Jon & Julie's Work From Home Life Blog

Welcome to Jon & Julie's MLM life blog! We love working from home and are regular people dealing with regular stuff with our kids, finances, staying motivated. Hopefully, you can relate and learn a little from our life lessons!

Hung By the Tongue

Are you hung by the tongue? Have you heard that verse in the Bible that states “As a man thinks in his heart so is he” and “Death and Life are in the power of the tongue”? Recently, we have been working on our wonderful, red-headed , independent, manipulative,and very loving 4yr old son and helping him understand the power of his words. The saying – Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me – is so not true. Our son is at the age he does a lot of ‘testing’ . He says a lot of things just to see what kind of reaction he is going to get. However, he has a 2 yr old sister, Annie, who looks up to him and listens to every word he says. We have been working on him to use kind words and to say things that will make people feel good about themselves…not make them feel bad.

As we’ve been praying, about this with him, we started a new book called Hung By The Tongue by Francis P Martin. What an incredible book! It not only is helping us teach our children, but has helped both of us in our daily lives. It is such a huge reminder that our words, what we speak out of our mouth, can dictate how we feel, how we react, and can even dictate our future. There is huge power in our words. This can impact what happens in our day, the joy in our life, our success in business, and our health. We know God has been working on us because it seems to pop up everywhere. On Friday, in the St Pete Times there was an article called Sick Minds by Desonata Holder. This whole article was about how our mind can influence our death – at least our well-being. It talked about how people get worse because they think or say they are going to get worse. When you have thoughts that bad things might happen to you and then even speak your thoughts, they have done medical studies , that it impacts our health. It affects our heart rate and suppresses our immune system. Wow! We’ve started making a point each day to try to speak ‘positive’. If either one of us is feeling down or has a ‘woe is me’ attitude because we have too much on our plate , the other one is there to help be accountable in our quest for positive speaking, and therefore positive outcomes in our lives. This is a one day at a time kind of thing and requires a lot of faith that God is in control, but we control our tongues! Hope you find this helpful! The book Hung By the Tongue is worth the read – it is a very small but powerful book. Jon and Julie Bates

Life is Fragile

I am sitting here in deep thought and sadness as I just got off the phone with my husband who relayed some news to me about a friend of ours. She is my age, eats EXTREMELY healthy, exercises, stay at home mom, and has 5 kids. She was diagnosed with cancer about 6 weeks ago and was rushed to the emergency room today because it started causing problems with her heart. She may not make it through the night. Life is so fragile and we sometimes forget that..forget that life is not in our hands. We don't make the choice on when earth is no longer our home. I know we are given tools to be healthy, make good choices for safety and that is the part we can control. But when you do everything right...and that just isnt't good enough..it is hard to understand. I know God has a master plan for all of us, and I know my friend is one of His children and has a relationship with Jesus Christ and she will be at home in Heaven with him when He decides that is His will for her. But it still does not fully take away the pain and sadness especially for her family who are left here dealing with life without her. I am going to continue to pray for her and her family. If you are reading this, I ask that you join me! Thanks for listening!

Strong Willed Child Anyone?

Anyone out there have a strong-willed child? Oh my goodness, I love my red-headed 4yr old son (1st child) to death...but when he is in one of his moments it can take me to my brink! This morning he woke up with the start of a cold....so after drinking his antioxidant drink we drink in our family - I wanted to swab his nose with a Zicam nose swab. They are supposed to help reduce the severity and length of a cold. He had an absolute fit like I was giving him a shot. This went on for 1 1/2...no rational would work, it was like he was going to stand his ground no matter what or how crazy he sounded in his reasoning. I have to come up with alternative ways for him to see he is the child, I am the parent and he is not always right. My husband and I want him to trust us so if we tell him something won't hurt, he can take that to the bank. I guess this will be an on-going process. I continue to pray that God will use his strong-will for his own good as he gets older, but that he will understand when he needs to tame it and submit to authority. I know as adults we can be like this too! Sometimes it is hard to admit when we have made a bad choice or decision and want to stand our ground no matter what...then we look pretty silly. Hopefully, I will use this example with my son, to help make me a better mom, wife, and friend!

Networking on Myspace

Hi all I love this networking on myspace! I have met lots of cool people and people who are genuinely interested in getting to know me and what I do. There are so many things people can network about....from understanding more about kids to promoting their own business. The chat rooms have all kinds of people in there and I love it 'cause it is real-time. If you spend time getting to know people whether on My space or in real-life, they will want to spend time getting to know you. That is what it is all about, right? Hope you take some time to get to know me...I'd love to meet you!

WAHM - don't take it for granted

What a wakeup call for me this morning when my son got up EXTRA early excited because today is his last day of preschool for the summer..also called Water Day!! At first I was so annoyed he was up so early, but I had to take a step back and put myself in his shoes. I am blessed I get to go to his little party and his water day fun and I don't have to put on a dress and heels and go into an office. Sometimes I take my status as a stay at home/work from home mom for granted. I forget to appreciate the freedom I have especially as I am trying to prepare things to do for the summer and put together a little schedule for my kids so we all don't go insane on a daily basis! If you want to know more about building a business from home and what to look for in a company...checkout www.wealth-in-home-business.com! Look forward to hearing your thoughts!