Family by God&#039;s Design

The Satisfaction of Small, Meaningful Doses All Day Long

Families need a healthy diet of love and connection to thrive. How do we meet our family’s dietary need for love? Some families have one big meal a day to satisfy their “love cravings.” They try to engage in some extravagant show of love once a day (at best) in hopes that it will last...

Celebration Honor

connection family relationships happiness love

April 4, 2020

Daily Questions to Strengthen Your Marriage & Family

Building a stronger, more intimate marriage is as simple as asking the right questions…and then responding to the answers you’re given. Asking the right questions can also build a stronger family. With that in mind, let me share 10 questions you can ask your spouse, children, or parents to strengthen your family and marriage today....

Family Shepherds Grace Honor

family intimacy family relationships parent child relationship

March 30, 2020

Survival Tips for Your Family During Corona Virus

The corona virus pandemic has brought major changes to our families. Children are home from school. Some parents are home from work while others have jobs that require them to continue working and take great precautions to not “catch the virus.” Having everyone home 24/7 is a new experience for many families. Family members may...

Celebration Family Shepherds

family intimacy family relationships routines

March 23, 2020

7 Things You Can Do to Raise a Healthy Adult

Life is filled with risk factors and protective factors. Children, in particular, are susceptible to these risk factors and protective factors. In fact, you may have heard talk about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and how they impact our children even into adulthood. Specifically, ACEs include abuse (physical, emotional, or sexual), neglect (physical or emotional), and...

Family Shepherds

connection family intimacy family relationships healthy development parenting

March 7, 2020

Learn to Complain Well

Complaining can easily become a habit that traps us in a cycle of finding even more reasons to complain. That cycle is bad for our mood, our health, and even our brain… UNLESS we learn to complain well! Complaining well has a different purpose and outcome than simply complaining. Simply complaining traps us in the...

Grace Honor

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March 2, 2020

To Live the Dream of Emotional Closeness

It’s like a dream, isn’t it? A family in which your spouse and your children come to you to talk about their joys and their sorrows, their accomplishments and their failures, their courageous moments and their greatest fears. But this doesn’t come easy; it doesn’t happen in our sleep. It takes work. It begins with...

Grace Honor

emotional health emotions family intimacy family relationships intimacy

February 10, 2020

Good News for Parents of Children with Asthma

Northwestern University conducted a study exploring the interaction between neighborhood environmental conditions, families, and asthma symptoms in children diagnosed with asthma. Using Google Street View, the researchers took a virtual walk through each neighborhood considered to look at evidence of graffiti, abandoned cars, bars on home windows and doors, and abandoned homes. Then they interviewed...

Family Shepherds

family relationships healthy development parent child relationship parenting

January 13, 2020

What Does This Mean for Your Family

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Cologne collaborated to explore what contributed the most to a person’s well-being: Moral thoughts—thinking good things or things that benefit another, Engaging in moral deeds—doing something that benefits another, or Doing something kind for yourself—like relaxing or treating yourself to something nice. Interestingly, all three things contributed...

Grace Honor

family relationships happiness kindness moral development prayer

January 4, 2020

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I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for GOOD NEWS!!

I have good news. It comes from a study completed by Yoshihiko Koga, a professor at Kyorin University in Tokyo. He gave a group of people three spoons of ice cream to eat upon waking and then gave them mental acuity tasks to complete on the computer. The other group simply got up and completed...