Over the past few years, I’ve grown in my desire to buy local more often. It hits differently to hand my money over to someone in a team of 1-10 people versus a business that requires a high-rise to do most of its work. The most small and local I’ve gotten this year is stopping…
Book Review: Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin
Women of the Word has become an absolute staple in my life. So much so that I’ve used it to develop a women’s discipleship group ministry at my church. Each year, we read or reread Women of the Word, then using her study tools, we work through a book of the Bible verse by verse,…
Book Review: “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer
I have a few reservations about this book that I think warrant a front-row seat. On page 239 Comer talks about breath prayers. This involves “breathing in the Holy Spirit and breathing out anxiety, stress, etc.” This is an eastern mystical practice, never once even hinted at in the Bible. By endorsing this book I…
Six Ways Raising Kids is Like Gardening
Does this happen to you, too? My deepest and most profound thoughts tend to come when I’m on my knees, digging in my garden. If you’ve never experienced this, you might be surprised – the way weeds, which came into the world as a direct result of sin, are so much like sin. How they…
Why Homeschoolers Shouldn’t Graduate Early – and Why We’re Doing it Anyway
When I get excited about something, I tend to go all in. I love to research, so I jump wholeheartedly into gathering information. I’ll obsess over it as I learn and think up more questions. In the past, one thing I would not do was look for the reasons I shouldn’t do the thing, to…
Four Schedules to Bring Variety to Your Homeschool Year
I always love hearing how other people spend their days, and given how many “Day In The Life” blog posts and Youtube videos there are, I know I’m not alone. It can be so helpful to gain perspective and ideas for our own days by observing other people. This post is not a day in…
Accelerating Our Homeschool High School
Come along with me and see how I (imperfectly) accelerate my children’s education Have you heard of the Brainy Bunch? I read the book years ago and was inspired. This family had 10 kids, and six of them at the time had graduated high school by age 11 and began in-class college courses at age…
Systems in Homemaking
This is part 2 in a series on self-discipline and systems in homemaking. In part one, “Systems in Homemaking – What I Learned from a Video Game,” we talked about the differences between self-control and self-discipline, and why that matters in our daily lives. Something hit me as I approached my 40s. I’d been the…
Do Our Kids Really Need a College Degree?
Never confuse education with intelligence. You can have a Master’s degree and still be an idiot. -anonymous One memory of my college graduation stands out: our dean spoke at a pre-graduation luncheon. He described what he’d majored in, then his first job after graduating. He had one career for 5-7 years, then another which…
Resistance – the Sneaky Saboteur Keeping us from Fulfilling our Calling
I just thought I was lazy. All my life I’ve been full of ideas, goals, dreams of great accomplishments in life. I would think about these dreams when I was going about my day. I’d daydream about them and enjoy the warm fuzzies they brought. But when I had 30 minutes or more to devote…