http://marshill.com/music/albums/the-good-king Please go listen to Where Were You from this album. So good. I was driving home from the garden the other day and there was a storm going by the town. Something so beautiful about Kansas is that you can see weather miles and miles away. I saw the storm in my rearview mirror and had to take a picture at the next stop sign. A friend told me that the baby you have after a stillborn is called your "Rainbow Baby" because they are the rainbow after a storm. While I don't want to associate Jasper with negativity, I happen to love watching storms and Rainbow Baby pretty much describes Deakin. The storm that was our experience with Jasper is now in the rearview mirror and has been for a long while. But every now and then I want to pull over and look back at the storm. I want to sit on the side of the road and cry. I sometimes even wish I could go back to that storm and hold my baby's body again. I have been sitting by the side of the road for a couple months now. I can't pinpoint why his third birthday has so effected me, but it has. Every time I think I about it burst into tears! Which can be awkward when you're sitting with your husband talking about something non-related and all of the sudden your crying and your husband is saying, "What? What did I say?! I'm sorry!"
I have my four year old son and my almost two year old son but where is my three year old son? Likely, watching me cry from the arms of the Lord saying, "Get over it, Mama! I'm good! Get back to work!" And I would say, "Not yet. Just let me cry a little longer." We've had two miscarriages since Robert got back from Afghanistan. The last one was just ten days ago Jasper's birthday. We did not tell very many people because I felt a need for privacy. For whatever reason I associate him with these losses. I don't understand 100% but he will always be the baby I don't have, even though these were different babies and lost at an earlier age. When I picture the babies I'm missing on earth, his is the face I see. When I was grieving over the last miscarriage it was his stuffed elephant lovie that I slept with. But I will get back up and keep moving away from that storm toward whatever else the Lord has planned for me. I will get back to work and enjoy my four living children and amazing husband. I will praise the Lord with every breath, amen. I know He is always good and in control even when it does not feel like it. I have to keep preaching to myself. "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." Job 1:21 Happy Birthday, Sweet Boy! You're brothers and sisters sure do love eating your dirt and worm cupcakes every year!
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First, let me say, sometimes women can get kind of bitter about all the things other women do well. Let me encourage you to not look at the following passage and think, "Ugh! This woman is perfect! I hate her!" Ha! We all do it! Instead, let us praise God for the women in our lives that show us how to fear God!! Let us put aside our pride and ask for advice from them! Let us praise them!
Looking at Proverbs 31:11-16 I have compiled a list of characteristics of a woman who fears the Lord. I will tackle verses 17-31 in the next three parts, five verses at a time. Now, it's important that we realize these are characteristics of a woman that already fears the Lord, not characteristics you must do in order to fear the Lord. They are symptoms of a woman who has been given the Holy Spirit and a new heart and, there for, new desires. An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. 11 The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. 12 She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life. 13 She seeks wool and flax, and works with willing hands. 14 She is like the ships of the merchant; she brings her food from afar. 15 She rises while it is yet night and provides food for her household and portions for her maidens. 16 She considers a field and buys it; with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard. Characteristics: willing worker, trustworthy, plans ahead, and active in business Verse 11: She is trustworthy. And not only is she trustworthy in general, she is trustworthy to her husband! Can we just admit that our husbands no the worst about us. For a man to say, "My heart trusts in her!" is big! And not just fidelity issues (which are important, mind you!) but the little things too! Does your husband ask you to do something and then just know you will do it? This should be a goal for us as women after God's own heart! Also, her husband has no lack of gain. In other translations it says "he does not lack anything good" or "he doesn't lack provisions". Basically this means that our husbands should not be in want. He should be content with the provisions we lay before him! Verse 12: Does him good ALL the days of her life. I like this verse. One reason is because I failed at it so magnificently. Notice this verse does not say to do him good all the days of their marriage. It says all the days of her LIFE! If you're getting prideful and bitter you might say, "that is impossible!!" and you would be right. Whom do we know that honored their spouse all the days of their life??? Jesus! Jesus honored His future spouse (the church) all the days of His life. Meanwhile, his future spouse whored itself and killed him. (Next time you wanna label your husband as the worst, remember that!) Now back to the practical practice of doing good to our husbands all the day of our lives. How does that work? If you are already married, it means honoring him when he is not around. It means that when your friends who are still learning how to honor their husband start to get in a "My husband is the worst" contest you stand up and refuse to be involved. Even if he doesn't see it, you honor him, you do him good! If does not do you good, you still do him good! If you have a daughter, it means that you start teaching that child how to honor her future husband right now! All the days of her life! Just because it's impossible does not mean we stop trying. Our daughters are only 9 and 6 and we have already dealt with this repeatedly! Conversations like, "We will not say 'I am in love with so and so' because that is not doing your future husband good." or "We will not act flirty with boys because that does not honor your future husband." or "We treat our friends that are boys as brothers in Christ because that does our future husbands good!!" are common in our home. I know some think this is silly and over the top. Robert and I disagree with you. : ) Verse 13: She works willingly! I did not work willingly when I was on the internet all the time! I looked at my work as an inconvenience and a distraction to what I really wanted to do! Wrong, wrong. I should work for the family willingly. Without sighing or dragging my feet either! Ouch. Verse 14: From what I understand this has to do with a woman planning ahead for food. For instance, back in this time it meant that there were some foods that weren't readily on hand, they needed to be ordered from afar. And this woman who fears the Lord is on top of that! She doesn't invite company over and forget to get all the supplies needed to feed them! For us, this would look like knowing what is in the pantry! We order some things in bulk and I need to stay on top of when we are running low on those big things because it takes a week or two to get them in the mail! Also, I think this goes back to the husband trusting her and not lacking. Verse 15: She rises first and prepares food for her whole family and her maidens. When I have a plan and prepare things ahead of time, life is so much easier and calm. Wouldn't it be lovely if we always prepared just a little extra so that we can share if we need to? So that we can invite someone over to eat with us after church? Or if we had a meal frozen waiting for a family in need? Verse 16: She considers first. She is thoughtful and not impulsive about what she spends her money on. When she decides that it is a good investment, she buys the field. Which also means that she is wise about financial issues! Not clueless about the dealings of the outside world. And then she uses her investment to further the family with a vineyard! This is a woman that is looking out for her family in all ways and that is fearing the Lord and honoring the gifts He has given her. I've decided to make a small change to the blog. I am using psudounems for the kiddos from now on. I went back and edited some of the older entries but not all. And if you are having a hard time keeping straight who is who just head on over to The Kiddos page to keep them straight.
9 year old girl = Tender 6 year old girl = Hurricane 4 year old boy = The Boy 1 (almost 2) year old boy = Wild Man This year we have a 4th grader and a 1st grader!!! Can you believe it?! So exciting! I have, literally, been on my knees for the last 8 months praying for this year of learning! I have prayed for the Lord to give me a passion for teaching my girls, I've prayed for Him to show me what HE wants my kids to learn first and for most, and I've prayed for endurance to stay steadfast throughout the whole year! And He has been soooo good! I haven't shared much about our educating up until this point because I feel weak and embarassed of how short I will fall in my attempts to obey the Lord in this area. More than anyone I am aware of how poorly equipped I am to do this. Which only keeps me falling at the Lord's feet begging for help, so I'm counting my weakness as good! I will boast in my weakness instead of pridefully trying to hide it. So, one of the ways I hope to stay steadfast is by doing a weekly posting about what we did in educating each week. If I know I will have family and friends reading about our progress and projects then it will keep me accountable to keep begging the Lord and working hard with the Holy Spirits power! So here, in this post, I will outline a few goals and our plans for this year of learning! Curriculum: I bought two this year. One for writing and one for Math. The girls have a real interest in writing so we are going to lean further toward learning how to write proper stories and essays and such than a language subject. Just for this year to see how it goes. For Math I chose a thorough workbook for Hurricane and Teaching Textbooks for Tender. Teaching Textbooks is a computer program where Tender will do everything! It's easier for Mama and more educational for her. Reading: I am writing lessons from a book called A Basket of Flowers by Christoph von Schmidt. http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1442167122 It is very old and written in Old English language. It will be challenging! I have pulled out vocab/spelling words for each girl from each chapter and they are doosies! Along with extra learning from the Word concerning whatever trial the characters are facing. While the book is a children's book it was written at a time when children were just better educated and well read so it's harder to read similar to how it's harder for the average woman to read Jane Austen as opposed to Nicholas Sparks! The Lord really lead me to this book as Robert and I were praying about how to prepare our children to be able to read deeper books as adults. Robert has his doctorate but still has a really hard time reading Johnathan Edwards! We want our girls to be able to read the puritans and other classics with ease! Everything else: The Bible will be our starting point with every other subject. Each morning we will have our Bible lessons (this will be the only lessons I will require The Boy to be present for). We are starting in Genesis and working our way through. We will hustle through Genesis though because we have studied it a lot lately and I don't want to bore the girls. I will incorporate free lessons, lap books, reading books, videos, films, and informational websites along with whatever we are studying that particular day. I'm breaking things up into (roughly) six week unit studies. The first unit will carry us all the way to the story of Joseph. A couple weeks into unit two will put us into Exodus. At the end of each unit Tender will chose one person and event and do a study on each while Hurricane gets a breather before we start the next unit.
Geography, History, and Science will all come out of the Bible. For instance, when we get to the Tower of Babel we will start our History unit on Ancient Civilizations. We will study the Egyptians further(mainly their gods) when we get to the Passover story. We were going to start our Solar System unit with creation but I wanted to be able to do star gazing with a borrowed telescope and so we will wait until later in the year when the sun goes down earlier to do that unit. But we will do our Living Things unit for Science during the creation story. Basically these three subjects will spider web out of the the core source of the Bible. For each of these subjects there will be lap books, lessons I find online, websites, videos, songs, books from the library and anything else I can get my hands on for free! We will also incorporate copy work and diction from these subjects occasionally. Tender will do Typing twice a week, time allowing! This I will just be using websites that help teach typing for free! I read about something for the Littles called Morning Room Time. I latched onto the idea and just two weeks ago Robert and I finished up the video for the boys' Morning Room Time. We are using the concept a little differently. I went on YouTube and found several short videos that my kids love that also help them learn/memorize important things. Shapes, counting, abcs, books of the bible, fruit of the spirit, ten commandments, that sort of thing. Each morning after Bible, chores, and breakfast, I will put the boys in the guest bedroom with some toys and my laptop so they can watch/ listen to the short video and play so I can only concentrate on the girls. It will give us a for sure 30 minutes a day without them under foot. And they play pretty well anyway and I will have preschoolish stuff out for them the rest of the day. I will likely start this routine a week before we start school so that I can stay in there and supervise them so they know the rules and what to expect. That way when we start the girls' lessons I will be able to leave them alone (kinda). How I'm staying organized: About 6 months ago I looked up what 4th and 1st graders need to learn. I made tabs for each goal in a big three ring binder with plenty of paper in each section for idea writing. I then put a page protector in each section. When I print off a lesson or whatever from the computer I slip it into the page protector for that lesson. I have two page protectors in the Bible lesson section because I am furthest in my planning in that subject and they are filling up fast. I'm also using Pinterest for organizing ideas and websites. It's is a huge time and space saver!! I'm currently organizing my big "Homeschooing" board into several smaller boards, "Math lessons", "Ancient Civilizations", "Solar System", and so on and so forth! Well! That about covers it! I mean, without going into a huge amount of detail! Right now we are planning on starting up all this learning on August 5th! Pray for me to boast in my weaknesses and lean on the Lord! I never gave a whole lot of thought to learning how to be a lady according to God's definition until my girls started getting older. I started looking at myself and asking, "Do I want my girls to behave like me? Am I displaying how a woman of God is called to act?" And the answer was no, of course not. If the world thinks I'm cool and my friends think I'm fun and men think I'm attractive (not that any of those apply to me, just that they are the average goal for a woman) but I refuse to put on the holiness that has been given to me through Christ(Ephesians 4:22-24) then I've failed. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, I can change into a Godly woman! I can have grace for the days I fail and strength to start again the next day. Also, I wanted to look at how being a biblical woman effects all parts of a life. Not just how I would treat my husband but my children, friends, authority figures, and strangers. How should I treat my friend's husband? How should I treat my life long guy friends? These answers aren't always instinctual. So I started studying this topic. I skimmed some books but mainly fished through the Word to see what the Lord says about it. So I thought I would jot it out.
"Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled." Titus 2:3-5 This is instruction to older women in the body of Christ. Telling them how they should act: be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, or slaves to wine. Some of that instruction is easy. Don't be a slave to wine? That is easy to understand. But I think in our world the word reverent has been misplaced and forgotten. I looked up the definition. reverent- feeling or showing deep and solemn respect Showing reverence is hard. I mean, if you are reaching for the goal of being reverent it's hard. If you are fearing the Lord and seeking His righteousness reverence comes easily. I mean, who, with the full knowledge of how holy and powerful God is and how sinful and unholy I am, can resist being reverent? In some translations it actually says "grave" instead of reverent. When I think of this definition and how it might look on a woman of God I think of a woman who listens intently to a friend's concerns. Who instructs her children with a calm but "I mean business" voice. Who looks at and talks to her husband with the full knowledge of the lofty calling God has put on him and is constantly planning ways to support him in it. I think of the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her hair. slander- a statement damaging a person's reputation Slander goes hand in hand with gossip. Slander doesn't have to be a lie it can just be a statement said with the purpose to making someone else look bad while making you look good. I am CONSTANTLY checking the things I want to say to make sure that my heart doesn't have the motive of slander. When you struggle with pride, as I do, slander is so easy to fall into. The Bible says that older women, who are worthy of teaching, conduct themselves without being slanderers. Now that I've dissected what an older woman should act like, what do they teach? What is good, teaching younger ladies to love their husbands and children, be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands. And then the last part of the scripture says so that the word of God will not be reviled. What does that mean? This type of living proves the Gospel, it makes it attractive! We are adorning the Gospel beautifully when we behave this way! Looking at specific things that need to be taught, let's dig into loving our husbands and children. This means that an older woman should be teaching a younger woman to do less complaining about her husband and children and more loving! Showing them how to love their family. Self-controlled, pure... pure- not mixed with any other substance It takes a large amount of self-control to be pure, doesn't it? Especially in our world. In Kansas you have to name your homeschool so that it can be filed as a private school. I named our's Nehemiah's Work of Excellence because I was reading in Nehemiah one day and a scripture jumped out at me. It was, weirdly, the scripture that finally shoved me over the edge and made me obey the calling to homeschool. In Nehemiah 4 it talks about how the men worked on rebuilding the wall with tools in one hand and swords and spears in another hand so that if anyone attacked them while they were working they would be ready to fight! Through the story the Lord showed me that teaching my children the word of God is so important that I have to do it day and night as the builders did. That I have to be on guard and ready to fight anyone who wants to distract me or pull me away from the work! That teaching my children the word of God and his commands and His nature is like a wall that will protect them from the schemes of the enemy and the worldliness surrounding them! And building up that wall is the only way to prepare them to go out into the world and share the gospel! It is the only way to help them to stay pure, set apart, "not mixed with other substances." That wall is their shield of protection! Their key to staying pure. Working at home. This is a controversial topic isn't it? I've actually got a blog on this saved that I haven't posted yet. It's been sitting there for months now waiting. Anyway, notice this doesn't say only working at home, but says working at home. The Bible is totally clear that a woman's priority should be her home and her family. So if you are a woman who works outside of the home 60-80 hours a week and your job consistently comes before your family, you are living in sin. If you are a stay at home mom that volunteers so much time outside of your home that you kids are unruly and your husband is lonely, then you are living in sin. If you are a mom that works to help provide for your family but would drop any career centered activity in a heartbeat to better run your home, support your husband, or nurture your child, then yeay for you!! : ) We first work at home. When I think of this topic it is soooo easy for worldy wisdom to pop into my head. But the Bible is clear and our wisdom should come from there. Kind and submissive to your husband. Kindness is easy, right? I mean, it's easy to understand, not always easy to follow through with. But it is a fruit of the spirit. Believers display this characteristic. submissive- meekly obedient or passive I've had a lot of practice at this since Robert got home. I spent most of the deployment praying and studying in the Word and elsewhere how to be a better, more godly wife to Robert. When he got back I got to put the new knowledge to work. ; ) Robert noticed a difference and let's just say we find ourselves much happier and cuddly without that annoying "drip, drip, dripping" (Proverbs 27:15) of a quarrelsome wife around. Meekly obedient does NOT mean that I don't share my opinion or give input. I do, as Robert desperately wants me to! I'm far too smart to allow him to make a horrible mistake! Hee hee! But what it does mean, is that I wait for the right timing, I pray a lot for the right words and for a humble, honoring spirit, and then I voice my concern. All the while putting my faith in the Lord and Robert to ultimately choose the right thing. It means, I don't throw a hissy fit when he disagrees with me. (Well, not all the time. I'm not totally perfect, ya know!) And since I love the Gospel and try to preach it to myself all the time, I remember that when I DO screw up and become more quarrelsome grace covers me. I don't have anything to earn that hasn't already been given to me freely. And it just gives Robert a wonderful excuse to display grace toward me on those hard days, which only further glorifies God! |
LindseyI'm the mama and wife. Updating you on our life! Archives
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