Why I Turned Down My Dream Job To Be a Nanny

I got this note from a young college graduate about something that I've felt very strongly about for a long time. I wanted to post it here because I think the message is important. This is important enough to say twice - You don’t have to be in Africa to “count”. Remember, God doesn’t need us anywhere. He can use us anywhere. If God says, “Go,” reply, “Here I am, send me”. If God says, “Stay,” reply, “Here I am, use me”.

It all started about a year ago when someone was asking about my life.  They were sincerely interested and we got very deep into conversation and ended up talking about the church and other ministries that I am involved with.

She told me, “You remind me of that girl Kisses from Katie…you should do something like she did.” She then asked me if I had ever been on a mission trip.

 I replied, “I like to think that the ministries that I’m involved are my mission work.”

“Ok, but I mean have you been on a real mission trip - overseas……"

People often feel called to missions overseas. “God called me to Africa”. I hear it all the time. That’s good. People in Africa need to gospel badly. 

When God calls you to go, then go.  

But when God says stay, you stay.  

What is God’s calling? We know that He calls His children to be saved, spread His gospel and then train and disciple those whom have believed (Matthew 28:19-20).  John MacArthur wrote a book called, Found: God’s Will.  In this book he explains the six things we know for certain about God’s will. 

1) We must be saved (1 Tim. 2:3-4).  

2) We must be Spirit-filled (Eph. 5:16-18). 

3) Be sanctified (1 Thes. 4:3-7).  

4) Submit to God (1 Peter 2:3-15). 

5) Be suffering (1 Peter 4:19).  

6) Do whatever you want (Psalm 37:4).  

If we are truly following hard after Christ—if we are saved, spirit-filled, growing in sanctification, submitted to God, and suffering for the sake of the gospel, then we will desire to do the right thing.  We will desire the same thing that God desires for our life.  

What does this have to do with me being a Nanny? 

Leaving the interview for my dream job, I was hooked. I wanted so badly to go and work there. I told my family, “Just a warning, if they offer me the job, I’m probably going to take it.” I was planning to move really far away to work and serve God there. 

When my dream job called and offered me the job, the lady could tell I was hesitant. I didn’t even know why I was hesitant. What was I thinking? She told me not to let fear hold me back. That’s when it hit me. I was fearful to not go. I just got my college degree…I have to use it right? My reasons for wanting that job were for the adventure and opportunity. It wasn’t to serve God. 

Will there be a day when I leave and work for them? Maybe. Part of me hopes so. But, today is not that day. It is not time for me to break relationships I have made with children here. 

There is nothing dishonorable about staying home.  I love home. I love my church. I love the kids I work with.  I love my ministries. I love my family.  I can serve and honor God AND fulfill His will for my life, AND fulfill the great commission right here in a small town, working as a Nanny. 

If you are preaching the gospel, making disciples and serving the church, then you are doing REAL mission work. You don’t have to be in Africa to “count”. Remember, God doesn’t need us anywhere. He can use us anywhere. If God says, “Go,” reply, “Here I am, send me”. If God says, “Stay,” reply, “Here I am, use me”.

Our Homeschool Vision

With all of my talk and work recently on next year's homeschool, I wanted to rethink some of my early questions on homeschool.

Why do we homeschool?

How do we homeschool?

What is our homeschool vision?

I have been working on auto-pilot in my schooling so much lately that I'm not sure I even know what a vision is, much less how to write it out in words. So the best that I can tell, I think this sums it up in a not so great form.

To be filled with grace and wisdom

Grace- Christ gave His life for us to live. We must be filled with grace and live for Him.

know Gods word and practice it

Memorize scripture

Learn theology

Learn about missionaries

Serve others- the church, needy, young mothers

Learn history from a Christian worldview
Art and music with a view towards service to God

Wisdom- learn God's world and truths, learn about the world He created

Math

Science

Language arts
Foreign languages

Now, obviously, I need to work on form and make this clear for our family. We all need to sign off on how this looks for our family. As I make plans to change everything about our homeschool this 

coming August, our family will be going through a sort of "homeschool boot camp" to figure out how the next three girls can become educated the best way that we can educate them.

New Year's Resolutions

Here they are! I have prayed over these and know that it isn't anything earth shattering, but I think it's where God would have me change. There were a few more things but they are a little too personal to put out there.

2014 Goals

Tackle household projects list- one a month
Attend or acknowledge funerals and weddings - This may not be on anyone else's resolutions list, but I think it's important to people to show up to these events.
Financial- save a dollar for each week of the year. $1 for week one, $2 for week two, $3 for week three and so on
Physical- three days a week exercise, dessert 3 times per week, drink a cup of water before every cup of coffee
Parenting - daily physical contact, waking them with a hug or back rub, write in the girls' journals weekly
Marriage - kiss every day (not just your every day run of the mill peck on the cheek), put kids to bed by their bedtime
Learn to use iPad, audio books, download pics and music
Scripture- memorize even when we aren't in school, read from a physical Bible not the iPad
Read 10 minutes of a book besides the Bible during quiet time

Margin by Richard A. Swenson

Marginless is being thirty minutes late to the doctor's office because you were twenty minutes late getting out of the bank because you were ten minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station- and you forgot your wallet.
Margin on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of adolescence.
Marginless is the baby crying and the phone ringing at the same time; margine is Grandma taking the baby for the afternoon. Marginless is being asked to carry a load five pounds heavier than you can lift; margin is a friend to carry half the burden. Marginless is not having time to finish the book you're reading on stress; margin is having time to read it twice.

After the fiasco of the morning that I tried to stay in my pajamas and purposefully relax and enjoy my life and children instead of herding them in the direction they must go for he day. I picked up this book. Ray had to read it for some of his doctoral studies and thought it really applied to us. I don't want my children to grow up thinking that they were herded through their childhood, school, or life.

That last sentence about not finishing a book hit me particularly. I often don't finish books because I don't have time. I have filled my time so full that I can't catch my breath, minister to others or hear my children, much less be the help meet that I want to be to my husband.

Is God pro-exhaustion? Doesn't He lead people by the still waters anymore?

I know that God does still lead by the still waters, He does want us to be quiet and listen to His voice, He does speak in a gentle whisper. I cannot hear Him if I am running through my house and my life at break neck speed. 

As I look at the goals for the past year and set new ones for this year, I will be praying for that which causes me to sit and be still and listen. 

Stress Free Holiday....

Hahahahaha.... I'm still laughing. But not really. I purposed at the beginning of the season to remain as stress free as possible, and there was less stress. I planned to do things like

• take a frozen lasagna to Christmas supper at Nana's house
• skip blogging every two days
• shop online more than I would like
• not change my sheets every week (gasp!)
• make an easy Christmas Day lunch 
• let the dust bunnies live a little longer
• I even left a stripe of red velvet cake scraped across the floor for so long that it actually wore off! (Now that's just gross! I have to mop my house.)

But there were a few glitches. You know those well laid plans?

A couple of weeks ago, when I picked up Mary from a friend's house, they were all still in their pajamas sitting at the kitchen table playing a game. And, shocking as it was, it was around eleven o'clock in the morning. The way I keep my schedule so tight it is very rare for me to still be in my pajamas that late in the day unless it was a cleaning day and then I would probably still have changed to different clothes. At that point, I made it a goal to have at least one morning that I stayed in my pajamas and played with the girls, just played, no other agenda.

The morning I chose was a day when Mary and Lydia had friends over, I planned to make a pancake Christmas trees and paint nails, but most of all, stay in my pajamas and not be stressed. As it turned out, Abigail decided that was the day that she would give meaning to the "terrible twos." The pancake tower of Christmas trees looked more like deformed snow flakes. Everyone got their nails painted but I broke a brand new bottle of sparkly glitter nail polish in my hands and ruined mine. Abigail ended up getting several spankings and I was reduced to a bumbling mess and gave meaning to the "mean mother."

In God's sovereignty, He placed very helpful and understanding older girls in my home. Hannah dropped off the friends, took Mary and Lydia shopping and I put Abigail down for a long nap. Then I hid in my room with a cup of coffee to unwind. The afternoon turned out much better and I remembered yet again, that my life isn't going to be calm and quiet.

There is always noise and activity, but I can worship God, enjoy my family and serve others in the midst of it all. Some of my well laid plans fell through and I got stressed a few times, but my attitude toward it all was better.

The dust bunnies are still growing but they seem to be a little friendlier these days.

We are deep into school now with a full schedule. We have watched Al Mohler's convocation address to the students at Southern Seminary and read a good article by Bradley Green on the Imaginative Conservative blog.

We are either living our lives, making decisions, taking action, in ways consistent with the lordship of Christ, or we are not. Thus ultimately every school has some sort of ultimate goal for its students (even if this goal is unclear, unstated, or unacknowledged).

It's time for our family to redefine the goals for homeschooling. What is the purpose and what do we hope to accomplish? How are are we going to accomplish those goals each day?

As we start each day with devotions, it's tempting to skip them to save time. We spend about thirty minutes every day reviewing scripture, praying and reading biographies of great Christians in history. It is amazing to hear my girls pray from their hearts knowing they're learning Scripture and how to live from godly examples. So though I don't remember our specific goals at the moment, I'm remembering to stay in Scripture this week.

What to Do.... What to Do....

When Rachel moved out of our house, Vanessa moved in. When Vanessa moved out, Courtney moved in. And then, as college students do, Courtney moved out. Then we have this extra room, upstairs... where the big girls are... where I don't see everything... where I don't want the little girls hang out a lot.

I debated over and over with myself and we've had many family discussions about what to do with the room. There were more options than kids, but nothing seemed to be perfect. Hannah and Sarah have always shared a room and didn't want to be split up. Sarah will be living at college in the Fall. Abigail needed to move out of my bedroom. The upstairs bathroom is in need of major help. The little girls' room couldn't hold three girls. I didn't want Mary to be upstairs. I don't like for any of the girls to have their own room. I needed a place to store craft and sewing supplies so that I could actually use them. And all of the extra homeschool material that we aren't using at the moment needed a home besides the garage. Nothing seemed to work.

As of now, we have decided to move Mary up to Rachel's old room along with all of the craft and sewing supplies. The room is big enough to keep a small table set up with a project on it, but it isn't ideal. Mary's desk is facing a wall in the middle of all of the storage stuff, but it will have to do for a while. As I come up with extra time and money, I have lots of ideas to fix it up, but for now, Mary will have a lot to keep her creative juices flowing.

As usual for the Summer, I'll be juggling organizing projects to fit things that need to be rearranged to adjust to our growing family. I will be spending a lot of extra time in what is now Lydia and Abigail's room helping Abigail get used to being kicked out of my room. The first night she cried in her crib for an hour before she fell asleep, then woke up after forty-five minutes and cried for another hour. This picture is her on Lydia's bed sobbing just before I got in the bed and slept with her all night.

And for now I'll keep digging through boxes in the garage to get school books.

Proverbs 31:10-31

I have been wanting to do this project for a very long time, but for many reasons kept putting it off. There never seemed to be enough time to get the wall perfectly ready or the room cleaned out enough. I decided to move everything out and just go for it. The laundry room had become a dumping ground for us all. I put everything that didn't have a good home out into the garage and haven't missed it. Since I painted the wall, no one seems to want to put anything against it and we've even had some days of folding clothes in the there. (Imagine that!) I used a Sharpie paint pen and a ruler to keep myself in line and wrote the verses free hand. I have a few mistakes but I'm not going to point them out to you. You'll have to come fold clothes to see if you can find them yourself.

The picture on the right is where Abigail put her really cute sparkly silver shoes in the laundry room next to the other girls' boots and yard shoes. 

Meal Planning

How do you save time on meals? I have been all over the place on time saving for meals and never seem to get it down right.

A couple of weeks before I gave birth to Sarah, a friend came over and helped me cook a month's worth of meals in one day. She had gotten the book, Once a Month Cooking, and I bought all of the groceries. Between the two of us we had four small children, and it turned out to be a full day of fun. It was great to have so many meals to pull out whenever I needed them. Ray didn't love all of the meals, but the concept was so helpful.

I started working harder to cook dishes ahead of time to put in the freezer. I often cook double the meat so that I don't have do that, but if I don't pull it aside before it goes on the table, it will get eaten before I can get it in the freezer to save for another meal. Last week I cooked a pound of bacon for supper early in the day and I was left with only three pieces to use for the recipe at supper.

This week, I got a good deal on meat at Sam's so I cooked up two pounds of sausage, eight pounds of ground beef and about five pounds of chicken. I planned a bunch of meals and divided the meat into the meal sized portions. If I stay on my normal schedule and plan the meals for the day early in the morning I can get the food out of the freezer and have it on the table without too much trouble. (Our microwave is broken, so I can't defrost meat quickly anymore.)

Here I go, planning again. It seems like so much of my life runs better if I plan ahead. I need to keep planning and reminding myself Proverbs 16:9.

The heart of man plans his way,

but the LORD establishes his steps.

Guess what starts today? I have to start cleaning out the school cabinet. I'm only a few weeks behind so I guess it's not as bad as it could be. Our school year didn't end as well as I had hoped, as it seems every year. We usually start the school year with a bang, off and running with a great schedule. But by the end of the school year, we are limping along, barely getting things done. I am reminded of Proverbs 16:9 "The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps."


Side note- I typed this out early this morning, then got called away for 'just a minute'. It is now almost bedtime and I am now about to start on the school cabinet. I am repeating Proverbs 16:9 over and over to myself tonight.

Summer Goals

This has been a very hard Summer for our family so I can't say we have accomplished many of our Summer goals. Some of the girls never even talked about anything they wanted to work on. For Lydia, we were planning for her to learn to ride her bike with no training wheels, tie her own shoes and stop sucking her finger. Sarah helped her learn to ride her bike and then took some very sweet pictures with her. I think we'll wait to work on shoe tying until she actually starts wearing shoes. And if she keeps sucking her finger, will that make her stop growing so fast?