Walking the Path in 2015—Part One

 

Now that it is a new year, I wanted to share a little bit about our previous year and what we are looking forward to in this new year.  Our lives look much different than they did (and oddly the same) at the beginning of 2014, and we have certainly changed ourselves.

Every year for the past several years I have taken the time at the beginning of a new year to examine my life and set goals that I want to work towards.  I don’t call them resolutions because they are not as firm or as concrete as normal “New Year’s Resolutions.”  They also tend to be about the same every year, not because I don’t accomplish goals, but more of the fact that it is a continuation on working to be a better person, wife, and Christian.  There is no end point to my goals and they are definitely fluid in the fact that I revisit them every so often through the year and adjust to fit where I am in life and correct what may not be working.

Why we write, when we write…

Not only do I write for this blog, but I also like reading several blogs.  Some are about homemaking, some are about homesteading, and some are about Christian topics.  When Mark and I talked about starting a blog, we talked about what we wanted to write and why we wanted to write.

Out in the “Christian” sphere of books and blogs, there is a spectrum of ideas and beliefs.  Most of the problems stem from if you believe the Bible is true and what percentage of it you believe is true.  The other set of problems comes from incorrectly interpreting the Bible by either pulling verses out of context or not correctly interpreting them from the style that they are written in.  That’s how you can call yourself a Christian and believe completely opposite things from someone else who calls themselves a Christian (among other reasons).

One of our foundational beliefs is that the Bible is 100% true and that we believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible.  That means that we believe that every word in the Bible, as it was put together with 66 books in the original language, is true and that if the style it was written in speaks of it as an actual event, then we believe that it truly did happen sometime is the past.

Because of this belief, and the many beliefs that are not lined up with ours, we wanted to start a blog.  We wanted a place to encourage other Christians to be built up and at times to be challenged to a deeper walk in their faith.  And we do this all for the glory of God.  We do it because it is what He has commanded in His Word.

This is also the reason why we do not write regularly.  We’ve read all the articles that say if you want a successful blog, you must write regularly.  While we would love to do that, and hope to someday get ahead of schedule so that we can post on a regular basis, that is not where we are in our life.  And we would rather have an unsuccessful blog in terms of number of hits to our sites than post information that was written in haste just to make a deadline.  Usually in haste is where mistakes will be made or unclear writing will make it seem like we are saying something that we are not.  While these will still happen because we are human and make mistakes, we do not want to be careless in what we write.  Also, we both read every blog post that is added to either of our blogs.  Sometimes this too adds a delay of when a post is added.

What we also want to say is that we appreciate everyone who does check into our blogs for our posts.  And if you are a person who doesn’t want to check to see if there is a new post to either of our blogs, then look to the right of this webpage for the “Follow by Email” box; if you enter your email, you can get posts sent directly to your email when we put up a new one.  And it’s really easy to unsubscribe to it at any time.  Just click the “unsubscribe” at the end of any of the emails you get from our blogs.

Also, we will begin with new posts to each of our blogs this month.  We have a little lull in our schedule right now that we intend to start writing again.  And we are preparing for when things get busier within the next few months.

Thanks for your understanding of our reasons for the sporadic writings.  And we absolutely love your comments, even if you don’t agree as long as it is respectful.  We hope that you find our blogs an encouragement and at times a challenge to live more for Christ each day.

through His grace alone!

Sarah

Our Response to the World

Over the past several weeks, we have looked how world views affect our internal struggles and also how people may view and respond to us as stay at home wives.  Now we get to our response to the world.  Our goals in our responses are to give God the glory and to be able to share our faith.  Every person that we are in contact with will need a unique response, but I just wanted to go over some common areas that most SAHWs face.

Unsacred Marriage

 

I won’t even go into statistics in this post, because everyone can quote divorce rates, people living together before marriage, and unwed mothers.  I understand why most secularists don’t see the point of marriage, even I wouldn’t if I wasn’t a Christian.  I also understand why marriage is turning into a free-for-all; what does it matter if you take God out of marriage?

And this leads us to the last of societies views that we have to battle, or that might be something that you personally have to deal with before you quit your job.  This is not a post directed at convincing you to get married or who should get married, etc., but to defend Christian marriages to Christians.  Many view marriage as something that you can get out of through a divorce if it doesn’t work out.  Let me tell you, if you go into marriage already believing it might or probably will fail, it will.  Ever hear of self-fulfilling prophesies?  What effort would you put into your marriage if you think it might fail?

Trust in your husband and more importantly God

 

Last week, we talked about how women can try to prove that they are superior to men.  We examined a passage is Genesis that talked about our role and how we are equal creations of His that have different roles.  One of the reasons for this was because men have, and continue to do so, abused their role of leader.  So women have been viewed as a lesser creature.

A major issue you might encounter on your way to becoming a SAHW is the fact that once you quit working, your husband will be the sole breadwinner in the family.  And that can be scary for many reasons.

Better Than Men

 

I don’t think I need to even try to convince you that women in general nowadays feel like they need to prove that they are better than men.  It seems like men throughout history and in the Bible have been seen by both secularists and many ignorant Christians as chauvinistic pigs that try to put down women and make them the inferior sex.

I won’t argue that throughout history and even today many men act like this.  They believe they are better and that women are just there to serve them.  They have perverted their position that God gave men of looking out for and caring for women, and have used it as power over women.  How this must grieve God’s heart to see one of His creation treating another so abominably.

1950's Housewife

 

When most people hear the word “housewife,” they automatically think of the 1950’s.  June Cleaver.  The perfect housewife, with the perfect home, perfect marriage, and while mischievous, ultimately good children.  The housewife that cleans in a beautiful dress, pearls, and heels.

Personally, for me, as an “I Love Lucy” fan, I think of Lucy Ricardo as a housewife.  A very different view than the Cleaver mentality.  Lucy is not the perfect housewife, but usually is messy or late or spends too much money.  Her home is not always immaculate, although many times looks pretty good.  Her marriage, while presumably stable, has its own issues.  She constantly tries to get around what her husband says and more than a few times lies to him, although not always very convincingly.