Homeschooling Advice

We are in the midst of getting ready to start a new year of homeschooling on Monday. Luke will be in 2nd grade and Ray will be doing some laid back pre-k. I've learned so much in my first few years of homeschooling. I've had to give myself permission to let go of the expectations that I had for my children and go at their pace. A fellow homeschool mom and personal friend summed this up excellently on her blog in this post. If you are a homeschool mom of younger kids, or thinking about homeschooling when your kids are older, or if you just like to read blogs this is a great post to read. Thanks for the great advice, Mel!

Don't ya just love it when you dedicate a day to fasting and praying, and then when you wake up in the morning realize that you are holding last night's tiff against someone? Therefore, you have to go and apologize to said husband, er, I mean, person, in order to be able to petition your requests to the Lord with a clean conscience? Kinda puts a kink in the whole cold shoulder thing I had going.

A Grumbling Church

*This is from my devotional out of my Women's Study Bible yesterday. The title of the post was the title of my quiet time.*

"If we don't submit to and respect our leaders, in essence we are saying, 'God, I don't believe you are in control.' Often we are part of the problem that we are complaining about. We point fingers at pastors and leaders instead of recognizing that our own actions or inactions might have been part of the problem.

Problems occur in every church and ministry. After all, God uses fallible human beings to accomplish his work. But it is God's church and he is in control. We may not always agree with all of our spiritual leaders' decisions, but we can pray that God will lead them and guard their hearts and minds. We can examine our own actions and attitudes to make sure we're not causing more problems. And we can trust God to finish the work he has started--especially the work he has called us to do."

Are you willing?

I read this post this morning and just had to share it. I could identify with what the Lord has taught him, because it is so similar to what the Lord has been revealing to me. Not that he is calling me to be a Kenyan missionary. But then again, you never know...
Regardless of the call, I am willing to follow.

Sweet Surrender

I have been trying to post for about 4 days now. I finally have been able to get a bit of extra time and motivation to conincide with each other, so I started a post. I typed, and typed, and typed...and typed some more. After all that typing I still hadn't said all that I wanted to say! The post was long winded and just plain boring. I know that if I get bored reading my own writing about my own life, that other folks just might die of boredom. So, I scrapped it and I'm starting over. It may take several posts to let you in on all that God's been doing in our family, but I'm bound and determined to do it! Not just for your sake,(because I know that all of you are just dying of curiosity to know what is going on in my super exciting life *wink*), but for my own sake also. Posting is theraputic for me, and it helps to get my thoughts down where I can read them. And as long-winded as I can be, writing it on paper isn't always a viable option. Now, to get to the point...

I posted here about fully surrendering my life to the Lord's will. I've learned, in the year and a half since that time, that surrender is a continual process. It started out with the desire and willingness to fully turn every aspect of my life over to the Lord, but what I thought was the completion of my surrender, was actually the beginning of a whole new journey. And what a glorious journey it has been, thus far! It turned out to be very ironic that the title of my blog is "Surrender". When I picked that title I had a very specific area of surrender in mind, that being our situation with Treyson. But that trial started a domino effect of yielding my entire life to the Lord's control. Not that there haven't been bumps in the road, and times when I found myself, once again, trying to be in the driver's seat of my life, but the process has been far more amazing than I had anticipated.

I keep a spritual journal, of sorts. As I said earlier, writing is theraputic for me, and though I don't write in it every day, I do make an effort to write down major issues I'm dealing with. I write down prayers and thoughts about difficult problem that no one can fix but the Lord. I know that the Lord should be the first place to turn with any problem or difficulty, but it is so easy to try to handle things on my own and only seek the Lord when I feel overwhelmed and that the situation is out of my control. Therefore, alot of my spiritual journaling is desperate pleas to God to intervene in some situation or another. I am in the process of learning how to give even the seemingly meanial things in my life over the Lord, but I tend to only journal when I am feeling really good, or really bad. Journaling has been a blessing to me because I have been able to look back and see how God worked in some very difficult circumstances that felt utterly hopeless at the time. I also can see how He has been able to bless my life beyond measure as I have learned to truly submit to him.

He has given us financial peace after years of extreme burden.

He has transformed my husband into a man with a consuming passion to follow God's will for his life with complete abandon.

He is turning me in to the submissive wife that I never thought I could be.

And He is leading our family down a path that we would not have chosen for ourself, but we are joyful, knowing that in the center of His will is where we find peace.

I'm Baaaaaack!

So. I've been very out of the blogging loop for a good long while now. A rough pregnancy made my motivation for blogging dwindle, and then having a newborn takes up pretty much every waking(and non-waking) moment.

Now, I don't have a newborn any more and I'm not pregnant, and while I am still busy, I decided that I didn't really have an excuse not to atleast attempt to blog.

LOTS has been going on in the past 8 or so months since I blogged last. Besides the birth of our new little man, Kellen(who is now 5 months old), God has been doing some absolutely amazing things in our family. His hand has been so very evident in our lives and the effects have been simply astounding. I'd love to go in to it all in detail sometime in the not too distant future. On the outside we may still look like the same chicken farming, homeschooling, baby-wearing, bare-footin', Jesus lovin' family that we have always been. But inside our family's core God is teaching us some new truths about Himself that are drawing us in to a deeper walk with Him. The refining process may be difficult and painful at times, but as we are refined(individually, and as a family) the old is falling away to reveal the new. How exciting it is to catch glimpses of what He has in store for us! I have been thrilled to sit back and watch how He is weaving all things together for His good and perfect plan.

Much love to you all!

Proof of Life

Ok, so I know that I haven't posted in like forever and a day. We have had some computer problems, so we went several weeks without any internet at all. Now we are using a borrowed computer while our computer is being fixed. I am also having a rough pregnancy(physically), very tired, and very busy. The three of these things combined make it next to impossible to blog. Even though I don't have time to write much I felt that the least I owed you was to let you know that I'm alive....oh, and we decided on a name. Kellen Beck Carlin. He will probably mostly go by Kale I know what you are thinking Kellen and Kale, what's the connection?? So here is your explanation:

We love the name Kale, but I kinda have this thing against one syllable first names. It isn't that I don't like them, it's that they don't go with the flow of our other children's names(Lucas, Raylen, Treyson). So, before we even came close of picking a name we knew that it was going to be a two syllable one. We talked about name after name, but Kale was the one that we kept coming back to. We tired to elongate that to a longer name and came up with Kallen. Buuuuut, that spelling would be mispronounced and it also looked kinda girly to me. Hence the name Kellen. We love both Kellen and Kale so I'm sure we will call him both, kind of like we do with Raylen(Ray) and Treyson(Tres). Not that you care about that whole story behind the name. I just thought that I'd explain it just in case any one got confused.

So, you got the name, the explanation behind the name, and assurance that I am still alive and haven't given up on blogging or Treyson's Purpose. Since I have broken my blogging silence I'm sure that I will be more motivated to post more often.

Now, if I could just finish painting the baby's room....