Following the Lord’s Leading One Step at a Time
Have you ever felt a calling in your life so strong from the Lord that you know you have two choices…1. Follow His leading even though it may sound crazy to others or 2. Ignore the calling and miss out on an amazing blessing and opportunity to glorify the Lord.
Well, I’ve felt this a few times in my adult life.
The first, was the Lord calling our family to homeschool when our now 12 year old son was preschool age.
The second, when my husband Marty and I were called four years ago to sell our custom-built home and 6 acres of family land to move to a small 1942 home with just over an acre in order to reprioritize our family life.
And the third, to build this very website and blog as a means not only to help and encourage other homeschool families, but to enable our family of 5 to one day become a foster family.
Two Public-Schoolers Called to Homeschool
We literally had no intention of ever homeschooling our children. In fact, we would have laughed at you if you had even suggested we’d ever do such a thing. The only homeschoolers we knew of were the ones who we deemed awkward and “unsocialized,” and we certainly didn’t want that for our children.
That is until the day I was supposed to call the local preschool to set up a visit for our oldest child, then age 4, and felt so sick to my stomach that I couldn’t even get the number dialed and suddenly felt so overwhelmingly certain that we were supposed to homeschool.
Talk about a change of heart for both me and Marty. After much prayer, we jumped in head first and have never looked back. It’s been a huge learning curve to homeschool our now three boys (ages 8, 10, and 12) these last 7 years, and the biggest blessing that we never even expected.
Selling the Home We Said We Never Could Sell
For several years after we began homeschooling, Marty and I joked about selling everything and starting over in a small home with no mortgage, him changing careers to teaching rather than clinical nursing and pursuing big dreams of actually being able to put our focus on our family of 5 rather than on working our lives away to pay for a house.
But it was just a longing of our heart, a dream. It was never supposed to become a reality.
It was the house we built when we were married and then added onto once we had children; the house with 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a catering kitchen, a newly built workshop for my hubby’s hobbies, and most importantly, the house that was built on land given to us by family.
We could never in a million years actually sell it.
But you know what? When the Lord calls you to let go of something. Something that’s taking all your money, all your time, and that you’re holding so tightly in the grip of your hands, well, you have to listen.
I remember waking up one morning and telling Marty that I had had the most vivid dream of us selling our house and buying an older home. We both laughed, but somehow the Lord planted a seed in both of us that morning and we started looking at houses in the area.
Within a week we were fully committed to pursuing the Lord’s leading and let me tell you, stepping out in faith this time was one of the most difficult things we have ever done. It caused a rift at that time in our extended family and was such a heavy time for us.
But a line had been drawn in the sand and we ultimately decided to hold steadfast to the calling we felt and we sold our home and bought a little brick house built in 1942, a fixer upper with a lot of character, on a little piece of land.
We were able to mend those family relationships, reorganize our finances, and a couple years later (just 2 years ago now) Marty was able to leave his position as nursing director and become a high school teacher, allowing him to have holidays and summers off to spend more time with us at home.
A Call to Foster & How This Blog Will Impact our Family
Fast forward and four years, down to the very week, that I had that dream to sell our home, I was given a clear vision of us becoming a foster family, something that Marty and I have talked about for a while.
This vision was so very specific and I am thankful to the Lord for him guiding our steps in such distinct ways.
We may not know all the details or how this journey will look, but He has given us a calling and a plan to implement it as we seek his will for our family.
And we feel led to share that plan and goal with each of you so you can go along with us on this journey and see God’s hand at work as a testament of his abounding and steadfast love.
So here’s what we do know…
Our home, the little house built in 1942 that I mentioned, has two bedrooms (our three boys share the large master bedroom and we occupy the other) with room for another two bedrooms in the unfinished attic upstairs. In order for us to foster, we will need to finish that attic space to have enough room to meet the requirements for a foster child to have adequate space for their bed and belongings.
This website and blog were put on my heart as a creative way to share our homeschooling knowledge and encouragement with other families and to also generate income for finishing this attic space.
Our goal is to reach 50,000 monthly views in 2023 so that we can begin steps to making the blog profitable and be able to put any money generated here into building supplies for the attic project.
So every time you read and share our posts and story, scroll our pages, and spend time here, you are helping to move us closer to our goal of having enough bedrooms to foster a sweet child in waiting.
Would you share our story and website?
I am so happy to have you here following along with us and I sincerely hope your enjoy my homeschool articles and tips, book recs and lists, printables, and the community of encouraging mamas that you will find here.
Would you share our post or story on Instagram and Pinterest and with your friends. Please and thank you so very much, from our family to yours ♥
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Homeschool Vintage: connection over curriculum 