An Unexpected Moment

One of my favorite things about homeschooling is our ability to function in a non-traditional manner.  Monday morning we woke up to a very rainy day.  The girls both commented on how yucky it was outside and how they wanted to stay in their jammies and make it a lazy inside day.  Well, I decided to have them dress anyway because they are more attentive when they are dressed for the day and then we had our morning Bible study time.

For our Jesus time as we call it I set 3 camp chairs out on our front porch and the girls and I went outside to sit.  I had them spend a few minutes watching the rain, looking around and I wanted them to tell me where they saw God.  Caitlyn looked at me and said that she saw God in the trees.  Kathryn said she saw God in the grass and flowers.  I sat there seeking the Lord not really knowing where this lesson was going and then it hit me.  We began to talk about how grass, flowers and trees all have roots where they are fed.  We then talked about how they all get food through these roots.  In application I began to talk to the girls about how our roots in God are built on our belief in Jesus and that he came to die for our sins and save us.  I loved the look on Kathryn's face when she said, "that is my roots?"

 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, 

you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 

If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; 

such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 

 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, 

and it will be done for you.  This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, 

showing yourselves to be my disciples."

John 15:5-8

As I was talking to the girls we began talking about how each time we read the Bible, sing praise and worship, go to church and learn about God it is his way of feeding our roots just like the trees and plants get their food.  Then we talked about how the more we learn about God the stronger our roots get and the bigger our relationship with God grows that it blesses other people through our fruit.

During this whole lesson and after our time of prayer I was so blessed to realized how blessed I am to have the opportunity to spend moments like this with my girls.  I want them to grow up seeing God all around them and knowing he is always there seeking to grow and bless them.  Most of all I came away from that lesson more fed and blessed than I have been in days.  I think my favorite thing about homeschooling is all our unexpected moments.  No matter whether you homeschool, do private school or do public school I encourage you to seek out those unexpected moments where you have the opportunity to pour into your children not only the love of Jesus but the ability to see our Lord in all that is around us and in all that we say and do.  It will be those moments that end up blessing you the most.

When You Are Beginning to Believe the Lies

It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord speaks to my heart in various ways, over several days.  Yesterday as I sat in church listening to our Pastor I did not yet see what the Lord had for me, until this morning as I was reading back over my notes from the sermon.  As I read I could hear the Lord whispering to my heart, "Can you see it now?"

The main idea of yesterday's sermon was, "We live for Jesus, our Eternal God and Savior, not for this world that is passing away."  Our Pastor is currently teaching through 1 Corinthians and I love how it is blessing my life but out of all the lessons so far this one really hit home.  You see in the passage we looked at Paul was talking about how we need to keep our human emotions and perspective of the world in the proper view because once Jesus returns, all of these things will pass away and he will bring something amazing.

It is so easy today to let the things of this world, our spouse, family or friends become our everything.  Are we trying to be the perfect wife...the perfect mom...the perfect (fill in your job here)?  It is easy in the world today to think that money, success, lots of friends, a big family and a nice home means that we are all right with God and right on track.  It is easy to think that everything is in balance if in the world's perspective it is all going your way.  On the other hand it is easy to think that God is against you if you can't find a job, you struggle to pay your bills, your marriage is on the rocks and you feel like you can never get a break.  In both circumstances it is easy to just pour all you have into fixing those things or surviving your struggles, yet, neither of those choices are what Paul calls us to do in 1 Corinthians 7.

In this passage Paul was talking about making sure that we are not dependent on anything but Jesus.  If we are not paying attention it is easy to make our spouse, our children, our crazy lives and schedules what we are most dependent on.  If you are like me you spend your day with your check list of what needs to be done and when a problem comes up you immediately begin to problem solve that issue.  I don't want to be like that anymore.  I want to be the person that the moment a problem comes up the first thing out of my mouth is crying out to my Abba Father for help.  I want my total focus and dependence on Him.

This world has two dangers that my Pastor talked about and really rang true with me. 1) Getting too comfortable in this world.  If we get too comfortable and place our focus on fitting into this world, achieving our goals of this world and being successful in this world then we risk buying into the easy lies of the enemy that we don't need God right now we are doing just fine on our own.  2) Always wanting more of the things of this world.  It is so easy to think that if we had more money, a better job, a nicer house, or (fill in the blank) that we would be better off and content.  If we are not careful this is where the enemy will come in and steal our joy, he will lie to us that our struggles are because we are not good enough or that God is punishing us.  It is so important to remember that nothing of this world will last once Jesus returns...NOTHING!  The only thing we have that will last is our salvation and personal relationship with our Eternal Father.

All of these things continue to help me see why the Lord is taking our family off the beaten path.  I see how the enemy has been trying to steal my joy and contentment.  I can see how the enemy has been lying to me that it is my job to fix our problems and I just need to work a little harder.  All these things are lies and the Lord has shown me that it is time to step back, turn off the noise of this world and allow my focus and total dependence to be on him.  You see I don't want Jesus to just be apart of my life...I want him to be my life!  I love my family.  I love where the Lord has brought me in my life but I don't just want to survive this life, I want people to look back on my life and the first words out of their mouths be "She loved Jesus."

Me, Myself and all My Stuff

Every so often I go through major cleaning binges where my crazy house begins to really make me crazy.  Often I do what I can, give things away and feel better for a little while until it kicks in again.  Recently, I read a wonderful blog post about staging your house to live in.  The timing of this post was just perfect for me because I had been in cleaning mode and frustrated at all the "stuff" we have in our house.  After reading the post I felt so inspired and began really thinking about our house and all our stuff.  The reality that we have a bunch of things that are not family heirlooms, they are not antiques or childhood treasures it is just stuff.  As I looked in a couple boxes in our utility room I was amazed at how many things were random and had been in that room unused for years!  Then I did the unthinkable...I told my husband of my plans to begin working through all our storage areas and garage and cleaning out all this stuff.  His response was what I expected a look of "do not touch my things!"  Seeing this I promised that I would give him ample opportunity to go through all the things of his that I considered in question.

As I have been working through this project, I have realized that as I work on my house the Lord has been working on my heart.  You see we all have stuff that we keep in our hearts and minds just storing it and not letting it go.  Continuing to fill ourselves with the things of the world not always realizing that those things are finding permanent residence in our hearts.  The Lord has taken me back to a study I did called Me, Myself and Lies by Jennifer Rothschild.   She is an amazing speaker and writer who is truly gifted in getting to the heart of things in her teaching.  In this study we looked at our thought closets and how to allow the Lord to sort through the things we were storing there.  We focused on making sure to take the things that were not of the Lord and begin making a conscious effort to remove those thoughts and replace them with scripture and praise.

Through this process the Lord has helped me see numerous things that I am putting my focus in that is hindering my contentment along with my trust and reliance on him.  So I have begun to make some personal changes in my life.  One change is that I made a goal to get off of Facebook for 3 months.  Boy, that was harder than I thought.  I have been amazed at how each time I take a photo my immediate reaction is to post it on Facebook or something funny happens and my brain wants to post it on my page.  Then as I began realizing this the Lord began asking me a hard question...are the posts I am making to Facebook truly out of a desire to share my life or is it out of pride because I want to show off?  That thought hit me like a knife.  Then the Lord began showing me how I have unintentionally been measuring myself and my family by what other people are posting on Facebook.  I would be on there and when I would get off I would be discontent and wishing for all these things that right now are not in the Lord's plan for my families life.

All of these changes were part of the Lord taking our family to exit the freeway of life and go off the beaten path.  He wants us to do things differently.  Have I reached a point where I am not on Facebook at all, honestly no.  The social side of me is struggling to not know what is going on in the lives of my friends, however, I don't want it to continue to be a source of discontent, somewhere to get my daily fill of gossip or a place where I can make sure people know we are trying to keep up with everyone else.  I want it to be a place where the Lord allows me to share my life, my hurt and my struggles with people around me and far away.  But I don't want to hold, I want it to be something that I do every once in a while and not something I find myself wasting time doing.

So, as you can see the Lord has begun to not only help me clean out and organize my house, but he is helping me clean out and organize my heart and mind.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, 

where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:1-4

Everybody loves a good treasure hunt

One of the new changes to our family is we are working hard to become more active on a regular basis.  We want to get out with the girls not just to the park or zoo, but out on the city greenway to walk, around the local hiking trails, or exploring the state parks as we camp together.  We are naturally home bodies and I love to just stay home in my sweats, read a book and just be plain lazy.  However, as we have been homeschooling we have developed a real desire not to just get outdoors more but learn about the outdoors, teach the girls great skills and explore this amazing world God made.

So, last week we decided to take the girls out geocaching.  I have several friends who have done this with their families and really enjoyed the activity.  "Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location." (per www.geocaching.com)  Last week was our first try on this treasure hunt and we had some mistakes.  We went to the wrong part of the greenway and then when we found the right trail head there was no parking.  Once we found a parking place and headed out on the trail with me using my phone to track the cache...or so we thought.  We walked the entire trail and found nothing.  I was so disappointed and frustrated.  This was supposed to be the easiest type of cache to find and we could not find it.  On our way back having given up I realized one small error on my part...I did not turn on the GPS mode on my phone.  Ooops.  

When I realized this and said it out loud my husband in love looked at me and said, duh.  So, laughing I turned on my GPS and our mapping system began spinning and found our exact location in regard to the cache.  We headed back down the trail and quickly found the cache.  The girls were thrilled and I felt very accomplished as I signed the log.  We marked it as a find in our geocaching account and looked forward to our next hunt.

Our first cache!  It is the little brown film case the girls are holding.

Our second try was frustrating because I had my GPS on, we were right in range but never found the cache.  It was in a section of the city along a tree line so I know we must have looked silly traipsing up and down this tree line looking for something.  Our second cache we gave up on because we could not find it and were not going to take the girls roaming through uncut woods.  Upon later research I discovered that our second cache can be very hard to find it that section of woods is over grown, which it was.  That made me feel a little better but we are excited to try again.

As I have been thinking back on our treasure hunting adventure I began to see some real applications with our personal walks with God.  The Lord has given us the Bible which is our map and directions through our journeys of life, yet if our GPS or personal relationship is not working then we may find ourselves just wandering around not really finding anything.  However, if we have a good active personal relationship with the Lord it is amazing the small little treasures you will find throughout your day and your life.  This world has many things it calls treasures but once they are found they bring no joy or peace just emptiness and lack of contentment.  The Lord wants us to seek him and the treasures of heaven so that we will find our joy and peace through him.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and 

broad is the road that leads to destruction, 

and many enter through it. 

But small is the gate and narrow the road 

that leads to life, and only a few find it.

Matthew 7:13-14

My encouragement to you is that if you are looking for a fun new activity, geocaching is a great adventure to do with family or friends.  It is also a wonderful way to find opportunities to share with your children, family or friends all the amazing wonders of our God. I love how the Lord is always providing us opportunities to talk about God with our girls and I don't question that he will share many more treasure with us as we continue to adventure as a family.

Exiting the freeway now

How many times in our lives do we allow outside influences to steer our decisions and choices.  I know for me I can be easily influenced by what my friends think, by what the people at church think, or by what is trending in society.  It is easy for us to say that we don't ever allow these things to have a major influence on our lives and that only Jesus is our true influence, but in my experience that is only denying all that bombards us each day.  I am learning that for me it takes a daily, conscious effort and committing my actions to the Lord to keep those influences from overtaking me.

The past 5 years I have written on another blog called "Walking Daily". I started it because I have a love for writing, I have a ton of words and it allowed me to share my heart and all the Lord was teaching me.  My goal of that blog was to talk about making the most out of this journey we call life, because you see it is a journey.  Then in February, I really felt the Lord telling me it was time to leave that blog and place my focus on my family, my writing and homeschooling.  I thought this would be an easy transition...not exactly.  I have spent the past month in a half finding myself wanting to blog about the new adventures our family is taking, about exciting new things I am learning from the Lord, about struggles I am having and no one to tell them to.  I have tried to switch back to regular journaling but realized that it does not feed my heart and soul in the same way.  My blog puts it all out there, it is my way to allow the Lord to minister to others through my crazy life.  When I tried to return to my old blog I realized that in the past little while the Lord is changed my focus, over the past couple of years he has changed my desires, which is where the birth of this new blog has come from.

Welcome to Learning to Live Off the Beaten Path!

My desire of this blog is to begin sharing my heart of limiting the outside influences of the world on my life.  Taking my choices, desires, hopes and dreams off the crazy freeway of life and move them off the beaten path where the Lord can teach and mold me.  When we are willing to step out of what is usual, what "everybody" else is doing and quiet our lives then it is amazing what the Lord has to teach and say to us.  So I invite you to join me as I strive to take my life and the life of my family off the beaten path to explore all the adventures the Lord has before us.