groups, individual counseling, and advocacy for women and children; and prevention and outreach programs for the entire community. Safe Haven serves about 500 women and children every year. They offer a 3-hour training for individuals who want to be able to recognize abuse and know how best to respond; but we know that with our busy schedules that would be difficult! This is an opportunity to participate in an abbreviated session during Mom’s Time Out for those of us that don’t have the time or childcare to attend a full training session. If you would like to visit the Safe Haven website ahead of Tuesday, visit http://www.safehavenministries.org.

Our snack sign-up for this week is Aubree.

We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday morning!

Blessings,

Alesha, Lindsey & Kathryn

Voices — Soo many voices!

MTO — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 03:08:14 +0000

Voices — Soo many voices!

Roy Clark was incredibly insightful and entertaining this last Tuesday as he discussed marriage. Like all things a marriage relationship must be built upon the rock of a relationship with Christ. We hear the voices of those around us and they drown out the voice of God but also the voice of our spouse. Their needs become lost to us as we muddle through all of our to dos while simultaneously answering to the screams of our children. This must be one of the reasons God commands us “to be still and know that He is God”. As Roy stated we need to determine which of those voices are speaking truth. There were three things Roy said we needed to focus on in our marriage:

Time – How will you recognize the voice of God if you do not know Him. How will you know your spouse and their needs if you do not spend time with them. Where you spend your time is an indication of your values.
Trust – You must build trust in your relationship with God and with your spouse. Trust requires Risk. Trust requires you to be person of integrity. Do what you say you are going to do. Even in the small things
Communication – Talk little and listen more. Sooo many voices… be still and HEAR what is really going on inside the heart and head of your mate.

Books that were suggested during the discussion were:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Families

In closing, I want to encourage you to join us this coming Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at MTO! We are going to offer a small recap of our three incredible speakers and then ask you to offer some of your own ideas to the mix. Also, we have decided to take Roy’s challenge to pray for our spouses with expectation and authority please come prepared to learn how we are going to begin to make this happen. Finally, some of our time on Tuesday will be devoted to sharing ideas on how to discuss Lent or prepare the hearts of our children for Easter.

As Roy reminded us: We are a Remnant. A rare and separate people. Let us continue to grow together as we encourage each other in our faith walk. In our sharing of God’s incredible love for each of us. Lets ignore the voices that tell us we are errors and listen to the voice of our heavenly father who says we “are wonderfully made”.

Coming this Tuesday…

MTO — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 03:52:35 +0000

We fight too —

While I may be leading this coming Tuesday, February 19th, 2013’s discussion on conflict resolution strategies because of a necessary swap in schedule I must first bare myself open and share something I wish I could change or make exceedingly rare but all my wishing hasn’t changed the fact — we fight too.

Not just a little but a lot. Over the sink I had just cleaned which he left dirty after a quick shave. Over the coat he just can’t seem to hang up except in all the wrong places. Over my backseat driving. We fight over what matters and what doesn’t. We fight over who does more for who. And we fight ugly. We fight mean. We fight to win. We don’t lose.

Right now in my house we are learning how to lose. How to let go. How to serve by turning aside. We are learning ever so slowly — I’ll say it again — every so slowly how to model healthy conflict resolution.

On Tuesday we are going to discuss how couples can use Gods view of marriage, the source of conflict, the action of blessing one another and USE it to SOLVE conflict. It is not NORMAL. It is GODLY. It is not EASY but it WILL work. The information we will be reviewing comes from Family Life, iMom, and Ann Voskamp (of course) and it is FILLED to OVERFLOWING with GOD’S WORDS to guide us.

Please come and share life with us as we dive into the ultimate CONFLICT SURVIVAL GUIDE.

Alesha, Kathryn, and Lindsey

MTO — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:57:28 +0000

This past week we were blessed to have the wonderful Marlene Braunius come and speak this past week on “Unglued: Broken to be Whole.” She shared her personal story with us, and gave us some great ideas for working through issues with our children using bibliotherapy.

If you missed this week, you can download the powerpoint presentation that Marlene put together for us here: Bibliotherapy.

Tomorrow, we’ll be welcoming Jon Leegwater, who will be sharing with us some valuable tips on creating and maintaining a balanced household budget! And we all know, that will help our emotional balance as well! Join us as we begin at 9:30.

We also have an exciting announcement for our sessions in the month of February. We decided to change up the previously planned schedule, and instead make February our Focus on Marriage month. It’s great to have sessions about adding romance our marriages and improving communication (don’t we all need the reminder every so often?), but we really wanted to go even deeper in addressing some of the greater issues we may encounter throughout our marriages. The topics we will be tackling are:

February 5: We will begin our Focus on Marriage February by taking a marriage ‘check-up’ (anonymously) so that we can specifically identify what everyone would like to hear addressed by our speakers
February 12: Nance Robson from Psychology Associates will be sharing with us how we can create and maintain emotional balance in our marriages, even through big life changes (including post-partum, hormones, pregnancies, anxiety/depression, and lack of sleep, etc)
February 19: Our speaker will be discussing some of the big things that tear families apart, and how to counteract them in our marriages. Some of those topics will include talking about our kids, work, time together, success, money, bitterness, anger, pornography, jealousy, infidelity, and more.
February 26: Kristin Kuiper from Pine Rest will be discussing with us the hidden things and the roots of what make us angry at our spouses, and then sharing tools we can use to identify how we feel and deal with it in a healthy way.
March 4: The first week in March, we’ll be concluding our marriage month and sum up the previous sessions. We’ll answer questions, share our stories, and hopefully have some great discussions!

We’re very excited about what God will be revealing through these next sessions, and are praying for God to really use these to improve our marriages!