Author Archives: Kathryn Sneed

About Kathryn Sneed

Kathryn is a 20-something stay-at-home mother and military wife. She keeps busy by taking care of her special needs son and blogging about faith, marriage, motherhood, military life and more at Singingthroughtherain.net. In her spare time, she likes hanging out with friends and going on date nights with her husband!

10 New Year’s Resolutions for Your Marriage

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Last night I thought, I should write a post on New Year’s resolutions for your marriage. And then I remembered, that’s already been done…and done well.

This timeless post from HWC contributor, Kathryn Sneed, was originally posted this time last year. And I still can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year.

My personal New Year’s resolution for my marriage: to love like there is no tomorrow…because we never know how much longer we will be fortunate enough to live this life together.

Until tomorrow…make it a Happy New Year!

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2015 is here and now is the time that people start thinking about New Year’s resolutions.

A lot of people like to set personal goals, fitness goals, organizational goals and more. But what about goals for your marriage?

Your marriage is and should be one of the most important things in your life, shouldn’t it be first on your list of resolutions?

Every marriage needs and deserves a little more attention and 2015 is the perfect year to start giving your marriage that extra TLC! Not sure where to start? Here are 10 ways for you to work on your marriage this coming year!

10 Resolutions for Your Marriage:

1. Forgive and Forget.
This year, strive to forgive your spouse as soon as they apologize or ask for forgiveness. It’s easy to hold a grudge or to bring up past grievances, but letting these things go and forgiving your spouse can lead to a happier self and a happier marriage!

2. Spend More Time Together.
So many people are so busy, too busy. Life gets in the way and the important things in life tend to fall to the wayside. In 2015, resolute to spend more time with your spouse! Whether it be more date nights or more time at home together, I’m sure your spouse will appreciate having more of you in their life!

3. Put Your Spouse First.
In a day and age when there are so many things that scream for our attention, it’s important that our spouses feels like they are important in our lives. This year, determine to put your spouse above all the noise trying to attract your attention. Determine to put them first.

4. Seek God Together.
It’s sometimes easy to judge our spouse for the things they do, but learning to seek God together can help your relationship become stronger and help us learn to focus more on the things we need to fix in our own lives. Resolute in 2015 to seek God together and watch your relationship grow stronger together and in God!

5. Cultivate Common Interests.
It’s easy to do things that interest you personally, but why not learn some new hobbies with your spouse? This year, find some common interests that both you and your spouse would enjoy, and do them often! What better way to have fun with your spouse and learn more about them?

6. Work Toward Conflict Resolution.
No marriage is perfect, but a peaceful marriage is one to strive for! Let 2015 be the year you work toward healthy conflict resolution. Learn better strategies for your marriage and learn how to discuss things peacefully with your spouse. Strive toward healthy communication!

7. Keep the Passion Alive.
Maybe your marriage has gotten a little boring, you do the same things every day and nothing seems fun or out of the ordinary. Let 2015 be the year you change all that! Determine to keep the passion alive and help things get steamy instead of boring. You will both be thankful you did!

8. Flirt more!
Who doesn’t like to flirt a little with their spouse? It’s fun and brings back the spice you might remember from your dating years! This year, resolute to flirt more with your spouse. There are so many fun ways to flirt, and your spouse just might be surprised and happy that you started it!

9. Say, “I love you” every day.
A lot times it’s easy to assume that our spouse knows we love them. But there are so many different ways to say and show that you love them. This year, don’t let a day go by without saying it. Resolute to say, “I love you” in a special way every day.

10. Communicate Appreciation.
So many people feel under appreciated because their spouse doesn’t take the time to communicate appreciation for them and what they do. Don’t let another year go by without telling your spouse how much you appreciate them. Resolute to communicate appreciation as much as possible!

What New Year’s resolutions for your marriage will you be adding to this list?

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5 Ways to Keep Your Military Marriage Strong

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After our servicemen are deployed, so many come home to discover a strained marriage and children they barely know.

I can’t imagine how tough that must be, not only for them but for their families. That is why I love posts like this one from HWC contributor, Kathryn Sneed.

Posts like this that help strengthen our military families so once they’ve returned from fighting to protect our freedoms, they are able to truly live a life of peace.

So if you know a military wife, share this post with them. They’ll thank you for it.

Until tomorrow…make it great day!

___________

Over the years, I have learned a lot of lessons about military life and marriage.

Keeping my marriage strong has been important to me because I know that although the military lifestyle can be tough, marriage is still our responsibility and there are plenty of things I can do to help keep it strong!

Below are ways I have learned that have helped strengthen our marriage through the tough times, and separations, and I believe they can help keep your military marriage strong too!

5 Ways to Keep Your Military Marriage Strong:

1. Communicate!
You’ve probably heard before that communication is the key to any relationship, and that is so true! Communication is especially important in a military marriage because of how stressful the lifestyle can be. If you are not talking things out with your spouse, you are keeping it all in and eventually it will hurt your relationship.

Communicate honestly, your feelings about the lifestyle, the job, the mission, and even deployment. Yes, sometimes there are things your spouse may not be able to tell you about the job or the mission, and that’s okay. But with effective communication, you and your spouse will still be able to talk through important things about your family and about your marriage.

2. Savor Each Moment.
As a military spouse it can be very easy to see the difficult aspects of the military lifestyle. For a lot of military families, separation is big part of life and it can be easy to see each moment as less and less time until your spouse leaves again. Instead of looking at it like that, learn to savor the moments you have with your spouse.

Go on a date, take a vacation, do things you might not normally do together – just have fun! Focus on the good and appreciate the small things in your marriage and family. Then, when your spouse is away again, you will have these wonderful moments to look back on and remember.

3. Have Understanding and Patience.
Understanding and patience are so important in a military marriage because of the toll the lifestyle can take on the military member and even the spouse. There will be days where your spouse may be having a bad day at work or maybe they have pulled away due to an upcoming deployment. These are times where understanding and patience are the keys to getting through each day.

Being understanding will help lessen the tension between you and your spouse, and being patient will help both of you learn to get through each day and each tough time, step by step.

4. Talk and Laugh Often.
If there is one thing I’ve learned as a military spouse it’s that I should never be too busy to laugh and talk with my husband. Time together is precious and sometimes laughter is few and far between, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t take time out for it! It’s been said that laughter is the best medicine and I definitely agree. Sitting together talking and laughing is a great way to strengthen your relationship and it’s definitely something you won’t regret!

5. Make the Best of Time Apart.
Time apart from your spouse is usually inevitable in the military, but learning to make the best of that time is going to help the separation go much easier. Instead of pulling away during this time, use it to grow closer to your spouse and learn more about them. Make the best of these separations, by having a good attitude, setting some goals to accomplish during this time, and learning to encourage each other through it.

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Bacon-Cheese Pull-Aparts

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I found this recipe a long time ago via Pinterest and I made it for dinner one night. After deciding that it was very good, but definitely more of a breakfast food, I decided to make it again recently for my Sunday School class!

We are in the young married couples class and we all like to take turns bringing breakfast each Sunday. I decided this would be the perfect recipe to make and bring in and it was a huge hit! There was nothing left at the end. The recipe was simple and easy to make which I loved because Sunday mornings can be pretty hectic in our house.

I hope you get the chance to try it for breakfast one morning, I know you will love it!

Ingredients:

1 egg
2 tablespoons of milk
1 can of Pillsbury Grands Flaky Biscuits (Original)
1 package of pre-cooked bacon
3/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese (I used Colby cheese)
1/4 cup of chopped scallions

How to Make:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray your casserole dish with cooking spray. 2. Cut the entire package of bacon into 1 inch pieces and set aside. Chop up scallions and set aside. 3. In a large bowl, mix the egg and milk together with a whisk until smooth. 4. Open up the biscuits and separate. Cut each biscuit into quarters (4 pieces each). 5. Gently stir the dough into the milk and egg mixture and make sure they are all coated evenly. Add bacon cheese and scallions. 6. Spoon the mixture into your casserole dish and arrange biscuits in a single layer. 7. Bake for 23-28 minutes or until golden brown. (I would watch carefully, mine cooked pretty fast).

Image From: www.pillsbury.com

Recipe From: www.pillsbury.com

Let us know how you like these Bacon-Cheese Pull-Aparts!

3 Ways to Create Your “Happily Ever After”…Once Life Happens

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I have an enormous respect for women whose husband’s are deployed. They are charged with single-handedly maintaining the home while simultaneously raising and educating their children.

For me, that’s a real life version of I Don’t Know How She Does It. Well, Kathryn at Singing Through the Rain is one of those women who amaze me and I always leave her blog incredibly grateful for my life and marriage. I hope you enjoy her post.

Until tomorrow…make it a great day!

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When I was younger, I loved to read books about inspirational and Christian love stories. I loved reading about a couple’s background, how they met, and how they got together. But the best part was the pursuit.

As much as I loved these books, I have a confession to make: I disliked reading any books that had stories about couples after they got married. I thought they were boring. Where was the excitement of finding love and being pursued? Who wanted to read a story about life after the “happily ever after?” Not me!

What little girl, what woman for that matter, hasn’t dreamt of a happily ever after? But life after marriage isn’t always what we expect. For my mother, her “happily ever after” was definitely not happy. My parent’s marriage ended in divorce and the side effects of a bad marriage are still pawing at my family to this day.

How is life after YOUR happily ever after? Is it what you hoped?

I have been married almost 5 years now and I think that we have a pretty good marriage. However our “happily ever after” has been quite different than expected.

First a miscarriage, then multiple health problems, then finding out that our little boy has autism. Life definitely hasn’t been the happily ever after I’d imagined or hoped it would be and it’s this “life after the wedding” that seems to affect a marriage the most.

It isn’t that our marriage isn’t great, it’s all the other things that tend to take our focus away from each other and pull at us from all different directions!

So how do we fix our view of happily ever after? How do we focus on the life after ‘I do’ and make it just as good as falling in love and being pursued? Here’s a few tips!

1. Change Your Expectations.
Has life thrown you some curve balls? Has your road to happily ever after been filled with twists and turns, bumps and dips? Whatever has happened until now, that is the past. Know that YOU and only you can change your situation and your expectations.

You can choose to stay in the “what I thought life would be like” mentality OR you can regroup and choose to focus on the positive. See the changes as something wonderful – as an adventure you and your husband are taking together. Change your outlook for the better and it will change your life.

2. Learn to Pursue (not just be pursued).
Before the wedding, your husband pursued you. He sought after you and you after him. But sometimes after the wedding the pursuing stops. Life gets in the way, things get busy, or maybe you just think the “pursuing” is over now. I have good news for you: it’s not over! Marriage is about a life-long pursuit of one another!

Chase each other. Adore one another. Date for a lifetime. And if you’re wondering how to do that after kids, try this!

3. Accept YOUR “Happily Ever After”.
Your “happily ever after” is the one God gave you. All you have to do is accept it and make the most of what you’ve been given. Your happily ever after doesn’t have to be the boring part that seems to follow a lot of marriages. It can be an exciting, thrilling journey that brings you and your husband closer than you ever imagined. Trust me on this one!

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SAVE THE DATE: Bloggers, join us here every third Monday of the month for our fabulous Marriage Mondays link-up party! Next Up: Mark your calendars for Monday, August 19th!