This year has been a tough year for our family.  And from listening and talking around, seems this is a common thread among many, many families.  Each in their own ways have been struggling more than usual throughout the last year.  Perhaps it's the poor economy, perhaps it's the stress of changing times, or perhaps it's that the enemy is on the move.  Oh, there is no doubt that something is going on.  This has been troubling my heart, weighing upon it for quite some time now.  I've heard far too many stories of good Christian families being poked at, tormented, and even torn asunder.  I've spent many nights laying in bed tossing and turning thinking and praying about it all into the morning hours.

My blog tends to be a place that I mostly choose for joyful, pleasant thoughts; focusing the the happy things going on in our lives.  However, sometimes it's necessary to call it what it is....and that's HARD.  Sometimes, it calls for a "call for intense prayer"; for the prayer warriors to put on their full armor and courageously go into battle.

There is a family in our church who has a son who was severely injured in the war this past year.  This soldier has spent the last several months in a hospital enduring a long and VERY painful recovery.  Praise the Lord, he is recovering step by step.  He recently told a family member what his desires were...he wants to remain in the Army.  This is a warrior who isn't afraid to stand on God's promises and fight the battle, at all costs.  He believes in the mission.

We are fighting a different kind of battle, one that requires untraditional weapons, two of which are extreme passion and unrelenting prayer.  It requires a lot of courage to stand and fight this kind of war too.  It requires a passion for the mission.  For the enemy will attack back with just as much fervor and intensity, and these times are used to strengthen our character and faith in our Lord.  For we know the Truth, the war has already been won, and God is everlasting, the battles will only last so long.

And if we endure these difficult times, putting on His armor, fighting with passion, covering it with a constant blanket of prayer, in due time there shall be rejoicing heard all around the earth.

About a week and a half ago I posted an entry entitled A Divine Duty.  I thought this video was a great compliment to that post.  For I know first hand that upholding this Divine Duty is not for the faint hearted.  Whether we are becoming overwhelmed in the struggle with our children, our husbands, or our family life in general, this is a great reminder of why we do what we do.  We do not work for them, we work for Him.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was in a process of a change in my life, in the process of a new beginning.  If you've been reading my blog for long you may remember the posts I wrote long ago entitled Listening to the Voice of Truth (the four-part series of blog entries are on pages 9 and 10 of my blog).  For the last several months I have ashamedly been personally struggling once again to hear that Voice.  You see, when I wrote those entries, I may have failed to listen to emphasizing that learning to listen to Truth is a daily battle; just when I think I've got it down pat, satan lurks around like a lion waiting for the perfect opporutnity to invade your very thoughts once again.

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour ~ 1 Peter 5:8

Somewhere in the past months, he did just that, invaded my thoughts once again.  I won't go into all the details of the lies that I started to consume; but they lead me down a dark path, a path of bad choices and old negative thinking habits, and landed me drowning in a well of negativity filled with self condemnation, and the belief that I was no longer worth God's time.  Gees, you'd think I would have learned by now!  But like I said, daily battle...daily battle.

As a homeschooling mother I have done great things for my children, but I also mess up daily, and somewhere along the lines my perfectionist personality started to believe that God had finally had enough of my messing up and had abandoned me.  The truth was that in my wrong turn on the path of lies, it was me that had inadvertantly turned from Him.  Once again, I cried out to the Lord like a child in the dark.

"Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up." ~ James 4:10

Before long, I opened my devotional book and turned the next page to find this Scripture:

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit." ~ Romans 8:1-4

Hmmm, there's no condemnation for me?  Wait, that's what Christ did for me already, He paid for all my messing up long ago, it's done.  He paid for my messing up yesterday, today, and all my tomorrows.  I'm set free, so what am I doing back in these chains!?  I'm going to mess up, He knew that, but so long as I'm seeking and am in Christ Jesus, my sinful nature is history!  I don't have to let it bound me and condemn me, I am being made "new" by Him every second.

I am challenged every day, all day, to make right choices when teaching and interacting with my children.  Yes, sometimes I'll mess up, even daily, but I will move on and continue to grow in Him.  I will try to never again underestimate satan's relentlessness; his constant desire to cloud and confuse my thoughts.  But even more importantly, I will never underestimate God's power to forgive.

I'm taking a break from my Christmas break to share a devotional I recently received in my email inbox that was too good to not share!  It was written by Paula Moldenhauer, Christian writer and homeschooling mother.  This devotion came to me in God's perfect timing and encouraged me beyond belief!  I'm sure some of you already receive her devotions, but if not, what are you waiting for?  Check out her website at www.soulscents.us/ and sign up for her weekly devotionals and be blessed.  And while your at it, encourage yourself some more by visiting her blog at http://www.gracereign.blogspot.com/.  Thank you Paula for sharing your heart and God's love through your writings!

Dark is the stain that we cannot hide—What can
avail to wash it away? Look! There is flowing a
crimson tide—Whiter than snow you may be today.
- Grace Greater Than Our Sin
Text by Julia H. Johnston

Dragon Scales

God in His grace doesn’t leave us like we are.
While His grace covers our sins, it is also His
grace that changes us, transforming us into the
image of Christ. And, sometimes, God’s
transforming grace work through pain.

A while back, I went through a difficult season.
I’d prayed for intimacy with Christ and, though
coming to know Him better, I also experienced
hard times. Assault after assault left me
frightened and I began to shut down from God. 

I knew intimacy with Him meant being open before
Him, but I didn’t invite the Lord into it. I
feared more pain. A numb deadness covered me
while depression threatened.

Finally, I asked a friend to pray with me. She
confronted the lie—that I could ignore all that
had happened and the resulting deeply felt anger.


“You’re hurting already,” she pointed out. “Why
not be real before God?”

I did. I cried and poured my heart out to Him in
the midst of a small circle of praying women. 

Later, alone in the car, I tried to process the
pain I’d admitted. ”You know, God,” I said.
“Sometimes getting to know you hurts like crazy.
Intimacy with You can be very painful.”

Instantly, a scene from a book in C.S. Lewis’
Chronicles of Narnia played my mind.

A boy named Eustace sneaked into a dragon’s liar
to steal the jewels the beast guarded. 

Instead of grasping the treasure, his greed
caused an enchantment to turn him into the
dragon. Horrified, Eustace, now trapped inside
the dragon’s body, pounded around the cave,
trying to shed the horrible skin he now lived in,
but he couldn’t. 

In desperation, Eustace finally called to Alsan,
the Christ figure in the book. The majestic lion
bounded into the cave and ever so lovingly came
to the boy’s rescue.

But the process was painful. 

Layer after layer of dragon skin had to be ripped
away by Aslan’s sharp claws before the boy could
be free of the shell that held him captive. 

At that moment the Lord whispered to my heart,
“It’s not intimacy with me that hurts, Paula.
It’s getting rid of the old skin that enslaves
you.”

Like Eustace, tough, thick scales, caused by my
own sins and lies from the enemy of my soul,
covered the real me. My loving Lord had come to
the rescue, allowing pain in my life that
ultimately resulted in His purposes—the shedding
of another layer of outward scum. 

And the revealing of the person He is making me
to be.

So I chose in that season to go to that raw,
angry, tired place I was afraid of. I spat out my
accusations against the Lord and cried for mercy,
begging Him to take me to faith and truth once
more. 

In this process, I had to be honest before Him
and see where that took me. 

I had to give Him permission to extend a strong,
sharp claw and rip away the stain of sin in my
life.

For a while I thought I’d gone backwards in my
walk of faith—frustrated by my doubts, anger, and
fears. But, having emerged from the other side I
realized I’d only gone deeper with the Lord.

A phrase from a song sung by Sara Groves
ministered to my heart and whispered His
purposes. “And in His hands, the pain and hurt
feels less like scars and more like character.” 

I’m glad God ripped away that yucky old layer of
scales. And I have no doubt but that in His
perfect time, He’ll tackle yet another rough
place.

Thank God His grace never leaves us in that old
skin. He slowly and patiently scrubs it away,
revealing new, pink skin beneath—letting emerge
the person He created us to be.

~Paula Moldenhauer

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.  Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. - Psalm 127:1

As homeschooling mothers in today's society, we are under immense pressure.  Pressure not only to "live up to" the expectations of today's world, but also our expectations of ourselves.  I, for one, in the past have had a tendency to place a heavy burden upon myself to relentlessly pursue levels of "success" that were near impossible to achieve.  Do you relate?

What I have found, however, is that most of this drive for success comes from, and is dictated by, the world's expectations of me.  Throughout our first years of homeschooling I realize that I was focused on these expectations and repeatedly allowed them to "steer" my homeschooling days.  What did this result in?  A lot of days filled with stress and anxiety, and a loss of joy in homeschooling.  Not only for me, but also for my children.  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't mold myself nor my children into the world's expectations.   And we all ended up traveling on the road called disappointment, trying to become something God didn't make for us to be.

You see, I was holding everything accountable to to the world, instead of the Word.  I was wearing my children and myself out trying to live out the world's definition of "successful".  And by traveling on the world's path to success, I was relying upon the world's truths more than my Savior's.  Over the last couple of years, the Lord has grabbed the steering wheel from my hands and has taken me down a "less traveled road", in the process teaching me a few things about proper driving.

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humbled in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." - Matthew 11:28-30

Instead of being "yoked" with the world, the Lord wanted me to be "yoked" with Him.  For me it took practically loosing control of everything for me to realize I wasn't supposed to be the main one in control.  I imagine it like one of those "two-seater" bicycles, when things are in the proper order I'm in the back seat allowing God to drive.  If God is not in the driver's seat of my life I'm on the wrong road.

Most days now I'm trying much harder to focus on what God wants me to achieve for our homeschool.  The joy that we all feel on those days is beyond words.  Those are the days when I see my children's true talents and strengths and I can minister to the development of those for God's glory.  Now, I realize that above all, If I'm not teaching my children by lesson and example to love the Lord and to seek His guidance by allowing Him to "drive" their life, I might as well "count it all loss".

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. - Philippians 3:7-9

We have just begun our 11th week of our school year.  It has taken this long to "find a rhythm" in our school day.  For about the first 7 or 8 weeks, it seemed I was in a constant battle with the clock.  Anyone else out there doing that?  I was absolutely determined that if I just tweeked the schedule enough I'd be able to finish earlier in the day.  Unfortunately tweaking the schedule meant not enough time for things such as Bible reading, read alouds, nature notebooking, and art study.  All too often, I was rushing into the day, rushing through the day, and wearing myself out trying to beat the clock.

We were starting our school day at 9am and not finishing by 3:30 or 4:00, with just a couple small breaks.  After all, I had friends who could consistently be finished by 1 or 2:00.  Remember my blog entry about not comparing?  Hmm, seems I needed to re-read that.  It soon became aware to me that no matter how hard I flexed my muscles and how hard I fought, time always won.  After weeks of putting on my boxing gloves and fighting with the second hand, I remembered a verse that made me lower my defenses:

"In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps." - Proverbs 16:9

You mean no matter what I do to change my schedule, or how hard I fight, the Lord is in control of every step I take!?  It seemed that huge detail slipped my mind.   So, once again, I found myself face to face with God's glorious Truth.  I knew in "one tick of the second hand" what I needed to do...submit my will for His will.  I needed to hand in the hour hand for His perfect guiding Hand.  I had been letting the clock take charge, and it was merciless!

The next school morning I awoke with such a sense of freedom!  I submitted to the fact that no matter how long it took, that was ok, because in homeschooling I was doing God's will.  I relaxed, and have been enjoying our days so much more.  And no matter what happens, prayer and Bible reading come first!  And not surprisingly, after submitting my will to the Lord's, He showed me how to help our school day find it's rhythm, not by using my brains and brawn alone, but by using His perfect wisdom above all.

I'm happy to report that the boxing gloves are currently collecting dust, and the clock is feeling neglected.

I'm editing this entry to add a quote that my friend Jennifer (hi Jennifer!) recently sent to me.  It went perfectly with my entry!

“Oh! Do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.” –Jane Austen

We were honored this morning to have three new students visit our homeschool!  I'd like you to meet Snowball, Puge, and Wendy.

When I had finished busying about preparation for our school this morning, I glanced at them being carefully set up by Hannah on our school table, and for a moment, in my adultness, I almost missed the blessing.  Yes I admit, I nearly blurted out to tell her she must move them out of our way for it was schooltime.  But the Lord did as He so lovingly has done for me many times, He dabbed just enough glue between my lips so that I might have time to think.  Oh, what a beautifully sweet picture He painted for me.  Aren't childrens' imaginations divine?!  Father, please help our eyes to be open each and every day to such beauty.  I'm happy to report that our three new students, who beared a lesson for the teacher today, sat with us the entire school day!

Yes, Snowball, Puge, and Wendy are Webkinz!  My children love them, and I unashamedly admit I do too!

I know as a homeschool mother I often find myself not wanting to be “transparent” with others out of fear.  Fear that someone might actually think I don’t have it all together, all the time.  Fear that someone may pass judgment on that fact that I have chosen to homeschool, if I don’t act that everything is great.  And lately, fear that I’m complaining.

In light of my recent blog entries about being content, I feel it’s important for me to talk a bit about being open with one another.  There is a “fine line” to walk between complaining and being “real” with one another.  As I’ve embarked upon my new journey of experiencing contentment, I’ve found that finding this “fine line” has challenged me.  It’s new territory.  The last thing I want to be found guilty of anymore is being discontent.

However, I think the Lord is beginning to make this line more visible to me.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. – James 5:16

In James 5:16 we find that we are supposed to confess our sins to each other and pray.  But I couldn’t find one verse that says we should grumble about our unfair circumstances to each other.  I think therein lies the difference.  Confessing, being real, that oops I messed up today by doing this, but now I’m going to start over, isn’t complaining or being discontent.  Of course some of our oopsies can be brought on by our circumstances, but the focus is on our accountability.  This works very well for me.

The times that I’ve come “clean” with a good friend, I feel amazing healing, verse 16 talks about as well.  I am blessed to have friends and family that I can be transparent with and feel no judgment.  However the times I’ve complained and grumbled to someone about my unfair circumstances, I’ve always felt no better if not worse about my situation.

Beginning Again,

Melissa