I have been on a journey now for my entire life, and I did not even know it until about five years ago. It has been a journey to become the woman God created me to be. There have been curves in the road, barricades and detours. So many times, I was not even close to the right path, but I know the Lord was watching me and trying to get my attention. I am thankful for His faithfulness and the prayers of many I may never know.

I am blessed today to be on the closest path to fulfilling my purpose that I have ever been on. I am privileged to stay at home and train my children in the Lord and an uncompromising education. I am nowhere near where I should be or could be had I been counting it such a privilege to be a wife and mother since I came to the Lord in 1988.

It is hard to admit that I still struggle daily with being a cooperative and pleasant wife of a very hard-working husband. It is a journey I am still on. I do not know why God deemed it my lot to have these wonderful children, but there is not a time I am not thankful. That sounds impossible, but I always end my thoughts, even after frustrations, with how sweet my child is and how much I truly love him or her. That is only from God, because it has not always been this way!

I asked myself for the first ten years - and sometimes I asked others, “Why did God give me three girls first?”. I am not sure I can yet fully answer that question, but it has been proven many times how blessed I am to have three daughters first in our large family. These girls are such a blessing, a joy, and my best girlfriends. I am honored to be their mother.

As I said, we did not really have an understanding of woman and her design and purpose until about nine years ago. God spoke into our hearts about having children. He showed me in His Word why He gives us children and what happens when He gives us children. We started trusting Him in that, and it changed our lives. Shortly after this new-found understanding, we went through some very difficult trials that caused us to search and be confident in God’s Word alone. The things we learned in the next two years put us further into God’s plan for our lives.

At this time, and each year before, I had no idea what a wife really was. I mean, I understood that I was Matt’s partner as a married woman, but I did not understand my Biblical role, and even moreso, I did not understand what that Biblical role of a woman meant to my husband and children. I’m not sure I do yet. I do, in my brain and my heart, but my flesh is unwilling to let me remember sometimes still. ugh. Needless to say, we have stuck with each other through thick and thin, but not in a God-honoring way many times. Only by God’s grace can I shake the feminist bonds and become the lovely woman God created me to be.

Five years ago, I got a hold of a different homeschooling philosophy through such resources as Educating the Wholehearted Child and The Charlotte Mason Companion. Then, three years ago, I found a few sites that promoted a Biblical life. Sadly, that was all new to me. I had been a Christian for fifteen years, but did not have a clear understanding of denying my rights for His. I started reading my Bible differently, and God put a hunger in me to be a Godly wife. I no longer read it from my perspective, but from God’s. It wasn’t the world’s or the Church’s point of view I saw. I finally saw how different Scriptures I had heard or read over and over related to each other. It was as though I understood a new language. I understood that God has a specific personality and is steady. I can see, in His Word, what God thinks about things. He told us, and it is in there, if we look and listen. The Old Testament became more real to me and more a part of the New Testament than it had ever been.

I found some family resources and heard what I had already heard preached many times, but now it seeped into my spirit, and I soaked it all up. I was ecstatic. I was thrilled to finally ’see’ what the Bible meant. I wanted to learn it all and do it all, because we had lost so much time in the first fifteen years I had known the Lord. On the other hand, my girls hated it. I was so full of zeal for this new-found understanding of womanhood, I didn’t want to wait for them to catch up. There were some deep-seated worldly ideals that we had allowed in, and it took quite the strength and perseverance from all of us to get them out. Slowly, though, things changed in all of our hearts.

I put the family on a schedule that helped us do things we had never done before. We cleaned and cooked and homeschooled in an order that allowed for time for other things. We started doing things that the world no longer holds in high regard. We were so thrilled to learn them and enjoy each other and have something to show for it. We were blessed to make quilts and include it as a part of their learning. We started sewing. We spent time scrapbooking together. We had home births with our sixth and seventh children and welcomed two new sons into the family together as a family affair. We bought two goats and became interested in homesteading. There were still rebellion issues with the girls, but God walked us through them. He kept us close through the anger and hurt and brought us closer than we had ever been. He had a purpose.

When the girls and I started blogging in April 2006, my intention was for them to do weekly assignments for English or Research, but, before I knew it, a monster had been created… or two… or three. To this day I am amazed at how God used blogging to shape their perspectives and cause them to research and write things that I never could have anticipated or assigned. They wanted to blog, and they came up with topics on their own. I was quality control, editor, and their personal confidante in many topics, from the silly daily things to heart-breaking issues to deep Biblical posts.

God has allowed blogging to be a large part of our training our daughters. Having the three of them so close in age has allowed them to play off of each other in their beliefs, thoughts and silliness. They can be each others’ biggest heroes and biggest thorns! But, oh! I can see the love and integrity and compassion and fervor they each share for each other. And for their friends! Real life created many opportunities for reflection and soul-searching, and allows them to do it inwardly and openly at the same time. They have grown from the inside out.

Some days, we talk about the Bible and how it relates to our lives for hours. We revisit Scriptures as we serve dinner and clean or watch the Littles. Out of the blue, we can start a conversation about God or His plan or any number of things in His Word and see how it relates to our lives. Are we doing what God has for us? Are our attitudes or thoughts honoring God? Are we being too harsh or judgmental? All of these questions are open conversations in our home, and God uses them to shape us and open our eyes to His truths. And we are blessed.

I always wanted a boy first. I wanted a boy for three consecutive pregnancies. I could not see the future. I did not know what a blessing girls are. I did not understand what it is to be a woman, to train young women, to teach them how to become women. I did not foresee all of the times we would cook together and laugh and cry and scrapbook. All of the heartaches and tears. The smiles and fears that we overcome with the Word of God. And now, to have two daughters who are almost adults, to watch all of my girls, at ages 18, 17, 14, 8, and 1, just love on each other; it is such an honor. It warms my heart in a way that I know only God could have foreseen.

I do not deserve the unconditional love that my daughters show me on a daily basis. Or that any of my children show me, for that matter. I am not always the best example of gentleness, love or holiness. I do not always start my day off in the Word as I would like to do. We have by no means arrived, nor am I saying that our particular journey is the only way to become who God has created woman to be. I am still so sinful, and I do not feel worthy of so many blessings as God has given me. It is a good thing that neither my goodness nor my sinfulness is the measure by which God gives me His grace. It is a good thing He measures it out much more than any of us deserves.

Learning that truth in the past few years has allowed me to look at the role of a woman, a wife, and a mother differently. It is not self that I should look to apply the blessings in Scriptures to. It is not my perspective that is important. It is God’s. My perspective is important in shaping what I believe, but looking at the Word through His eyes is what I need to do. It is the only way I can show God to my children. It is the only way I can stop stomping my foot and demanding my way over my husband’s or my children’s. It is the only way I can be an example of a woman of God, Help Meet to my husband and lover of my children. I know it is my lifelong journey, and I want to fulfill this purpose. And, we have by no means arrived, nor am I saying that our particular journey is the only way to become who God has created woman to be.
 

Last year I opened a blog on homesteadblogger entitled Training Daughters, Teaching Wives. My intention was to blog about things we had learned or were learning on this journey we have made in becoming Godly women. We were going to be reading Created To be his HelpMeet together, and I thought we could post about it on there. Though we do not blog on it regularly, the TDTW blog has become a little blog compilation of some of our posts,

Instead of worrying about keeping up the blog, I created the Training Daughters, Teaching Wives blogroll. The TDTW blogroll is for moms training their daughters in the Biblical admonishment of training our daughters in the Word and for women teaching wives in the Titus 2 admonishment for the older to teach the younger. Of course, as we train our daughters, we will begin to teach them about being a Godly wife.

We have many wonderful blogs of on the blogroll already. If you are interested in joining the TDTW blogroll please contact me. Adding the blogroll to your blog will not automatically add you to the blogroll itself! I will contact you with the code after taking a look at your blog. :))

Here are a some posts from some of the mothers on the Teaching Daughters, Training Wives blogroll. I know you will enjoy them:

Kate at A Simple Walk: Teaching My Daughters to Love a Life at Home

Sally at Diamonds in the Rough: For Mom

Robin at Robin’s Egg Blue: Titus 2 Schedule

Tamara at Training Hearts: Training Daughters, Reaping the Harvest

If you are interested in visiting more Mothers and daughters on the TDTW blogroll, it is on my sidebar.

blessings!

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Tags: Biblical, christian, feminine, feminism, God's will, Help Meet, teaching, titus 2, training daughters, wife

I do not like these prayer requests. I will just say it up front. I don’t like to hear about sick and dying children. Here is a request for a new little baby boy. It is also urgent.

“…we were told that Joe has tested positive for Enterovirus.”

I know that God is faithful and hears the prayers of his people.

You can read his dad’s and mom’s posts at Preschoolers and Peace.

Pray for Baby Joe - Update! June 26, 2008

Early Friday Morning Update  June 27, 2008

Update on Joe- from Kendra June 27, 2008

Joe’s Diagnosis June 27, 2008

Also, please pray for LucyLillie. She got a mosquito bite on her eyelid, and her eye is swollen shut.

I am doing what I can for her, and praying it doesn’t get infected. We are monitoring it, hoping we don’t have to take her in. Praying for her healing!

blessings!

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Tags: aseptic, enterovirus, faithful, God, illness, infant, meningitis, prayers

Comments ~ LEAVE A COMMENT

“The neurosurgeon has decided and we agree that it is time for them to remove the coma medications to let Rachael wake up if she will. It is not possible to assess her brain damage without waking her. It is most likely that this will cause her pressure to spike too high and she won’t survive it. But that is my opinion based on what I know.

But it is time for us and her to know what will happen.”

This is from her journal on CaringBridge.

Pray for her and her family. They are all deeply grieved and in a lot of emotional pain. They are relying on the Body to lift them up through this.

Let us join together and lift their arms for them through this.

Ok, so several of you knew, and many of you probably surmised that we were on vacation for the past two weeks. Yes, we traveled all of 5,000+ miles over the past two weeks, and met and visited four blogger families as well as family in Louisiana and New Mexico that we haven’t seen in years, some up to 17 years!

It was a long trip, and we are happy to be off the road, but I woulda’ stayed if I could have!! I wish we could have stayed in LA longer and visited with Grandpa and Aunts and Uncles, but maybe we will see them again soon! A week was not long enough to stay with my mom and my sister and Adrian, either.

Be looking for updates on all of our blogs of all of our adventures and our 3,000+ photos!!

We were blessed to meet:

Dawn and her great family

Brooke and her parents and sisters

Josephine and her daughters, Jordan and Sarah, and Sandy and her children. We didn’t get to meet Celeste, but we wish we could have!

Sprittibee and her hubby(unfortunately for only about five minutes) and her little munchkins.

Chickie, Sbees momma

I can’t count Heather, Chickie, Kaden and Morgan as ‘meeting’, since we already got to meet them in April, but it was fun seeing them again!

It was a blessing to meet all of these dear friends. We were humbled and blessed to meet and pray with Josephine's family. If you haven’t met them online yet, please go over and read Josephine’s story. And pray for them. They are a dear family. I am sad right now thinking about leaving them, and I so wish I could just go over right now and sit in her living room with her or weed her garden with her.

Thank you to each and everyone of you, my friends. It was a time we will never forget.

I am bummed I didn’t get to post for Caleb’s Birthday or Matt’s. You can read the birthday tributes here:

Our Cowboy, Caleb

My Superman!

Happy Birthday Caleb and Daddy!

I am also behind on my Saturday Psalm and Praise Meme and Rosa of Linden Castle discussion at HSB Literary Club, for which I truly apologize!

Today, June 22nd, is my grandmother’s birthday, mom’s mom. The anniversary of her death was on Friday, the 20th, which was also Matt’s birthday. Times slips by so quickly… don’t waste a moment of it. I need to have that drilled into my head sometimes.

blessings!

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Where do I begin??? With the day we found out we were expecting you? Or the day we found out we were expecting our first son? Or when the Dr. told me that ‘there may be some problems’, and I felt God telling me that I can say to this mountain be thou moved and be thou cast into the sea… and the problems were gone that afternoon from the ultrasound screen?

Or should I talk about moving 1500 miles when you were but three months old? Or how rambunctious you are were? Watching you stand down by the fence at two, watching the trains go by, “honking them”.

Knowing in my heart that your little two-year-old leg was broken when we took you to the ER, and crying when the Dr. confirmed it…

Seeing you change Hannah’s diaper, then Isaac’s, then Caleb’s, and now Lucy’s. The joy I feel when you laugh with her and coo with her and want to hold her. It gives me hope and a vision of what a great father you will be someday.

The barn chores, cleaning up a room you didn’t mess up. Holding your tongue when you want to let it go. Reading everything you can get your hands on!

Always coming to Mom’s aid when I need handy-man work done and Daddy is at work. Always finding you outside. Always. Riding your bike to check on goats and chickens - or to run the trash out…

The anticipation of turning eleven. How can you be eleven? Just yesterday you got into the double digits, and now an entire year has passed. Make the most of your time, for it passes much too quickly.

I am so proud of you son. I could reiterate all of the moments like these, and I could not say just how proud I am to be your Momma. There aren’t enough words. I love you. I am thankful for these past eleven years and I look forward to so many more I can’t even count those either!

Have a super fantastic blessed birthday, my son!!! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You are an awesome son!

All my love, Mom

Isaac and Caleb love to type on the keyboard. I took the opportunity of this love to teach Isaac about touch-typing this evening. Isaac is four. I had him feel the little marks on the letters f and j with his fingertips to show him where to put his index fingers. He placed them on the keys and started ‘typing’. Then he got tired and asked me to type up a few things for him.

Here is what he had to say:

I play outside.

I go in the barn, and I like the chickens running.

I go in the barn, and I see the bats.

I get the bikes out.

I like the roosters.

I go and eat on the table.

I drink lemonade out of cups.

I draw hats.

I draw pictures.

I like the blankets and the robes.

I like the pillows to lay my head on.

I like the lotion to put on my hands and feet.

I like the cowboy boots that Dad got me.

I saw a fire engine and a shriff’s truck go by again.

I love the best of the flowers and the hyacinths too.

He left the room for a few minutes, and as I was adding the rest of this story, he came in and asked me what I thought I was doing. It was not mean, but boy was it cute!

Here is his practice. It is so cute to see him typing the letters while he looks at the screen, instead of the keyboard.

erfvhjkjlopsjkfdjfkduturheryehyegeyeteteheyetytttet

hgfhfgdfgdgfghtweytetetetregetretreretrerertrwtrtwwtr

geteewrewrewtrewrertewtergeydyfrfyyfythyreruyry

xgxhgdddddctdtdtgtwdegwtegteteeteretrettrttreretrrwertrw

trwrwrwtrwrtwtwrwrwwedgs

dewtetrewtdrtretreretrertdrrewtwtrtrwtrwtwtrwgwerftwererttre

trtrwtr

xgxzsgsssxxfgsgsdgsgsgdrtsdtdgst6hsdggdshdgdsgdydtde

xfxczzxfssfsxdstsfgsgfsvvsvtsgrsdshtdjmgcmch,gxl;dydrjsjhgdytsy

tsgaskjsraywe6we

dgdcgdsgdbgydsdghdgddgfdgsdgfsdgsdgfsdgdsfsdgfwggdsfsgfgfgfgg

fggfgfgsdfsxgsgss

gsgsggdgasgsfgtwgshyfddhdysdhtdhddgdhgfdhgddyfhgfyhf

I love this little boy! Here he is with my sister when she and my mother were here.

Our children grow up way too fast. It is such a joy to use every opportunity to teach our children even the smallest things. Isaac may not keep an interest in typing, but offering him the opportunity when he shows an interest is the way to see just where that learning might go.

Proverbs 22:6

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

It has become a part of my mantra in our home educating. Train them up according to the bent that the Lord God created in them.

It is quite an adventure to see what interests each child. It is even more of an adventure follow that interest and walk it with them, learning everything you come across together.

blessings~

I had the best swap gift of all of you this time. I got to actually meet my swap buddy irl. No, I am not gloating. At all. Ok, well, maybe a little. Here is my swap gift that arrived via FedEx a few days before she came. I am sick the we didn’t get a pic of both of us with it! I guess I will have to take it with me to Austin when we go visit on vacation!

I am not sure if my info sheet says I collect mugs, but I do. This is a “Really Woolly”. I thought it was funny that my sister asked me if it was a “Woolly”. I love green too, so it is such a great gift! I may even have to buy some more teacups and the teapot that goes with it, so my girls and I can all have matching ones!

This is all of the blogger gals outside of Chipotle’s in Fort Wayne. This is Heather’s favorite restaurant. It has kinda’ become a running thread on the HSBA yahoo group with all of us… who has been to Chipotle’s and in which, er, how many, states. So, that was fun!

There are so many more really neat photos, but I am posting this since I am so late on getting it posted!

blessings~

If you want to join us next time, you can read about it and sign up: May & June 2008 Swap!

I was emailed about the news about the Duggar Family’s new baby, due in January 2009 by my friend, SisterLisa. Then, their name even came up at Jocelyn’s birthday party. I have to admit, I’m a bit jealous after thinking we were going to be expecting before the end of the year, but we won’t go into that right now. This post is about the video on their website that shows their home. Amanda said she thought it was a bit extravagant, because it looks like a hotel, and I asked her what it was supposed to look like when they are expecting their 18th baby! I love our farmhouse, and I will hate to leave it, but - oh! - all of that open space inside the house! Ahhhhh….

So, if you would like to see a very well-planned-out home for a large family, take a look at The Duggar Family Home. That big, long dining room and table… that is one thing on my list for our new home. I have a great list, you know. Two years into the addition on our house, our children almost wrote to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition about helping us finish it, but I pretty much discouraged that. We don’t need it all torn down and started over, just the next 25% of the job completed! Jocelyn’s letter to them that I found in the trash was really cute, though! (Anyone looking to donate time, email me!) But, I digress… I love their kitchen and laundry room set-ups too. Two stove tops and two sets of washers and dryers would be great. That is on my list too.

The funny thing I noticed is that we have already come up with some of the ideas they have implemented. We have a laundry room that is quite large almost finished, and we had planned to put all of their clothes in it and get rid of dressers. Matt already wants them to hang up all of their clothes, so that would make it easy to do it right off of the laundry area. No dressers in the bedrooms makes for plenty of rooms for beds, too. Rachel would love that, since she would love to share a room with Amanda and Jocelyn…

I never would have thought about a cafeteria tray rack, but it makes sense. I love the windows. I could get used to all of those huge windows.  And a real prayer closet… Anyway, I went through the video a few times. The third time, I used the pause button so I could read and inspect. I love the layout. Let me know what you think!

blessings~

Please pray for a dear family on HSB.
Dixiecajun and her daughters blog here on hsb, and I just learned that her husband was tragically killed in a car accident last night. You can leave a comment and read about that on Dixiecajun’s blog. He was a much loved husband, father, and grandfather. This family has been through a lot, and I know they would appreciate your prayers. They moved to Alabama after losing everything to Hurricane Katrina. I don’t know them as well as the girls do, but I have read their blogs, and they are fine Christians.
Their children’s blogs are:
• Sandy
• Celeste
• Jordan
• Sarah

We at the Dixon house are so sad right now with this family. We don’t know them personally, just another family God has placed in our lives through blogging that we have come to love.

blessings~