Read more Light-Hearted Facts about me –>
Welcome to Empowered Hearts Ministry!
My life is devoted to the ministry of the heart, where my goal is to help you become competent working in the heartbeat of your family, so you can write the best possible family story.
“So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well.” ~ Philippians 1:9
My adult education and work experiences have been unconventional, so I’ve included some explanation of how I got to the place of being able to help others.
Forging My Path in the Trenches of Life 1984 – 1990
Even though I was raised in a loving and stable home environment, I spent the last half of my thirties overcoming the low expectations of my upbringing and lack of real life preparation. With a heightened sense of urgency, to turn around the big ship of my own young family’s relational brokenness, I created a home for my family—a safe place to receive God’s work in my heart to form character and to begin my self-education. And so, my spiritual and life lessons began in the “school of Christ” with my own dear husband and precious children while I was also learning how to educate my children.
I intentionally addressed our spiritual lives from a basis of relational reality. With God’s abundant wisdom and love, He filled the void in my soul while providing first hand experience and understanding for how growth and learning happens in people. The resulting confidence and love empowered me to train my children’s hearts and minds toward relational, moral character [Christlike character] formation with the same vital and practical processes God used to train me.
The Good Lord continued to rewrite my family’s story with my husband, Jim, who eventually responded to my help to overcome his own relational hindrances, and preserve his influence with his children. Our family went on to experience the joys of a much happier family life and Jim and I grew in marital unity. Our hearts became locked together and one in Christ as we practiced the life-long lessons of how to love.
To sum up that pivotal season, the strength of my conversion and later transformation led to an abundance of ordinary days, while raising my children and educating them at home, that were filled with His extraordinary love—Love that overflowed and led to a lifetime of purpose and ministry to other families.
My First Act 1990 – 2005
My husband and I co-founded Lifestyle of Learning™ Ministries in 1990, and I have taught and ministered in the broader homeschooling community ever since. I wrote a number of books, beginning with Wisdom’s Way of Learning in 1994. This opened up speaking opportunities as an invited featured speaker at several state conventions, but I did most of my speaking at 2-day conferences and women’s retreats I held throughout the country for 15 years.
The thousands of questions I received from moms in letters and at meetings almost always pointed to the need for a relational answer. I could see the distress of their soul and deep-seated concerns they carried for their families. I was there once too. This experience taught me that the average homeschool mom (including myself) wasn’t relationally and emotionally fit enough for educating her children. Many of us lacked the inner equipping that relational-based discipling processes offer when carried out in the childhood home and church. We begin our parenting and homeschooling journey often from a place of deficit. This led me to join growth principles with learning principles I taught in my written and spoken messages about Lifestyle of Learning™.
My Quiet Years 2005 – 2012
In 2005, due to unforeseen circumstances, we shut down the ministry-focused business that had been our family’s sole means of support for several years. It wasn’t foreseen, but when I removed myself from public ministry to recover from a serious health crisis, we had no idea it would be a long recovery that would span years. During that time I focused on people, building the new relationships God gave me during the quiet ensuing seven years, and the Lord graciously increased our family with the marriages of two of our children.
My Second Act 2012 – present
My second act refocused my writing even more toward the practical processes of internal spiritual growth and development. My latest book, Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family, published in late 2011, came out of my relational ministry experiences during my quiet years.
I began re-building my public platform in 2012, and produced a series of mini coaching programs, Making Heart-Level Connections, to help the believer become more powerfully connected to the work God wants to do in their heart.
In 2015 we launched M.INT. 4-day weekend events. We’ve held four types of Master Intensive M.INT. weekends: Dove M.INT. conferences for women, Marriage M.INT.s (small groups of only three couples). We added Junior M.INT.s (for 3 families with older teens) in 2016, and Empower M.INT. conferences in 2019 where we expose demonic influence and help you to get free of strongholds.
I always minister from a basis of addressing the heart-level dynamic of relationships, while providing parents with a practical execution of truths to heal the heartbeat of marriage and family.
My Personal History
My husband, Jim, and I were high school sweethearts, in the most innocent sense of that expression, and we married when we found each other again after having gone down the wrong relational paths for several years. We’ve always felt that God knew our hearts when we and our parents didn’t, and gave us a second chance to get it right.
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We are deeply grateful for our mutual deep commitment and lasting love, and for our four adult children, three in-loves, and growing troup of blessings from the Lord—seven precious, active grandsons, and one sweet, adorable granddaughter (still counting!). We enjoy being open-heartedly involved in one another’s lives.
Jim and I eagerly help out with our grandchildren when we can. Living in the great Northwest surrounded by family and dear friends, we look forward to any opportunity to enjoy God’s amazing creation with our favorite people.
My Christian Community Life
The Lord has blessed us with a thriving Christian community of younger families that have surrounded our family and keeps us going strong. We get to experience the unfolding true story of authentic Christian living portrayed in Scripture. Jim and I are viewed as the senior ministers of this vitally relational church that God formed and established by His Spirit—Lifestyle of Faith Community Church, which we recently changed to Empowered Hearts Community to more accurately reflect our purposes.
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We believe that the best avenue for discipling believers that brings them into Christlike maturity and authenticity is through relationships that are open and established at the heart level.
My passion is to cooperate with the Lord to help parents become emotionally and relationally fit. One of my specialities is mobilizing wives to become true helpers to their husbands so dads can heal their influence with their children. I enjoy dispensing practical wisdom that transforms lives and the relational culture of the home.
The blessing to me is getting to witness powerful changes of heart in parents, teenagers, and young children that translates into more meaningful relationships in the family and between families in community life.
My Hope that You Let God Start with You
Do you feel emotionally (relationally) fit and in a state of readiness for your parenting and educating challenges? I want you to prosper and succeed in your marriage, in your parenting, and in raising your children for the Lord, in your homeschooling efforts, and in helping your children toward their life purposes. I want you to experience, as I did, abundant ordinary days filled with His extraordinary Love—love that translates into a greater capacity for family life and more purpose.
Just as God helped me to rewrite my family’s story, He wants to help you rewrite yours. When I started with a commitment to God, it opened the door to my family for Him to begin doing His best work in us, starting with me. I ask you to make that same commitment to let God bring a transforming work to your family—starting with you.
You can begin by taking a look into the relational culture of your home so you can start to receive practical strategies and actions that will allow you to heal the heartbeat of your family, leading to greater success in your life and purpose. I hope you find something in this ministry—Empowering the Heartbeat of Your Life—that will serve you and your family well.
To get you started in the right direction, I offer you two complementary gifts.
My Complimentary Gift to You
Please accept my gift to help you bring your considerations about the heartbeat of your family to a very practical place of clarity. “Snapshot of your Relational Heartbeat”. It’s completely free to you! And if you can’t wait until you’ve finished reading the article, you can also read more about my book, Empowered—Healing the Heartbeat of Your Family.
HOW TO CONNECT WITH ME
I invite you to connect with me on Facebook. I love to meet other moms, and please let me know if you’ve read or are reading my latest book!
Next please visit my blog. You will find posts on all things relational about family life, and since my readers are primarily stay-at-home moms like me, you’ll find a slice of domestic interests sprinkled in.
Occasionally, there will be posts about insights to growth and change, getting more specific about areas of personal development like your self-talk. I also like to talk about health, since addressing my health was a full-time job for more than a decade, and is still a major part of my life. I may even share some random cuteness that I simply can’t resist about the things my precious grandkids do and say.
Please be blessed and encouraged! I welcome you to come and join in the conversation! Thank you for reading!
Grateful to serve the Lord with what He’s given me to share with you, Marilyn
