To my husband on our Anniversary

Today is our 14^th wedding anniversary. 

14 years. We were both 20 the day we tied the knot, young and in love and with the world at our fingertips. We knew that we were coming together in love and commitment to ultimately live our lives together in service to the Lord.  How that would look we both had no clue, but we were each other’s and we were His.

Our last year of Bible school was spent as newlyweds, studying hard, working when we weren’t in school or doing homework, and driving two hours one way on Sundays to serve at a small church that needed help in their Sunday School ministries.  We looked into various ministries and opportunities as they arose.  Many doors opened and shut, and soon we started feeling the crunch of graduation looming while we still had no real direction regarding where God might be leading us. There was one ministry opportunity in Arizona that kept popping up while we looked elsewhere -the one that we said we had no real interest in pursuing.  It was so far from both of our families and we were trying for a baby.  Why would we move to Arizona?

God’s plans prevailed (as they always do) and soon after graduation, we moved to Arizona to a small town whose large swooping bats welcomed us the first night of our arrival, and the following morning we woke to a man in the parking lot with a flame-thrower killing weeds the way many do in the desert! It was a surreal experience as we unpacked our moving truck at 9:00 am in the already 90 degree heat.  Yet, despite our earthly desires, our overwhelming desire was to serve the Lord and do what He called us to do in faith and for His glory.  In Arizona we welcomed our first baby, the nearest hospital to give birth being two hours away from the rural town in which we lived. God saw us through.  He was faithful and provided for us despite your extreme vertigo and my terrible cold the week I was due to give birth.  God worked it out.  He is faithful to provide for His children.  We looked to Him in faith when difficulties arose and He never let us down.  He never failed.

After two years, God was gracious to move us back closer to family and to a ministry we loved.  He blessed us with nearly eleven years of ministry to and among that local church body. I watched you grow. I watched you serve in areas where you thrived and some where you didn’t.  Yet, it wasn’t about you.  It wasn’t about what you could get, how you would be perceived, or how many people liked and followed you as a personality.  No. It was none of those things.  Your main desire was to stay faithful to teaching and preaching the Word of God, to serve the Lord whole-heartedly, to lead people to the truths of Scripture, and live a life the aligned with what you said you believed.  Sharing God’s Word with others faithfully was your main ministry goal because you believed that submission to God’s Word was the only true way to lasting change in the lives of individuals. 

Wes, you have been faithful. When I think back on the last 14 years of our marriage, that is one word that stands out as the word the exemplifies your life as I have watched and witnessed you and your character and had the privilege to be called your wife.

You have been faithful in honoring me as your equal partner in ministry and marriage even when others viewed that quality as weakness. I have loved serving God with you, partly because I know that if I have an opinion or perspective you will listen and consider what I have to say because you love me as your wife and value the gifts that God has given me (different than your spiritual gifts) as equally important and valuable.  You have been faithful to me as your wife, not only in honoring our marriage bed but also in honoring me as a person and equal partner.  I praise God for that, as I know this is truly a blessing from Him.

When the pressure of ministry has been all-encompassing, you have been faithful to lead your family to the One that we serve, taking time with your children to develop their spiritual lives and to disciple them to know and to love Christ.  You have cared about their struggles and pain.  You have sought to be the leader and example to your family that God calls you to be. Of course, neither of us has done this perfectly, but as I watch you lead our family I know and see daily a sensitivity to the Lord that allows you to be a good dad, good husband, and good spiritual leader that we all can look up to and respect. I honor you for this and your faithfulness to our family and children.

And lastly I have watched you over these last 14 years serve God in making decisions that were not always popular but were spirit led and God honoring- ones that have been praised by some and misunderstood and wrongly judged by others.  Yet, you stood for what was right even when others didn’t see the whole picture, knowing God knew your motivations and your heart.  You followed through with what God was leading you to do and left the consequences to Him, because the safest place to be is in the center of His will.  He is the chief authority, nothing and no one else.  I honor you for your faithfulness to follow God’s Word even when you knew it would be judged wrongly.  Even when you knew the consequences for faithfulness to Him could be severe, you did the things God wanted you to do.  I love you for that and will forever respect your determination to follow God’s Word even to the unpopular and misunderstood places.  You are in good company as other saints and even Christ Himself was maligned and misunderstood.

God has been so gracious to us, and it is only His grace and faithfulness that allows us the opportunity to serve Him.  I recognize that any good that we have done and continue to do is only Christ in us working to accomplish His good purposes.  I am thankful for His grace, His forgiveness, and His ability that works through us.

When I married you at 20 years old, there was absolutely no way to predict what our lives would be, the joys and struggles we would face in our marriage, the loneliness that often can come from being a ministry family, and how we would go full circle and end up at the very spot where it all started for us.  God is faithful.  I pray that we will be counted as faithful to Him. 

Not that we are adequate in ourselves so as to consider anything as having come from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.

2 Corinthians 3:5

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

I love you Wes.  I pray that God will continue to bless our marriage with strength and unity to chase after Him with endurance as we serve Him and His bride. You are the best.  Here’s to many more years together as we strive to serve Him.

Moms, you need Him!

Ask any mom of young children, and they will tell you that having a baby in the house is one of the greatest blessings you will ever experience.  You will learn to love another precious human being in a way you have never loved before.  Your whole life changes when you become a mom.  You no longer get the luxury of just considering yourself and what you want to do or how you feel.  Now, every decision is filtered through this little life that you are constantly working to keep fed, happy, healthy, and some days, just trying to keep alive.  Motherhood is a blessing, but it also has a way of exposing sins in your life that you didn’t know were so bad until you had a baby- things like pride, selfishness, and self-sufficiency.  These were all things I did not know that I struggled with until I had a baby.  Having a baby is one of the events in life that makes you grow up really fast.

Here’s the thing- there will be times in your early moments of motherhood that will have its joys, and then there will be moments that will make you wonder how you are going to survive this, how you will get through with your sanity, how you can possibly continue to function without sleep, how you will find time to take care of yourself and keep your own sanity.

In times like this, it is tempting for a young mom to look for help somewhere.  If you go to the internet, you can find all sorts of helpful hints. You will find articles like, “What Doctors Wished Mothers of Infants Knew”,  “Newborn Baby Bootcamp” “The Benefits of Breastfeeding.”  Dive a little deeper and you will find encouragement from other moms who are trying to be helpful writing articles that say things like, “To Every Exhausted Mom Out There, You Are Enough.” 

 I remember seeing this particular article going around Facebook a couple of years ago.  It was shared by moms trying to encourage others with young children through their struggles with the words, “you are enough.”  Here are some words taken from that article…

You are enough.
You are important.
You are worthy.

This is a phase of life for us. This is a really, really hard, challenging, crazy phase of life.

In the end it will all be worth it. But for now it’s hard. And it’s hard for so many of us in many different ways. We don’t always talk about it, but it’s hard and it’s not just you.

You are enough.
You are doing your best.
Those little eyes that look up at you – they think you are perfect. They think you are more than enough…

Those little hearts that reach out to touch yours – they don’t want anything more. They just want you.

Because you are enough. You are more than enough, mama.

You. Are. Amazing.

Something like this is good to get you focused on yourself, thinking of how great you are, and give yourself a little pep talk.  Here’s the thing- these words are not true.

Mothers, we are not enough.  Sure, you might do your best, but your best is not enough. Your children might look up to you, might need you to survive, might appreciate you or not, but you are not meant to be all that they need.  You are important, but you were never meant to be the most important person to your child.  It will all be worth it.  It is hard, but you are not enough.

You are not enough, but Jesus is.  If fact, He is not just enough, He is all that you have as a Christian.

In 2 Corinthians 3:5, we are told all about this fact. It says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.”

All the good that you do in motherhood will be a blessing from Him.  He has given you the knowledge and ability to care for a child.  He has blessed you with a body able to bring new life into the world, and sustain life after birth.  John 15:5 says, “Apart from Him, you can do nothing.”

On your good days and your bad days, you need Him.  He is your helper and your sustainer.  He gives you wisdom, He is near, and He is your strength.  He supplies your need, He is your shelter, and He holds all things together, including your little family. He is your reconciler, your salvation, and your hope in life and death.  He is unchanging, and He is sufficient.

James 1:17 tells us that every good gift comes from God.  We know that children are a gift from Him.  He has gifted you with precious life to nurture, to grow, to take care of and love.  He has made you to be your child’s mother.  But, he has not made you to be all the things to your child that only He can be.  All of the things that God is for you, He also is for your child.  One of your main jobs as a mother will be to graciously show your child your utter dependence upon Jesus and your need for Him. 

When you fail, Jesus hasn’t.  When you are anxious, He is your rock.  He has given you His Word to guide you and speak to you.  His Word is where you will find wisdom, and it is adequate.  Go to Him when you are struggling and need strength and help.  He tells us that His Word is there to thoroughly equip you.  You need the strength and truth found in the Bible, because you on your own are not capable of living the life He has called you to live. 

So, when you have a sleepless night, a fussy baby, and you are so exhausted that you feel you could fall asleep standing up, remember that Jesus says to come to Him when you are weary, and He will give you rest. When you feel you are doing well, you are getting this hang of this new mom thing, you are doing a good job, remember your success comes from Him.  When you feel as if no one sees or understands the struggles you are going through, remember Jesus sees.

You are not called to live the Christian life on your own.  You are not called to be the most perfect mother.  You are called to realize how inadequate you truly are and rely upon the Lord and His strength, through faith, to live the life that He calls you to.

Look to Him.  Look to His sacrifice.  Look to His hardship.  Look to His example. Look to the Word of God. He will be your motivation and encouragement.  You need Him every hour or every day, and He is sufficient.  You are not.  Remember that truth.

Family Devotions

Family devotions are a discipline we have struggled with over the years. We have used many resources such as Word of Life Quiet time books, Keys for Kids, Our Daily Bread, Foundations Bible reading curriculum, and probably others throughout the years that I have just forgotten about. These are all great materials, but we have found that the more time spent in one of these pre-packaged resources, the more it can become a mundane chore to finish if we are not careful. As Christians, we all can be tempted to make Bible reading about what we are doing, what we can check off the list, or just another chore in our list of things to get done in a day. That’s the last thing we want to teach our kids when it comes to reading God’s Word! Reading Scripture is about knowing God, developing a personal relationship with Him, hearing from our Creator, and spending time with Him so that He do a work in our lives.

We recently re-vamped how we are discipling our kids in the area of Bible reading. We want them to open Scripture for themselves and read what God is actually saying, not just someone else’s interpretation of what a particular passage means or how it applies. We want our children to have some basic tools in their belt to read and understand God’s Word, figure out what it really means, and then apply what they just read to their lives.

Here’s how this works for us.

Every morning before the kids do anything else, they open up their Bibles and read the passage for the day. The passage is assigned by Wes the night before. Wes and I make sure to read that same passage that morning also, although we may add more to our daily reading than we ask them to read. The kids spend a minimum of twenty minutes in the Word each morning, reading the assigned passage and looking for certain things as they read.

This is where the goofiness of our family comes into play, even in our Bible reading time! We are looking for SPACEPETS as we read. Did you know that you can find SPACEPETS in the Bible? We do all the time!

This is an acronym that assists our children in their curiosity when it comes to Scripture. Here’s what is stands for:

S- Sins to confess
P- Promise to claim
A- Attitude to Change
C- Command to Obey
E- Example to Follow
P- Prayer to Pray
E- Error to Avoid
T- Truth to believe
S- Something to thank God for

For example, our Bible reading on Saturday was Colossians 3:5-8. It says:

 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.  But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

Col 3:5-8

Do you see any SPACEPETS in this text?

I see some. “Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature….” These things are “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed…anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language…” This would be a Command to Obey. Also, if I am convicted while reading about my earthly nature and God allows me to see during my reading of His Word that I am really struggling with anger I would say that this is a Sin to Confess. I would then spend some time confessing this sin to God and asking Him for help. There are other SPACEPETS that you could find in this short text of Scripture. Do you see any?

The kids have learned to do this over the past few months and the growth in their own daily walk with the Lord has been such a grace to witness. Just the other day my son Colton was on the phone with one of his aunts. She was asking him what he was up to and he boldly said “I just was reading my Bible and founds my SPACEPETS for today.” She was bit confused, and he went on to explain to her what he looks for in his Bible and that day he had found a Command to Obey that day. It was super cool hearing him excited about what he was discovering in God’s Word and how he was applying it to his own life and sharing it with others.

Lastly, what we do each day after each of us have done our own personal time with the Lord is we all get together to share what we learned and what we found in God’s Word. This is usually in the evening after dinner. Many times, we all have focused on a different part of the same passage of Scripture. It’s neat to see what God causes to stick out to each of us. We then spend some time praying about our own SPACEPETS we found that day and asking for God’s help in applying what we have learned.

This method of Bible reading has been such a benefit to us and our family. The kids are always so excited to share their SPACEPETS and why that particular verse was important and stood out to them. There are times when as parents we realize that a verse has been misunderstood or misapplied, so this has also been a great method of discipleship with our kids. We are able to talk through those misunderstandings as a family and help them to correctly interpret and correctly apply Scripture.

Maybe you feel like you are in a rut with you family devotions. We highly recommend this simple method. It’s so simple, teaches discipline in Bible reading, helps each individual to engage with God’s Word in a personal way, and allows you as a family to do something so meaningful together- get into God’s Word!

Why We Homeschool

As many of you may know, my family is a homeschool family.  I have a 9, 8, and 6 year old and have been homeschooling them since the very beginning of their education.  Homeschooling is a lot of work, takes serious commitment on the part of the parents, and is one of the most rewarding forms of education in which a family can partake.

We homeschool for a variety of reasons, believing that homeschooling my children is what is best for us as a family.  I do not disparage anyone who makes different choices in their children’s education.  Homeschooling is not always the best option for families, but for us, it most definitely is.

So, why do we homeschool? 

I can.  I do not have a job outside of the home.  That is a decision that I have consciously made in order to be able to be a help to my husband in ministry and educate my children at home. My priority in this time of life is my marriage, our ministry, and my children.  Therefore, I choose to homeschool.

I like spending time with my kids.  This one may be obvious and true of most parents, but others really enjoy having their children leave and go to school. That is not me.  I enjoy the time I get to spend with my children.  They enjoy the time they get to spend with me and each other as siblings.

Homeschooling provides flexibility. My husband takes a day off of work on Friday.  That is his day off for the week.  Most children who leave home to attend school attend for five days a week, Monday through Friday.  Because we homeschool, we get to choose to not do school on Friday so that we can spend that time together as a family.  My husband covets this time with the kids on Fridays.  Homeschooling allows us to have a day together as a family that we wouldn’t otherwise have.

Also, because we are in ministry, at times the ministry gets super busy.  December is one of those months.  With multiple family birthdays, Christmas parties, extra services, and other Christmas activities, often we have choose to take a few weeks off school in December to focus on other things.  Homeschooling allows us to do this.  We can take time off when we want to and not be worried about missing too many days of school.  We just make them up later!

God gives parents the primary responsibility for their child’s education. Ephesians 6:4 says “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”  Written to fathers, but definitely not excluding mothers, this verse teaches that parents are to provide their children guidance for godly living (discipline), and teach them how to avoid actions and beliefs that are improper for godliness (instruction).  A wonderful way to invest in the lives of your children is to be with them consistently, modeling and teaching the things of God as you go about life. 

In fact, this was the model God gave to his children, the Israelites, about how they were to teach their children.  Deuteronomy 11:18-19 says, “You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the read and when you lie down and when you rise up…”. A Christian home education provides a wonderful way to  teach your children through everyday life moments.

I can provide a Biblical education for my kids.  This points back to the previous reason I stated.  We are commanded to teach God’s Word to our children.  The best way that I know how to do this is to provide them with a Biblical education.  The best education I can give to my kids is to provide for them a deep knowledge of Scripture.  I want them to understand Biblical principles.  I pray they will live a life centered around the truths of Scripture and in relationship with Christ. This is of first importance in our homeschool.  Although other subjects are important, they cannot usurp the role that the Bible has in our lives. Homeschooling allows me to have Biblical education take a primary role in our education.

I can provide tailored learning for them specifically.  One massive perk of homeschooling is that it allows for a learning tailored to the specific child. My oldest daughter struggles with things that the others do not.  Each child has strength and weaknesses.  As their teacher, I know their struggles.  I see them on a daily basis.  Because of this, I can provide them specific help in these areas, spending more time where they struggle and less where they are doing well.  They will not get behind the rest of the class because they are the class.  They won’t be stalled, waiting for the rest of the class to learn a concept they already know, because they are the class.  Homeschooling provides and wonderful way for specific, tailored learning that benefits each student. 

If I am not training my instilling values in my children, someone else is.  I want it to be me.

I want my kids to be sheltered from harmful ideas until they are ready.  I cannot control everything that my children see, hear, and experience, but I can proactively be involved in what my children see, hear, and experience while they are in my home.  Homeschooling allows the parents to be the filters of content, not other teachers, adults, or peers.  I can do this proactively when homeschooling, barely ever having to parent reactively.  I get to set the tone, content, and information flowing into and through my home.  When the kids are introduced to ideas that are unbiblical or sinful, I get to be the one to walk them through those things, “bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:1)

Homeschooling my children has been one of the most rewarding endeavors of my lifetime.  I thank God every day for the freedom to do so. 

Do you homeschool?  What are some of the reasons you have made the decision to educate your children at home? I would love to hear from you!