I Am Undeserving

The Lord has blessed me in such immeasurable ways, that I cannot begin to understand them all, let alone re-pay him.

I am grateful for my husband, he is loving, considerate, passionate, hard-working, he cares deeply about our welfare and gives his all to provide for us. He is also less-than-perfect in all the best ways for me. Working to overcome my pride and take care of his fragile heart, have made me a better wife and woman in general. I love him so completely.

I am grateful for my kids. I am blessed with three amazing children that I get to watch grow and learn every day. I am also blessed with one brilliant, defiant son from my first marriage who challenges me to grow farther and fastest than I ever imagined. I am also blessed with 5 step-children who amaze me with their capacity for respect and forgiveness. These nine beautiful souls have touched my life and my heart and caused it to grow beyond my comprehension. I love them each so dearly.

I am grateful for my rental home. I am blessed with just the right amount of space to teach my kids and let them be safe exploring outside. We have enough room for all our kids to be comfortable at night, even if they all come visit at once. We are in a good neighborhood and enjoy our neighbors.

I am grateful to have two cars again. It is truly wonderful to be able to go to the library and the homeschool coop while my husband is at work, without having to wake everybody up at 6 am to get ready and take him there. I am grateful that these cars are well-maintained and will last us a good long while, barring anything unforeseen.

I am grateful to have reliable internet service and a computer. I am blessed to be able to have the resources to build a business that I can run from within our home. I love being able to care for and teach our children, as well as hopefully have the means to provide the extra income we need to pay down our debt and save for our own home.

I am grateful for cellphones. I am blessed to be able to talk to my husband and other family members regardless of the distance between us.

I am grateful for indoor plumbing and a hot water heater. I am blessed to be able to drink and cook with clean water, and shower in very warm water.

I am grateful for our refrigerator and freezer. I am blessed to be able to store and preserve foods, so that we may eat healthy food.

I am grateful for our furnace and fireplace. I am blessed that my family can be warm at night, even when it’s 5 below.

I am grateful for many other temporal blessings that the Lord has provided my family and I. Perhaps I will continue counting them another day.

For now, Blessings to You, and Thanks for stopping by!
Sarah

That Love-Hate Relationship With Our Tech

Our personal technology gives us more information and less wisdom. We have endless, instant access to information. But we do not allow ourselves the off-grid time to process that information into anything more than knowledge. Leaving us knowledgeable fools, lacking wisdom and depth.

We are allowing others to think for us, groupthink was the term from 1984, if I remember. When was the last time you used a meme to chose or reinforce your position in an issue. A meme is not wisdom, it is almost a clear opposite to wisdom. Usually memes are emotional sound bites, made to stir up our heart into taking an ideological stance. But our heart was not designed for reasoning!

If we were to debate all the pros and cons of an issue, we would come to a logical conclusion that would be somewhat near the middle ground. But allowing our heart to be swayed by guttural sound bites throws our belief system to the extremes. We have chosen a path without engaging our own reasoning. Instead, we are relying on the fully formed opinions of others. These others clearly do not have our own best interests in mind, after all many of them are proven to come from other countries. They have their own agenda, in which they want your blind support. Why are we letting them think for us?

Part of it is laziness, but only because we are so busy and stressed with our own everyday problems, that we “farm out” the thinking, debating, reasoning, and reflecting of national or global issues to other sources. And though I could go on about how we become too busy and stressed to do our own thinking, I think I’ll save that for another day. (I should mention that both the problems of being too busy, and succumbing to groupthink are among my struggles, which is why I write about them.)

The brunt of it is, I know that each of us are highly intelligent creatures. To be clear, I’m not talking about IQ as it’s measurement of comparison with each other. I am referring to our God-given gifts of thought, logic, and reasoning which were reserved for man alone upon this earth. We need to take back our own individual thought processes. Cease from allowing our beliefs to be based on someone else’s fully formed opinions. And grant ourselves the down, or off-grid, or unplugged time to come to our own conclusions.

And forget not that “if any man lacks wisdom, let him ask God.” James 1:5

Blessings,
Sarah

Man’s Laws Are Not the Answer

Our country is shaken and mourning from yet another mass murder at a school. Yet as we mourn, we are becoming inured to the tragedy of it, and turning more to rallies and politics. We are turning away from our homes and children and churches, and turning up our volume and anger and disgust. In short we are turning away from Christ, which is precisely what will contribute to the problem.

If we truly want the answer to the violence that plagues our children, we have to acknowledge that Man does not possess the answer. Nor can Man create any law that will heal our children’s hearts. We need to accept that in order to heal our children, we need to turn to them, and turn them to Christ.

We need to accept that in order to heal our children, we need to turn to them, and turn them to Christ.

Try this, set aside a few extra minutes with your child tonight (or over the next several nights, depending on how many you care for). As you tuck them in, ask them some of these questions:

• How did your day go?
• Did you have any trouble with anyone today?
• Can you think of a way that you can improve your relationship with them?
• Did you notice anyone struggling or lonely today?
• Can you think of ways that you could show them Christ-like love tomorrow?
  • Smile at them.
  • Wave hello.
  • Say, “Hi.”
  • Sit with them at lunch.
  • Talk to your friends about being nicer to them.

As you have a conversation about showing Love to others with your kids, you will help them become part of the solution. Remember Christ’s words:

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. – Matthew 22:39

Man’s Laws have second and third order effects that we cannot fully comprehend, but God’s Laws are perfect. Love each other and we are all healed.

Blessings,
Sarah

True Feminism is About More Than Position

True feminism doesn’t match well with the world’s feminism. While I do believe the goals of feminism are noble, I can only see the degradation of a woman’s true power through the current tendency to jockey for a greater position or title.

I understand that in all attempts to improve something, people and even societies usually go past their mark to an extreme, before returning and finding the sweet spot. In fact, this swing can happen multiple times, like a pendulum, before resting in the center. However, I think it is time for the voices of women on the other side of the spectrum to be heard in order to bring the pendulum back closer to the center.

So, what do I feel is missing in modern day feminism? —

Only the source of a woman’s greatest power and influence:

Motherhood

Through motherhood, women are at their highest level of influence. Women guide and direct everything about the little lives for whom they are responsible. We teach them what to believe in, what is important, what to learn. We groom them, nurture them, steer them in the directions they will follow their whole lives. We have all power over their little lives, if we are willing to give up all thoughts of self. They notice when we care for them and respond by following the path we lay out for them.

Now I know, I’m describing a perfect, theoretical child. I know as well as the next mom, that every child at some point (usually around an age ending in “teen”) decides to rebel against the best laid paths of mom. And usually this rebellion causes endless sleepless nights to the poor overwhelmed mother. This being understood, many children will still return to the patterns and programming built in by said mother. For better or worse, mother remains the most influential individual in most people’s lives.

So I propose that as women, we need to speak up more about this powerful position and help those around us to understand and support it more. I know that as we come to understand it and exercise it better ourselves, either as a biological, step, adoptive, foster, grand, part-time, surrogate, or unofficial (including teacher, aunt, nanny, next-door neighbor, mentor, etc.) mother; that we will empower our gender all over the world to become stronger and more influential.

Blessings!
Sarah

 

Photo by Suhyeon Choi on Unsplash

How Quickly We Fall Prey to the Spirit of Contention…

Hi there,

My heart is heavy today. I have fallen prey to the spirit of contention. This article is a personal spiritual chastisement for allowing my self to get upset over something so trivial.

I have a dear sister in volunteer work that, unintentionally, has made it very inconvenient for myself and a couple dozen other volunteers to complete our latest project. My reaction initially grew into outrage and contention. I was so angry at her for making it so difficult for us to do our job, and for slowing down the service we were trying to do. Grrrr!

And then a small voice whispered that perhaps she was doing the best she knew how. Which, of course, is the truth. And then I started thinking of ways that I could help her to eliminate the inconvenience for the other volunteers. And though I’m still working past the emotional flooding that comes from all that anger, I’m working in the right direction now. This scripture runs through my head:

For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another. 3 Ne. 11:29

And I realize that if the father of contention can stir me up, it means I have the power to overcome it and reach for the Prince of Peace. I am grateful for the power I have to turn away from our adversary, and I am grateful for the whisperings of the Spirit that remind me of that power.

Repent means to turn towards Christ, which also means turning away from sin. I can turn towards Christ and humbly ask for his help to reject contention and seek after peace. I know that this is a small matter, but we know that through “small and simple means” can hearts be changed and nations be saved.

One of the vices that comes with building a public following is that I spend more time on social media than I had previously. I am trying reach out to and get to know people of all walks. Sadly, digging through the media sites, I run across terrible happenings, wildly biased reportings of current events, and attacks on anybody and everybody who doesn’t agree. I am brought down in sorrow reading all the contention in these public forums.

My hope and prayer is that each of us, individually, can be strengthened to forgive, repent, turn from contention, and seek diligently after peace. As we do so, I know that our nation and our world can be healed.

Blessings!
Sarah

 

Photo by Frida Bredesen on Unsplash