Liz: 0:12

welcome to our one blessed mess where ben and liz and we are raising six kids which we had in eight years, homeschooling and a dual entrepreneurial home. So two businesses and keeping it exciting while having four teenagers soon to be five, and we also have eight.

Ben: 0:34

Did you mention the chickens?

Liz: 0:35

No, no, we also have eight chickens and two dogs, and also we have a story about a snake in the chicken coop. I feel like we should talk about that for a second, because that's quite.

Ben: 0:45

That's a good story. So we had this snake and he got into the chicken coop.

Liz: 0:52

He got into the chicken coop.

Ben: 0:53

And we found out about it because one of our kids came running inside screaming ah there's a snake. There's a snake in the chicken coop.

Liz: 0:59

Yes.

Ben: 0:59

I can't remember who it was.

Liz: 1:00

There was a lot of commotion. I don't remember either, but it was quite the excitement, not to mention quite the heart attack for me.

Ben: 1:07

Yeah, because Not to mention quite the heart attack for me, yeah Right, because the way that we built the chicken coop is like you have to lift up the little door.

Liz: 1:15

Flat door, like flat door thing To get to the eggs To see the eggs.

Ben: 1:19

But it's about eye level. So when you open it up you kind of have to like stick your head in and look down.

Liz: 1:25

Oh my gosh.

Ben: 1:27

Thankfully, you know, the snake wasn't in that coop at the time. It was in a different coop, since we no longer use that one. But anyways, that's besides the point. We were thankful that we didn't have a surprise snake in the face.

Liz: 1:40

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at, yeah.

Ben: 1:42

But instead we found this snake in our other little coop that we no longer use, and it was unique because the snake had four, four eggs.

Liz: 1:55

So it looked like.

Ben: 1:56

In its body.

Liz: 1:57

In its body. So when you looked at the snake literally when you looked at the snake it looked like a beaded necklace. It was like a beaded necklace, yeah. Or like you know how. There's that hairstyle where you put your hair in a ponytail and they put like pony tails around it and it like, yeah, like puffs. It looked like that it was freaky, deaky.

Ben: 2:12

And it wasn't moving very fast.

Liz: 2:14

No, I mean that snake must have been real hungry, because it was like it was like Pac-Man, but with our eggs, and so this, this snake, gets a bunch of our eggs and it was scary as heck for me. Ben's like ah, it's just a rat snake, which you know. Okay, I just don't like snakes.

Liz: 2:31

Yeah, I don't like snakes, Right, they're not poisonous, so I'm like you have to get rid of the snake, because now the snake knows how to get into our coop, which we're not really sure how it got on, and then also knows where the goods are.

Ben: 2:52

So we've got to went and got the snake, which he was pretty easy to get he wasn't moving fast and I put him in the brown paper bag, uh, but the issue was I had to go to work and there was some client thing going on and I had to, you know, I had to go make sure it was getting taken care of. So I left the snake in the brown paper bag and I thought it was pretty secure because I had stapled the brown paper bag together.

Liz: 3:18

But I'm in the house. Okay, I've already seen the snake. I don't really want to see the snake. Take care of the snake. So I go into the house and this is Ben's plan is to put it in a brown paper bag stapled, and then proceeds to bring it into the house and brings it into our bedroom, where I am, and he's like hey, here's the snake, what are you doing? It wasn't going to hurt you, why is it in our?

Liz: 3:40

house. Why is it in my bedroom? Why is it in a brown paper bag? He's like I stapled it.

Ben: 3:46

What who cares? It was a Trader Joe's bag. It's high quality.

Liz: 3:50

Who cares? We need to trade that somewhere else, anywho. So he's like well, I don't have time. I got to jump on this meeting. And he's like I'll get rid of it later.

Ben: 3:59

I kind of forgot about it.

Liz: 3:59

And then he forgot about it. But you know where? He put that brown paper bag? Right inside our door in our house. By the door going outside he sets it down right there. Now I have to homeschool the kids. I still have business meetings that I'm going to be jumping on for my business and I'm thinking what if the snake gets out of the paper bag? Nah, he wasn't coming out, well, okay. So the day goes on and unfortunately everybody forgot about the snake.

Ben: 4:26

Everybody forgot. It just stayed there. It just stayed there Right at the front of the house and then by the time I got off work I was like, oh crap, I gotta, I gotta, take care of that thing, you gotta go dispose of it.

Liz: 4:35

So oh, I didn't kill it, no, you didn't, but you had to get it away because it wasn't a, so you just took it to another part of our neighborhood near a grassy knoll right and a lake.

Ben: 4:50

I just rolled down the window, opened up the bag and just let him out.

Liz: 4:54

Let him out. And that snake was a happy snake.

Ben: 4:57

Well, hopefully.

Liz: 4:57

It had a well. It slithered away, it had its breakfast, lunch and dinner and the next meal. And the next meal. And so yeah, that's what it's like having chickens. I mean, we got lots of stories and I just don't know if I've been cut out to be a farmer's wife.

Ben: 5:15

Well, you're doing a good job.

Liz: 5:17

Well, thank you, I just aye, aye, aye, aye, aye I don't know if I'm cut out to be a farmer. Well, Farmer Ben, you're doing pretty good, in my opinion.

Ben: 5:34

I think you're great. We have lots of stories of hatching eggs and getting incubator and it's really fun. And a dog that ate chickens, which, yeah, which we had to take care of, yeah, that's another.

Liz: 5:39

Yeah, that that dog we had to give away.

Ben: 5:40

What are we talking about today? That was a rabbit trail man.

Liz: 5:42

These rabbit trails they sneak up on well, but that's a good story it is I mean, it's a good story about how you brought a snake in a paper bag, a big snake in our bedroom.

Ben: 5:51

That's a good size, yeah, yeah.

Liz: 5:53

Okay, so this is the topic we're diving in today and we're going to be having a conversation about, and it's a pretty good one. I love this topic. In fact, ben is wearing his festive shirt because it's festive jazz hands, because he's like oh, we're talking about our we retreat. We did a we retreat and it was pretty awesome.

Ben: 6:15

I wanted to go to Hawaii for our we retreat, but we couldn't quite make that happen.

Liz: 6:19

Not yet.

Ben: 6:19

Maybe a future. We retreat, we will do Another anniversary trip.

Liz: 6:24

Yeah, there you go so that's our topic.

Ben: 6:25

today is a we retreat and we got to go on a we retreat recently.

Liz: 6:32

Yep.

Ben: 6:33

So we're going to share a little bit about that, but first we're gonna talk about what it is All right. So what is a? We retreat Liz.

Liz: 6:38

So, basically, it's time that you get away with your spouse and you go through some like goal setting. You spend time with the Lord, spend time with each other, and it's just a really great retreat to get on the same page, because you're an individual, I'm an individual and we've got things that are going on. We're raising a family, a very active, busy, crazy full life and so sometimes we need to get away and pause, to just come together, and that's what this we Retreat is all about. Actually, how we came up with it was I saw a post somewhere I don't even know who said it, but they coined it we Retreat, and so we've just adopted that name. It's like a reboot.

Ben: 7:23

It's like a reboot.

Liz: 7:23

Yeah, I've seen a download and reboot, you know, or goal weekend, something like that. But we, you know, we value that and we just, you know, wanted to share that with you because it was so, it's been so effective for us that we want to pass on the goods. That's what our one blessed mess is like. Whatever we found that works, it's like, hey, we want to let you know so, yeah, so that's what it is.

Ben: 7:49

Cool, and so I think you talked about kind of why it was important a little bit. But one of the things that we realized and this is when we were doing our we Retreat we realized that we actually had been doing like a really basic form of this for years. And I'll talk just a little bit about that.

Liz: 8:09

But we Probably since we were married.

Ben: 8:11

Yeah, I mean really.

Liz: 8:13

Yeah, so for over 20 years, so for over 20 years.

Ben: 8:15

We would go to this conference and it stopped right around the new year and it was a conference of ours that we were involved in at one point in time and then we took our kids to and it was just a cool place to hang out and get refreshed and whatnot, and so we were coming back and we would always travel pretty good distance from from this conference in the car, in the car because flying with that many kids, that many littles was way too expensive, yeah, so we would have the kids strapped in their car seats um, you know, eating snacks and or sleeping or watching a movie, because it's a long it is a long trip.

Liz: 8:51

I mean we're talking like 18 hours and we just do it in one drive for that family, but it would give us time to like kind of reflect the previous year and then also kind of set goals and hear each other's heart for the next year.

Ben: 9:05

Yeah, we weren't going anywhere for 18 hours, like we were strapped in and we were up in the front seat. The kids were mostly good in the back. And so we just took that time to ask each other questions and figure out what we wanted to do for the year, because it was always that conference terminated right at the end of the year, so it felt like it was just our time to plan and set vision, yeah, and figure out what we wanted to do differently and stuff, and so that's a lot of the same point, and even why to do it and what's why it's important with this we retreat.

Ben: 9:37

It felt like the same thing, but just a lot more intense, and it was great that we weren't in a car for three days.

Liz: 9:41

Yeah, so this one that we just did, like we actually had fun for three days.

Liz: 9:45

Yeah, for three days we actually planned it, got away. You know the kids were taken care of and we went into it with you know we're going to be not in a car, sleeping in a bed. You know we decided to go to the beach because it's beautiful and inspiring. We both enjoy the coastline, um coastal line, and we both enjoy, you know, just being inspired in beauty. And we, you know, have a belief in this part of our marriage that every couple of months we've been doing this for probably gosh 10, 15 years.

Liz: 10:17

I mean it has to be where, every couple of months, we try to get away. Yes, it's costly. Yes, it takes planning. Yes, we have to get systems in place to be able to leave our kids to go away. Now, our kids, you know, in the beginning was a little bit harder because they were tinier. Um, but as the older they have got, the older they have gotten, the easier it is to take off, because the older self, the youngers and you know, we're in a great place to be able to do that.

Liz: 10:43

I should say 10, 15 years we've been doing this, not getting away every quarter. As the kids have gotten older, we've implemented it in the last maybe, I don't know five or six years, where we try to get away every three months or so. So anyway, this was really awesome because the whole point and focus of it was for goal setting. It was to hear each other's hearts.

Liz: 11:06

And when we get away, I just want to say this little commercial when we get away every quarter, we don't get away for multiple days. We try to, we would like to, but sometimes we just get away for one night, like we'll head out to a B&B, bed and breakfast that's not too far from us, maybe in a near town, or we'll even get like a hotel room, local, and you know, have a grandparent come and stay with the kids, or the kids go to the grandparent's house and we just treasure that time to be able to pause, reconnect, remember, remember why we're married, who this individual is, because when you get in the rat race of life, sometimes this person gets a little blurry, and so when we pause and we take time, it gets clear again, right? Yeah, it's true.

Ben: 11:52

Yeah, it's true. So we just did that. We just came back about a week or so ago from our we Retreat and we wanted to just share a little bit about that experience and what we got out of it. And we just talked about kind of like what it is and then, specifically, we did ours for three days but then like even more into what we did day to day. So the first day, unfortunately, I couldn't take off the full day for work on the first day, but the other two I was able to, so I had to do a little bit of work, but it was still nice to be at the beach and just relax and look out the window and see the waves and let all of your fellow workers that you work with be jealous at your view and you know all my zoom call and show them my real background at the beach.

Liz: 12:36

Yeah, it was beautiful. I mean, honestly, we we found a little Airbnb, it wasn't a bad price and and booked it at a great beach and, um, you know, one of the things that was great is it just takes it. Sometimes it takes time to dial down to dial down. Yeah, and so even though yeah, even though you had to work you were beautiful and able to start dialing down, yeah, and what I was doing while he was working.

Liz: 13:00

I was actually answering some questions that both of us ended up answering at different times. But I really took the time, took a notebook and went through all these questions and we'll post these down below in a document so that you can take them too. We think that they'll be helpful for you. We actually got them from another couple. Their names are escaping me right now, but they're legit people.

Ben: 13:20

We should yeah, we should find out. We need to attribute it because it was worth attributing to.

Liz: 13:26

Yeah, and they're great and they have a wonderful ministry about helping families and everything. So they were doing a free Zoom and so we went through these questions and we'll link their information in this as well. So if you're wanting to jump into that, I definitely would listen to them. They're fantastic. They give a lot of wonderful godly insight to families and marriage and raising kids and adult children and all those finances. They're pretty cool. So, anyway, I went through their questions and it was all about like wrapping up 2024 to be able to get ready for this next new year, and I'm so glad I did it because it brought a lot of healing for me. So, even though Ben had to work and do his things, it was like the Lord hemmed me in to kind of get me ready for what he has in store, because this last year has been a little intense in my life.

Ben: 14:14

Understatement.

Liz: 14:15

Understatement a little bit, and so this was just like to me it felt like a kiss from God that these questions came at the time that they did, because we jumped on a Zoom with this couple.

Ben: 14:24

Do you wanna do like a couple questions?

Liz: 14:25

Yeah, sure, so like what was something that stole your joy this year, talking about this past year? What has stole your joy this year talking about this past year? Um, what has blocked community? Um, what was a hindrance concerning your health or physical well-being? Um, what has been the biggest distraction from being your best self? Um, something that I also thought was really great was is there any area you need to grieve before you leave 2024? And then the last question was do I need to forgive myself? So these were, like you know, really good introspective questions and it was just really helpful.

Ben: 15:07

It's interesting, though, that it kind of focused on some of like maybe, what we would consider not the positive things, but almost some of the negative things, because we felt like it was a great way to actually like, bring closure to 2024. You know, not that you have to focus on the negative all the time no but it was a great way to like.

Ben: 15:28

In our goal setting, typically, what we try to do is we try to fix things that aren't in the right order or they're not dialed in just right. So that's what our goal is is to get to a better place, a healthier place. By us taking the time to kind of think through and digest 2024, we're able to help set the goals for 2025.

Liz: 15:49

Yeah, and it just prepped us, so we'll post that, so you guys can go through it too. And it just prepped us, so we'll post that, so you guys can, you know, go through it too, and it doesn't matter what year it is. And I also just want to say this we retreat does not have to happen at the beginning or the the end of a year. Like it can be any time really, it can be any time, um, but it's just. It's just to get convenient.

Ben: 16:07

Yeah, that's convenient.

Liz: 16:09

I mean, you may be having a baby, there may be a sick family member we don't know what's going on in your life, right? But if you make it a priority, you're going to get the results. And we, we, we are so thankful.

Ben: 16:19

Yeah, so OK. So what do we do day two then?

Liz: 16:22

So that was day one.

Ben: 16:24

And then day two we kind of actually jumped more into the goal setting piece of it. Goal setting, piece of it. Yep, all right. And so talk about that a little bit, about how we started off individually and then kind of got to our together goals.

Liz: 16:39

Okay, so we took lots of walks because we were at the beach and we walked to a coffee shop every morning. It was like the best, it was the best, it was so good it just.

Liz: 16:52

I mean all that sea air anyway, it's just so good for your lungs and it was just, it was really good to um, especially after the holidays, to kind of just like have a reprieve, um, cause our, our home is usually the hosting home for our very large, large family and our family's already large, but like the extended family. So you know it was a lot of Christmas, um, but anyway. So we took that time and had a whole list of different topics and after we went for a walk and had our coffee and we're back and we've both had our quiet time. We're back at the Airbnb.

Liz: 17:23

We set a timer and we made a list of topics that we felt were important to us and I'll tell you our topics in just a second. But with the timer we did like maybe five minutes and we really didn't need the five minutes, the full five minutes.

Ben: 17:35

On some of them. Yeah, some of them we breezed through the other ones and some of them we actually did need the five minute timer because some will go a little long. But yeah, so we split up as individuals, right. And then we timed and so we took a look at these topics, and the topics are wide ranging topics and the topics are wide ranging.

Liz: 17:53

You want to go through a couple of them, sure. So we have like finances, travel, family, um, kids, and we did our kids and each and every single name. Yeah, each kid because each kid's in a different stage and we see different things. And you know all this stuff, um, we did marriage, um, friends for me, friends for ben. Uh, we did business, we did different streams of income. Philanthropy I always say that word philanthropy.

Ben: 18:17

Thank you, philanthropy, giving what we want to do, to be, you know, better stewards of the resources that we've been given, especially as it relates to other people right, our home.

Liz: 18:26

Um, we have a camper, so we put that on there. Um, health and fitness. My goals, ben's goals, because they're not the same. He has a different goal than what I do. Oh, imagine that right Mules. I did put mules on there because we kind of needed to get on the same page for that. We did faith for Ben, faith for me, and then personal for Ben and personal for me. So those were our big topics and then we each had our own list.

Liz: 18:53

So five minutes for each one, five minutes on each one and you just basically don't want to spend a lot of time.

Ben: 18:57

It's like a dump list.

Liz: 18:57

Yeah, it's like a dump, Because if you spend too much time then you can get in the weeds. You kind of only work quickly, get through it. So we did.

Ben: 19:04

How long did that take us?

Liz: 19:06

I mean, for all of these maybe 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes.

Ben: 19:14

I feel like it was a little longer than that, but maybe, yeah, okay, that's okay but the but, what took the longest that? Day. So we should say that this is how you start right individually. And then the next part of this exercise was coming together, talking through our individual goals and simultaneously forming our together goals our, we goals Okay. So this was the real crux of what we were trying to get to the real crux.

Liz: 19:44

It was we, our we-ness, our we goals. So this was the we retreat piece, the we yeah, so this was a big deal because you deal, because it took about five hours people, it was a while.

Ben: 19:58

From start to finish, it was five hours.

Liz: 19:59

Yeah, and we didn't really feel like it would take that long.

Ben: 20:02

No, we were blindsided. I thought we would be done in like an hour. Nope, no way. We got a few that were like, oh shoot, we're not on the same page, and so we had to try to come and come to compromises, and it wasn't too hard, honestly, but it was very detailed.

Ben: 20:18

Like there were some things that we had to really work through to figure out what the actual compromise would be, and not that it was hard, but it was just. It was like a lot of information to process, especially when you had a different perspective. I had a different perspective, and then we were trying to figure out just how to see that perspective as it relates to whether it was kids or finance or even just physical goals, so it was really interesting trying to find that common ground.

Liz: 20:43

So, if you know anything about Strength Finders, which I love, strength Finders we actually Gallup, right.

Liz: 20:49

Gallup Strength Finders. Pretty brilliant. Costs money to take the test, but highly recommend it. A lot of corporations use it. It's basically focusing on your strengths, so there's 34 strengths and when you take the test you can unlock your top five strengths and then, if you want, you pay a little more money and then you hear and find all 34. And it starts from one being your highest and 34 being your least. And the idea is that you're looking at your strengths and how God has made you and not looking at your weaknesses and trying to change those.

Ben: 21:22

I mean just operating in, your operating in your strengths Right.

Liz: 21:25

So we pulled up our strength finders because in our goal setting we are, we think, different. Like isn't that the beauty of marriage? Like you have two completely different individuals coming together. And something about Ben is he has a strength called ideation.

Ben: 21:43

Are you excited about that strength of mine?

Liz: 21:47

That one is some and if you know about ideation. It's a really great strength to have. But I didn't realize my husband really operated in that.

Ben: 21:56

So what is ideation?

Liz: 21:58

It's where you have lots of ideas. Yeah, he has a lot of ideas, and here's the beautiful thing about Ben he has great ideas and he likes to research everything out. He also has a strength called intellection, so he really likes to learn, and that's really him. That's why, when we're doing these podcasts, he knows the facts, he knows where it's going, because he's done the study to be able to talk about it. He's learned it and so, with ideation, he has lots of great ideas, lots of great ideas. But what we had to realize is which ones are we going to work on? Because he has so many ideas.

Ben: 22:35

Sometimes I present them in a shotgun format and you don't.

Liz: 22:40

I don't know.

Ben: 22:40

You don't receive the shotgun format very well.

Liz: 22:43

So I just start blocking him. No, no, no, no. And I don't want to shut him down, right, I don't want to shut him down because his ideas are great, you do?

Ben: 22:51

But I have to be a little bit perceptive as to which ones I share and which ones are important enough for me to focus on with you. Right Because otherwise I can overwhelm.

Liz: 23:03

Well, and that's your responsibility. I think that's what we discovered in the we retreat that his responsibility is to like. He may have 15 ideas and I'm not kidding, okay, about something, and you're laughing, but it's true and so he has a lot of ideas and then he needs to pare it down to like three and then the one. So you know, I'm a doer.

Ben: 23:26

It's true, and that's what probably overwhelms you is because you start to think okay, if we actually do all 15 of these we're going to be spent.

Liz: 23:42

I'm already spent just talking about them. I'm tired, liz is tired, so anyway. So it was really interesting, you know, I mean, but it it wasn't like bad. I think the beautiful thing coming away from this like was looking at what's in your heart and what you want to do and like being able to champion you on to pursue whatever's in your heart. Like, for an example, ben has a desire to read 12 books a year, one a month, okay, and he loves to read. He's so into books and I love that about him. And you like the real sciencey ones that are thick with lots and lots of statistics. I'm like put me to bed, calloway. What is it, calloway? Take me away the bath, okay, it doesn't matter Anyway, but y'all know what I'm talking about. So now I can be like hey, how are you doing on your book? Like, you know which one are you reading this month? How's?

Ben: 24:39

Yeah, and I know that you know you've got other goals too, and through talking about it and figuring out, like you know, I can see that your heart is in with the kids specifically, like you had really detailed goals for each of the kids and you know I can see how much you love them and how much you you are shepherding their hearts, and so that was actually inspirational for me, and not that I didn't have those goals.

Liz: 25:04

I was going to say I think you're really good into our kids, like I thought what you have for the kids honest.

Ben: 25:10

Well, just bless me, because it's like man, yeah, you've got so much insight, you know I felt that way about you.

Liz: 25:14

It's kind of funny we're talking about that.

Ben: 25:15

There you go On the same page. Hey, hey, hey. Same page On the same page Okay, high five. So, anyways, being able to find the commonality in the goals and then come away with a corporate or I guess you can call it a we goal list right when it's both individuals together coming and saying this is what we really want to focus on on 2025. And we took it one step forward.

Ben: 25:42

We actually then started looking at our budget and then try to figure out how those goals match up with our budget and how to prioritize those goals based on our budget and our finances and things like that. So that was another step and if you've got the time, great to do it, if that stresses you out and doing budget the same time, you're doing goals may not be smart. I'm just saying you know that might not work for you.

Liz: 26:08

Schedule it in. Schedule it in that you're going to get that done. Yeah, so that you're like okay, next Saturday we're going to meet for breakfast and we're going to like be at a restaurant having breakfast with cup of coffee and like hammer this out, you know figure it out so yeah, and, and here's the thing, you guys like we spent time on our we goals, uh, but we know we're not going to hit all of them.

Liz: 26:28

It's just, it's a target to aim towards and to just get clarity with each other, because I think when we look at marriages and we have friends that are in marriages they're not on the same page, you know they're. They're not communicating enough and, like you know, I want you to hear my heart.

Ben: 26:45

I want to hear your heart Right.

Liz: 26:47

And so this is a pause.

Ben: 26:48

Well, and we can also hold each other accountable too, Like if we have this common set of goals that we're both trying to get to. Like we can look at one another and say, hey, how are we doing our goals? You know we have check-in, regular check-ins, and that was part of it.

Liz: 26:59

We scheduled that.

Ben: 27:00

Let's figure out how to actually act on these goals, activate them, and now we have decided that on Sundays we're going to take a look at our goal sheet and figure out how we're doing and week to week we can make some adjustments and figure out how to prioritize other goals and maybe deprioritize some.

Ben: 27:19

But that's the idea is like we want to have a plan. We want to, we want to be diligent, we want to do our best and we want to do our part. We realize that it needs to be flexible, and the other thing, too is like we realize that the God's got to be in it. You know, so it's. It's definitely not just a we, me and you, but also a we with him, and so all three of us coming together and figuring out what's the plan for the family. I think that's the important part. Right Is to make sure it's a three-strand cord and that God is invited and has complete rule over the plans, because they can change Depending on situations. They might need to change Even in the middle of the year who knows?

Liz: 27:58

Yeah, so what do?

Ben: 28:03

you think we'll do different next time. Oh, what would we do different next? Oh, that's right. Okay, so what we would do differently next time is I definitely would take off work. I wouldn't try to fit in the day.

Liz: 28:12

I like it. I think it's good because it was.

Ben: 28:14

it wasn't that it was bad and I needed to do it, especially because I had taken some time off already for um, I was gonna say thanksgiving, that wasn't Thanksgiving it was Christmas.

Liz: 28:22

It was a different holiday. Yeah, they're all blended together. They all came together.

Ben: 28:25

Anyway, so I would take off work. I would just dedicate the entire time to doing this goal setting and finding out about you and you know what, what didn't go right in 2024, what you want to see differently in 2025. And um, another thing I think that we would do differently is we would try to experience something new together. I think that would be nice to like, you know, while we're doing this, to also maybe do a little adventure or something we haven't done before together.

Liz: 28:55

I love it yeah.

Ben: 28:56

Just kind of keep it exciting.

Liz: 28:58

Like, do a cooking class or Something. Yeah, something Wherever we're located, just find something cool to do. I love that. I think that's a great idea. Yeah, put that in there. Great idea. So our blessing is in the midst of us meeting, am I right? Yeah?

Ben: 29:14

Yeah, it was awesome, um, being able to just hang out and you know goal set with you, and it was encouraging to see kind of like your passions and finding out what you wanted to do, where you wanted the family to go, and I know you felt that way about me too, and so it was just exciting to be able to set some vision for the year. And some verses come to mind Proverbs 21.5,. The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty. So that's kind of an interesting verse. Being diligent and planning, I think, can be a blessing, can lead to abundance, abundance. And on top of that, a little bit before that passage in Proverbs 16, 9, it says the heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps, and so that was what we're talking about, that third piece like making sure that God's a part of your plans.

Ben: 30:09

He's the one that makes it happen. You know we can do our best, but without him, um yeah, it's not blessed.

Liz: 30:16

It's not. It's not and we definitely have a mess. Yes, we do, and so we just want to say thanks for being a part of our One Bless Mess today. Also our fun acronym that Ben always says Go ahead, Ben. What is it?

Ben: 30:30

A 1BM.

Liz: 30:31

A 1BM, or I say our 1BM Because, again, here we are, but don't forget to subscribe and share like heart, whatever platform you're listening to this on or watching, and also to share us with your friends If you think that there's somebody out there that would benefit from what we have to share. You know especially about the we Retreat. We did a we Retreat and you know, again, follow us on Instagram. Our one blessed mess is our handle. Of course, it's the numeric one, but until next time we just want to say embrace your beautiful mess, because if our mess is blessed, then we know, so can yours.