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    Christianity

    Marriage After God

    Marriage After God Podcast | Christian Marriage, Relationship & Parenting Encouragement

    Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast with Aaron and Jennifer Smith — a top-rated Christian marriage podcast offering faith-filled conversations for couples who want to grow together in Christ.

    Whether you’re newlyweds or decades into marriage, this podcast equips you with Biblical advice, practical tips, and inspiring stories to strengthen your relationship and deepen your spiritual connection. Each episode features real, honest discussions on topics like intimacy, communication, parenting, conflict resolution, forgiveness, and pursuing God’s purpose for your family.

    As authors of 11 books and hosts of a thriving Christian community, Aaron and Jennifer bring years of experience, heartfelt testimony, and Biblical truth to every conversation. Listen in for solo episodes, expert interviews, and encouraging messages that will help you build a marriage after God.

    New episodes weekly — now available in video on YouTube and Spotify!

    🔔 Subscribe and join thousands of listeners who are growing in faith, friendship, and purpose — together.

    Topics We Cover:

    Christian marriage advice
    Godly communication in marriage
    Biblical intimacy and sex
    Parenting and family discipleship
    Spiritual growth as a couple
    Testimonies of redemption and healing

    Perfect for: Christian couples, parents, engaged and married believers, and anyone pursuing a Christ-centered relationship.

    👉 Visit MarriageAfterGod.com to find devotionals, books, and free resources.

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    Copyright: © 2023 Smith Family Resources, Inc & MarriageAfterGod.com

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    Latest Episodes:
    Our Salvation Stories Jun 08, 2020
    Show notes

    In this episode, we share how we both came to know and walk with the Lord!

    In this episode, we share how we both came to know and walk with the Lord!

    Connect With Us

    • Instagram | @marriageaftergod
    • Instagram | @unveiledwife
    • Instagram | @husbandrevolution
    • Check out our marriage resources!

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    Get our new book The Marriage Gift - 365 prayers for your marriage!


    How We Walk Through Trials and Hardships in Marriage Jun 01, 2020
    Show notes

    The world as a whole seems to be experiencing crises. In the last five months, we have seen headline after headline in the news and on social media. There is so much hardship, pain, death, loss, uncertainty, fear, chaos, and unrest. In addition to it all The world as a whole seems to be experiencing crises. In the last five months, we have seen headline after headline in the news and on social media. There is so much hardship, pain, death, loss, uncertainty, fear, chaos, and unrest.In addition to it all, there are countless more trials, hardships, and painful circumstances that didn’t make headlines. We are all hoping for peace. We are all wondering how to walk out these things, especially together in marriage.Whether you are currently facing hardship or if those times are ahead to come, we want to encourage you to walk through them in your marriage together, supporting each other and looking to God's Word to guide you.https://marriageaftergod.comREAD TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with Marriage After God.- [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.- [Aaron] And today we're gonna share how we walk through trials and hardships. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- [Jennifer] We have been married for over 13 years.- [Aaron] And so far we have five children under eight.- [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over nine years through blogging, social media and writing over 10 books.- [Aaron] With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life,- [Aaron] Love,- [Jennifer] And power- [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.- [Jennifer] Together.- [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.- [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God.- [Aaron] Hey everyone, thank you for coming back to the Marriage After God podcast, this is Episode two of season four. We missed a week, that's okay. We, sometimes things happen. And that's kind of what this episode's about. But before we get into the topic, we just wanna invite you if you have not already, join the thousands of marriages that have taken the marriage prayer challenge. It's a completely free resource that Jennifer and I have created for you. And all you gotta do is go to marriageprayerchallenge.com all one word. And just fill out the form and boom we'll start sending you every day for 31 days, a prayer prompt and a reminder to be praying for your spouse. And we literally just wanted to offer this to you to encourage your prayer life that you guys are praying for each other daily. And we hope it inspires a ongoing prayer life even after the 31 days. So that's marriageprayerchallenge.com, it's completely free. Go check it out today.- [Jennifer] Alright, so hi, everyone, Jen here . Thanks, Aaron for that awesome intro and reminder to do the marriage prayer challenge. I hope you guys do that. So today's topic is about walking through hardship and trials and, you know, I just wanted to start out by recognizing and acknowledging that the world as a whole right now, seems to be experiencing crisis after crisis. I mean, 2020 has been a little crazy.- [Aaron] Yeah, we're not even like halfway through the year, right?- [Jennifer] Oh, man.- [Aaron] And it's felt--- [Jennifer] Five months, five in five months, we've seen headline after headline for I mean, disaster after disaster. We have had massive fires, locust invasions wreaking havoc, the whole COVID-19 thing and the lockdown and that, you know, causing the market crash.- [Aaron] Yeah financial crisis- [Jennifer] Yeah.- [Aaron] The highest unemployment rate in history.- [Jennifer] Crazy, injustices that just break our hearts and I mean, just seeing things online and social media and the division between people over all kinds of different things, all kinds of different opinions.- [Aaron] I'll say this, the internet used to be fun and funny, it's mostly dreary now. Which you look at it, and, yeah I'm sure we have our connections with our friends and family but, man this world is, it's chaos.- [Jennifer] I'll say this. I don't think we're the only ones who have thought recently, I just wanna unplug and go, you know,- [Aaron] Yeah.- [Jennifer] I just wanna go--- [Aaron] Where can I go,- [Jennifer] for a hike. I just wanna go fishing.- [Aaron] Where no one else's- [Jennifer] Yeah.- [Aaron] Yeah- [Jennifer] But you know what? I think that when we experience times like these, it's so important to just stop and acknowledge it and say, "Okay Lord, what do we need here?" And so Aaron and I were just, you know, thinking about this topic today, and we're like, "We're not the only ones experiencing this, "everybody's experiencing this." On a grand scale right now and it just feels chaotic. And so we wanted to speak to this right now. And that's, like I said, on a grand scale, but that's not even including all the crisis's that have arose that didn't make the headlines. Things like people facing hardships in their health, in personal relationships and losing their job or experiencing anxiety.- [Aaron] Or depression or worse. Cause there's so much stuff going that no one knows about. Because there's too many of them to make deadlines.- [Jennifer] Yeah. So when we, you know, when we talk about hardships and trials, let's be reminded that it says this in John 16:33, "I have said these things to you "that in me You may have peace. "In the world you will have tribulation, "but take heart I have overcome the world."- [Aaron] Is that saying might have tribulation like maybe some people will have tribulation? Or we'll.- [Jennifer] We'll.- [Aaron] Have tribulation,- [Jennifer] We will.- [Aaron] And this is Jesus speaking to his disciples, and he's reminding them he's like you're going to have tribulation, on varying degrees, varying levels. So everyone's got things that they're going through and will go through. You can be in the bed, we talk about this often in our book, just the seasons of life, which are a beautiful thing when you look at just nature, which by the way, nature reveals the invisible attributes of God. You see seasons, you see cold, you see hot, you see rain, you see harvest, you see all these things and they show the different aspects of our ecosystems and how things work but they represent spiritual things too. They represent things that go in our life so you could be in a really great season and then you can go through a really hard season and then you can go through a cold season of like, you know, just questions and wondering, and then you can go through a season of just harvest and plenty, that's what seasons are for. Unless you live in California and there's only one season. I'm just joking.- [Jennifer] Even California has its seasons.- [Aaron] Yes. But we will have tribulation, but Jesus encourages us in His Word He says, "Take heart, I have overcome the world." And what's awesome is just real quick thinking about this. Being in Christ is our shelter, just like Noah and his family were in the ark. While there was turbulence and casting judgment and just the flood was happening. They were in the ark. And I just, this is our main encouragement is, for this episode is, we are in Christ for all those who name the name of Christ, who have their hope and trust in him, no matter how chaotic it gets, we're in him and he calms to the storm, so.- [Jennifer] I thank God for that hope. Like I could not imagine surviving this world without having that, you know, as an anchor. Okay, so we just wanted to give you guys some encouragement, some inspiration, something to help you as a married couple, survive, walk through, encourage each other through--- [Aaron] Thriving maybe.- [Jennifer] Yeah, maybe even thrive through hardship and trial.- [Aaron] Yeah. So, on a personal note, we've been walking through some trials recently. I mean, we've gone through various trials in our life, but currently going through some pretty hard things.- [Jennifer] Things that, you know, have had a kind of heavy filling over our marriage, our daily life, our ministry, and, you know, we've felt tested, you know, through it.- [Aaron] Being tested, yeah.- [Jennifer] being tested through it, refined through it.- [Aaron] Challenged- [Jennifer] Yeah, humbled.- [Aaron] That's a good one. That's probably the biggest one is we're being humbled in this trial, reminding us how little we actually have control over in our life.- [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll say this, when you experience hardship face-to-face like that, you go through the motions, you have emotion, right, like,- [Aaron] You mentioned something about like the seven stages of grief.- [Jennifer] When we were talking before,- [Aaron] I don't know what those exactly are, but it felt like that we were going through like boldness and then like weakness, and then fear and then like anger and then like,- [Jennifer] Frustration and then sadness, and it's like all of it.- [Aaron] Confusion and then silence and then like we've been going through all of them, as a couple and those are normal things, But, our point in this episode today is, there is something that we as believers get to hold on to because that, even everything I just said, feels like it's like a whip, like back and forth,- [Jennifer] Back and forth, back and forth,- [Aaron] Back and forth up and down, like the waves of the ocean being tossed by the wind. But as believers, those things may happen, and naturally in our flesh, we might want to be tossed around like that, it might be the easiest solution because it just happens. But is there something for us to grasp onto? Or is that just the fate of a believer when they go through trials? And that's what I wanna, I think we should dig into.- [Jennifer] Yeah, totally. And we're just sharing that with you guys, because we felt like if we're facing something like this, it's totally possible and probably--- [Aaron] Likely.- [Jennifer] Likely that you are facing hardship in your marriage, in your life, in your family., so we just wanted to talk about this today and remind ourselves of some really important truths that God has laid out in his word for us. So yeah. Maybe we should get started with, when hardships come, first of all, we know they're hardships, right? Like, they suck. Nobody likes them. But how should we respond, Aaron?- [Aaron] Yeah, I think as believers, first of all, we have something to respond with, and we have someone to respond with, which is really awesome. So just encouraging that, we have a Savior, we have a God who loves us and knows us and actually isn't surprised by the things we're going through. So just first and foremost, knowing that is amazing.- [Jennifer] I'll say this personally. I think that the flesh is quicker to respond, you know, the flesh flares up really quick and you just want to respond in that,- [Aaron] It reacts.- [Jennifer] And reacts, so if you're not abiding in Christ, and you're not familiar with God's word, that flesh is gonna take- [Aaron] It's gonna react- [Jennifer] The lead, right?- [Aaron] Yeah, I would imagine just naturally if you think about, like, if someone turns a flashlight on quickly in your eyes, like you close your eyes, your eyes dilate naturally, you have no control over it, boom, it does what it's supposed to do. And so in our flesh, we do have natural fleshly responses, naturally, you know, you step into something cold, you feel the cold and your body responds to it. You get pinched, you feel the pain, your body responds to it. But what's amazing about knowing the Lord is He's given us of His Holy Spirit. And it allows us, you know, as the old Switchfoot song goes, "A new way to be human." we have a new way to respond in the flesh. And so we may react, like the reaction might happen, but then we can respond in to that reaction, and to the circumstance that's causing the reaction differently, then people that don't have the hope of Christ, people that don't have the word of God. But that right there is the walk that we get to take, the race that we get to run, is that natural, spirit and flesh, you know, convergence in our life. So I don't wanna condemn anyone. for responding, I should say reacting in the flesh to these hardships because we've been doing that. But the encouragement is, with the Spirit of God as it tells us in 2 Peter 1:3, "We've been given all things that pertain to life "and godliness in Christ Jesus, our Lord." So we get something, we have something else. We don't just have the flesh to respond, and we have the Spirit of God, that we can ask to animate our reactions, to change our reactions, to show us how to repent of our reactions, if necessary.- [Jennifer] So that's the key right there, as you said, ask God and so I guess the first response should be prayer, like before you even consider what the hardship is or what the solution is or how to resolve, we have to go to the Lord and say, "God, why is this happening? "What do you want me to learn from it?"- [Aaron] No, my way of responding is I'm gonna figure out the answer today, and like, we're gonna solve it right now--- [Jennifer] Mr. Fix it, no. I think that it's so important to pray, you know, when we're going through this recent trial, our seven year old son said, he overheard us talking and he goes, "Hey guys, I think that you just need to pray."- [Aaron] So pretty much every time he's seen us discussing and where we're at, and he can tell that there's just hardness going on. He doesn't really know what's going on, but he would say things like, "Hey, make sure you pray before and after." He's like, "Oh, we need to pray." stop and pray.- [Jennifer] Actually, he told me to pray before and after, because God is the Alpha and Omega. I thought that was really--- [Aaron] Oh, he did say that.- [Jennifer] Yeah, I thought that was really clever, or cool.- [Aaron] Yeah, like pray in the beginning, bring God in the beginning and bring God into the after and bring God into the middle.- [Jennifer] So, you know, we mentioned the marriage prayer challenge, and that all is about prayer. And I just wanna remind you guys like it is so important that we're praying together not just for our marriage and for each other in marriage, but we gotta be praying together. I think that has been such a powerful thing that has helped us survive and walk through hardship in our life.- [Aaron] Well, because it's us petitioning our Father in heaven saying, "Hey, help us. "We don't know, we're confused. "I wanna be this way, I wanna act this way." And we ask God not just to take it away we ask for Him to take these things away.- [Jennifer] But also for the wisdom to go through it.- [Aaron] Yeah, and how do we go through this? And will you make us stronger in this?- [Jennifer] So let's read some verses. Romans 12:12 says, "Rejoice in hope, "be patient in tribulation, "be constant in prayer." And I love that reminder of just like, bam, bam, bam, this is what you do.…

    Full show notes at the publisher

    Our First Home Birth During A Global Pandemic?? The Story May 18, 2020
    Show notes

    We start season 4 off by sharing the story of our first home birth. We start season 4 off by sharing the story of our first home birth.READ TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.[Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.[Aaron] And today we're gonna share our first home birth story. Welcome to the marriage after God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.[Jennifer] I am Jennifer, also known as unveiled wife.[Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as husband evolution.[Jennifer] We have been married for over 13 years.[Aaron] And so far we have five children under eight.[Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over nine years through blogging, social media and writing over 10 books.[Aaron] With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.[Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life...[Aaron] Love.[Jennifer] And power-[Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.[Jennifer] Together.[Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.[Jennifer] This is marriage after God.[Aaron] Hey everyone, welcome back to Marriage After God.[Jennifer] Season four.[Aaron] We're on season four. Yeah, this is crazy.[Jennifer] Awesome.[Aaron] We've had a lot of episodes, but we're back for season four. So if you're tuning in, welcome. If this is your first time, we're so glad that you're here. Listening to the Marriage After God podcasts. We pray that it's an encouragement to you and a blessing, but if you've been listening for a long time, welcome back. We're so excited to have you here.[Jennifer] Hi everyone.[Aaron] Yeah, and we're recording this in our garage as usual and it's still locked down season. And I know that a little interesting for everyone. It's interesting for us. Jennifer, have you had any thoughts about the season we're in with lockdown COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented times.[Jennifer] Yeah, I mean, I've had some thoughts about it. I think what's been really a blessing is that we've been in postpartum season, so we had our baby and so we would have been kind of having a low key life anyways right now. Just with me resting, nursing is always usually an issue with our kids. Baby Edith had a tongue tie like several other of our children. And so the first couple of weeks was just basically me and her figuring that out. And so-[Aaron] I do feel like though we started self quarantine earlier because we were leading up to having the baby and then all of this stuff happened right around the same time as having the baby.[Jennifer] Yeah. I would say this we had a really good distraction from what was happening in the world. And so now we're kind of like coming up out of that we just hit the six week mark after having the baby. And I think the most important thing has been for me has been to communicate with you in navigating this pandemic and what the world looks like these days. And it gives me peace, being able to talk to you. It gives me a bit of relief and just knowing that I can share my thoughts, my concerns, whatever that I'm going through with you. What would you say?[Aaron] Well, same. We've been having a lot of conversations about it. We've also had a lovely conversation with our kids. It's kind of hard to like hide it from them cause why can't we hang out with our friends? Why can't we go out? And we're like, "Well, there's a lot of things going on the world." which is going on.[Jennifer] And as an encouragement to parents, I think it's so important that we really understand that our kids lean on us for security and support, especially in times like these. So when they have these big questions, we should be answering them. If they see us being able to have peace and hope and joy amidst the chaos it will give them guidance on how they can respond in times like these. if they sense in us fear and anxiety over the situation, then that could also influence them. So I think as parents, I think it's really cool to see that God has given us an opportunity with our kids to help them navigate this whole thing. And I think it's good for us to engage in conversation with them. It doesn't mean we have to explain everything, especially we can keep it age appropriate. But just being able to willing to have conversations with them.[Aaron] Well, and also being honest with them and letting them know that sometimes we don't have the answers. Like we don't know the appropriate way to respond to all this. We don't know exactly how this is going to turn out. We don't know... Like we just, there's a lot of answers we don't have.[Jennifer] And then we tell them, but our trust and our hope is in God. And so it's another opportunity to point them back to God and encourage their hearts to be able to trust God and I don't know, just to be able to move forward still in life and know that he has us.[Aaron] Yeah, and it's also been good to, I feel like in America we have a lot of comforts and this has shown us how dependent we might be on some comforts. And also brought us to a point that one of the other benefits to this is reminding us of our need for Christ, our need for his peace, his satisfaction, being satisfied in him alone. So one thing we've been trying to encourage our children, whether we catch it or not, whether we are always healthy, we don't know how this is going to turn out. We encourage them to know that God is good. God has us, he knows his plans for us and that we can't control all of those things, but what we can do is look to God who's in control.[Jennifer] Yeah, Aaron, you brought up comforts and especially living here in America. However this whole thing has also allowed us to see how people might be struggling. So you use the word comfort, but I also want to just mention that there's a lot people who've been greatly impacted by this whole thing in a negative way in a lot of different ways. So, I dunno if you want to speak to that.[Aaron] Well, yeah, we know that there's millions and millions of people that have lost their jobs. Some might not get them back. And so our hearts break for that situation. And we know that there's people that are sick. We know that there's people that are, that have other issues going on, that are not COVID-19 related and are having a hard time dealing with that. There's mental issues, there's abuse, there's a lot of things going on in this world that are being exasperated by this situation. And so-[Jennifer] As Christians, I think that we need to remember all of that especially if maybe we're in a different situation, but no matter what our hearts should be to be in prayer for everyone who's been impacted by it.[Aaron] And also been asking the Lord how we can be used.[Jennifer] Yeah, cause we're his body.[Aaron] We might know someone that needs some love, some reaching out, some help. And so we should be aware of that and ready for that. And we should be praying for each other. Praying for those that are going through hard situations and our prayers should not just be, "God, make their situation better."[Jennifer] Or even, "God let us go just back to normal."[Aaron] Right, because that's a thing that I have is like, "Hey, can we just go back to normal?" Our kids keep praying like God make this go away. They miss normalcy. But our prayer should be that hearts are softened. Hearts are turned towards the Lord, that people are brought back to the Lord, that people that don't know the Lord and find him, that families are healed and mended, that like these deeper things. That even if the body is broken, the spirit can be made whole. And so, yes, we should be praying for healing. Yes, it's good to pray for being taken care of financially and being taken care of in these ways. But right now, this is the time when man, the spirit of God catches hold of people. And so we should be praying that hearts are ready to receive. Hearts are open to hear the word of God are being watered and seeds are being planted. And that's, I mean, I don't know, more than anything. I want people to be saved in this time for eternity, not just for the season. So do you have any last thoughts on, I mean there's gonna be lots of thoughts.[Jennifer] I know we could probably do a whole episode on it. Two things. The first thing I was just thinking, if people are listening to this episode in the future. So like going-Yeah, after the-[Jennifer] After the fact, after all this has kind of settled down a bit. I just wonder what their thoughts would be just being reminded of this time. And then my other thought was just an encouragement and it's just for husbands and wives, it's an encouragement to be communicating with each other because no matter what your situation looks like right now you have someone right next to you who's going through it with you. And sometimes, I don't know those listening are like me, but sometimes I get caught up in my head where I'm having conversations in my head, even with you Aaron, and I'm like answering for you. But, then I realized I haven't actually talked to you in a couple of days about how I'm feeling or about what I'm thinking. So my encouragement is, especially in times like these that we are open and transparent and vulnerable specifically with each other.[Aaron] Yeah, I was also thinking, we are friends and families. Not being afraid to just come straight out and say, "Hey, how are you dealing with all this? "Hey, how's your heart? "Are you going through any sort of depression? "Is there any fears that you're like-[Jennifer] Yeah, are you okey?[Aaron] "that are just getting inside your heart." And just asking so that they can be maybe brought out of that darkness, maybe brought out of their shell and not be afraid to ask those questions. Cause I would imagine there's a lot of people dealing with hidden fears and anxieties right now.[Jennifer] And it's okay if you don't know how to answer them. It's okay if the greatest thing you can even say is I'm going to be praying for you or just stop and pray for them right then and there. But I think it was important that we just spend a little bit of time on that since this is such a huge thing going on in our lives right now. And our hearts go out to everyone. And we know this is just crazy, but God is good, like you said.[Aaron] And God's not surprised by any of this stuff. I just wanted to bring up a verse. James 1:12 says, Blessed is the the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Over and over again the New Testament speaks of steadfastness and continuing on and standing strong and standing firm. And I just want to encourage everyone, you believers out there, that we need to stand strong in the word of God and we need to remember who's got us, whose hand upholds us, who guides our steps and makes our paths and brings light into our life and it's God. And so we need to put our strength, our hope and strengths in him because they're not, and our hopes are not in the government. They're not in a vaccine, they're not in treatments, they're not in the, it just going away or those things are going to come and things happen, but we can't control any of this stuff. We just can't. And if we put our hope in those things that our hope is gonna fail. So let's put our hope in the only thing that's consistent, the only one that is a firm foundation and it's God and his word. And let's look to him for wisdom and guidance on how as believers we are to approach this thing that was going on. Cause he's the only, James also says, "If you lack wisdom, ask. "And we will be given wisdom as long as we do not doubt." And so let's ask him for wisdom. I need wisdom. We've been talking a lot about this man. Like how do we deal with all of these things? And we're definitely don't deal with it in fear, but we don't deal with it on our own strengths, our own wisdom. We lean not on our own understanding, but on every word, on God's wisdom. So that's what I just want to encourage everyone with is remain steadfast in these trials. And let's look to God for answers and our hope and for our courage and our wisdom.[Jennifer] And our peace.[Aaron] Oh, most importantly, our peace. So, that was just a bit of a encouraging word for everyone. We need it ourselves. I mean, he reminded ourselves, but I just want to invite everyone to, if you have children or if you're thinking about having children or if you're pregnant, we have something that we've created for you. It's a free resource and it's called the parenting prayer challenge. You can go to parentingprayerchallenge.com all one word and it's completely free to sign up and we will send you over the next 31 days, email with something to pray for and a reminder to pray for it. And it's pretty awesome. We've had almost a thousand people sign up for it and we would love for you to take advantage of it. We created it just for you. And man, it's an awesome thing and it reminds us as parents to pray for our children and there's awesome prompts in there to pray for all these different areas of your child's life. So yeah, we just, it's parentingprayerchallenge.com it's totally free and become part of the people that are going through that challenge.[Jennifer] All right, so today's topic is our first home birth story. No, it's not our first birth story. Obviously if you've followed us for any amount of time, this was baby number five. And, it's just kind of an interesting story and we're excited to share it with you guys.[Aaron] What's more interesting is that we actually fit every one of our kids and us inside of our explorer.[Jennifer] It's tightly, but it's good.[Aaron] It's tight. But that was just a fun little adventure that we figured out.[Jennifer] Aaron was surprised by that.[Aaron] I was a little surprised. They would fit without car seats. But the trick is as we have five car seats. We have actually we have-Four cars seats.[Aaron] four cars and two boosters or is it three car seats, two boosters.[Jennifer] Right.[Aaron] And just the way it's all arranged, we barely fit. It will be a lot better when some of them are out of their boosters. That'll make a big difference, but-[Jennifer] That's okay. Thanks for sharing. so the first four births were done in the hospital and we were happy with those experiences and we had the same, what's it called? It's not a goal. Same birth plan.[Aaron] Our plan was, we'd love to having children in the hospital, actually really love our local hospital here.[Jennifer] And food is so good.[Aaron] The rooms are just really nice and quite.[Jennifer] The people are so nice.[Aaron] It's been good. So we're not opposed to hospital births by any means.[Jennifer] No, we had that plan held in our hands. My whole pregnancy really, and the word changed that at the finish line.[Aaron] Pretty much, yeah.[Jennifer] And so it was our first home birth and I got gotta be honest, I was nervous. Even in the past I've been nervous to even consider a home birth, even though…

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    How To Communicate Better In Marriage - Biblical Answers To Your Questions Mar 23, 2020
    Show notes

    This Q and A topic is all about communication in marriage. Which we mention often in almost every episode because it is such a vital component of marriage. You have to talk to each other! We answer several questions that were submitted by our listeners. P This Q and A topic is all about communication in marriage. Which we mention often in almost every episode because it is such a vital component of marriage. You have to talk to each other! We answer several questions that were submitted by our listeners. Please enjoy.Read Transcript[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.[Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.[Aaron] And today we're gonna answer your questions about communication in marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.[Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.[Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.[Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.[Aaron] And so far we have four young children.[Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.[Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.[Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life.[Aaron] Love.[Jennifer] And power.[Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.[Jennifer] Together.[Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.[Jennifer] This is Marriage After God.[Aaron] Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. It's actually the last episode of season three. So if you've been following along, we're gonna be taking a break, we're about to have a baby. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, you know that. And so, we're gonna have a little break. And then we're gonna come back in another season, in season four. We don't have a date for that yet, which is fine.[Jennifer] We'll let you guys know on social media.[Aaron] Yeah. And then, we'll do some new episodes. And so, just as a side note, if you have topic ideas for the new season, go ahead and shoot those in a message to us on Instagram at @marriageaftergod. But, today we're gonna be answering some questions from the audience, but before we get to the questions we like to talk about some things in life, but really, this first thing I wanna talk about is, I wanna encourage everyone listening today, because I know that there's a lot of fears, there's a lot of anxiety going around with the coronavirus, with things that are happening in the world, and I think some of them are legitimate things to be thinking about and considering. We wanna be wise people, that's what the Bible talks about. We don't wanna just pretend that none of this stuff's gonna affect us. But, my encouragement is to remind everyone listening that our trust is not in this world. Our trust is not in the vaccine that they might come out with. Our trust is not in the government. Our trust is not in the healthcare system. Our trust is not even our bodies.[Jennifer] Or money.[Aaron] Or money. The Bible is very clear where are trust lies, and that when we trust in anything other than God, other than His son Jesus, that trust is faulty, that hope is false, and we're actually insecure in those hopes. So I just wanted to point our hearts and our minds back to the Giver of Life. To the One that we look forward to, the One where our hope should lie, which is in Jesus Christ. Guys, one day we're gonna be with Him forever, and we're gonna have new bodies, we're gonna be healthy, He's gonna make the world right. All these things that are in the world, the destruction, the death, the injustices, the sickness, the pestilence, all those things are going to be made right. And so, once this thing passes, and whatever the damage is going to be, we don't know. But there's always gonna be something else. That's why our eyes need to be on Christ. And so I just hope that if you're having anxieties about this, the Bible tells us how to deal with our anxieties, it's to lift up our request to the Lord with thanksgiving, and to pray to Him. And He says He'll give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. And what I love about that is that our peace in God is completely standalone from everything in our life. That it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, it doesn't matter what's going on in our life, it doesn't matter about our circumstances. You could be like Paul, in prison and be praising God. You can be like Peter in prison, writing letters to the church. You could be in the midst of whatever it is that this world and that the enemy, or whatever it is, wants to throw at you, and you can have complete and perfect peace in Jesus. And so, I just wanted to quickly encourage everyone with that.[Jennifer] No, it was really good. I think that there is just a lot of attention specifically on the coronavirus. What I would say is, it is important to pay attention to what's going on in the world, current events and things like that, but--[Aaron] Wisdom is good.[Jennifer] When we get those thoughts of fear, or anxiety, or frustration even, we need to remember that even in those times we need to submit those feelings to the Lord, and ask Him to guide us, to lead us, to give us wisdom on how to approach the situation and deal with it. And then remember that our bodies are gonna fail us. Our bodies are gonna get sick. There's gonna be, if it's not this thing, it's another thing, and so we just need to be able to trust the Lord that He knows what's gonna happen to us. He knows everything.[Aaron] He's knows all, He's omniscient.[Jennifer] So we can trust that.[Aaron] We can totally trust Him. And again, this isn't to say do not be wise, like we be wise, if we can make that take measures we do, but we have to remember that we could take every perfect measure, we could take every precaution, we can totally stock up what on whatever, just imagine it, whatever you think you could do to prepare, and your trust in that would still be faulty. Because none of that is actually secure. So, our trust is only good when it's in Christ. So, be prepared to the level that you can, and let the Lord have your fears and rest in Him. That's our encouragement.[Jennifer] Another thing that we wanted to share with you guys is just how incredibly blessed we feel for our relationship with Hobby Lobby. And, I don't know if you guys all know but they carry our books.[Aaron] Which was a total God thing, because there was no way that we were connected with them. I wasn't reaching out.We didn't reach out to them. They actually reached out to us and asked if they could carry our books, and I think it's so awesome. It's one of the cheapest places you can get our books.[Aaron] The cheapest place.[Jennifer] And, who doesn't love Hobby Lobby? I mean, just to be able to go there and peruse, and look at everything.[Aaron] People who've never been to one.[Jennifer] Well, if you haven't been to one, you should go check one out. I'm sure there's one near you.If you're near one, yeah.[Jennifer] But I just wanted to first give a shout out to Hobby Lobby and say thank you. Thank you for being someone who advocates for books like ours, and resources that point people back to God. And I also just wanna thank everyone who has been picking them up and buying them from Hobby Lobby, 'cause that keeps our relationship with them good.[Aaron] That reminds me, I love when people go into Hobby Lobby and they take a picture. And they #hobbylobbyfinds. So if you ever do that, we love to re-share those. So if you are in a Hobby Lobby and you pick up a copy of our books, please take a picture of it, and we'll probably re-share it on our Instagram.[Jennifer] Just make sure you tag us @marriageaftergod so that we see it.[Aaron] Exactly, 'cause if you don't tag us, we don't know. But yeah, so that's just a couple of things, just encouragement on the chaos in the world that had our peace. And then just, we're incredibly blessed and honored by Hobby Lobby and their partnership with us. That, to be honest, I don't think we deserve. I don't think we've, it's a God thing, that He set this up and we just wanna give Him the glory for that.[Jennifer] And if you're like me and you have been wanting to order our books, and you want it today, you can go pick one up today. You don't have to order it online and then wait for it.They have them in stock. And they're in every Hobby Lobby, which is amazing. So, it doesn't matter which one, unless they're out of stock. But they carry them everywhere.[Jennifer] Once I know what I want, it's so hard to wait when I do online shopping and stuff. I just wanna go get everything.[Aaron] But now Amazon has one day shipping, which is crazy.[Jennifer] I don't know how they do it.[Aaron] I don't either. But it gets here. Okay, so, one last thing, we have a another prayer challenge. I don't know if you've taken the marriage prayer challenge yet. Over 50,000 people have taken the marriage prayer challenge, which is incredible. So, we have this new challenge called the parenting prayer challenge, and it's a prayer challenge for you to pray for your son or your daughter, or both.Or all of them.Or all of them.Depending on how many kids you have.Yeah, all your kids. And it's completely free. Just got to parentingprayerchallenge.com and fill out the form and choose who you wanna pray for, and we'll start sending emails every day.[Jennifer] You guys might be wondering how it's set up because, obviously, they're not individualized prayers for you and your child, but they're prompts. So, it'll suggest pray for this specific thing, and then, as you're praying, you're making it personal because you know your family best.[Aaron] And it's a scheduled daily reminder. So you get this email, it says hey, you're gonna pray for your son right now, and here's what you should pray for. And it's not to replace your prayer life, it's to encourage it, inspire it, and give you a new outlook on your prayer life, and maybe expand upon it. One more time, it's parentingprayerchallenge.com to go sign up for the parenting prayer challenge.[Jennifer] All right so, this last episode of the season is a Q&A. We polled the community, the Marriage After God community, and Unveiled Wife and Husband Revolution, and we asked you guys to submit your questions, specifically about communication in marriage. And so, first of all, we just wanna thank everyone who sent us your questions. It's been cool to be able to poll the questions from the audience from Instagram, from you guys, and to answer them here. It makes me feel more connected and I love it.[Aaron] They often ask things that I'm not even thinking about. I'm like oh, that's a good question. So, it's really fun that we ask you guys. It also makes us feel like we're connected with you on another level. So, if you follow us on Instagram, that's usually where we poll our audience. You could follow @marriageaftergod, or @unveiledwife, or @husbandrevolution. We're gonna be doing Q&A's often, so if you see us pop a question and ask you to give us your questions, just submit them there, and we store them and we pick from them, and we try and answer them on here.[Jennifer] Yeah, and just let you guys know because of timing, we don't always get through every question, and so if you're listening and you're like, "I know I submitted a question "for communication in marriage," and we didn't answer it, please reach back out to us and just let us know, and maybe we can just answer it on Instagram for you.[Aaron] Or on the next time.[Jennifer] Or on the next Q&A.[Aaron] Cool. So, before we jump into the questions, why don't we just talk about some of the scriptures that, when I think about communication, these scriptures aren't just, they're not necessarily communication between a spouse. But it's--[Jennifer] With each other.[Aaron] Yeah, it's with [Both] people. With one anothers in the church.[Jennifer] Very applicable to marriage.[Aaron] So I'm just gonna read through a handful of scriptures.[Jennifer] I'll read the first one 'cause it's shorter. You read the second one.[Aaron] All right.[Jennifer] Psalm 141:3 says, "Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; "keep watch over the door of my lips."[Aaron] Yeah, and I pulled some of these scriptures to just show what a biblical perspective over our mouth is. And the things that we say. In Matthew 12:33 Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and He says this, "Either make a tree good and its fruit good, "or make a tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit."[Jennifer] Like we know a peach tree is a peach tree because it has peaches.[Aaron] Or it's one of those fruit salad trees.[Jennifer] Well, that would be confusing.[Aaron] Which totally ruins the analogy. But anyways, "You brood of Vipers, "how can you speak good when you are evil? "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. "The good person out of his good treasure "brings forth good, and the evil person of the evil treasure "brings forth evil. "I tell you, on the day of judgment, "people will give account "for every careless word they speak. "For by your words you will be justified, "and by your words you will be condemned."[Jennifer] So what you're saying is words are powerful?[Aaron] They matter, yeah. We need to know that, we can't, like this specifically, and we just talked about this, actually, the other day, we say something and then we say I'm just venting, or I'm just kidding. But in reality if, it's coming from somewhere, those words that we just conjured up out of our mouth. They came from somewhere, and so we need to be careful and aware, like wait, so I said this thing and I wanted to make it sound like it wasn't that bog of a deal, but why did I say that? Why did I say that about so and so?[Jennifer] If someone has self control of their tongue, and they think, they're about to say something, but they decide not to, which is good, I would say they still need to evaluate their heart and question why was that even on the tip of my tongue?[Aaron] Why did it come out so quickly? And often, I would imagine this is about people in our life, and then if we say something so quickly, even if it's to someone in confidence, and we think, wait, am I actually angry at this person, or am I actually annoyed by this person, or bothered, or judgmental or whatever? And we have to think about that 'cause sometimes that comes out of our mouth and it's not from a pure heart.[Jennifer] And I'll say this, words cut deep, and when, especially in marriage, you see that person, you just see their face and you're reminded of what they've said, either recently or years ago. And you can hear them saying it in your mind, over and over again. And so, I think we just need to be reminded that we have a huge responsibility with our words.[Aaron] The next verse is from James, but there's another verse in James that we didn't write down here, that talks about having control…

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    What Does Moses and The Burning Bush Have To Do With The Gospel? Mar 16, 2020
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    We are hosting a giveaway at the beginning of this episode!!! Listen to find out how to enter :) FREE DOWNLOAD: datenightideas.com In this episode, we have a fun conversation about the experience Moses had with the Lord and the burning bush. Reading the

    We are hosting a giveaway at the beginning of this episode!!! Listen to find out how to enter :)

    FREE DOWNLOAD: datenightideas.com

    In this episode, we have a fun conversation about the experience Moses had with the Lord and the burning bush. Reading the Old Testament and the many miraculous things God has done over history is a powerful way to see who God is and His plan for redemption even from the beginning.

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    Our Favorite Non-Toxic Products Mar 09, 2020
    Show notes

    Our physical health and learning how to take care of our bodies have played a large role in our growth of the years. In the beginning of our marriage, we dealt with sexual issues and after 4 and a half years living with those problems we finally discovere Our physical health and learning how to take care of our bodies have played a large role in our growth of the years. In the beginning of our marriage, we dealt with sexual issues and after 4 and a half years living with those problems we finally discovered what we believe was a major contributor to those problems. We began replacing our toxic products with non-toxic products and almost immediately found healing in the area of intimacy. We have had many people over the years ask what kinds of products we use now and so in this episode we share a little of our journey and the products we like to use. Pleas enjoy!PRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for our bodies. We pray we would be good stewards of our bodies and consider all that goes on them and in them. We pray we would be willing to take the time and research the items we use on a daily basis, using things that help us and not hurt us. Lord, we ask that you would give us wisdom as we navigate living a healthy lifestyle. Help us to make good choices and be on the same page in marriage so that we can enjoy the benefits of living toxic-free. Please help us not to be overwhelmed by the process of learning, but rather, help us to be humble and willing to learn so that we can choose what is healthy for us and be advocates of healthy living for the sake of others. We pray living healthy would not become an idol in our lives and would not hinder any of our relationships. May we be people who don't just consume, but who are about our bodies and take care of them.In Jesus’ name, Amen!Some things mention this episode.http://Parentingprayerchallenge.comhttps://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/the-unveiled-wife-embracing-intimacy-with-god-and-your-husband-by-jennifer-smithhttps://ENG.orghttps://unveiledwife.com/oils/https://norwex.bizDr. Bronner’s - https://amzn.to/2vRCQ91https://www.bendsoap.com/Native Deodorant - https://amzn.to/2VXpWkzBert's Bees - https://amzn.to/3cPJkpNBurt's Bees 100% Natural Moisturizing Lipstick - https://amzn.to/3aKRNs7Ancient Minerals Magnesium Lotion - https://amzn.to/2TQu6YTREAD TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.[Jennifer] Helpin' you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.[Aaron] And today, we're gonna share with you our favorite non-toxic products. Welcome to the Marriage After God Podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.[Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as, Unveiled Wife.[Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as, Husband Revolution.[Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.[Aaron] And so far, we have four young children.[Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.[Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage. Encouraging them to walk in faith every day.[Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one. Full of life--[Aaron] Love.[Jennifer] and power,[Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.[Jennifer] Together.[Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly, after God's will of our life together.[Jennifer] This is Marriage After God.[Jennifer] Welcome back everyone to another episode of Marriage After God. We are happy to have ya, and today we are just going to share some, it's kinda like a funner episode, where we're gonna share, not just our non-toxic products, but why we choose those, and part of our story.[Aaron] Yeah, and well, we've had a lot of people over the years, kind of, 'cause we've talked about our journey with health, and we talk about products we use, and you have people often asking, "Well, what do you use?"[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] And so--[Jennifer] A large portion of my first book, "The Unveiled Wife," you know, talked about our journey, you know, figuring some stuff out, and so, we'll probably start there.[Aaron] Yeah, but it'll be fun. We believe that it's good to have a healthy life, I mean, everything we talk about it spiritual, but there's something to be said about, taking care of our bodies, and being careful with what we're putting on, being thoughtful, we even talk about, yeah, we talk about this often in our books, we talk about it in our life. We actually try and live it also, doesn't mean we're perfectly healthy in every aspect, but what's been awesome about it also is, we actually have less stuff, which is cool. So we'll talk about that a little bit too. So first, before we get into that, why don't you give a little update on baby Edith?[Jennifer] Yeah, is everyone as anxious as I am to meet her? I'm--[Aaron] Some people are probably like, "They're having another baby?"[Jennifer] I know,[Aaron] Yes we are, number five.[Jennifer] Yep, I'm 38 weeks, and just starting to feel like way more ready and prepared, mentally,[Aaron] Some of that pre-labor stuff[Jennifer] Yep, and my body, but also, just in our home, I feel like, we are all kind of getting to that transition point where, I don't know, we're just, we're just ready.[Aaron] So I'll say this, if you don't hear of any more podcasts coming out, after this one, it's because we had the baby.[Jennifer] But, I haven't ever gone that early, so--[Aaron] Yeah, you--[Jennifer] I don't know.[Aaron] We're usually like, I should say, you're usually right on the dot.[Jennifer] I will say this, usually nesting kicks in, and I you know, look forward to, just utilizing that energy, that extra energy to clean the house, and get every nook and cranny, and this time I didn't get that way at all. I had to like, really rely on the Lord, and just um--[Aaron] Well I'll say this, I think you did have the desire to nest, but you didn't have the energy this time.[Jennifer] Yeah, I had the desire for sure.[Aaron] You're like, "I just can't get up off the couch, "I just, I don't feel like I," So, there was all these things that you wanted to do, but it took a lot of my helping, it took a lot of like, extra stuff that you didn't have--[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] and so, but that's just unique for this time.[Jennifer] But we got some stuff checked off our to-do list this weekend and now I feel ready. So thank you Aaron, thank you for your help with that. Yeah well, I'm sure we'll have a little bit more stuff before the baby comes.[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] Gettin' the house ready, just gettin' some things off of our plates, so that we can enjoy little baby Edith,[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] when she's here.[Jennifer] What I did do, was I got through Olive's old clothes, and got like a drawer ready for her, and all of her clothes are ready, so,[Aaron] Oh, we also moved all of, 'cause right now we have all of Truitt's clothes, in our bedroom, like right below the changing station, so that we can like change him, and put clothes there, but we moved those. Now he's got his clothes in the boys' room.[Jennifer] Yeah,[Aaron] I'm imagining, we're probably gonna move him into the boys' room soon, right?[Jennifer] Soon, yeah.[Aaron] And then he's gonna be one of the big boys.[Jennifer] Uh?[Aaron] I know[Jennifer] Everyone's growing up too fast.[Aaron] Who in the world?[Jennifer] Elliot feels like he's seven feet tall. Doesn't he feel so big?[Aaron] Yeah, he's gonna be a tall one.[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] But it's awesome, seeing them grow, we were just talking tonight about if we would have had children earlier, which kinda goes into a little bit into our story, but if we would have started, day one, we'd have a 13 year old.[Jennifer] Yeah, just recognizing, how long we've been married and--[Aaron] And we probably have 13 kids. So,[Jennifer] At our rate.[Aaron] Yeah at our our rate, yeah. Hey, I just wanted to also bring up something that I've been doing lately, and maybe you can chime in on this, Jennifer, as well, but for the men listening, something I've been trying to do, I know not everyone has our situation. We totally understand that. We get that. But Jennifer and I both, I would say I work the majority of the time, it used to be much more equal, but as we've had more kids, Jennifer's desires, and our desires has changed to, you spending a lot more time homeschooling,[Jennifer] My work just looks different[Aaron] Totally looks different, but the idea is that we're keeping things going, but what I've been doing lately, is letting you have Fridays to yourself, often that's so you can get, you know, the work that you need to get done, done. But sometimes it's just to go.[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] To get into the Word. To meet with a lady[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] From the church. To just have time to yourself, or a little bit of both, like you get some work done in the morning, and then you have like a hair appointment, or you have a meeting with a friend,[Jennifer] Yeah, I try and use that time to schedule appointments--[Aaron] Yeah.[Jennifer] But um, I will say this, I've really enjoyed it, and it's been super beneficial in a lot of ways, but I also recognize that change is coming, with having the baby and post-partum, and all that. So it'll be something that we reevaluate, come very quickly.[Aaron] Right 'cause we go through seasons, and ebbs and flows, and we have to adjust our schedules and our way of living to the situations in life. But, I just wanna encourage the men out there, that even if you're not in a situation, where maybe your wife works with you, or works at home, or maybe, I don't know, like your situations are gonna look differently. The idea is being intentional, to let your wife know that, especially if she doesn't have like, a regular nine-to-five job if she is at home with the kids, if you have a similar situation in that aspect, is giving them time. It may not be every week, maybe it can't be every week, but if it's once a month, if it's every other week, if it's for a couple hours, there's times like, "Hey why don't you, "I got the kids you get out of here--"[Jennifer] And maybe it can't be during the day, but it's at night or, if it can't be during the week, it's you know Saturday morning or something like that.[Aaron] Yeah, there's always going to be a way to just let your wife know that you're thinking about her time, and also, as men who are leading our wives, spiritually, giving them time specifically like, maybe it's at home like, "Hey, why don't you just go lock yourself in the bedroom? "Open up the Bible like, read, journal, "go take a bath, and listen to some worship music." Giving them time to themselves, time to recharge, regenerate. I know some women probably recharge around people, not alone, but, whatever it is, maybe they need to go be with some friends. Just, keeping that in your mind, something we've been practicing, like we said, it's a it's a seasonal thing. So it's not necessarily that it's always going to be this way, but currently Fridays have been your day, and you've been enjoying them, we've been slowing down on that with the baby coming.[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] Also 'cause, you're having less energy, and you're like, "I just wanna be home."[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] But, it's been a cool thing.[Jennifer] I think it's a really good encouragement, and I think it's good for husbands to hear, that when it's even spontaneous, 'cause this was something that we kind of scheduled out, and looked at our situation, and said, "This needs to be happening." But even when it's at random, you know, spontaneous, it's a huge encouragement to the wife's heart to know that the husband is thinking of her like that. You've done that for me plenty of times over the years and so, I love that you're bringing this up. I think it's cool.[Aaron] So hope you're encouraged by that. One more thing before we get into our, our list of our favorite non-toxic products is, we just want to invite you to join the Parenting Prayer Challenge. We created this prayer challenge, it's very similar to the Marriage Prayer Challenge, where you get 30, 30 some-odd emails everyday, reminding you to pray for your children, and giving you a topic to pray for over them. and you can actually sign up for one for a son, or one for a daughter, or you can sign up for both, which is pretty awesome 'cause some of you probably have a son and a daughter, or just sons, or just daughters, or just one or the other, but you can go, you go to parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, and you sign up, it's completely free, and we just pray that God blesses you, and your prayer life for your children, because praying for your children is so important. Just like praying for your marriage. Just like praying for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Prayer is so important. God wants to be praying people, and so this is just a fun challenge. It's a way of being a catalyst for your prayer life, for your children. It's parentingprayerchallenge.com, it's completely free.[Jennifer] Okay, so for some of you listening you may have already read "The Unveiled Wife," if anything we talked about today, you know sparks interest and you haven't read that book yet, that was our first book that we came out with, you should go check it out, just because it shares more in depth of our journey, of kind of coming to this place of like, being aware of healthy living, and living a healthy lifestyle. But we're going to kind of summarize it. Just to kick off this episode, just so that you guys can, just get some background into Aaron and Jen. How about that? Okay.[Aaron] Let's see how quick we can make this summary.[Jennifer] Okay so I would say that when we first got married, Aaron, we didn't really, we didn't have a strong foundation of what it look like to live healthy. We grew up on fast food, and and home cook meals, but there was no,[Aaron] We didn't have an awareness of healthy living at all.[Jennifer] Yeah, and so we didn't really care about looking at ingredients on products, or you know reading the labels of things. I would say that you know I used all the all the really good smelling lotions and body washes, and if you didn't have more than three or four in your shower, it was like, "What are you doing?" You know, that type of thing. Fragrant candles, the kind of laundry detergent that you just never think about, you just use it because your parents used, or that's what so-and-so use. I remember using MAC makeup. This one, actually, I didn't really ever talk about this one, but this was one that affected me, in my teens because I was caking on the foundation, but I was using it to cover up acne,[Aaron] Which that made more acne.[Jennifer] Which made more acne. And I was actually allergic to something that was in it, and so I stopped using that, even probably around like 18. But anyways, the point that I'm getting at is that we didn't care about what was inside of these bottles that we were using to put on our skin, you know, the soap that we use, the body wash, the lip balms, the hairspray, we just consumed it.[Aaron] Not internally necessarily.[Aaron]…

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    The Power Of Touch In Marriage Mar 02, 2020
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    Physical touch is such a powerful and amazing gift from God. He designed us for it. We need it. And it is physically, spiritual and emotionally damaging when we avoid it or do not get enough of it. In this episode, we discuss why Physical touch is so impo Physical touch is such a powerful and amazing gift from God. He designed us for it. We need it. And it is physically, spiritual and emotionally damaging when we avoid it or do not get enough of it. In this episode, we discuss why Physical touch is so important and we give some practical tips on how to touch and be touched more.Embracing each other says “I trust you and need you in my life.”A comforting hug says, “I’m here for you.”A kiss says, “You are mine! And I love you!”Holding hands lets your spouse know you like them and like spending time with them.Tickle rubs, massages, running your fingers through their hair says, “I want to make you feel good.” ...And most times lets them know you desire more physical touch.Being married and living in that sacred space of physical closeness, embrace, touch...there is no other relationship like it on Earth. Make the time to send those messages of love to your spouse through touch.READ TRASCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God."[Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.[Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about "The Power Of Touch In Marriage." Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.[Jennifer] I'm Jennifer also known as unveiled wife.[Aaron] And I'm Aaron also known as husband revolution.[Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.[Aaron] And so far we have four young children.[Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.[Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.[Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life.Love.And power.[Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.[Jennifer] Together.[Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.[Jennifer] This is "Marriage after God." Well, welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Marriage after God, we're super excited to have you. You're looking at me funny Aaron, why are you looking at me funny?[Aaron] I was wondering if everyone knows that you're still pregnant. Or if they're waiting to hear about the baby 'cause I don' know if everyone knows the exactI'm still pregnant?[Aaron] March 20th is the due date?[Jennifer] Creeping up on us.[Aaron] More like, almost there. Also soon along with the baby coming, we have the end of our season coming. Season three of the "Marriage After God" podcast.[Jennifer] You're just prepping their hearts.[Aaron] I'm prepping their little hearts.[Jennifer] Will come back don't worry.[Aaron] Yeah, we have this episode and I think three more episodes. To finish up this season.[Jennifer] It's actually really great timing you guys. And it was intentional, because postpartum is the real deal. And so I need time.[Aaron] We're gonna take a break during the postpartum season and then will come back.Right before summer starts. We're super excited about that.[Aaron] Which always want to take these breaks gives you enough time to go back to all the episodes you haven't listened to yet, or haven't fully listen to.[Jennifer] Or relisten listened to your favorite one.[Aaron] Or relisten to your favorite ones.[Jennifer] I wanted to before we get into today's topic, I wanted to start off this episode with an encouragement of something that happened. But Aaron, when I mentioned that's what I wanted to share about, you're like, "No, let's just do the whole episode on that." I'm not gonna share it right now. That's what the whole episodes gonna be about. Enjoy it later.[Aaron] Right, but what we can talk about is so everyone, we've talked about how we're going through what's it called? "My Family 24 Ways".[Jennifer] "Our Family 24 Ways".That's what's it is.By Sally and Clay Clarkson.[Aaron] It's a family devotional and it's 24 weeks long. We did it twice. The first time we did it. We did it in a quarter of the time because we just kind of took each day was a--[Jennifer] Each day was a new way. And they come with these coloring pages. Those are really great kind of quick overview of what it was about and gave us time to wrap our heads around it and get familiar with the content. And that was super fun for the kids. We did that last summer and then kicking off the new kind of school year in September. We're like let's do the whole week. And we'll use the was it a devotional or resource? We'll use it the way that they wrote it--[Aron] Which is every way is a five day--Process.Process, yes. Every day, there's another verse you're reading, another idea, there's another question, but it's all in the same family way. And we just finished that a couple of weeks ago.There's a couple of weeks we didn't do because of travel or different things. But we just finished it and it was great. The kids loved it, we loved it.[Aaron] Yeah, and we're bringing this up to just to kinda recap that we told you we were going through we gave it as an example to you all, on a great way to start doing a family bible time. It was a lot of fun was really easy. I had a lot of prompts for the parents to walk through it gives you the questions to ask. But Jennifer, what are we doing now? We finished our family 20 or 23rd, "Our 24 Family Ways".[Jennifer] "Our 24 Family Ways".[Aron] By Sally and Clay Clarkson. You should go pick that on Amazon. But when we're done with that and we love that. But what are we doing now?[Jennifer] There was that question creeping up to the end of that resource that were like, Hey, keep in mind, what are what are we going to do next? And there's lots of different things that we could have chosen.[Aaron] Now we've done before, where we just like read through some of the Bible, read just whole chapters.[Jennifer] I proposed to Aaron, I said, "Why don't we focus "on some of the kind of major Bible stories?" Our kids are still pretty young, and they know a lot of the stories but just clarifying for them, what actually was taking place during those stories, and what are the details and so we'll take a whole week on one story. And what I didn't share with Aaron was, my heart behind it was and let's focus on how Christ is pictured in these stories, which I just thought would be a really cool perspective, but I didn't share that part with you for some reason. I just said the Bible story thing really short and brief. And so I started making a list of the different Bible stories and I put them up on our chalkboard and you love the idea, and that first day that we started out with creation and Adam and Eve. You're like, and guys, because you're like, basically laying out what they can expect from how Bible time is gonna change for us. And you told the kids, "so we're gonna dive into these Bible stories, "one story a week, but we're gonna see how Christ "is at the center of each one." And I love that you did that we are totally like on the same page without even having talked about it.[Aaron] And it's been really good. Elliot's been loving them, because He loves learning about these stories. And also the questions and the digging in and how those correlations to Christ and Adam, or these stories that we all know of.[Jennifer] Just in simple things like in Genesis when it says, "we're gonna make them in our image" and get the kids to really like, focusing on what that one is.Like who is the hour. Who is us, who's talking here about Adam and Ellie is like, "Oh, it's God and Jesus in the spirit."[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] He got the idea in the beginning. And just an encouragement for those that are listening. You're probably thinking like, okay, like all of our kids know these stories, but you're actually surprised at the stories that you kind of know because you grew up in Sunday school, or how if they don't ever get brought up, your kids aren't gonna know them. They're not gonna know the story of Noah's Ark. They're not gonna know the story of Jonah and the whale. They're not gonna know the story of Joseph and Abraham and Isaac and Adam and Eve and creation. We have to do that. We have to teach our children these stories, and not just stories, their history.[Jennifer] Yeah, and my encouragement would be for our sake, as adults, going back to some of these stories have been encouraging because then we either see things we never saw before, or somehow it's relevant to something that we're going through that we can apply. That's just an encouragement.[Aaron] It's just getting back into the Word of God always and remembering these powerful, testimonies that God's given us of who He is, His plan for redemption and His story for us. Awesome, before we get into the topic, as usual, we have a free thing for you. If you haven't taken the marriage prayer challenge yet, we dare you. Take the marriage prayer challenge. It's marriageprayerchallenge.com. It's a 31 day email series where you're gonna get emailed every day with, something to pray about, and a reminder to do that. So you're gonna be praying for your husband or your wife every day for the next 30 days, 31 days, and we just wanted to get you jumped in. It's almost 50,000 people who have now taken this challenge.That's incredible.Yeah. If you're not one of those 50,000 I just wanna encourage you to go right now and take a break from the podcast even go sign up marriageprayerchallenge.com, It'll take you like one minute, and then come back and finish the episode.[Jennifer] Alright, so today's topic is on The Power Of Touch. And again, this is something that happened recently in our marriage that impacted me so much that I told him and I'm gonna share about that in the next podcast and he was like, "No, we're doing "the whole episode on this."[Aaron] And you went, "we don't need to do a whole episode "it's just a little passing idea." I did I was like, "No, this is actually really important "'cause of how much value you got out of it."[Jennifer] Yeah, so, and we understand that sometimes our episodes go quite long. And we're just gonna jump in, we're gonna dive in and give you the tips and tricks that you can do--Up front.Right now we're gonna just do them up front.[Aaron] That way if you don't listen the whole episode, you're gonna walk away with the best tips for touch.[Jennifer] Yeah, I like that.[Aaron] What's the first tip they can get real quick.[Jennifer] I mean, I'm just thinking like, when you're passing by each other in the kitchen, you both have these tasks on your mind that you're trying to get done. Just give a little, elbow to the gut and let that let that spouse know that you're there next to them working alongside side them.[Aaron] It also might get them out of their way for a second. Another little tip is like when you guys are laying in bed and like just just right before your spouse is falling asleep, just to remind them that you're there and that you love them. Just giving them ,a wet finger to the ear. Or like a little like tap on their neck to like tickle them a little bit.[Jennifer] Maybe a pinch.[Aaron] Pinch. Those kinds of things that let your spouse know, "Hey, I know you're just we're almost falling asleep "but I love you."I love me so much. One of my favorite ones is when you're like out on family excursion, and your spouse is wearing a backpack And you're kind of walking, a little bit behind them just give that backpack a little push to the left or right. And it really throws them off. But it reminds them, hey, I'm here with you.[Aaron] It's almost like gets them to like flip around a little bit and then they could see you.[Jennifer] The whole point of touch really is to interrupt what's going on. It's to interrupt the day and to say, I love you.[Aaron] Everyone's thinking are they serious right now? We are totally playing.[Jennifer] Yeah.[Aaron] We're being playful. These are funny ways. Don't don't actually go by and especially if your wife's pregnant. Or go and hit the stomach.Don't do that.Don't do that.[Jennifer] No , we're just kidding.[Aaron] No, we actually legitimately wanna talk about the power of real loving touch, and what it means and how it works and why God's given us this gift of touch and the benefit from what we've seen in our own life. Something that Jennifer's gonna talk about in a second, an experience that she had with me. And then we're just gonna talk about that and encourage you the listener, you husband and wife who are in your car or in bed or at home, walking around the house, whatever you're doing listening to this, to just remember to touch more. It should be obvious but it's not.[Jennifer] I'd even say evaluate how long it's been since you've intentionally touched your spouse or what does that touch look like, either throughout the day or in the morning or at night, and just let the Lord inspire you today, when it comes to touching your spouse.[Aaron] And this isn't just for those that one of their love languages is physical touch, because every human actually every organism in the world requires touch for that stimulus for healthy growth, especially for human beings. And we'll talk about that a little bit later. But so this isn't just for those that the love language's physical touch. Every single one of us need to focus on this and if it's not your natural tendency to do so then we just gotta work a little harder.[Jennifer] Yep, okay, so this is what happened. I was having an off day. I felt rundown, I felt tired.[Aaron] Super pregnant.[Jennifer] I mean, just physically I just was not doing well. And yeah, just super pregnant. And I mean, everyone listening right now you're just thinking about that off day you've had and you're like, "Okay, I can relate to that." But I felt overwhelmed. And I was getting ready to jump in to school time with the kids. And I just had already felt exhausted. And so I was--[Aaron] It was like the morning we hadn't even gotten our routine going.[Jennifer] Nothing had started yet. And I was already feeling down. And I didn't say anything about it. I just was trying to do what I knew I had to do, right that saying, "Do the next right thing." And so I'm in there with the kids. And Aaron, usually your routine is, after Bible time you get a cup of coffee and got out to the garage, that's were you work. But you didn't do that. You came in, you came straight to me your like Beeline right for me.[Aaron] Which is not normal for me.[Jennifer] No, usually there's just this space where you like maybe even question like, "Hey, how are you?" "What's going on?" You didn't do any of that. You just opened the door, walked over to me had me stand up. And you just wrap your arms around me an…

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    Q & A - Not Seeing Eye To Eye In Marriage Feb 24, 2020
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    FREE DOWNLOADS Datenightconversations.comMarriageprayerchallenge.comparentingprayerchallenge.com “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, FREE DOWNLOADSDatenightconversations.comMarriageprayerchallenge.comparentingprayerchallenge.com“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” - Ephesians 4:1How do I become more selfless in my marriage?What are some Tips for consistency in communication within marriage to build intimacy?How do we live for God together...my husband never really been to church Etc?How do you work through disagreements on hobbies? IE motorcycles?How do you keep chasing dreams God's call you to, when your spouse is in a totally negative place?Do you still struggle with trusting your husband? Speaking about p 0rn and how can you battle thoughts?What is your number one advice to couples struggling?READ TRANSCRIPT[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.[Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.[Aaron] And today, we're gonna answer some questions from the community about not seeing eye-to-eye in marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.[Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.[Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.[Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.[Aaron] And so far, we have four young children.[Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.[Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.[Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life--Love--And power.[Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God--Together.[Aaron] Thank you for joining in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.[Jennifer] This is Marriage After God.[Aaron] Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Marriage After God podcast. This is gonna be a Q&A episode where we polled our community and we got a buncha questions about a specific topic, which is not seeing eye-to-eye, and we're gonna answer those in a bit. But first, before we get into that, Jennifer, is there anything new going on in your life? Is there anything you wanna chat with me about?[Jennifer] I love chatting with you. Something that I wanted to share, that's been on my heart for our listeners, is just something that I been doing intentionally with a girlfriend of mine and that is discipleship and it's going really well, we meet bi-weekly. And the reason that I wanted to bring it up is because I think so often we can go about our days and our times and our schedules and just focus on what is at hand and what we need to do and sometimes we forget about discipleship or mentorship or how we impact other peoples' lives. And I just think it's really important for us to consider, you know, who's that older, more mature Christian in our life that we can glean from? So, someone we can be spending time with that will fill us up that will maybe speak truth into our life or see something that isn't going the way it should be and call it out in us or maybe we can go to them for a question. And then, who's that person who is younger than you that you can reach out to and have an impact in their life? You know, be that person for them.Toward God.Yeah.Encouraging them.Yeah. So, I just, I'm bringing it up because it's been going so well in my personal life that I just thought, "Man, if they're not thinking about this, "I want them to be thinking about this."[Aaron] Well, and it's a, we've talked about this in past episodes, about the necessity of community and walking with each other and our ministries in other people's lives.Yeah.[Aaron] Just the importance of we're not autonomous creatures, we're part of a body, and God's given us gifts that must be used to glorify Him and to mutually build up the Church and to encourage each other and to bless each other, so.[Jennifer] And sometimes our flesh can get in the way, you know, those insecurities where we go, "Oh, it'd be really nice to spend time with that person." But then we answer for them, right? We go, "Oh, they're too busy." Or, "They can't." Or, "I don't know"--You're really good at this, aren't you?"I don't know what to say."Answering for people.Answering for people, yeah. And you've drawn me out of this. But my encouragement to that person is don't answer for that person but surrender to God, pray about your desire to build that relationship up, and then have the courage to just ask. And if they say, "I can't at this time," receive it and say, "Okay," and pray about, maybe, who else you can engage with in that way. But chances are, they're gonna be thrilled to hear from you.[Aaron] Yeah, I've been through something very similar. Not necessarily, I don't have a scheduled meeting with a single person each week or every other week, but I've been trying to intentionally meet regularly with all the men from our fellowship. Mainly to get to know them more, to get into deeper relationship with them, to be encouraged by them. But also to, yeah, disciple. And we're called to make disciples, we're called to walk with each other and sharpen each other, as iron sharpens iron. If we're not doing that and we're just kind of going about our day and, yeah, we see 'em at church on Sundays and then we leave and we have dinners every once in awhile, but if there's no intentional, like, "'Kay, I actually want to be in this person's life, "lifting them up to the Father, "and I want someone in my life doing that for me," we're kind of missing out on a huge part of what it means to be a believer, so. That's a great encouragement for everyone listening.Yeah.So, before we get into the questions, we wanna tell everyone about our free things that we have to offer you guys. We've made a bunch of resources now that I feel like they keep compiling, like, we're making more and more. 'Cause we get an idea and then we're like, "Okay, "let's make it and let's give it to everyone," so.[Jennifer] And I gotta admit, I'm the one that pushes for the new ones because I want you guys who have already been through, maybe, some of the ones that we've been offering to jump into the new one, which, the newest one we just launched is the Parenting Prayer Challenge, which, oh my gosh, I'm so excited about.[Aaron] Yeah, it's a totally free email challenge and essentially, we send you an email every day for 31 days giving you a prayer prompt for a specific area of your child's life, either your son or your daughter, and it's a reminder every day.[Jennifer] And it doesn't matter what age your kids are because it could be for your infant all the way up to your adult--Your kids that are out of the house.Children, yeah.[Aaron] And you can get that at parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word. It's totally free, you should go sign up today if you haven't. And just a quick note on the other ones, we have a free download called Date Night Conversations. It's a list of 52 conversation starters. You can get that at datenightconversations.com, one word. And then the last one is Marriage Prayer Challenge. It's similar to the Parenting Prayer Challenge, but it's for your marriage.Prayer's best.[Aaron] Yeah, you can sign up to pray for your wife or you can sign up to pray for your husband and we send you a prompt every day for 31 days. So, get those, those are completely free.[Jennifer] All right, so we are moving on to today's topic, which, we're doing a Q&A. We already polled the community from social media. We usually do this on Instagram, so if you're not already following, be sure to follow @marriageaftergod. You can also follow me @unveiledwife for some more wife encouragement and then @husbandrevolution for more husband stuff.[Aaron] And we'd love for you to be following us on Instagram so that you can see the behind the scenes stuff in our life. When we do the polls, we'd love for you to participate in those. We look at all those questions that you guys give us.[Jennifer] So, what we do is we poll you guys, we ask you to submit your questions, and then we use those to order these Q&As.[Aaron] Sometimes the questions are not all in the same category, but if we find enough in a category, we're like, "Oh, that's what we're gonna talk about." And so, we try and answer those. And we also always wanna start with: we don't have all the answers.Yeah. That's a funny way to start out a Q&A.We don't.We know this.[Aaron] We will answer to the best of our abilities, we will answer based off of things we've experienced and, as always, we're gonna try and, to the best of our abilities, point back to scripture. We don't always do that well either, but that's our heart because we know that the Word of God is the Word of God; it's perfect and we know that everything that we order our life by should be ordered by it. And so, we try, to the best of our ability, to do that, so.[Jennifer] So, today's kind of overarching topic is not seeing eye-to-eye in your marriage, which can play out in a lotta different ways, but I would also label this as disunity. So, this idea of not being unified--[Aaron] Right, not on the same page.[Jennifer] Not on the same page in marriage.[Aaron] Which is that, the analogy of not seeing eye-to-eye, that we're unbalanced, you know, one's higher, one's lower, and so you're not seeing in the same space. And so, you have the, unity is a huge thing for marriage. And I'm sure that many marriages don't even struggle with this, right? Like, this is a unique issue in--[Jennifer] I'm gonna correct Aaron, I'm gonna correct that.[Aaron] We're not gonna see eye-to-eye on this.[Jennifer] I think every marriage encounters this.Yeah.A lot, actually.Every human relationship.Yeah.[Aaron] In the history of human relationships.[Jennifer] Because we're all different heights.[Aaron] Like, it started in the Garden of Eden. You look at Adam and Eve.Come on, guys.[Aaron] Eve was like, "Oh, it does look good to eat." And Adam's like, "All right."No, just checkin'.[Aaron] And just, from the very beginning, not seeing eye-to-eye. But that's what we're gonna talk about today. There's quite a few questions, so why don't you start off reading some scripture?Okay. So, we're gonna dig into Ephesians 4 and starting in Verse 1, it says this: "I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, "urge you to walk in a manner worthy of "the calling to which you have been called, "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, "bearing with one another in love, "eager to maintain the unity of "the spirit in the bond of peace." And if, for some reason, you hear that verse right now and you're like, "You guys have shared "that verse so many times on this podcast"--A couple.I'm not gonna apologize. The more we say that verse and the more you hear it and the more we live according to it, we will experience this, right babe?[Aaron] Well, and it's essentially Biblical meditation. We're repeating it, we're chewing on it, we're gonna say it over and over again because it's true.[Jennifer] And we're gonna see how it applies to our life and, you know, what we are--[Aaron] Well, and it's a good tone to start with, to set the mood for this conversation, because no matter where you're at in your marriage, you could be thinking, like, "My husband "just thinks this certain way "and I'm not gonna get on that page with him." Or, "My wife just doesn't understand," fill in the blank. If we're eager to maintain unity with our bride--Maintenance.With our spouse.[Aaron] That's gonna be the place that we start from, not a, "They need to change because I'm not gonna change." It's a, "What needs to change so that "we're on the same page?"And maintain is, that's a constantly occurring, that's not a, "Okay, we got on the same page "and now we're fine for the rest of our lives." This is a consistent--Oh, we gotta realign--Checking.Oh, we gotta do it again.Yeah.Oh, let's do it again. Let's continue to be this way, yeah.[Jennifer] Yeah, so I couldn't help but start out, also, obviously, God's Word is the priority and first and foremost, but I also wanted to start out sharing a little bit from Marriage After God because we've--Book plug!Written a book for you and if you haven't gotten it yet, we want to urge you to get it, but this is from page 56 in Marriage After God and it talks about this idea of oneness, okay? You know, in Genesis, it talks about two becoming one flesh and so, we though it'd be great to elaborate on this in Marriage After God and so--[Aaron] Okay, so I'm actually gonna read this section. Jennifer's actually a little outta breath, being pregnant and all--He's saving me![Aaron] So, it says this, it's on page 56: "One flesh does not mean two "independent individuals sometimes acting as one, "neither does it mean two individuals "negotiating a workable schedule where they "inhabit the same space but leave each other alone. "One flesh is a picture of unity, a joining together, "a growing together, where parts of each are woven together "in a way that there is no noticeable seam. "Oneness is one of the greatest ways "we show the world the true gospel."[Jennifer] So, what you're saying is it's powerful.Yeah.Our oneness in marriage.Did we write this?Yeah.[Aaron] Yeah, the idea of oneness it's not our idea, it's a Biblical idea, we pulled that from the Bible directly. And it's, again, the reason why I wanna talk about this and we always go back to it is because our marriage represents something more than just our marriage. It's a symbol that God created to represent Christ and the Church and the relationship between the two, that we are no longer separate, we're no longer nomads, we actually are part of Christ, we are one with Christ, the same way my wife and I are one. But when we walk in disunity, when we walk in brokenness and we're not seeing eye-to-eye, we're against each other where actually--[Jennifer] Or even apathy where it's like, "I know we're off, I know we're"--"And I don't care.""Not seeing eye-to-eye "and I don't care."Yeah.That's so dangerous.It's not the symbol that God intends it to be, so we're walking in opposition to God's way when we walk that way, so--So, it's good to maintain that, you know, what you were talking about earlier, it's good to--Maintain, yeah.Have priority in our marriage to focus on unity.[Aaron] So, question one, from the community, it says…

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    How Love Covers A Multitude Of Sins Feb 17, 2020
    Show notes

    This devotional episode is based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. We wanted to share in this episode how Love covers a multitude of sins and why it is so important that we love with this level of eagerness. Also, we will discuss how we all long for this kind of love fo This devotional episode is based on 1 Peter 4:7-11. We wanted to share how Love covers a multitude of sins and why it is so important that we love with this level of eagerness.1 Peter 4:7-11 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.PrayerDear Lord,We lift up our hearts to you right now and ask that you would make us a people who love others earnestly. Holy Spirit direct our hearts and remind us of your word. We pray we would above all things love others. We pray we would love our spouse, our children, our friends, and those who are in our life. May your love pour out of us. May your love pouring out of us transform our marriages. We pray others would be impacted by the love we share. We pray we would be able to love so deeply that it covers a multitude of sin. We pray that instead of shame or guilt, people would feel undoubtedly loved by us and by you. We pray for your word to be fulfilled through our choices to walk in love and that your will would be done.In Jesus’ name, amen!READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith, with "Marriage After God."- [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.- [Aaron] And today we're gonna talk about how love covers a multitude of sin. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- [Jennifer] We have been married over a decade.- [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children.- [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.- [Aaron] With a desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life,- Love,- And power,- [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God,- [Jennifer] Together.- [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.- [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God." Okay Aaron, so we, we survived kind of a hard week.- [Aaron] We did survive.- I mean,- We're barely coming on- Our kids survived.- The other side of it, yes.- [Jennifer] But we're not the only ones going through this, so we thought we would just give you guys a little update of our family and hopefully encourage some of you out there who it might be hitting as well.- [Aaron] Yeah, our whole family got the flu. It was bad, but not bad. It was kind of a weird thing.- [Jennifer] Well, I'll say this, the Lord spared me and gave me the grace to be able to help everyone. 'Cause I felt--- And you didn't even really get sick, you got some of the, like you felt sick.- Yeah you know the gut pain?- [Aaron] But you didn't have any other symptoms, which was awesome.- And the rosy cheeks. I felt like every once in a while, like I really don't feel good right now, I need to go lay down, but for the most part, I was able to be there to help everyone. Which made me really nervous, because people were, you and the kids were throwing up and I just thought, me, at this stage of the game in pregnancy, throwing up would not go over well with my body.- No and so--- That woulda been terrible.- [Aaron] We're definitely thanking God, which we did a lot of, oddly. But not to be too graphic, but I'm pretty sure I put a rib out from how hard I was throwing up.- [Jennifer] That sucks.- [Aaron] Yeah, it still is really sore. But, what's awesome is, a couple of things, I just wanna praise you Jennifer, because I feel like you handled everyone being sick, and the inconvenience of it so well. I think I even told you, I was like, "I can tell you're walking in the spirit." Like your attitude was good, how much cleaning had to be done.- [Jennifer] It was a lot of work.- [Aaron] It's no fun when literally all the boys are throwing up and it's like, there's no clean blankets.- [Jennifer] It's all at the same time.- [Aaron] Yeah, so we, but we survived, we're coming on the other side of that. But one thing we practiced, I don't think we've ever done it before, not that we're not thankful to God.- [Jennifer] Not in this kind of circumstance, it's not at the forefront of our minds.- [Aaron] I did a post a couple weeks ago encouraging men to thank God for everything, if they get cut off in traffic, if something bad happens, even--- [Jennifer] You didn't say if your whole family comes down with sickness, did you?- [Aaron] I know, if something good happens, I just said, say, whatever it is that happens today, thank God for it. And I tried practicing that. And so I'm literally in the fetal position in the bathtub, and I'm trying to thank God. I'm like, "Okay God, thank you. "Thank you for being sick." And I was like, why am I thanking God for this? Well, thank you for reminding me that I'm human. Like I'm fragile. Thank you for reminding me that one day I'm not gonna have this sickness.- [Jennifer] Or that we need to pray.- [Aaron] Yeah thank you for reminding,- Ask him.- Humbling me, showing me that my weakness. So there was a lot of things to thank God for for being sick, and I directly thanked God for being sick. And then we of course have thanked God for healing us and sparing our family from being even worse, 'cause it probably could have been worse.- [Jennifer] Something that really stood out to me is I didn't know you had this perspective kind of going into everyone being sick, and I wouldn't say I was there with you in those beginning moments, but you brought the family to the living room, and you said, "You know what, we're gonna pray, "and we're just gonna thank God today." And I think even one of the kids asked, "Why are we thanking God?"- [Aaron] Doesn't make any sense.- [Jennifer] But I was questioning it in my own heart too, like, okay, where's this going? But it was so beautiful to hear your prayer and you starting out saying, "God, thank you for this sickness." And it was humbling for me and for my heart to go, "oh yeah" you know? And to have that perspective before him. And then, I gotta share this other experience is just a friend of mine who, their family also got it really bad.- [Aaron] Pretty much our whole church got sick.- [Jennifer] But I met up with her for coffee when it was all past and she goes, "You know I just found, we found our whole family "just worshiping God through it." And it was so cool, kinda the same thing. And I said, "I didn't really worship him through it, "but at the end of all the laundry being done, "all the bathrooms being cleaned, "and having taken a shower, I came out singing "'Victory in Jesus' so, that was awesome."- [Aaron] But it is worship. Thanking God is worship. So whatever he gives, I think Job says it, "Should we not thank God for the good and the evil?" Like the bad things that happen? We thank God for those too, because he's God and he deserves our thanksgiving. And at the end of the day, salvation is so much greater than anything that we can go through. So, at minimum you can be like, "God, thank you so much "that one day I'm gonna be with you." That is so good.- [Jennifer] So if your family happens to get hit by whatever bug this is,- [Aaron] It's going around, yeah.- [Jennifer] Whatever's going around, we just wanted to encourage you guys to move forward with a thankful heart and to trust God and to be prayerful. And also just to be patient, because we know it's an inconvenience, we know it's hard, it takes away from your work schedule, it takes away from things on your to-do list that maybe you were hoping to do or whatever it is. We know it's hard, but if God's allowing it to happen, we can trust him and walk through it with him.- [Aaron] Yeah, so that was just a little update on our flu campaign. But we wanna encourage you. We have a new challenge. We've been doing a lot of these lately, a lot of new downloads and challenges and free things that you guys can get from us. And our new one's called the parentingprayerchallenge.com. We launched it last week and this week you get to do it. We're still encouraging parents to sign up to pray for either their daughter or their son or both. So if you haven't signed up for the Parenting Prayer Challenge, it's completely free. We're gonna send you 31 prompts every day, encouraging you to pray for different things for your child.- Over 31 days.- Over 31 days.- [Jennifer] Not 31 emails in one day.- [Aaron] Yeah, that's happened one time. Yeah, one a day, and the whole idea is that at the end of the 31 days you've built a habit of praying for your children. I'm sure all you parents love to pray for your children, but we just wanted to give this resource to encourage you to pray more, to pray deeper, to pray more consistently and give you ideas on what other things to pray for for your kids.- [Jennifer] Yeah, and I'll add this, it goes hand in hand with our books, "31 prayers for your son and for your daughter." And if you have those books, oh this'll be an incredible reminder. It's kinda like an alarm, right? Because your email comes through and then you're like, "Oh yeah." So you can get the book and go along with it that way too.- [Aaron] Mm-hmm, so parentingprayerchallenge.com, all one word, spelled the way you would think it's spelled. And sign up for free today. All right guys, we've been doing this new thing, we've mentioned it a few times this season. We're trying to do a marriage episode, we're doing a devotional style episode, a Q&A, we're trying to give a little bit more diversity on the kinds of things we're bringing up and this episode's gonna be a devotional style. We're gonna talk about some scripture. And something that we've been learning, something that I taught on at church. And so we hope it encourages you and why don't you, Jennifer start off by reading--- [Jennifer] Oh, I was gonna sit back and let you teach for 30 minutes, yeah.- [Aaron] Oh, I'll just do it? No.- Go for it.- [Aaron] Why don't you read the scripture that we're gonna be talking about,- Okay.- And then we'll go into it.- [Jennifer] So it's 1 Peter 4:7-11 and it says this, "The end of all things is at hand, "therefore be self controlled "and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. "Above all, keep loving one another earnestly "since love covers a multitude of sins."- [Aaron] This is a great scripture in 1 Peter and we're excited to talk about it and what it means for us as believers, not only in our marriages, but just in life in general and walking in the body of Christ. And the power that is in our love for one another. And what that means and looks like. So we're gonna dig into this, these few scriptures, and kinda break it down and talk about some stuff and Jennifer you might have some questions. But we're just gonna break it down and see how this applies to us in our life. So the first thing I wanna point out is where our perspective should be. And Jennifer you read it, the very first thing it says in verse seven is "The end of all things is at hand."- [Jennifer] I feel like there should be an exclamation mark.- [Aaron] And it's almost is, it's a semicolon which says everything I'm about to say is attached to this statement. The end of all things is at hand, and so, we can easily, quickly think this is talking about Jesus coming back, or the end of days, right? But in the New Testament when it talks about the end of days or all things at hand or the end of the generation, it's mostly talking about all of the things that needed to take place, they needed to occur for the salvation story, for redemption, God's plan for redemption that he's been planning and preparing since Adam and Eve in the garden. And so, when Peter says the end of all things is at hand, he's saying that essentially, Christ has been born, he's died, and he's resurrected.- [Jennifer] Like we have what we need.- [Aaron] The thing that God has planned to take place has taken place.- Yeah.- [Aaron] Which means a lot. It means that we can now draw near to God. It means that we now can have salvation and a right relationship with God. Because without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension and him sending the holy spirit there is no, like we can't be made right with God. So all of those things, the end of all things is at hand. The end of everything that God planned for salvation has been done, as Jesus says on the cross, it is finished. So it didn't necessarily mean that hey, the end of the world is tomorrow. But it's also an allusion, it alludes to Christ returning. Because now that the church age has begun, the spirit is living in man, we're made right with God, the bride of Christ is growing, we have an expectation of Christ's return. So we're in this imminent return zone. Like at any moment Christ can come back.- [Jennifer] And we are, we're called to walk a certain way.- [Aaron] Yeah. And so that's kinda, he starts off these statements with here's how you should be thinking. Realize first and foremost you have everything you need because Christ died and resurrected. He's given you his spirit, so now you can walk in his spirit and not the flesh. Like the things that we need to accomplish what he's about to tell us have already happened and are already available to us and been given to us. So that's our perspective in our relationships with our spouse, our children, our church body. That the end of all things is at hand. Like first and foremost, I have everything I need in Christ Jesus, to walk this way that we're about to talk about. And I walk this way because I look forward to Christ coming back, and I wanna not be ashamed at his return, I wanna stand boldly at his return. I wanna be excited for his return.- [Jennifer] It gives those relationships a lot of depth and purpose, how we interact with each other and how we're supposed to be in those relationships with each other.- [Aaron] Right and so, if you think about your marriage. You say, "Well, I just can't because my husband "is this, this, this."- [Jennifer] Or together you're just facing a really hard circumstance.- [Aaron] Yeah, like we went through stuff. And it's like, oh, our love for each other is stifled because of this hard circumstance or these character traits in the other person. But if our mindsets are on wow, first of all I can, because Christ did, and I should, because Christ is coming. My perspective and the way I treated you and the way we treat others would totally be transformed because we're no longer thinking of this immediate, well how did you treat me and how am I gonna treat you?- [Jennifer] Well, it's not about us.- Exactly.- Right?- [Aaron] Which is a powerful thing. And this is being taught…

    Full show notes at the publisher

    Fun Ways To Spend Quality Time With Your Children Feb 10, 2020
    Show notes

    We are about to have our 5th child and with our growing family comes more of a necessity for spending quality alone time with each of our kids. The logistics of this also get more and more Complicated but that should not stop uf from trying and growing in We are about to have our 5th child and with our growing family comes more of a necessity for spending quality alone time with each of our kids. The logistics of this also get more and more Complicated but that should not stop uf from trying and growing in our ability to single out our children to show them that we love them, want to hear from them, and want to get to know them as individuals in the family. In this episode, we share some practical ways to get some alone time with each of your kids and why it is so important to cultivate that experience on a regular basis.Join our Free Parenting prayer challenge today and build a habit of praying for your children daily.http://parentingprayerchallenge.comPRAYERDear Lord,Thank you for the gift of family. Thank you for the blessing of children. May we be people who are willing to make our children feel special, and to feel seen and heard. Help us to spend quality time with them, building fond memories and moments that build our trust with them. Help us to carve out time to show our kids that we desire to be close to them and want to dialogue with them. We pray we would be fun and intentional parents with the purpose of teaching our kids your ways. May our children have a heart to build a family of their own because they love our example and appreciate all they experience. May your love be woven into our legacy and may your light shine in our relationship with our children.In Jesus’ name, amen!READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God.- [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.- [Aaron] And today we're gonna share some fun ways to spend quality time with your children.- [Aaron] Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after.- [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife.- [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution.- [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade.- [Aaron] And so far we have four young children.- [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media.- [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day.- [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life,- Love.- And power.- [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God.- [Jennifer] Together.- [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey, as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together.- [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Okay, Aaron, this is just, I am so excited about this episode. I don't know why.- You're always excited for all the episodes, I like it!- [Jennifer] No, this is different. This is like I'm giddy over this because we have young kids and the whole episode is about spending time with our kids, things that we've been learning, as--- [Aaron] We should let the cat out of the bag. You actually really like our kids.- I do, I'm biased.- So, that's why you get so excited about this.- Okay, fine. I was gonna say we're gonna share things we've been learning as new parents. Are we still new parents?- [Aaron] Someone recently called us new parents. They said, "I would consider you still new parents." And I'm like, we have a fifth kid on the way, how are we still new parents?- I know, I think it's 'cause they are all just still little--- [Aaron] They're all young, yeah.- [Jennifer] Yeah, we're in a lot of just little kid time. And so even though this episode is about spending one on one time with your kids, really it can go for any age kid. But before we jump into that, why don't you give us a little update on something you shared a couple weeks ago on studying your kids? And if you guys don't know what I'm talking about, you gotta go hear that episode.- [Aaron] So I got some journals and I purposed to take some time to write in those journals things that I'm observing from my children so that I can kind of learn them, think about my children on a level when they're not around and say, "What are the things that I've seen in my kids, "ways they're being, things they've said?"- [Jennifer] So he got one journal for each kid, and he's not writing to them, per se, he's just writing about them to help him.- [Aaron] Yeah, I just write stuff I'm observing as if I'm like, on a safari, like "I saw Elliot today do this." I will say this I wrote about Wyatt in the wrong book.- [Jennifer] I know.- [Aaron] I had to rewrite the whole thing, which is actually kinda good 'cause I wrote it better, but.- [Jennifer] What are some things you're learning about our kids?- [Aaron] Yeah, well, just some cool things. It's cool writing it down, and I've only been doing it like once a month right now. So it's not like every day I'm writing something about them, but it's cool 'cause I write down emotional things about them, like when I see how they respond emotionally to things.- [Jennifer] Okay.- [Aaron] I also write down things that I see them getting good at--- Or interested in.- Or interested in, things they say, 'cause every once in a while, they say something really remarkable, and I'll just try and remember those things and I write it down, I'm like, "We asked this question and he answered this way." And so just, it's really cool, I've done it twice now and I'm gonna continue doing it, you've encouraged me and said, "Hey remember you said you were gonna?" I'm like, "Oh, yeah." So I think over time, it'll become more of a habit, but it's been a fun thing to to write down and I would encourage parents to figure out ways that they can learn their children.- [Jennifer] Do you feel like it's requiring you to pay attention more? So like, are you trying to notice things?- [Aaron] I am, I am.- [Jennifer] Your eyes are on them more.- [Aaron] Yeah, and I'm not just, "Oh, yeah, they're in the background, doing their thing." I'm trying to watch them intentionally like, how do they respond to that thing? How are they gonna answer this question? How are they...? So yes, I would say it's making me more intentional.- [Jennifer] I just think that's so cool. So something that I wanted to share before we get started is that I had a friend recently asked me at church, she just said, "Hey, have you taken Wyatt out on a date, "like just you and him?" Okay, Wyatt's our, he just turned three, and I was shocked. I was like, "No, I haven't, thank you." Because they know that we do this. They know that we like to take the kids out for one-on-one time, and we've been doing it with the older kids, Elliot and Olive, but I don't know why I just didn't think about taking Wyatt, and he is getting to that age where he would probably love it. And so it kinda woke me up and it was a good reminder that God knows that we have this desire to spend one on one time with our kids, And He used a friend of mine to ask me about it.- To remind you.- To remind me.- [Aaron] It's like a gentle nudge.- [Jennifer] It was! It was really cool, so thank you friend.- [Aaron] Yeah, and you know what, just a little bit of honesty, especially as our family grows, 'cause we had Elliot and it was our first time being parents and so we had all this energy on every milestone, on everything with him and then we had Olive and that dwindles a little bit, all that attention. And then now we have Wyatt and now Trude, and now we have Edith on the way, and I just, sometimes it can be easy to forget certain children in the place they're at, forget what we did with our older children at that place.- [Jennifer] Yeah, or that they're all individuals, because we see 'em as a pack, we're always going places together, and so being able to separate them and say, "You are unique, and you are special, "and you are important to us."- [Aaron] So before we move on to the topic, we just wanna tell you about a new free resource. One of our ways we minister through this ministry is by creating free resources and paid resources. We have our books, of course, but we also love to create these free resources to encourage you in your prayer life and your marriage and your parenting. And the new one we have, I don't know if you've taken the Marriage Prayer Challenge yet, but now we've created a Parenting Prayer Challenge where you can sign up to pray for your son or daughter or both and we'll send you a prayer prompt every day for 31 days, to encourage you in your prayer life over your kids. It's pretty awesome, and all you gotta do is go to parentingprayerchallenge.com and sign up completely free today. Go do that today.- [Jennifer] Okay, so the topic for today is, you know, spending one on one time with your kids, spending quality time with your kids, some even call it dating your kids, like having date night with your kids. And I'm not sure exactly where this came from, but we have two couples in our life that have been instrumental in our faith and in our parenting that we wanted to share with you guys 'cause I'm sure the idea came from one of two of these places.- Or both.- Or both. Matt and Lisa Jacobson from Faithful Life podcast, and Isaac and Angie Tolpin from Courageous Parenting podcast. Again, both of them have been instrumental in both of our faith and our parenting, and they're so encouraging you guys, so if you're not already following their podcasts, you need to go check them out right now.- [Aaron] Yeah, and we started dating our kids after Olive was born, Elliot was getting older, he was almost three and we've tried to continue it since. There's seasons that we totally forget to do it, but we try and make it built into a regular routine. So just one example right now Olive's in dance and so I take her to dance, and I sometimes, maybe every other week, I'll go early, and we'll go have dinner together before she goes to dance. And so it's just me and her, and that's actually been a lot of fun. We get to go eat together and then she goes and dances off all the food that she ate.- [Jennifer] Yeah, not all of the the opportunities that we take with our kids happen regularly because well we're going into having five now, our oldest being seven.- It gets a little harder.- [Jennifer] Yeah, and it just gets hard. So we try and take advantage of every opportunity that we have, but as a large family, we also like to do things together. So I would say our goal is usually to take one kid out a month, and so either you will take them or I will take them.- Yeah.- Or you take two and I take two. So we kinda just mix it up and we play with it.- [Aaron] A good tip to make it more regular, and we tried this in the beginning was monthly birthdays. So Elliot's birthday's on the seventh, and so remember we tried doing on the seventh of each month would be like that date day for Elliot. We haven't been consistent with that, but someone might be able to take that and run with that idea.- [Jennifer] Yeah, the thing that I remember from that when we tried it was that the kids began to expect it.- Yeah they did.- Which was cool, because we want them to know that we wanna spend time with them.- [Aaron] It's my birthdate day coming up!- [Jennifer] But we also like the spontaneous, "Hey, I'm going to take you on a date right now." So, we'll leave that one up to you to decide, but we thought it'd be fun to share with you some standout moments that we've had with our kids on these date days. Do you wanna start Aaron?- [Aaron] Yeah, so speaking about Olive, I would take her to dinner, and we'd go to one of our favorite restaurants and it's right there, right where she goes to dance. And I'll leave early and we'll spend about an hour eating together and just talking, sometimes she's coloring, sometimes she'll bring a book that she loves I'll read it to her, but a couple of cool things about this is it really stands out to other people. They start seeing me with my daughter and they're like, "Wow, this Dad's with their daughter" or just, it's a really intimate thing. So it's an example to others, which has been really cool. It also gives you enough time to just ask them questions and be like, "Who are you?" This little girl who's growing and turning into a her own person with her own ideas and with her own dreams and which is just a really powerful thing. A couple months ago, there was a really funny thing that I found out about Olive from dating her. So we go to this restaurant and I order something I've never ordered before, and it's this shrimp pasta dish. It's amazing, I loved it. It's like one of my new favorite things. And I get it and I'm like, "Oh, this is so good. "Oh my gosh, this is so amazing." And Olive leans over and she's like, "What's that smell?" And I'm like what?- She's really straightforward and blunt.- She's like, "Dad, that smells disgusting." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And she literally, she was like "I can't eat Dad, "this is ruining everything and I don't like that smell." I find out she doesn't like seafood smell, 'cause it smelled a little like shrimp and she was like, "It's disgusting!" So every time I order she's like, "Dad, don't order that, "I can't eat with you!"- [Jennifer] Actually, I remember her coming home that night and so you went to dinner first and then dance. So you guys were gone for a couple of hours. And she came home and I was like, "Oh, how was it?" And she goes, "Mom, Dad ordered this food "that I did not like."- [Aaron] "It was disgusting." And so I found out that Olive doesn't like the smell of seafood. So I have to get that pasta when I'm out around Olive now.- [Jennifer] That's funny. Something that stood out to me was, I remember a while ago, just having a hard day and needing a Mommy break. You know, all the Moms right now are like, "Yep, I feel ya." And so I asked Aaron if he could come in and watch the kids while I went and grabbed some lunch by myself. And I was really looking forward to it 'cause you had said yes.- Oh I remember this day, okay- [Jennifer] You understood and said yes and I was getting ready to go, and it was a day that I was actually having a really hard time with Olive. And so I don't know why all these stories revolve around her but--- She's special.- [Jennifer] She's special.- [Aaron] She's our only little girl right now.- [Jennifer] She was just having a very emotional day, which was new for her in her development. She wasn't like this before, and it was rubbing me the wrong way. And so I was getting ready and you looked down the hallway and you kind of signaled to me like--- I said it quietly--- Do you wanna take her?- [Aaron] You learn really quick not to say things out loud. 'cause then it's like, it ruins everything.- [Jennifer] And I was actually really frustrated that you even ackn…

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