I joke that I've been married to three different men, and yet physically it's the same man. And while it's partially a joke, it's also not. I think any sustained marriage comes with numerous iterations, and I'm learning what a gift that is.

My husband pre-kids is different from who he was after. And naturally, he's different now than he was a decade ago. Instead of assuming the man I married is the same man I'm married to, I want to start celebrating all of the changes and iterations of him.

And likewise, he to me, because if I've been married to three different men, he's averaged at least ten different wives.

In this podcast, we talk about what it looked like for us to fall back in love, how to increase intimacy in marriage, and what we've kept from the Sex Talk podcast series and what we've left behind.

Read the full post: https://thelivingwell.com/374

Ready to edit your story? Join the next Freedom Story Workshop: https://thelivingwell.com/freedom-story

Also, be sure to subscribe to The Weekly Fill Newsletter. Inside the newsletter, you'll receive weekly reflections, practical health frameworks, and invitations to exclusive live conversations. Join here: https://www.thelivingwell.com/the-weekly-fill

Can we talk about a phrase that makes a lot of Christians squirm? Self-love.

I'll be honest, for most of my adult life, I thought self-love was worldly. Anytime I entertained the idea of self-love, I felt guilty. I wanted to nourish myself, and yet I thought the holy thing to do was the opposite: push myself aside, keep myself small, and call it humility.

Only recently, while reading the Bible through God's perspective, did I start to see things differently. I realized self-love is not only biblical. It's foundational. That opened the door to rethinking what humility means. In my latest podcast conversation, I unpack that with Blake Guichet, host of The Speakeasy podcast and author of Confessions of a Crappy Christian.

Blake is one of my all-time favorite people to talk faith with, because she goes straight to the questions most of us are scared to ask out loud. This one hits home.

Read the full post: https://thelivingwell.com/373

Ready to edit your story? Join the next Freedom Story Workshop: https://thelivingwell.com/freedom-story

Also, be sure to subscribe to The Weekly Fill Newsletter. Inside the newsletter, you'll receive weekly reflections, practical health frameworks, and invitations to exclusive live conversations. Join here: https://www.thelivingwell.com/the-weekly-fill

Say this out loud: "I can't handle this. I'm so tired. Everything is falling apart."

Now notice your body. Did your shoulders creep up? Did your breath get shallow?

Now try this one: "This is hard, but I can handle it. I can let this be easy."

Feel the difference?

We spend so much time talking about what we eat, how we sleep, and how we move. But there's one thing running underneath all of it, every single day, that almost nobody is tracking. Your vocabulary. I call it the missing nutrient, because like food, your words either fill you up or drain you.

In this episode, I walk through what the research says about how language and your body's stress response are connected, what God says about the power of our words, and why so many of the things we say over ourselves are labels instead of descriptions. I also share 15 simple swaps to start speaking life over your body, and a five-step way to make them stick without faking positivity or pretending you feel great when you don't.

Your words won't override biology, and they won't replace your doctor. But they do shape your stress, and your stress shapes your body. And this is one of the few places in that chain where you get to choose.

Grab your coffee, press play, and let's start editing the story you're speaking over your life.

Read the full post with all 15 swaps: https://thelivingwell.com/372

Ready to edit your story? Join the next Freedom Story Workshop: https://thelivingwell.com/freedom-story

Also, be sure to subscribe to The Weekly Fill Newsletter. Inside the newsletter, you'll receive weekly reflections, practical health frameworks, and invitations to exclusive live conversations. Join here: https://www.thelivingwell.com/the-weekly-fill