Joyce Zook Joyce Zook JoyceZook.com Life and Marriage Coach Practical Christian Woman

How to Break the Habit of Interrupting

Do you have a habit of interrupting people? Did I honestly think what I had was more important than what someone else was saying? Was interrupting...

When to Talk About Health Issues

When discussing our health, we tend to focus on ourselves and usually don't share the conversation with someone else. What should we do? How do we...

Steps to Align Your Marriage with God’s Divine Plan

I tried to control my husband by nagging and criticizing him. In return, I got anger, resentment, and a man who didn’t like being around me. If I...

Why We Can’t Stop Nagging

Many women expect to change their husbands' bad habits after the honeymoon, but if you're married, you've already realized it seldom happens....

Love Is Not A Know It All

Love in Action: Applying the Teachings of 1 Corinthians Looking at what love is not, I catch myself with little thoughts, words, and actions that...

Dropping the D-Word

Avoid Divorce Ultimatums to Strengthen Your Marriage During the first few years of our marriage, I, like many of you, found myself using the word...

Me Time – Better Work Life Balance

There’s no time for ME! Do you feel like you’re out of time and there's no time for you? You can't do anything for yourself: get together with...

7 Practical Tips to Keep Romance Alive

How do we keep the romance alive in our marriages when we have kids or even after they're gone? Sharing tokens of our love and physical touch with...

Finding the Right Time and Places for Adult Discussions

How do we find time to talk alone with our husbands when the kids are always around? I know it’s a problem. But staying connected to your husband...

How To Share A Closet With Your Husband

We share a bed, meals, and money, but do we share our closet? “Honey, I know we bought this house together, and we sleep in the same bed, but you’ll...

Building Wardrobes That Work

Fashion and Faith is a live online course where I’ll teach how we can accent our God-given beauty as we discover the essentials we need for a...

Bedroom Boundaries

Creating A Space For Mom and Dad Appropriate boundaries for our bedrooms allow us to create spaces where we can snuggle, sleep, have sex, and talk...

From Stress to Romance

How to Shift Your Mindset for Love Often, with our busy lives, shifting our mindset from the stress of our days to love is a challenge. We get stuck...

2 Secrets to Keeping Your Home Clean

Do you walk into a hotel room and say, “Aw…” while letting out a sigh of relief? There’s no clutter; it smells clean and feels like an excellent...

2024: What’s New and What’s Not

New! You now have easy access to my products, which you can use to help you apply the Bible in your everyday life. New! I’m stepping out in faith...

Stop Chasing the Urgent

Are you chasing the urgent, running from one crisis to the next? Do you move from task to task without a plan or sit and wait for the next crisis?...

How Do I Reduce Holiday Stress

I didn’t like Christmas or the whole rush of the holidays. There was too much stress. The kids and I felt tired and cranky. I even wished we could...

3 Steps to Declutter the Toys Before Christmas

Before the new toys descend upon your house this Christmas, let’s make room for them. Go through the kids’ room, hopefully with them, and sort...

How to Have Dates During the Holidays

The holidays bring much joy into our lives but can also be stressful when our schedules get too busy. Keeping our husbands a priority is challenging...

Temptation to Quit

When God asks us to volunteer, lead, or take on some responsibility, we often feel excited and privileged. Exploring the ins and outs of the task He...

Conquer Fear and Anxiety

A few years after we got married, I asked my husband what he wanted from me as a wife. My precious guy thought for a while, then said, “Happy,...

10 Ways to Deal with a Traumatic Event

“Are you guys alright?” the text said. “Hon, please call me.” said the voice message. I tried his number, no response. I looked at Facebook. What’s...

How to Stop Feeling Tired and Worn Out

Do you feel tired and worn out? Has life or chronic pain sapped you of energy? One night, I felt worn out from the constant challenge of dealing...

4 Ways to Embrace Your Pain

Learning to embrace the pain has been a process. I want to share how I’ve transitioned from anger and disappointment to learning to live in joy and...

Meddling In-Laws

Do you have meddling in-laws or parents? On their wedding day, a man and a woman trade in their unmarried lifestyle to form a new couple. Together...

Saying Always and Never

Do you get stuck saying always and never? Like it always goes wrong, or bad things always come in threes? Or maybe you say it's never going to work...

7 Places to Meet New Friends

Do you have trouble making new friends or feel isolated after COVID or an illness? Getting out among people can be uncomfortable when we feel...

Self Care Is Not A Sin – Hair, Bras, and Doctors

What do hair, bras, and doctors have to do with self-care? These are three things we often leave off when considering taking care of ourselves. We...

God Made Me Wrong

Are you content with how God made you? Or do you grumble and complain about how He molded your features and abilities? Many of us struggle with...

8 Ways To Say No

We get too busy and say “yes” to too many things. What are you too busy doing? What reason pops out of your mouth most frequently when asked why you...

I’m Not Enough

I hear the rabble accusers making lots of noise. They tromp thru my head, saying, "You don't match up. You aren't like them. You don't fit. "You're...

When Time Management Isn’t Enough

Time management techniques will only work if your priorities are right. I felt stressed, worn out, and never had enough time to do what I thought...

Creating No Phone Zones

Have you thought of having no phone zones? You may need them if you or someone in your family tries to have two conversations simultaneously, one on...

Is Phubbing Hurting Your Relationship

One brother set his phone face down in the middle of the table and then looked at the other with a challenge in his eye. Would he be willing to turn...

Why Do We Nag?

Why do we nag when we know it doesn't work? I believe it's because we don't know what to do instead. Nagging is when one person repeatedly pesters...

How To Ask For What You Want

Try the Esther plan when you want to ask for something big from your husband. These simple instructions from Queen Esther of asking the king for a...

How To Have A Good Argument

Fights, or disagreements, as my husband calls them, are healthy- all marriages have them. But most of us haven’t learned how to fight a good fight...

How to Prevent Burnout

As a coach for women who are or want to be entrepreneurs, I get asked how to get the business done during our busy days. But, unfortunately, no one...

Why Work From Home

Why would you want to work from home? Maybe you've dreamed of working from home now that the kids are in school or have left home. Or, with...

What Is A Mompreneur?

Can a woman be both a mother and an entrepreneur? They Can! A mompreneur is a woman who runs her businesses at home while maintaining their role as...

6 Expectations That Will Ruin Your Holidays

What I expected to happen at Christmas didn't happen. My expectations had ruined the holiday. There was no joy or peace as we gave thanks and...

The Candy Cane Story

A candy maker in Indiana wanted to make a candy that would be a witness, so he made the Christmas Candy Cane. He incorporated several symbols for...

Why I Don’t Like Housework

I'm not particularly eager to do housework. The minute I get it done and move on to almost anything else, some part of the housework needs cleaning...

5 Ways To Stop Negative Thinking

Negative and positive thoughts cannot inhabit the same space. One or the other fills our minds until we decide to intervene. Both thought patterns...

He Thinks He’s Right

How do we get our husbands to listen when they think their right? We’ve tried talking to them, but they seem to block us out, and our concerns don’t...

Stay in Your Lane

If we push and insist our way is the right way, we lose more than we gain. Our actions result in strained relationships or possibly anger and...

Fun, Friends, and the Future

As women, we often don't include ourselves in our schedules because we forget, think it's selfish, or get too busy serving others. Yet God tells us...

Shop Your Closet

After we've decluttered our closets of clothes that don't fit, haven't worn, and don't like, it's time to Shop Our Closets. We save time and money...

How to Feel Good in Your Clothes

When we de-clutter our closets, we save money by knowing what we have and need to buy. De-cluttering saves time because we don’t need to hunt for...

Emotions and Clothes

It's hard to get rid of clothes if we have emotions or special memories tied to them. Before we declutter our closets, let's ask God to help us...

Listen to Understand

When my husband and I had a controversial topic to discuss, we sat down on the couch and used a sticky note pad as the designated "Floor." With this...

Declutter Your Thoughts

Is your mind full of self-defeating thoughts, worry, anxiety, or fear? These thoughts cloud our thinking and stop us from achieving what God wants...

Declutter Stuff and Emotions

Clutter costs us time, space, and money. It also takes away our peace of mind, freedom from our past, and personal identity. Unhealthy emotional...

Friendship Dating

6 Steps for Making Friends Have you wanted a new friend? Many ladies find it easy to make friends and consider everyone their friend. However, for...

Follow Your God Nudges

A Woman of Influence follows the nudges God speaks to her heart through the Holy Spirit –often sensed as a gentle prompting, a still small voice, or...

Stop Procrastinating

Everyone procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. 20% of adults are chronic procrastinators." Procrastination doesn't discriminate...

Women of Influence Don’t Have Stinkin’ Thinkin’

Stinkin thinkin and God thoughts can't inhabit the same space. One or the other fills our minds. Whatever direction we allow our thoughts to take...

How To Become A Woman of Influence

After reading Dale Carnegie's classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, I wondered what his principles would look like for Christian...

Pity Parties Are Easy

It'd be easy to have a full-blown Pity Party today, the kind where you eat chocolate−lots of cholate, read, cry, and moan "Woe's me!" We had a...

Stop Lying To Yourself

Do you lie or tell yourself the truth? Early in the year, I made a list of the projects I wanted to complete. Even though I knew they'd take a lot...

Myth – It Takes Two

Is it true that we can't change our marriages unless our husbands are willing to work on it too? Here 'my answer. Yes and No! Okay, I know that...

Making Friends

Have you wanted a new friend? Many ladies find it easy to make friends and consider everyone their friend. However, for others, making friends is...

Most Effective Tactics for a Happy Ever After

Most Effective Tactics for a Happy Ever After So how do you get from wherever you are in your marriage to Happily Ever After? Admire Him Our men...

5 Reasons to Date Your Mate

So why do we need to date our mates? Simply put, dates let us lead healthy marriages filled with passion, romance, and time to talk with our guys ...

What Does He Want?

By making your own life more satisfying, you take pressure off your spouse to be your sole source of happiness. ~TEAL SCOTT A few years after we got...

Free or Almost Free Dates

Our dates were very different depending on where we lived. We floated on a lake in Texas. In Germany we climbed a hill to see a castle and walked...

7 Reasons Why He May Not Be the Problem

When I asked a friend what the most significant takeaway was for her from the 12 Keys for Marriage success course, she said, “He’s not the problem.”...

Who’s Priase Is He Hearing – Yours?

We see our men as the strong ones and seldom realize how much they appreciate positive attention. We don’t want our guys becoming attracted to the...

When Anger Is Out of Control

If Your Anger Gets Out of Control, Try This Fights, or disagreements, as my husband likes to call them, happen in our marriages. But most of us...

Dealing with Personality Clashes in Marriage

When he doesn’t do it your way, what do you do? Get angry, yell, threaten, or walk out of the room? I was right, and he was wrong. But he...

6 Ways to Stop Complaining

I felt angry and unhappy when I woke up. Jealousy coursed through my blood. My husband got several new expensive items and planned a hike on the...

20 Tips for a Happy Marriage

." Do you want to save your marriage, rekindle romance, or keep your relationship healthy? I've got good news for you. You can change your...

Accept Him As He Is

When our sons got serious about a girl and thought about marriage, I asked them to consider three situations before they got married Would he still...

When Brain Surgery Seems Like a Good Idea

My Physical Challenge - Arnold Chiari Malformation The car in front of us suddenly stopped, causing my husband to stomp on the brakes and my head to...

How Expectations Can Ruin Relationships

Have you thought or said any of these lately?? Life should be fair Opportunities will fall in my lap Everyone should like me People should agree...

Can I Change My Marriage by Myself

Even though we might want to change our spouses, we can’t. Fact is, we don’t have the ability to make anyone willingly alter their behavior with our...

14 Creative Ways to Say I Love You

I know you said “I love you” the day you got married, but don’t stop. Keep telling that special man in your life how much you love him. Choose from these creative ideas to make your husband feel special.