Motherhood challenge

Part of the aspect of changing the world is improving ourselves. Motherhood is my calling and I need to strive to be better at it. I have been reading Nancy Campbell's book titled The Power of Motherhood. It has been an interesting read and I have had several "light bulb" moments if you will. Today's reading was about the mother being a watch dog at home. The finally scripture quote was Song of Solomon 1:6, "They made me the keeper of the vineyards;but mine own vineyard have I not kept."
Nancy Campbell the goes on to say, " Oh what a challenge! We can so easily get caught up in busyness. We can even get caught up in the service of the Lord. But if we are looking after other vineyards and not keeping our own vineyard, we are not pleasing God. Your greatest service for God is right in your home. You must tend to your own vineyard and make sure that it is watered, cultivated and protected, before reaching out to other vineyards!"
"Did you notice that this Scriptures says, 'They made me...'? Oh how easy it is to let others cajole us into doing things, or we feel pressure from the church to be involved in this and that. We must watch that others do not make us do things that will hinder us from tending to our own vineyard first. Do not get into the deception of working in other vineyards and leave your own vineyard unprotected."
These words really got me thinking about my life, both now and in the past. I am always trying to do more or take on more and I know that it often comes from the feminist ideology ingrained in me. Motherhood alone is not taught to be satisfying, there is more I should be doing and that doing always takes me out of my home. The more I do the more my family suffers and I suffer. I always regret taking on too much. I am doing better now but I wonder if I would have had the wisdom to come to this place I am in now on my own or if I am only here because my circumstances changed. I thank God that He intervened in my life and took me to a new beginning.
In the past I have expressed interest in many things outside of motherhood. Things that Ithought were just as important as my mother hood or things that pertained to helping others in their role as mothers. I was surrounded by a few individuals who took what I said and encouraged me to do more. Even though they were Christians their advice or encouragement was not Godly Christian wisdom. They encouraged me to be more involed in serving others outside my home. This is not in and of itself wrong but was terrible timing. When a mother has little ones at home that is where she needs to be. Here time and energy needs to be at home. How can a young mom be an example to other if her own life does not reflect what she is preaching?
If I had been counseled to stay home and embrace motherhood I would not have lost so many years. Instead I took the advice of these individuals and I did too much outside my home. I pursued worldly service "In the name of the Lord" without realizing that God had already called my to motherhood and I had much to learn. I see now that although their intentions were meant well, they were in many ways using me and my desires for their own purpose and profit. I so wish now that I had had a Godly woman mentor who could have shown me the joy and beauty of fully embracing motherhood, of being satisfied at being home. I don't mean loving my children when I say motherhood, but I do mean the profession of Motherhood itself. I would give anything to go back to when I had two kids and have someone teach me the wisdom of organizing my home and my time. I would love for someone to train me how to keep my life in balance. There are so many skills I do not have that I am still struggling with trying to learn and now with 5 children I feel like I am trying to catch up. Every day feels like I am rushing and I am going to crash and burn. I wish that I had been trained better for the profession of motherhood. I love being a mom. I just regret spending so much time and energy outside my home when there was so much I could have been doing to improve my home and be better prepared to handle the blessing of a larger family. That is the wisdom I would pass on. That is the challenge even today.
I am so glad that God has freed me from my past. I am so grateful for my new beginning. I am no longer surrounded by those who would cajole me and pressure me to doing more for others. Instead I am more confident in my full time role as the keeper and watch dog of my home.

2009 Garden

I am still working on learning to create a nice blog. I thought I would post some pictures from this years garden. Here is a picture of the Big Max pumpkins we grew in our front yard. We got a lot of complements on these . We also grew mammoth sunflowers Which were as tall as the house in the front yard. This picture was taken before the flowers opened. Too bad we forgot to take some pictures when the flowers were open.

Our favorite fruit was the raspberries that came up. Fresh raspberries are like eating a piece of heaven.
The watermelon and tomato are heirloom varieties that I grew. The Watermelon is called an Orangelo and the tomato is called a Striped Roma. Both were fun to grow.

handkerchief apron

This is my half apron made with 3 red bandannas and some wide red ribbon. I got the pattern idea from a Mary Jane magazine. It ended up being longer than I expected but it works well for a tall gal like me. I usually don't like half aprons because I am so very messy. I would love to try and make a full apron for myself with the same material because it suits me.

2008 gardening

So here is my garden. I worked hard this year and feel like I had a good harvest. My most abundant crop were the pole green beans. I got over 400 beans and was able to put up 2 quarts and 4 pints of green beans. I also froze some, dried some and ate them fresh. We even had enough to save seeds. It remains to be seen how we do next year with our own saved seeds.

The strawberries were fun. We never saved any. We ate them as soon as they came up.
I did discovered that the flowering plum tree we have produces edible plumes and so picked them and made 4 little jars of plum jelly.
The rest of my produce looked like this
Zucchini= 15 (from one plant)
Cucumber=10 (from one plant
Summer squash=7 (from one plant)
Jalepeno peppers=12(from one plant)
Tomatoes:
Yellow pear =50
Mr. Stripey=5
Sweet 100= about 100
Big Boy=30

Carrots were terrible this year. I had about 7 of them come up even though I sowed about 3 packages of carrots.
Corn.... well even though I added my cute pictures of corn we did not eat out corn. I don't know what went wrong. The corn either didn't fully develop so there was not a full ear of kernels of\r the corn kernels were all there but I left them too long. Needless to say since we have a lot of corn growers around us I won't be growing any more corn. It takes a lot of nurishment from the soil and takes up too much space.
I also planted 3 watermelons and one pumpkin all with a no go. The pumpkin grew a nice vine but nothing else. This may be because it was from seed i saved from last years pumpkin. The watermelon I have a feeling needed to be fertilized. In fact, i think all my plants needed additional fertilizer through the growing season and I din't plan for that. Next year I will be more aware of the need to continue adding fertilizer.

back again

After 2 years of not being able to post on this site i have finally found my sign in information. It is so weird to be able to post again. Now if i only had more time. I will be posting again soon but I am here.

Long absence-Long vacation

I can't believe it has been so long since I posted. Actually, I can believe it. So much has happened that I felt too overwhelmed for too long to even talk about it. I may at some point reflect on on the stresses of buying a house in Utah but not right now. To add to those stresses we had our dog of 7 years die, 2 weeks later I had an Aunt die. The following week I found out I was pregnant and the week after that I had another Aunt die. So I have run away (so to speak). I left Utah and headed for sunny Las Vegas. I have been here since October 10th. Good news was that once I was here I was finally able to get some competent people to help us close on our house. I also found out that my sister is pregnant and due a week after me. It is cool but right now we are both feeling rather sick. I think I am doing better than she is but we both feel pretty crummy. The other thing that has been hard is that my husband has had to commute every week just so he could see us. We miss him desperately and his patriarchal influence is very much needed. We are all feeling lost and bored. We need to start our life again. We need to have a home of our own and start a daily schedule. I think this has been a good visit though because until now, I just wanted to get out of Utah. I wasn't even excited about our house because I was just sick of all the problems we were having to get it all finished. Now it has been finished for almost a month and my visit here with my family has gotten a bit long and it is time for it to come to an end. We don't get the keys for the house until the 21st but in another week we will be going to visit my husbands family in Arizona and I will get out of my parents place. Then we return, pick up our stuff and drive back to Utah. Then it is moving time. Yeah!!!! So I am finally at a place where I can be happy enough to write in this blogger. Not that anyone but me cares but-Casara sara. Until next time.........

childbirth education

I have struggled with my desire to work with pregnant women for some time now. I want to make a difference in their lives by providing the knowledge and education that i got while pregnant that led me down a particular path and helped mold the type of parent I would be. I really feel like the best place to reach a woman and educator her about so many issues is at the childbirth education level. I can help them prepare not only for the birth of their child but I can also be there to educate them about their birth options, breastfeeding, circumcision, vaccinations, natural remedies, natural family planning, homeschooling and many other areas. My struggle has always been what program to go through. When I was pregnant I went through the Bradley method class. I like this method because of it's emphasis on nutrition, kegels and the fact that itis more well known-more widely supported and provides referals(automatic advertising). I have't been leaning in this direction because I am not sure that I want to commit to teaching 12 weeks. I don't know that I believe in their relaxation techniques all though I do think first time moms need something to old on to. I am really leaning toward two different programs. one is decidedly Christian from Apple Tree Family ministries. i like the idea of providing a Christian childbirth class. My biggest problem is that their ideaology comes from a book by Helen Wessel that I have yet to read. If their ideology teaches that women are lacking faith if they experience pain in labor I will NOT be going in that direction. I do not believe in such teachings AT ALL! The second one is from ALACE. I like the fact that it is only 7 weeks long, that it is only about $750 and that it was created by a midwife. I also like the fact that i don't have to travel to any seminarsor classes in order to teach it.The other two program require that i attend their seminars. I have gone over and over and over my feelings on the subject and have yet to come to any conclusions. I want to start working on something but I don't know what. The Apple Tree Family minsitry is revising their program so I guess I will buy their book and start reading it to see if i agree with their ideas. I wish I had better input on the subject or knew which one suited me best. Perhaps some clarity will come soon. I feel like I need to really focus on some personal learning right now. Hopefully something will come to me soon.