Lasso The Moon

A Daffodil's Promise

Spring. It's coming.

ValenSWINES Day

The happiest of Valentine's Days to all of you! I hope all of your wildest dreams come true!

Motherhood as a Profession

I'm making time to read this book right now. And it is feeding my soul! I made the commitment several years ago to go "all in" as the homemaker in the family. To unapologetically make motherhood my JOB. This book is affirming that decision and pushing me to recommit. .
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Also, as my new business has started to blossom, and I begin to walk other women through the process, there are some real, practical ways I'm needing to develop personally. Time management, home management, business management. I'm looking forward to stretching myself in these areas. .
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If you have read this, or if you decide to give it a try, let me know what you think!

1 year Eggaversary

A year ago I was only dreaming about getting chickens. Donnie and I set aside a portion of our tax refund as a sort of grown-up "allowance".

I used mine to build our little coop.

Life From Death in the Garden

Onions are going in.

This week has been so hard. Some friends are going through an unthinkable tragedy, and I have been on my face before the Lord on their behalf. Begging, pleading, bargaining, arguing.

Today I spent some time in the garden. It's time for the sweet Texas onions to go in. The garden is a great place to see God work. To hear His voice. To ask Him for a miracle. 

It's raw in the garden. Messy and raw. You're on your knees in the dirt, mixing compost with blood and bone. Fertilizer, sweat, tears all come together, and you marvel at the components that combine to make something new. How can anything come from this WASTE? How can anything good come from this?? From DEATH. 

That's what the garden is. Something new from waste and death. Something good. Something that points back to a Creator, an Organizer of millions microscopic details that come together to produce GROWTH.

He's doing the same thing with my friends. I know He is. It's His nature to take the WORST and transform it into something good. I don't want them to lose their child. I'm holding out hope that they won't. God, please. I beg you. But I know whatever the outcome, He is good. And He loves them. And He won't let a single tear go to waste.

Dark Sunglasses--Let's Talk About Mental Health

Hello my name is Anna, and I want to talk about mental health. There are so many of us who struggle in this area--normal people whose brains don't produce enough of a certain chemical, or produce too MUCH of another one, and just throw us a little (or a LOT sometimes) out of balance.

 

I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so I am not speaking to everyone's situation. But I have been living with this brain and actively working to manage my own mental health for over 20 years, so I feel qualified to share my own story!

 

My friend Curt describes depression as viewing the world through a pair of dark sunglasses, and I love that description. You know that the world and your life isn't as dark as it seems, but you just can't SEE that. I got my pair of those dark sunglasses when I was about 16. I'm sure it had to do with my hormonal development and changes happening during puberty that maybe didn't quite click into place. I think it's important to note that people who live with depression are not necessarily negative people. It's just really difficult to see what's so great about the world when your brain is flooded with chemicals that indicate doom and despair.

 

As I dealt with this new situation as a teen and young adult, I started experimenting with parts of my lifestyle that I noticed had an effect on my mental health. I'm a figure-out-the-problem-and-find-a-solution type of person. I collected tools that could help me navigate those periods of darkness, and sometimes even bring me out of them into the light again.

 

Over the next few blog posts, I would like to walk through the tools that I use, even today, to manage my mental health. At this time I am not on medication, but I am VIGILANT about assessing my own state of mind, along with a couple trusted people in my life, and will immediately consult a doctor if at any moment it becomes unmanageable on my own. The great thing is, the tools I want to share with you are helpful whether you are using medication or not!  So please, if this is something that interests you, or you have a loved one who struggles in this area, join me!

 

I'll be back next time with my first tool for managing mental health.

 

 

XOXO Anna

Giving Testimony--My Newest Favorite Pastime

Can I just introduce myself to those of you who might be new here? Actually, this might be a new story for all of you...

My name is Anna.  I'm 38 years old, and mother to four children, whom I homeschool.  They are 13, 11, 7, and 5.

I'm married to Donnie, the most incredible man.  We dated off and on in high school and college...it was a mess.  Lots of break ups, broken hearts, and insecurity.  We went our separate ways, and without the other knowing it was happening, we each fell in LOVE with Jesus.  It happened to me in an amazing way. 

I had decided to take some time off of dating. I was a chronic relationship junkie. I was good at the drama, and it was really the only value I saw in myself. So I thought maybe some time away from that would do me good.  I was nearing the end of my commitment of time, and I noticed I felt exactly the SAME as I had before I started.  I wasn't changed.  I wasn't growing.  All I was, was lonely.

I was in church one Sunday, and this man was telling a story about his father. He said he had met Jesus, and he was so amazed and changed by the love of Christ, that he wanted to tell his dad.  But he was such a new Christian, he was worried that he didn't know enough about the Bible to be able to speak confidently to his father.  So he read the Bible, and then he went to share Jesus with his dad.  I honestly have no idea what happened after that in this man's story. All I heard was "I read the Bible" spoken as if it were no big thing.

I had grown up in church, given my heart to the Lord at a young age, and maintained a fairly close relationship to Him over the years. But the idea of reading the entire Bible, all fifteen-hundred-and-however-many pages of it?  Like it was just some book? Without an accompanying Bible Study booklet or concordance or complicated read-in-a-year schedule? This had NEVER occurred to me. But I went home that very day and started reading. For the next few weeks, I was never seen without it.  Ever.  The only notes I took were a list of chapter "titles" that I came up with and wrote in an old spiral. After I finished a page, I drew a line down the center, between the two columns and moved on.  Some time around Genesis, Donnie started showing interest in dating me again. He had decided to go to BIBLE COLLEGE of all things, which I was very cynical about.  I gave him a piece of paper with "Genesis 29:20" written on it, and told him to wait "just a few days."

I finished reading the Bible in 2 1/2 months. Reading that quickly from cover to cover, I was able to see the big picture and how it all fit together.  There was no "angry God of the old testament" vs. the "forgiving Jesus of the New Testament".  It was clearly the same God throughout, laying out and demonstrating His plan of mercy, forgiveness, and restoration from the very beginning.  I was HEAD OVER HEELS IN LOVE.

So...what to do about Donnie? The idea of reverting to old habits was not an option. I had renewed faith and hope for the future, and I was not about to compromise that for anything.  This is where it gets really good.  In fact, even though it was almost 18 YEARS ago, I'm crying tears of joy and thankfulness as I type this.

In the time that we were apart, Jesus had won over Donnie's heart and LIFE, too.  I still cannot imagine why He would ordain something so beautiful. I had been worrying that Donnie would pull me back into our old habits of selfishness, sin, and pain, and INSTEAD? God had taken hold of his heart and grown him into someone I could look up to--who would build me up and spur me on, instead of dragging me down. (I'm weeping like Joan Wilder at the beginning of Romancing the Stone now.) In fact, although it's a story for another time, he would literally SAVE me from an addiction that could have taken my LIFE in the next year.

So when I say he's incredible, it's because it's true. Our love story is intertwined with THE love story.  When I was in the midst of the mess, and the heartache, and the loneliness, I never could have imagined that Jesus was there with me.  But He fought His way through all that and made Himself known to me. And I have never been the same.

I'm begging you, friends.  If you do not yet know that powerful love of Jesus, to the point where He has changed your BEING, and rescued you from your own self, I'm begging you to call out to Him.  You only need to know one prayer: Help.  And you only need one Book to get to know Him.  I suggest you start in Genesis.

Much love,

Anna

 

Hello Old Friend

Well hello, old friend!  It feels good to be at the computer again after such a LONG time. I hope you'll forgive my absence, but I've been on a journey.  I needed to figure out some things.  For example, do I still want to blog?  That was a big one! And the answer is, yes!

But there are going to be some changes.

I've been on a spiritual and informational journey that was jump-started by a major health scare last year.  God uses scary things sometimes to get our attention, you know?

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The fact is, as I've been gathering insight and information this past year, I've realized that I have a lot in my head and I need somewhere to put some of it. I considered making a series of binders with tabs--very Leslie Knope and all--but in the long run, that would only benefit me.  And maybe my family, if they ever bothered to open these hypothetical binders.

And as much work as I've put into this diy education, that seems like a waste.

So, I'm going to take this blog in a direction it's never been before.  It's about to get real.  Really real.  And really vulnerable.  But that's where God shows up, I've noticed.  So for the 50 or so subscribers to this blog that are still around, hello!  I have missed you! And for the friends I have yet to meet--I hope you find this a nice place to settle in and read for a bit. I love you, just for being here.

See you tomorrow.

Anna

Black History Month 2017

Black History Month.

Since we started homeschooling, we have not taken the time to study black history every February, because we've been following our history curriculum Story of the World.  It includes a lot of black history as it fits in the timeline of world history, but Emma told me this year that she misses the annual report on a hero that she did while in public school. Wait...you want to do extra history this month?  Um, YES.

We headed up to the library in search of our subjects.  Emma already knew she wanted to find books on Bass Reeves. We learned about him in the new time travel show Timeless.  He's the real man that the Lone Ranger is based on.  Yes, the real Lone Ranger was black!  Hollywood changed his skin color to make him more palatable to the masses.

Our library had one book in the Juvenile biography section, and we went ahead and Amazon primed the other one.

 

Ethan (10) has very little frame of reference for American black history, since he was in 1st grade his last year of public, and we haven't reached America yet in our chronological history study.  I thought he needed a good foundation, so he's learning about the Underground Railroad with these two.  They were both at our library, but I found them on Amazon too:

  

I feel a little weird adding Levi Coffin in there, since he wasn't black.  But he had a major roll in the U.R., and MLK said it was about the content of character, not skin color right?

I didn't want to leave out Esther and Elijah, even though they are little.  I'm geeking out over the books I chose for them!

 Esther (5) is doing her "report" on Bessie Coleman.  This book is filled with gorgeous illustrations, and is told through the eyes of people who knew her.

And Eli (3) will be reading this book about a boy who dreamed about being a baseball star, like his heroes in the Negro League.  I've already peaked at this one, and it's going to be way over his head, but you have to start somewhere, right?  Maybe I'll be able to find a good one about Jackie Robinson before the month is out.

If you are working on your own Black History Month reports, I suggest starting at the library to save some money.  But Amazon tends to be so fast and inexpensive, you can fill in any gaps that way.  Do you have a favorite black history hero that you think we should learn about? Please let us know in the comments!

Also, the pics above work as affiliate links.  The companies we promote have agreed to send us a little something if we send them a sale--at no extra cost to you.  It helps keep this blog up and running.  So thank you!

Happy Black History Month, friends!

Don't forget to pin this for later! 

Mom, teacher, or friend? Finding my place in my daughter's life.

 So there's this question that you as a parent are going to ask in the course of your parenthood.  If you haven't asked it yet, you will.  Am I her friend, or am I her parent?  And for me this week, this question got a little more complicated.  Am I her friend, her teacher, or her parent?  As a young mom of a toddler, this answer was simple.  Her mom, of course!  I have to keep her safe, teach her rules, maintain consistency with bedtimes!  But this year, with the new and wonderful and confusing stage of preteen, the answer is not quite so clear.

We sat at the table fighting about fractions. We were slugging it out over numerators and common denominators, and when to convert to an improper fraction, because THERE ARE JUST SO MANY RULES!

And as she sat there hopeful that she'd get to move forward, I was the one with the answer book.  I was the one with the red pen. I was the one marking one after another incorrect...and her spirit fell.  I saw it happen.  And I tried to make it right in that clumsy, insensitive way moms have sometimes: "Hey, it's no big deal!  We'll just practice some more! Why are you getting so upset about this? Listen, if you're going to have such a bad attitude about something as little as a test, then maybe you need to spend some time alone in your room." You know, super helpful.

I didn't realize until that moment when the dam broke behind her eyes, that it wasn't about the fractions.  It's never just about the fractions!  Especially when you're twelve.  I forgot that.  When you're twelve, your math test is your identity.  Your clothes are your identity.  Your talents are your identity.  The way your mom talks to you...

...is your identity. When you're twelve, you haven't come to the understanding of who you are, so the entire sum of what you know about yourself is the response you get from outside influences.  It wasn't about the fractions.  It was a question of being good enough.  Am I smart? Am I important? Can I keep up? Do I know as much as everyone else? Is my mom impressed by me?

 I looked at her beautiful, disappointed, crest-fallen face, and I was at a total loss. I was too exhausted by the week to come up with anything thoughtful, gentle, or helpful like the moms on t.v. do at times like these.  (Oh, what would Beverly Goldberg do!?) So I laid it down.  I put my arm around her and whispered a prayer into her ear.  I don't know why it's so hard to pray when you're weary.  The words came slowly--I didn't even know what to say.  So I just told Him the truth.

"Lord we're frustrated!  This seems harder than it should be! I'm not explaining it right, or it's getting scrambled, or she just can't remember when she needs to.  Help us. Protect us.  Don't let us fight over fractions! Help me to know when to be a teacher and when to be a Momma, and how to be both as often as I can. Protect our relationship--the most precious thing we have.  We're friends, and we laugh together, and we snuggle on the couch, and read books, and talk about music, and that's too great to get ruined by a hard day of fractions!  Help her to know that I love her.  Help her to feel my love for her." 

When I was done, she sat there heavily for a minute until I declared the school day over--sometimes you just have to call it.  But I've had that moment with me for a couple days now.  That moment when our hearts were bowed before His throne.  And we weren't mother and daughter as much as we were two sisters asking Daddy for help.  I want more of that.  I hope I remember to go to Him first next time.

Y'all!  Parenting a pre-teen is new and wonderful and terrifying!  I'm so excited about all the new things we have to share--like romantic comedies for example...seriously so much fun.  But this is entirely new ground we're walking on now, and I want to proceed with extreme care.  I asked some friends on facebook if they had any resources for parenting, growing up, or becoming a godly woman, and they did!  Here are some of their suggestions.  Just click on the picture to take you to the amazon link if you want to check them out.

 

        

For older teens (some mature content, I've been told!)

   

(affiliate links)

If you have another suggestion that has helped you through the raising (or growing into) in woman who loves the Lord, please share it!! I need all the help I can get!  Emma and I are starting with Becoming Myself.  I'll let you know what we think!

Much love, friend!