Thoughts For The Day (Nick)

Note: These are simply thoughts I have had today. Some of them are a bit blunt. Feel free to disagree with some things if you would like – as this is not meant to be a post that is 100% error proof.

“Foolishness is more than being stupid, that deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance.”
– Paul David Tripp

(If you haven’t ready any of Paul Tripp’s books – stop reading this now and look him up. Order every book. Read them all. God has given this man incredible wisdom.)

You are not your child’s God. When you are frustrated with your child, what is the motivation behind it? Are they disrupting your sovereignty?  You need as much grace as your child does.

I want nothing more than for my family and friends to know the love and grace of God. This world changes all the time. New ideas come. New social norms form. Jesus is constant. You may have a lot of questions. You may not have received good answers. Don’t let your pride get in the way to believe that there are no answers. Just because YOU don’t know the answer, doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer. Don’t base your life on not knowing the answer. Base your life on the grace of God and pursue him!

I love being a dad. When I was younger, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I wanted to be a dad. By God’s grace I am one. It is an incredible responsibility, an incredible joy!

I love my wife. I love how much she pursues God. I love how hard she works for our family. I love that she is wise beyond her years. I love seeing her as a mommy. I love how she points out my sins. I love the grace that God has given me in allowing me to marry her.

I love how Elizabeth is a tiny thing with chubby cheeks and skinny legs. All she does is sleep, eat, cry, and poop – but all of it is a miracle.

I love Owen. I love to wrestle with him. I love how he is learning how to think for himself. I love that I can be his dad and that I have the responsibility to point him to Jesus.

I am very thankful for the job God has given me and how he has provided for our family. I will always be open to where God leads me and my family, but I am very satisfied with where I am at – and I don’t plan on changing in the near future. I’m also pretty good at getting people amazing deals on insurance!
(shameless plug: http://www.libertymutual.com/nicholaswalker)

It is baffling to me how Christians have no idea how much they gossip when using social media. This has never been shown more than during election season. I’m sure I also do it on occasion, and I’m sorry for that.

Speaking of gossip – prayer time does not give you the right to gossip. STOP IT!!!

STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT YOUR KIDS ON FACEBOOK!!! They are a blessing, not a burden. Don’t treat them like a burden.

Are you annoyed with your kid? Look in the mirror. Where do you think they learned the behavior that annoys you? That’s right… YOU!

Other parents frustrate me. They just… frustrate me. That is the nice way to put it. I’m just simply amazed at how many bad parents there are. Parents who are completely ruining their children – and they have no idea that they are doing it. God has given me incredible grace in my life, and he continues to. However, I have a really hard time giving grace to other parents (not a good thing).

I struggle with self-righteousness. I tend to think I know better than most people – and I tend to prove it through my actions. Maybe that explains my thoughts today…

Men who have children need to be better dads. If you can’t be trusted to be alone with your own child(ren), there is a big problem. There are incredible resources at your disposal on parenting. Click away from the pornography website and go to a site that can give you tips on how to be a good dad.

Don’t be satisfied if there are major problems in your marriage. Just like the nerves in our body signal to our brain that something is wrong (pain) and needs to be changed – a problem in marriage means something is wrong and needs to be changed! Don’t just wait and hope it gets better. Here are a couple of obvious problems:

You rarely have sex with your spouse.

I suppose every couple is different, and there are certainly special circumstances, but if you are only intimate with your spouse once every couple weeks or longer, that is usually a problem. Why has it not been addressed? The problems can run deep, but how about you change something? You did marry that person for a reason – so at one time you probably liked them. How about giving grace rather than demanding to be served. How about viewing intimacy as a way to serve your spouse rather than to serve yourself. Also, it is very common for the husband to have issues with lust and pornography if they aren’t having sex with their wife.

Wives… for crying out loud – have sex with your husband. I feel like nobody is saying this: Stop being so SELFISH! If you don’t “enjoy it,” find a way to enjoy it. Talk to him about it. Even tell him what to do! He is your husband – no need to be shy. Sex is not just about you! If you rarely have sex with your husband, you are sinning against your husband (unless you are abstaining from sex mutually – which I’ve rarely heard about…). It can be complicated, I get it. You may have trust issues. I get it. Withholding sex because you are bitter towards him for something does not give you the right to sin. In all the years of listening to husbands complain about their wives not having sex with them, I have rarely found anyone who would actually approach the wife.

Keep the bedroom safe, though. If something in bed makes the other person uncomfortable, it is not safe. Sex is for intimacy. Don’t be selfish. It is not about pleasing you. If your spouse is not comfortable with something – talk about it. Yes, talk about sex. Don’t just talk to your friends, talk to your spouse! Figure it out! There are probably underlying reasons why they would be uncomfortable about something – and it is important to know that.

You argue often with your spouse.

I’ve heard so many times that if you don’t “fight” with your spouse, you must not have a healthy marriage. That is a bunch of crap! You typically fight because one or both of you are being completely selfish in a moment (or longer) and you care more about yourself than the other person. I’d say you will almost never “fight” if you are practically giving grace to your spouse with no expectations.

You have "communication problems".

I am very introverted. I don’t particularly like hanging out with a lot of people – and I generally don’t actively look for people to hang out with. I don’t feel refreshed when having a long talk with people. I work in sales and need to talk on the phone a lot – but I am very happy to work via email or other correspondence – and I have found a way to be successful doing it. All that said, I will talk to my wife about anything. I will lie in bed and talk to her for hours if she wants. I enjoy talking to her. I desire to talk to her. I find it incredibly dumb when I hear that husbands cannot communicate with their wives. Why did you marry them? This is your spouse. Talk to them. Tell them how you feel. Let your spouse speak into your life. What are you hiding? REVEAL IT! Let her forgive you and show you grace. If you have a problem with communication, I believe you are likely hiding something, or you simply don’t like who you are talking to. That is a problem if you are married to that person. Don’t just go and sit in groups and whine and complain about it with other people – actually do something about it! How do so many married couples not talk? We live in a strange world…


All this being said, thankfully you don’t need to be perfect or do anything to receive God’s grace.

My Goals: 24 x 24

I apologize for taking so long to write this. I can't believe it's already been almost two weeks since my birthday! Here is the follow-up to my last post. I got this lovely idea from my friend and fellow mama-blogger Ally. She posted a list of 25 things she wanted to accomplish by the time she turned 25 and I just adored the concept! So, without further ado, here's next year's "bucket list", so to speak!

1. Grow in Christ. (I have no idea what this looks like for next year because I have no idea what’s coming our way, but if I look back on my 24th year and see no growth, I’m going to be very sad.)
2. Pray intentionally each morning for my husband, my children and for patience with both.
3. Develop a consistent quiet time routine.
4. Get out of bed and spend some time alone in the mornings before my child(ren) awake.
5. Journal consistently.
6. Spend quality time by myself out of the house.
7. Make a family photo collage to fill a wall in our home.
8. Give birth to our second child fully naturally in a birth center (as planned).
9. Maintain physical health and make my body a priority (example: actually eating three meals a day EVERY day) throughout all the changes my body will go through this next year.
10. Spend more time in the kitchen and make some of my own staples (pancake mix, salsa, spaghetti sauce, baby food, etc).
11. Make a real effort to be on time more often than not.
12. Work out at home on a consistent basis.
13. Achieve softer hands than my husband’s. (I have terrible skin on my hands and it bothers both of us. I want to seek a cure and be consistent about caring for my hands!)
14. Have at least one totally awesome party at our apartment. Hopefully more.
15. Plant a mini-herb garden on our deck. I am dying to grow my own herbs because it is a joke to buy them fresh at the store so I usually just settle for dried herbs in a little plastic tube and I know it’s stunting the potential of my cooking skills.
16. Read at least one book – start to finish – per month.
17. Go on vacation with just Nick.
18. Go on vacation as a family.
19. Pay off both of our student loans and be DEBT-FREE!!!
20. Host at least one holiday at our home – and make it ROCK!
21. Invite someone new to church at least once a month – and follow up with them.
22. Preach the Gospel to Owen every day – when we read books about Jesus, when I’m disciplining him, when we’re eating, praying, resting, playing… I want to show him Jesus every second of every day.
23. Accept imperfection, revel in its glory and thank the good Lord that I do not have to be my own Savior.
24. Have fun and enjoy the blessings God has given me!!!

Please hold me to this list, friends! I am all for accountability so please ask how these things are going! How about all of you? What are your short-term or long-term goals?

23 Things I Don’t Want You to Know About Me

I turn 23 years old tomorrow. In honor of my birthday, I thought I would share some things with you that will probably humble me far more than you will even care to read them. I once saw a blogger do this and was inspired to to the same because I have the tendency to make life sound perfect when it is so obviously not. So... here goes!

1. One of my greatest problems is my pride. I am guilty of often thinking, “Wow, I’m so glad I’m better than that person…” One of the reasons I am sharing this list on the Internet is to try to force some humility upon myself.

2. When something out of the ordinary happens, my first thought tends to be “How can I make a super clever Facebook post about this?”

3. I have a terrible, awful fear of man. This results in me being a people-pleaser and very internally critical.

4. I am far more organized than the average person, but I am almost always late. (Okay, you probably knew this one)

5. I am a grammar Nazi. If someone misspells something on Facebook or incorrectly uses or omits an apostrophe, I will judge their character for it. No joke.

6. When I originally typed this, I spelled “grammar” wrong.

7. I couldn’t tell you the last time I cleaned behind/under my furniture.

8. Three of my weaknesses are Nilla Wafers, Bugles and Circus Animal Cookies (the pink and white ones). I could eat an entire bag of any of these three snacks in one sitting.

9. I have left a load of clean laundry in the dryer for four days before folding it. I also once ran a load of dirty laundry in the washer completely without soap.

10. I have gotten so angry at my cat that I have kicked him.

11. I have gotten so angry at Owen that I have made him cry.

12. I was always really unpopular in school because I did my homework and liked my teachers. It didn’t help that they liked me too. In fact, I switched schools in third grade because my only friend at my previous school was my second grade teacher.

13. Generosity is not a spiritual gift of mine. When I am blessed by a natural gift-giver, I feel really guilty about not feeling like I can return the favor with the same attitude.

14. I feel guilty a lot.

15. I am not consistent with reading my Bible every day so when I come across verses that friends share on the Internet throughout the day, I try to tell myself that “that counts”.

16. Sometimes I really want to hide under a rock and run away from my life.

17. If there are baked goods in my home, I will eat every single one unless someone else does. On top of that, it usually only takes me two or three days to go through a whole batch of baked anything.

18. I’m blonde and I really can be dumb.

19. Example: Owen “happened” because I really, really didn’t understand the Calendar Method. Yep, you heard it from me – MY fault!!

20. My husband cannot organize anything correctly unless I taught him how.

21. I love being a photographer, but I can be a really lazy editor.

22. I avoid sharing the Gospel to strangers pretty much at all cost. I just don’t want to make things “awkward”. (This one makes me want to punch myself in the face just thinking about it)

23. My own self-created standards are more important in my mind than God’s standards. And I usually don’t even meet my own standards.


All this leads to one thing I really DO want you to know about me.

1. I am not defined by my failures… or my successes. Jesus died for every single thing on my list. I am saved by grace – obviously not by my works. I praise my sweet Jesus because I will ALWAYS be a sinner and He will ALWAYS be my Savior.


Stay tuned for a follow-up post in the next few days - I'm going to post a list of things I hope to accomplish in the following year!