How often do you find yourself scrambling to put together dinner? Are you tired of relying on pizza or grocery store rotisserie chickens to bail you out when there’s nothing thawed in the fridge?
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to latch onto a group of women interested in transforming their families’ dinner time experience. Once a month, we’d spend 3-4 hours preparing 10-12 delicious freezer meals in our individual homes. Then, we’d meet at a designated location and exchange our meals with each other in a 15-20 minute “meal swap.”
I’d drive home a cooler filled with entrees and side dishes, all prepped and ready to hang out in my freezer until I thawed it for dinner. We enjoyed meals like dijon pork loin with Israeli couscous, Monster Meatballs, Chicken Enchiladas with salsa rojo, chicken fajitas with all of fixings, Million Dollar Spaghetti and so much more!
Not only did our family enjoy great dinners without the epic mom-meltdown, but our meal swap group also discovered how our meals would make a difference.
In this Part 2 episode with Laura Bell and Alison Frye, we’ll share more stories about our meal swap experience and how we used meal swap to bless our neighbors, friends, people at church and even families overseas.
FREE BONUS!
Would you like to host a meal swap group in your neighborhood or at your church?
Download the first 12 pages of our cookbook, Never Make Just One. We provide step-by-step instructions so that you can successfully set up and launch your own meal swap group. Give it a try! Click here to download the free sample. We’ve included a sample recipe for you to try!
WANT TO BUY THE ENTIRE COOKBOOK? Here’s a link to the entire cookbook. You can purchase it for $5.00. All of the proceeds will benefit mothers and children served by our Moms on Mission team traveling to Honduras this summer.
SHARE YOUR FAVORITE DINNER WITH US! What’s your favorite dinner time meal? Tell us about it in the comments.
Ahhh, the daily question that haunts mothers all across America. It’s well-known that 4pm-7pm is a mother’s least favorite time of day. Between after-school or daycare pick-up, sports practices or music lessons and figuring out homework, tired mamas often dread tackling dinner time preparation. As much as we’d love a hearty, healthy homecooked meal, what we want more is someone to make it for us!
But, what if you could enjoy a great home cooked meal with your family without all of the dinnertime craziness?
On today’s Better Together podcast, we’re going to talk about something that revolutionized dinner at my house. In fact, if I’d found out about this 20 years ago, our family would have eaten at home much more often and I would have cried a lot less!
Join me and my friends, Laura Bell and Alison Frye as we talk about meal swapping. This concept began as an experiment, but soon, it changed our lifestyles and transformed our families’ dinner time experience.
This two-part episode also includes a great bonus! You can download the first 12-pages of our cookbook, Never Make Just One. You’ll get all of the details on how to begin a meal swap group in your community, plus we include one of Laura’s recipes from the cookbook.
SPECIAL OFFER! If you’d like to purchase the entire Never Make Just One cookbook for $5.00, 100% of the proceeds will go toward helping moms and babies in Latin America when our Moms on Mission group heads to Honduras this summer.
BONUS RESOURCES
Click here to download the first 12 pages of the meal swap cookbook (free)
Click here to purchase the Never Make Just One cookbook for $5.00. (You’ll receive it via email. This is a digital download. There are no hard copies available.) Check out this episode!
Have you been praying for something for a long time? Maybe you’ve been praying for:
…healing in your marriage or for a marriage proposal;
…healing from cancer or another disease;
…the restoration of a broken relationship;
…a pregnancy or solution to infertility; or
…a loved one’s salvation or freedom from an addiction.
Whenever we pray, we do so with the expectation that God will answer our prayer at some point in some way. But, what do we do when it seems like God isn’t doing anything at all?
Speaker and author, Marlo Schalesky grappled with this question during her 20-year battle with infertility. Her story is more than just trying to get pregnant. Marlo’s story is about her fight for faith while learning to wait on God.
During this new episode of the Better Together Podcast, Marlo and I discuss what she’s learned about waiting on God when the waiting gets hard. We talk about her new book, Waiting for Wonder and what we can learn from Abraham’s wife, Sarah’s long wait for baby. gritty conversation is a no-hold bars honest reflection on how God can handle our heartache while we wait for His divine purposes to be fulfilled in our lives.
Our candid conversation is a no-holds-barred, honest reflection on how God can handle our heartache while we wait for His divine purposes to be fulfilled in our lives. After you listen, please take a moment and share a comment about the broadcast. I’d love to hear from you.
One more thing…if you know of a woman who’s been struggling with waiting on God, especially a woman struggling with infertility, share this podcast privately with her.
Marlo Schalesky is an award-winning author of 10 books, including both fiction and non-fiction. Her novels have garnered the high honors of the Christy Award and ACFW Book of the Year. Schalesky’s non-fiction releases include Wrestling with Wonder: A Transformational Journey through the Life of Mary (Zondervan) and the latest, Waiting for Wonder: Learning to Live on God’s Timetable (Abingdon Press).
More than 1,000 of Schalesky’s articles have been published in various Christian magazines, including Focus on the Family,Today’s Christian Woman and In Touch. She has contributed devotional books for couples and children. She is a speaker and regular columnist for David C Cook’s Power for Living.
Schalesky is a graduate of Stanford University and has earned her Master’s in Theology, with an emphasis in Biblical Studies, from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is the founder and president of Wonder Wood Ranch, a California charitable organization bringing hope to a hurting community through horses.
Schalesky lives with her husband, six children and a crazy number of animals at her log-home ranch on California’s central coast.
Have you seen the movie, Hidden Figures? I’ve talked about it so much that someone should cut me in on the profits for my publicity work – ha!
Not only did the movie capture my heart, the movie also reminded me that there are hundreds of not thousands of hidden figures in the black community. This matters to me because those stories don’t surface that often. I am grateful for the achievements of modern day African-Americans, which we hear about all of the time. Yet, I need to know about the contributions of those who helped build our country and those who elevated my way of life.
So, here’s my list of seven bold, black & beautiful African American women who’ve inspired my life. This isn’t my entire list, but I hope that these women inspire you, too. I’d love for you to tell me your list of bold, black & beautiful women. Let your list in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you!
LOOKING FORMORE BLACK HISTORY MONTH EXPERIENCES? Check out my most recent Better Together podcast featuring Cara Meredith, daughter-in-law of civil rights icon, James Howard Meredith. We’re talking about racial justice and being mamas of bi-racial children in or racially-divided country. Listen to my interview below:
Yesterday, I took my two younger daughters to a Black History Month community event at our local art museum. Artists from our community shared their talents inspired by African-American composers and musicians. A multiracial audience experienced a variety of unique expressions from performers of every race and culture.
As the mother of three bi-racial daughters, I wanted to seize this opportunity to let my girls see and hear people who could elevate the unique gifts, talents, and passions of their ancestors.
In this week’s Better Together podcast, I want to seize an opportunity to share with you, too. I’m interviewing a Caucasian woman who’s life radically transformed as a result of deciding to use her life and voice to elevate racial reconciliation and social justice. Her name is Cara Meredith, the daughter-in-law of civil rights leader, James Howard Meredith.
This is a candid, authentic conversation about race, family, motherhood. It’s the conversation where you might feel God poking at certain patterns of thinking or challenging different stereotypes. Just know that God’s just waiting for you to give Him permission to dig out that stuff and replace with His love for people.
In this week’s episode, you’ll hear about…
Cara’s reaction to finding out that her new boyfriend’s dad was a civil rights icon;
Some of the struggles that Cara and I have encountered while raising bi-racial children;
How Cara and her husband are intentional about instilling pride in both sides of their children’s heritage;
Important, but tough internal conversations that we all need to have if we’re ever going to turn the tide on the volatile issue of race.
About Cara Meredith…
Cara Meredith is a writer and speaker from Seattle, Washington. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she is co-host of the Shalom Book Club podcast and an adjunct professor at Northwest University. She lives with her husband and two young sons, and consumes guacamole whenever she gets the chance.
Cara with her husband, James Henry Meredith and their two sons.
Cara’s father-in-law, James Howard Meredith talking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr during the March Against Fear in June 1966. Meredith organized the small march and planned to walk from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MI. However, Meredith was shot on the second day of the march, but recovered in a local hospital. In the wake of the shooting, civil rights organizations rallied and over 15,000 people marched, including Dr. King.
When’s the last time that you considered what it meant for your body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit?
I began contemplating 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 this weekend after my third BIG bowl of luscious, buttery pecan ice cream. There wasn’t anything sinful about eating ice cream, but when I started choosing to eat ice cream over real food, it was time for a reality check. In fact, I got a shock when I flipped over the ice cream container to review the nutritional information. Holy Moly, Batman!
Every half-cup serving contained a whopping 15 grams of fat and 240 calories. No wonder it tasted so good!
But just because it tasted good, didn’t mean that it was good for me.
When we consider the Apostle Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, we’re reminded that our bodies are not our own. As believers, we’ve chosen to offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1-2) in light of what Jesus Christ has done for us on the cross. So, while my temple may be named ‘Barbara” on my driver’s license and social security card, God owns my body.
With that in mind, I must determine if what I eat, drink, watch or wear will honor God’s authority over my body or not.
I’m not talking about following strict rules to gain God’s favor. Instead, it’s about the kind of relationship that I want to have with God. I love how God give me Himself, as well as a life of freedom and purpose. Since I want God to do more in me and through me, I must stay attune to God’s leadings in how I steward the temple that He’s given to me.
Because when we’re careless about the body that God has created for us, we’re essentially trashing our temple.
Here are a few “temple topics” that come to mind when I think about how I honor God with the body that He’s given to me.
Temple Topic #1: Movies
I have a vivid imagination. Anything that I see sticks in my mind for a very, very long time. Years ago, I felt that any movie rated over PG-13 had too much mind clutter for me. So, I made the decision to not allow extreme content in my mind.
Now, am I telling you that any movie over PG-13 is wrong or sinful? Nope. I’m just telling you that my temple mind can’t handle PG-13 or above. You’ve got to decide how God calls you to steward your temple.
Temple Topic #2: Exercise
Ephesians 2:10 reminds us that God has created us to do good works. But, I’m concerned that too many of our lady temples are too tired and out of shape to do the work that God has called us to do. Even if you’ve got health limitations, are you treating your temple in a way that allows you to have as much energy as needed to serve where God calls?
I don’t love to exercise, but I need to have a healthy body because as God’s ambassador, He’s got things for me to do. So, I want to stay stretched and strong to the best of my ability. So, I get up and move my temple on a regular basis to get it stretched and strong.
Temple Topic #3: Sleep
When my husband began working nights last summer, my sleep schedule fell apart. My cherished eight hours per night plummeted to less than six hours per night. It didn’t take long for me to feel sluggish and grumpy. My temple needed more shut-eye!
It took some trial and error, but I now back on track. My Fit Bit gives me an honest and accurate record of how much sleep I’m actually getting. I started wearing a sleep mask and ear plugs so that I wouldn’t awaken at 3 or 4am when my husband got home.
A well-rested temple is important. How’s your temple doing in this area?
And finally…food.
I know that I’m getting up into some of your business right here. But, as God’s beautiful daughter, is it time for you to put a microscope over what you’ve been eating lately? Are you eating in a way that honors God’s authority over your body? Again, this isn’t trying to please God by following a bunch of rules. Jesus already freed us from that! Rather, ask yourself if you’ve consulted God lately about your eating or drinking habits. If so, are you walking in obedience to God’s leading in that area of your life?
If we truly believe that God has put more in us and that God wants more for us, then it’s up to us to pay attention to our temples and listen forhow God wants us to use them.
QUESTION: Is taking care of yourself a struggle for you? What gets in the way of good self-care?
Does it seem like the same women volunteer all of the time and you’d like to see some new faces get involved?
If you answered ‘yes’, then I hope that you keep reading!
My name is Barb Roose and I’m a Christian speaker and author. However, I served on staff at a local church for 14 years, most recently as the Executive Director of Ministry. As a former volunteer, ministry leader and church staff, I know all of the hard work, late nights, sweat, tears and prayers that go into planning women’s events. I know what it’s like to dream and plan – only to feel frustration when volunteers don’t show up. But, I’ve learned some key principles to recruiting and retaining high caliber volunteers along the way.
One of the people that I’ve learned from is Cindy Casey, a fellow ministry leader and long-time local church staffer. Over the past 15 years, Cindy has recruited hundreds of volunteers. She is truly one of the best volunteer recruiters I know!
Take 10 minutes and listen to my short Better Together podcast interview with Cindy. She’ll talk about how she recruits leaders, especially young leaders. Cindy will also talk about how she activates and appreciates her volunteers.
If you enjoyed this podcast, leave a comment below and share it with your women’s ministry team. My hope is to bring hope and help to you. What you do in your church and community matters so much and my prayer is that God can use me to support you along the way.
Feel free to email me at barb@barbroose.com with your volunteer recruiting questions or issues. If there’s an interest, I’ll do another podcast with the answers to your questions.
How often do you criticize yourself? Too many of us have a running negative dialogue in our mind about our faults, failures, shortcomings and mistakes.
We’re too something or not enough of something else. Most of us don’t realize that we’re heaping thousand pound words of criticism on ourselves without too much thought as to what impact those critical words are having on our hearts, minds,and lives.
Do you realize that you have a relationship with yourself?
This isn’t a question that we usually consider. We’re used to thinking about cultivating a great relationship with God and others. But, what kind of relationship do you want to have with yourself?
In today’s Better Together podcast, we’re discussing how self-compassion is the key to treating ourselves with the kindness that motivates us toward self-care and resiliency.
Here’s what self-care is not:
Self-compassion isn’t self-pity.
Self-compassion isn’t self-focused.
Self-compassion isn’t selfish.
Self-compassion is a balance of grace and truth. Self-compassion means that we are honest with ourselves in our reality and still treat ourselves as if we have love and value.
Today’s podcast guest is Kim Fredrickson, the author of Give Yourself a Break: Turn Your Inner Critic into a Compassionate Friend. As a marriage and family therapist, Kim taught her clients the principles of self-compassion. As a breast cancer survivor and now, dealing with a terminal diagnosis, Kim still practices these techniques on herself.
In today’s broadcast, you’ll learn and learn:
The reasons why women obsess about caring for others, but quickly neglect themselves;
The impact of not learning about or receiving self-compassion as children;
How to revisit our old baggage and mistakes and reframe our self-critical thinking;
How to talk and treat ourselves with self-compassion on a daily basis.
If you listen to today’s broadcast and you think that your friends may need to hear Kim’s wisdom, please share this post with them.
Do you ever struggle to find time for Bible study and prayer? Goodness, I think that I can hear all of the amens going up around country!
I get the struggle. I LIVE the struggle. I love Jesus, but I get distracted. Don’t let me pick up my smartphone and accidently hit the Facebook app instead of my Bible app.
But, are we missing our blessing?
When I spend regular time in Bible study and prayer, I can feel it! The sweetness of God’s Holy Spirit leads me and I am so blessed. In a world filled with rising chaos, the Holy Spirit supplies the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control that blesses my life. (And my family likes me so.much.more.
But, what happens when I don’t spend time with God?
I get grumpy.
People start getting on my nerves.
My words lose their sweetness.
I couldn’t find the exact quote, but I remember Rick Warren saying that when he doesn’t spend time with God:
…after 3 days, he can tell the difference.
…after 5 days his family can tell the difference.
…after 10 days EVERYONE can tell the difference.
Do you want God’s Word to flow deeper into your heart and mind? I’m not talking about just doing a deeper Bible study, but do you want the truth of the scriptures to bury deep in your heart?
Listen to this Better Together podcast episode and my conversation with Nike Anderson. She’s a homeschool mom and business owner. Nike shares the question that she’s been asking God. She also tells us about an ah-ha moment that she had while reading 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 that taught her about embodying God’s Word, instead of just reading God’s Word.
If you haven’t listened to an episode of the Better Together podcast, now’s the time! (It’s only 10 minutes long – you can do it!)
Are you tired of the negativity that you’re seeing online?
If you are interested in learning to love and value people for who they are, no matter their skin color, then you may be interested in what I’ve got to say in this video.
Whenever I’m stuck with a complex problem that I can’t solve, the most helpful thing that I can do is break the problem down until I discover the foundation. When I find my foundation, I can examine it, repair it, re-enforce it and then re-build. When it comes to racism, I’m inviting you to join me in evaluating about the foundation for how we think about race and prejudice.
You’re welcome and encouraged to leave comments after watching the video. We don’t have to agree, but there will be no hatred allowed. If someone posts something that causes you to lose your peace, then that’s your cue to leave this blog and do something different. As a wise woman once said, “You don’t have to give your words to people who don’t deserve them. Keep your peace and give them your prayers.”
Are you tired of watching people fight with each other? Do you get discouraged when you see Christians unfriending each other, not just on social media, but in families and friendships?
If so, then you’ll be encouraged by today’s podcast. I’m sitting down for an important conversation with Bible study teacher and author, Melissa Spoelstra for a kingdom conversation on the Bible teaches Christians to handle disagreement. She recently released a Bible study on the book of 1 Corinthians, a New Testament letter written to church leaders trying to deal with the fighting and drama in their churches. Sound familiar?
Melissa is the author of the Bible study, 1 Corinthians: Living Love When We Disagree. This is such a well-timed topic for our culture today, especially for Christians.
How do we love each other even though we don’t share the same perspective or convictions? We do know this: That when Christians disagree poorly, the gospel message gets lost and lost people stay lost without that message of hope. Friends, we’ve got to change this!
In today’s podcast, Melissa shares powerful content on living love by sharing:
How Jesus proposed instead of imposed himself on others;
How we establish middle ground or common ground when we’re in the midst of a disagreement;
How Paul’s counsel to the leaders of the Corinthian church provides encourage and practical advice for us to apply to our lives today.
Find out more about Melissa’s book and Bible studies by clicking here.
About Melissa…
Melissa Spoelstra is a popular women’s conference speaker, Bible teacher, and writer who is madly in love with Jesus and passionate about helping women of all ages to seek Christ and know Him more intimately through serious Bible study. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Bible Theology and enjoys teaching God’s Word to diverse groups and churches within the body of Christ.
She is the author of theFirst Corinthians: Living Love When We Disagree, Joseph: The Journey to Forgiveness, Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World Bible studies, and Total Family Makeover: 8 Steps to Making Disciples at Home book. She lives in Dublin, Ohio, with her pastor husband and four kids.
Find her on Twitter @melspoelstra and Instagram @daring2hope, and follow her blog at MelissaSpoelstra.com.
Have you ever felt like your child was your parenting report card? If he or she was doing well in school, then you felt great. But, if your precious cherub was causing the teacher to pull her hair out, then you were failing.
How do we snap out of making our kids our “report card” and instead love and raise them as God calls us to do?
Proverbs 22:6 tells us to direct our children onto the right path so that when they are old, they will not leave it. If the Bible tells us to teach our kids God’s ways, how do we teach when we’re not always sure on how God wants us to live?
Today’s guest, Melissa Spoelstra coaches moms through eight areas that we need to teach our children so that they can develop their own relationship with God. As the mother of four kids, Melissa understands the difficulties and hard decisions that go along with parenting. According to Melissa, parenting is never about perfect, but intentionally planning out how to disciple our children so that they can learn to love Jesus.
In her book, Total Family Makeover, Melissa discusses how Jesus modeled certain disciplines, like prayer, mentoring and service. Then, Jesus taught the disciples how to integrate those same disciplines into their lives. Melissa will share her experiences as a mom, stories about how she’s “failed forward” as a parent and encouragement for any mom who’s at the end of her rope.
In today’s podcast, listen to my interview with Melissa as we discuss:
Why we make our children into our parenting report card;
How not to disciple your children into worriers;
The CRUCIAL importance of finding a mentor mom to help you stay sane during your parenting years;
The differences between parenting young kids and parenting older kids;
Melissa Spoelstra is a popular women’s conference speaker, Bible teacher, and writer who is madly in love with Jesus and passionate about helping women of all ages to seek Christ and know Him more intimately through serious Bible study. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Bible Theology and enjoys teaching God’s Word to diverse groups and churches within the body of Christ.
She is the author of the First Corinthians: Living Love When We Disagree, Joseph: The Journey to Forgiveness, Jeremiah: Daring to Hope in an Unstable World Bible studies, and the soon to be released Total Family Makeover: 8 Steps to Making Disciples at Home book.
She lives in Dublin, Ohio, with her pastor husband and four kids. Find her on Twitter @melspoelstra and Instagram @daring2hope, and follow her blog at MelissaSpoelstra.com.
Barb Roose is a speaker and author who is passionate about teaching women to live beautifully strong and courageous so that they experience God’s great adventure of faith and purpose for their lives.
Check out Barb’s new releases, Stronger Than Stress: 10 Spiritual Practices to Win the Battle of Overwhelm book and Stronger Than Stress: 10 Spiritual Practices to Win the Battle of Overwhelms Bible study.
Barb lives in NW Ohio and is proud mother of three adult kids. Whenever possible, Barb prefers to eat dessert first. Visit Barb’s online home at barbroose.com.
Cara with her husband, James Henry Meredith and their two sons.
Cara’s father-in-law, James Howard Meredith talking with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr during the March Against Fear in June 1966. Meredith organized the small march and planned to walk from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MI. However, Meredith was shot on the second day of the march, but recovered in a local hospital. In the wake of the shooting, civil rights organizations rallied and over 15,000 people marched, including Dr. King.
