Prioritizing

The List

 

Hello, readers! This is Alex, the hubs to Brooke! As this is the first post I am writing, I think it fitting to make it both enjoyable and meaningful. I hope to contribute to the Mr. and Mrs. Journey with Biblical, historical, and political thoughts. Yes, I know the last two may sound a bit tiresome, but I'll try my best! Enjoy!

Over the past couple weeks I have thought heavily on the choices we make in life. Spcifically the choices of prioritizing. I remember before I started dating Brooke how often I would sit down day after day and play video games. I figured that since I am in college and I am going to be working my whole life once I graduate why not enjoy my life right now! And while there is some truth to that, I remember thinking often, Wow, I accomplished nothing today. I did not prioritize my time properly, though I did not make a clear cut decision how I should be prioritizing my life until just recently (marriage obviously has changed my way of thinking quite a bit!). I think I finally have made a few good choices in how I should be prioritizing my focus and my time.

First, my Savior, Jesus Christ. How could I place God in a spot other than first? He Who created the universe, created me, and created my wife. He Who took on the form of a man and died for not just my own personal sins, which by the way are too many to count on just the fingers of my hand. He Who, in his mercy, overlooks my faults and forgives if I just ask of it. He Who has granted me eternal life. What a marvelous God my wife and I serve! No one should ever come first. It saddens me to think of all the times I picked up a video game controller or turned on my laptop screen instead of simply opening up the Bible. I want to place first in my life Jesus Christ, to talk with Him, read His Word, study His Word, and glorify Him in all that I do.

Second, my beautiful wife, Brooke. She is the greatest blessing in my life. I shall by posting at some time what marriage means to me, but just as a summary I would like to share this... I believe, as stated in God's Word, that marriage brings a man and a woman together and literally makes them one. What an amazing miracle that is! I treasure my wife so much! God not only has blessed me with her, but has also placed me in charge of caring for her, leading her, and doing and sacrificing everything I can as long as she is happy. While I struggle with that sometimes I am trying my best and am learning how to be a dedicated husband.

Third, my children. This actually comes later down the road because we have no children yet! However, I do want to stress the importance that if God chooses to bless me and Brooke with children, I shall do anything in order to make their lives happy as best as I can.

Fourth, finance. Yes I know that is strange, but that is what I am studying in college! God has called me into this field as a career for my life. I have not a clue where He will lead me, but this truly is what God has in store for me. After I have put my Savior first, and my wife and children second and third respectively, I would like to glorify God and make my family happy by striving to the best of my ability to excel in this field.

Fifth, history and politics, my hobbies. I do not think that God gave me a craving to learn about history and politics for no reason at all. So much can be learned from the past through history, and found in politics is an array of knowledge to defend what you believe. I know that history and politics are such broad terms and cover such a wide field, but in any free time I have after my first four priorities, I want to spend it learning about history and politics.

These are the five ways I want to prioritize my time. I've already begun to practice this, and in time I hope that practice becomes habit. I know I'll struggle at times, but in the end I hope my wife can say, "I've always felt your love," and my Savior can proclaim, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

The Mr.

An Afterthought: My wife and I may still play video games together from time to time!

Healthy Creations!

Good morning, my fellow readers!

This morning we would like to introduce you all to some healthier snack alternatives. We couldn't start off cold turkey with the whole ABSOLUTELY NO sugar thing.. So these recipes may contain like 1-2g of sugar a serving. I was getting too moody when I went that whole day without sugar. So we took baby steps. (And trust me, I have come so far! I could go every day with just veggies and fruits.. especially cucumbers. They're the best!)

The first one being our meal the other night. THIS IS SO GOOD.

We made these instead of unhealthy burritos.

What's in them?

Shredded chicken.

A tiny bit of Green Goddess

AS MANY VEGGIES AS YOU WOULD LIKE!

I personally prefer Spinach, carrots, cucumber, and celery. Alex likes mushrooms on his.

I used parmesan on mine in replace of cheese.. Alex had swiss cheese.  

Here is what one of them looked like:



Another yummy treat we had for dessert was the banana oat balls!

Ingredients:

1. As many DARK chocolate chips as you would like. (I tried not to go overboard here). There are many pros and cons of dark chocolate, but one thing dark chocolate is known for is the reduction in anxiety it causes. It does have sugar, but it is less than what milk chocolate contains. Dark chocolate reduces the levels in the "fight or flight" hormones I have discussed in the previous blog post. They also reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol! And I'm not doing a "Sugar-free Diet," I'm doing a "anxiety-free" diet.

2. One spoon of peanut butter. (This also helps with anxiety, as long as you don't get too much of it).

3. 2 mashed bananas. Let me tell you the fun fact about bananas... Bananas contain B vitamins and natural Melatonin. SO calming! I try to eat a couple a week on my "bad" days.

4. 1cup natural oats!

Preheat your oven to 325 F and keep them in until golden brown! Alex is not a huge sweets fan, and he devoured these.

As you can see, there are healthier alternatives to help anxiety, and simply cause a better eating habit! Alex and I noticed that we are both already getting in better shape and look thinner just from one week of eating healthier and going on walks! And what's great about that is we didn't even plan on losing weight!

We encourage you all to continue healthier alternatives and keep supporting us!

Thanks!

~The Wife~

The Beginning of a Journey Together

Hello and welcome to our blog!

We are a very happily (and just recently) married couple! We would like to introduce everyone to our blog we will be working on throughout our life's journey together! Alex and I (Brooke) have been married almost three months now! We have been best friends for a long time now and are always trying to give each other the best! Throughout this blog we intend to motivate all of you readers to live a healthier lifestyle, help encourage ourselves to continue this exciting journey together, and to let our creativity and hobbies flow!

Why did we create this blog? We created this blog for our journey in this unhealthy, American-style world (everything must be full of sugar, junk, and EXTRA large, you know!). We thought blogging would be a good way for me to enjoy my healthy lifestyle. Recently, we discovered that I have REALLY bad anxiety. I have stomach pains from stress, panic attacks, and really out-of-control emotions! For the past four to five years I have been struggling with these pains and didn't know what they were until a few weeks ago! Even after multiple doctor visits, an ER run, a "search surgery,' and etc., it took us until now! Crazy right? So we researched panic and anxiety quite a bit and found that a lot of it has to do with lifestyle! Because of this, we have challenged ourselves to exercise, do daily activities (such as walking, jogging, running, hiking, biking, etc.), eat WAY healthier (no more sugar!), and get spiritually closer to God! For those of you who do not understand anxiety, it causes me to feel overwhelmed and panicked a lot for no reason. Anxiety causes me to feel emotionally down a lot of the time, and it takes away my energy and motivation to do anything! I don't want to get too detailed, so for more information just simply Google search "panic attacks" or "anxiety"...

I didn't want to go to a therapist because I didn't want to pay someone money to talk about my problems and do nothing about them, and I also didn't want to pay a psychiatrist money to pay more money for medicine (may I add, ADDICTING medicine) that will only cover the surface of it all! I wanted to stop it completely and trust God that He Alone can take this struggle away from me! A lot of people don't realize how hard anxiety disorders can be on a person. I'm ready to tear Satan down with this! And I have Al's support to do so! So here's to gaining control of my life and making it a super happy one!

With this challenge I have found so many healthy alternatives and secrets so many of you should know! Here is a picture of just a few items we bought this weekend to start off!

Shown above: Parmesan cheese, starkist tuna (light), pita chips, sea salt, Green Goddess Kraft, Chicken and Dumplings soup, Wasabi & Soy Sauce Triscuits, Naturals sweetener, baby corn nuggets, strawberries, and Honey Vanilla Chamomile tea!

Some aweosome hints and tips:

1. Green Goddess dressing tastes like cucumbers and ranch mixed together (SUPER YUMMY and low in sugar!).

2. Parmesan cheese is a good substitute for shredded cheese on salads.

3. Naturals sweetener tastes just like real sugar but isn't sugar at all! (Stevia and fruit exctract!)

4. Chamomile tea has NO SUGAR and is all natural! Not to mention, the tea is VERY calming!

5. Sea salt is definitely better for you than regular salt!

6. I LOVE Asian foods, and these triscuits are a great alternative! They have the taste, but low sugar, no MSG, and they're brown rice based!

Some things that I noticed the past two days of my challenge:
1. I have been way hungrier eating healthy... My body isn't used to eating healthier and is constantly craving junk food! So to curb this hunger, I just continuously eat fruit and veggies all day!
2. I slipped up with the sugar and had quite a bit last night (I made a brownie cookie mixed dessert).. Lets just say I woke up twice in the night (once at 11pm and another at 5am) really emotional..
3. I noticed that when I make a meal and there's still a tiny bit of sugar in it, a cup of chamomile tea definitely offsets this emotion! (I'm totally drinking this right now..so good!)

We haven't had much time to walk or get out because of the rain, but we have been staying a bit active by working and cleaning the apartment up!

Another few ways I found to calm my anxiety down:

Candles! LOTS AND LOTS OF CANDLES!

Happy, good memory-filled pictures.

Something from Maine that involves seaglass!

And fresh flowers! (Alex is so sweet!)

Now we are off to get a good night's rest!

We hope this helps you all understand the importance of health and encourages you readers to live a healthier lifestyle as well!

~The Wife~