Today, we went on a field trip with our homeschool group to a castle... a REAL castle!  In fact, it is the only authentic Norman castle anywhere in the world.  It was amazing for many many reasons, but one thing really struck me.  The WHOLE thing, including the castle, terraced gardens, flood plain, retaining wall, fire pit, graded road, and terraced hillside, was made by one man... by hand.  Sir Harry Andrews made, stacked and mortared every brick, hauled every rock out of the Miami River, dug shovelfuls of dirt out of the ground to prepare and flatten the hill, ALL by hand, by himself.  It took him 52 years.  In that time, he also managed to teach for 30 years, edit textbooks 30 hours a week during his retirement, publish over 900 writings, run the Knights of the Golden Trail, and much more. He worked on it up until his death at the age of 91.  Every detail of the castle is an authentic 10th century Norman Knights castle.  All of that makes the castle all the more amazing.  (And a VERY worthwhile field trip if you are ever so inclined to visit me in Cincinnati, I will go with you!)

Lately I have been overwhelmed with the enormity of my dreams, goals and projects... one in particular, but others too.  The one that really overwhelms me is our financial freedom goal... it is so important to me to get out of debt, but the debt seems so huge to me that I feel like it is near impossible a task to conquer.  So I dream about ways to help us get free of the debt, like growing my business, starting another business, etc... and I take steps like budgeting, frugal living, etc...but eventually the enormity of the debt returns to stare me in the face.  I start to feel like the tiny results I am achieving are not even close to enough to put a dent in it, and I start to feel myself give up. 

God impressed a lesson from the 10th century on my heart today.  My dream of financial freedom and of "changing my family tree forever" like Dave Ramsey says, is a huge dream, a lot like the dream of building a 10th century authentic Norman castle.  And the debt is the huge hill and the river that was there when Sir Harry first began to dream of building his castle.  I would love to get the equivalent of a bulldozer, crane, and a team of builders with power tools to just power through the earth to flatten it and terrace it, build the flood wall, retaining wall, terraced gardens and the castle.  It would go much faster.  But, just as Sir Harry valued making the castle truly authentic and thus did it all by hand, our dream is to get out of debt while still doing the things that are the most important to us... things such as me being at home with our children and homeschooling them, and doing our work and business in a God honoring manner.  Thus, we cannot use "power tools" such as me getting a full-time job, fast easy unethical money schemes, or robbing a bank.  We have to do it shovelful by shovelful, brick by brick.  And most days, that feels nigh to impossible.  But I saw with my own eyes today a huge CASTLE, built brick by brick and laid on earth terraced shovelful by shovelful!  I don't know if Sir Harry ever got discouraged, I bet he did.  But he kept on going, pulling rocks off the riverbank and carrying them up that hill, until those rocks, homemade bricks, and riverbank mud-mixed mortar became the castle he dreamed of.  And if we keep on going, even though each rock, shovelful, or brick seems so insignificant, we will certainly be able to achieve the dream of financial freedom we so earnestly desire.

And that is my lesson from the 10th century for today.

If you are so inclined, comment and share a castle-dream of your own with me!  I will pray for you if you do!