Obedience: Safe & Secure?

This posting from Large Family Mothering really spoke to my heart:

"We are a planning, plotting, goal-reaching people. We are taught to strategize and have all of our ducks in a row. 

With all of the danger and uncertainty in the world, people are looking for more ways to feel secure; with seminars on how we can make our money work better for us, how to stay out of debt and how to nail-down every aspect of our fiscal existence. 

But we just don’t see it—at least not yet. God is not impressed with all of our vain efforts. Of course, Biblical principles will never steer us wrong—but if we miss the God that speaks these principles, we will still miss the greatest blessing of relationship with Him!

Life is not easy—no matter how one tries to make it seem so. I know some people who live what I call “prophylactic” lifestyles. They don’t just live—they are making sure that they have accounted for every contingency. They exist according to a plethora of checklists for everything from leaving the house to preventive medical tests and exams.

I don’t know if you’re like me, but I have observed that those who love God don’t usually live “safe” existences. I am reminded here of all the saints in the Word who followed God not by "sight" but by "faith" alone. King David certainly loved God—he was declared to be a man after God’s own heart! And yet, he went through so many trying circumstances—fleeing from King Saul after he was anointed, even living among the Philistines for a time, posing as a madman. 

Even Moses was not without trials because he chose to walk with God.

We should not (and can not) plan for every contingency. Safety should not be our preoccupation. Obedience should be our focus with our gaze on Christ! 

Obedience--not sacrifice! 

Instead of looking to experts, we should be training our spirits to tune in to the voice of the Holy Spirit--following His lead.”

The past two weeks was to say the least a shock for my system. It all started the night after my first day of school for 2011. I was in total despair!  That evening as I was laying in the safe arms of my husband, I uttered my fears, my frustrations and my insecurity for home schooling my eight precious children!

Many a day over the past two weeks, I couldn’t get to every child with all their different assignments.  CJ will turn 17 this year!  Theoretically he has only two years of “school” left. I just love the work he’s learning and don’t have a problem helping him, but oh, to find the right time is such a frustration! For his work we need exclusive time for sometimes up to an hour or longer.  

Try to do that between a baby and 3 toddlers!  Then there is my fear, will I be able to teach him everything he needs to know, for whatever he want to do in the near future?

Little Danika is turning 8 this year and needs a great deal of individual attention, with learning to write, read and doing basic maths! (I am a ‘rather late than early-Mom’) 

It just doesn’t come easy!

Heidi-Mari and Josua are at a stage where they can work more by themselves, but I still need to explain new Math’s concept, English grammar, test spelling and find time for their Science narration! 

There’s also Andrew and David who eagerly waits for their share of stimulation every morning. 

Oh, I have the most creative ideas in different areas on how to teach my children, but it isn’t always possible to execute it in real life!

One of my biggest frustrations is my inability to multitask!  Yes, I know mothers can all multitask, but I can only do this to a certain extent!  Let me give you an example.  At this moment Christo and I are both working on our computers.  Christo love to work while listening to music, but I’m totally distracted the moment he turns on the sound. I just can’t concentrate to order my ideas and words.  Now imagine 3-4 little ones, each telling me something while I’m trying to teach Danika a math concept!  Crazy! Or doing laundry and cooking while helping CJ with Physics.  Just not possible for me.

So, I’m a little out of control, with no hope to get back in control in the near future!  Until I read Shelly’s posting and it called me back to basics and gave me peace. 

Why am I home schooling my children?

Because God appointed me to home school my children, to train and teach them in His will and purposes for their lives.

Why do I have this large family?

Because God made me a Mother, with the purpose to raise godly children, who will one day change the world for Him and bring Him glory and praises into everlasting life!

I’m out of control, but God is in control. My life is in no way safe and secure, but living life through God in obedience is the only safe and secure option I know!  Every moment of every day is a surprise and I can plan as much as I like to, within minutes it can all change due to unexpected events in a large family, with many small children! But this way God can work out His plan for our lives.

I can get distracted to easily!  And I thought of it as a vice until Christo showed me it is a virtue, if I hand over control to God in this area.  I feel secure when I’m in control, so if I could multitask and keep my hand on 8 things simultaneously, I would suffocate my children with ‘school’ and we would miss out on many fun moments.  

Since I get distracted so easily, I can very easily decide that “this is it for the day”, lets go bake a cake or play a board game and through away the schedule!

And then I’m a sinner, in whom God still have to do lots and lots of carving and shaping,  polishing and submitting, to make me holy. Some days I can only bow down my head and cry out to God: “I’m a mess!”  Every day has so many stress situations and temptations, during which I mess up big time, especially on relationships. 

There isn’t many places I can turn to for help.  Other large family mothers are busy with their own trials and challenges.  The only place I can turn to, is my God and in such I’m a blessed woman!

God called me for this purpose in life and I need to trust Him with every second of my day!  There is no better place than being in the centre of God’s will, and in having a large family, and home educating them, I know I am!   

God asks obedience and my missing part is whole hearted trust!  I have to recommit myself to whole heartedly trust Him for this year!  Many a day will not be as I wish them to be, but God will pull as through for His glory and at the end it will be nothing to do with me, but all about God!

My Lord can lead me through the fire without burning, and through rivers without drowning! 

(Is 43:2)

Like Peter I need to focus on Jesus and not on the storms around me.

"God knows that, in our heart-of-hearts, our motivation was to know Him, to trust Him, and to obey Him, no matter how it seems to others and no matter what the cost. And so, even if some days it looks as though the Philistines are winning, we are sure that those things we have entrusted to Him, He is able to keep for us and for His everlasting glory."

With Love

Linnie

My First Tomatoes and Some Tips!

On Wednesday night we picked our first tomato!

We picked it, cut it into 9 pieces and every one of the family (except little Michael - who didn’t mind) had a taste of a ripened on the vine, organic, non genetic modified tomato! 

And it tasted totally different, even compared to the organic tomatoes we receive from the Ethical Co-op!

This year my tomatoes are doing extremely well!  I guess I had to go through the trial year,  I made mistakes (some bigger than others), I had disappointments but got the hang of growing a specific vegetable.  There is a difference in reading all the right books and websites on growing a specific vegetable and to learn by experience! That is what happened with my tomatoes.  This year I’m in the trial of growing my own pumpkins, watermelons and corn (more in another posting).

Last year my tomatoes was doing relatively good for a first time, but although we planted almost the same amount of tomato plants as this year, the harvest wasn’t nearly big enough, to last us during summer.  This year I foresee that we will not need to buy any tomatoes, once they start to ripen!

 

There are dozens of well formed, healthy tomatoes hanging from the plants!

Some things I’ve done that could possibly have made the difference:

Sown my Own Seeds

I’ve sown my own heirloom seeds, in organic worm cast. I bought seeds from Living Seeds and Being Plants.

Plant Strong Plants

I’ve made sure they are strong young plants before I replanted them. I also only replanted them when I was sure the temperature of the beds were warm enough - tomato plants love warm temperature.

The previous year I replanted it too quickly, before the soil temperature could climb and due to my impatience, I lost a few young plants.  This year I lost only one plant!

Mature, Worm- and Nutrient Rich Vegetable Beds

My beds were well prepared with mature, worm- and nutrient rich soil. I once read from Sean Freeman at Living Seeds - healthy plants won’t get diseases.  How do you make sure you have a healthy plant - make sure the soil is full of nutrients and don’t use any pesticides, ensuring a balanced ecosystem. 

Since we have only clay soil, I have to redo the soil of every single bed.  I don’t have any soil available, so the soil in the beds are made up of horse manure (I get it for free from CJ’s horse riding school), peanut shells, Phillipi sand and my home made compost.  But often when I start a new bed the horse manure isn’t mature enough and I don’t have nearly enough hand made compost.  I choose two of last year’s beds for my tomatoes, ensuring the soil is mature.  I only topped it up with a layer of horse manure, Phillipi sand and compost.  As CJ was working through the soil, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of earthworms - a sure sign of nutrient rich soil.

Liquid Fetrilizer

I periodically gave the little plants my liquid fertilizer - Bokashi.  Since I’m in my trial year for pumpkins and watermelons, I had to used almost all my Bokashi for them, but I could manage to spare some Bokashi for the tomato plants.

Finger Pruning

I constantly finger prune the small side shoots, also called suckers, growing between the main stem and the leaf stems, and gently pinch these off with my fingers. 

The side shoots only create a lot of leaves, which take energy away from the rest of the plant and few to no fruit.

In my opinion, pruning my tomato plant is one of the most important things to do towards a healthy tomato plant.

Remove Bottom Leaves

As soon as the plants was about a meter high, I started to remove the leaves from the bottom 30cm of the stem to allow air to circulate through the entire plant and light from beneath.   Removing the bottom leaves is an ongoing proses as the plant grows and the bottom leaves become bigger and tend to grow down-wards. I’ve observed these are usually the first leaves to develop fungus problems. They get the least amount of sun and soil born pathogens can be unintentionally splashed up onto them.

Hand Watering

This year, I only hand water the plants - no water by sprinkle system and only in the morning, at the latest 11h00.  My mother-in-law believes when you water in the afternoon, the ‘wet plant’ will more easily develop diseases in the cool afternoon air. So although it is much more pleasant to be in the garden in the cooler afternoon, I try to be in the garden as early as possible (that varies depending on the night I had with my two babies) and be finished by 10h00 - preferably 08h00! I carefully water the plants to make sure no soil splash up against the plants’ stem and leaves - this way no soil-borne diseases are caught.  

Stacking

Every day while I’m hand watering the tomato stools, I make sure they are securely stacked against the trellis. 

It is very interesting to see how pumpkins and peas can tie themselves to the trellis, but not the case with tomato stools. 

Their tendency is to lay on the ground! 

I constantly have to stack my tomato stool and the sooner the better, or the plant will break when you stack it.

Old stockings works perfect to support a stalk, heavy with ripening tomatoes.

Remove Yellow or Wilting Leaves

I gently pinch off any leaves that are turning yellow or wilting on the tomato plant.

We are now only in the beginning of the harvest and I’ve learned you can lose your whole harvest within days, when it catch a disease, but I’m full of high hopes. 

Pruning and tending to my tomatoes is an every other day process, but for me it is also therapeutic and often a time I meet God and receive revelations (more of that in another posting) and now I’m starting to see a harvest I’m very proud of. I can’t wait to have a tomato salad, made only from the harvest in my garden!

David proudly showing off with his harvest of tomatoes this morning!

With love

Linnie

A Blogger's Prayer

Over the past few months blogging became a liability.  The joy and satisfaction I’ve experienced in the beginning was gone!  There were a few reasons for this:

I’m an Afrikaans speaking girl from the Free State and somewhere during my Secondary school years something went wrong with my understanding of the English grammar.  It got all mixed up and speaking or writing in correct English is almost impossible for me.  Thanks to my dear husband, I’m able to publish blog postings in understandable English, but it takes a lot of effort from me, as well as time on  Christo’s part.

Since English is my second language, I don’t always have the extended vocabulary to express my thoughts in a creative way.  As a result I get frustrated when I try to put down my thoughts on paper (uhh, on the computer!)

I’ve fell for a lie that comments and followers indicate the value of my blog.  Since I don’t often receive comments and I’ve even lost some followers over the past month, I wasn’t sure if my blog was even being read any more,  and therefore of any value to anyone.  

So I lost my passion to write, but deep inside of me I have this pull to share my testimony of God’s blessings, grace, providence and love for our family, while we try to live in total obedience to Him alone.  A family who is doing everything opposite to the world and the mainstream church in terms of raising our children, how we worship, health, etc.

In the process of loosing my passion, I’ve become like someone who has lost something very, very valuable, but as hard as I tried to get back in writing, I just couldn’t wrap up a posting.  

A few weeks ago I read a posting Blogging by Numbers.  It immediately grabed my attention, then I hoped over to @ A Holy Experience and read an incredible piece by Ann Voskamp called, Six Things Every Christian Blogger Needs To Know, the final posting of three postings on “Upside Down Blogging”. Part 1 - Why Blog? and Part 2 - What is Success? The more I read it, the more it felt like someone was unlocking the prison I was locked in during the past few months.  A prison in which I’ve locked up myself, through the lies I believed and expectations I had.

I’ve started my blog almost 2 years ago because I’ve sensed God wants me to share truths, testimonies and a personal journal of my blessed life, but also struggles and rejections as a mother of many children. For me, keeping a blog had nothing to do with my ability to write, being creative with words, the applause of people or how many people follow my blog!  It was all about God’s glory and to strengthen my faith!

Ann’s article brought me back to basics - the core of why I started my blog.  

The Word says: “The truth will set you free!”

The Lord truly sat me free!

Since that day, I could start writing again!  Christo still need to check my grammar, I still struggle to have all the creative words and search for the right vocabulary, but I enjoy writing again! 

And most of all I got convinced of God as my ONLY FOLLOWER and therefore don’t need to follow my Follower’s statistics anymore. 

I also know God’s comments are the only comments that truly matters and rejoice in fine-tuning my spirit to hear His voice and opinion on whatever I intended to blog about!

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate every comment, but it isn’t the focus of my blogging!

And as I’m starting this new year I want to share with you a Bloggers Prayer by Ann Voskamp:

I am no longer my own blogger, but Thine, O Lord. 

Refine me with each post how You will, rank me how You will. 

Put me to service, or put me to suffering. 

Let me post for Thee or be put aside for Thee, 

Lifted high, only for Thee, or brought low, all for Thee. 

Do with me and each post whatever you will, because You alone know best. 

Let me not strive but submit Let me not compete but care 

Let me not desire hits but holiness 

Let me be a follower, instead of seeking followers. 

Let my blog be full of Thee, and let it be empty of me. 

Let me crave all things of Thee, let me care nothing of this world. 

Let my words be worthy of the greatest of audiences: You. 

And You are enough. 

May I write not for subscribers… but only for Thy smile. 

May my daily affirmation be in the surety of my atonement, 

not the size of my audience. 

May my identity be in the innumerable graces of Christ, 

never, God forbid, the numbers of my comments. 

May the only words that matter in my life not be the ones I write on a screen ---

but the ones I live with my skin. 

I freely and heartily yield every sentence, every title, every post, every comment… or no comments… all to Thine pleasure and perfect will. 

My only fame is that I bear Your name 

My only glory is the gift of Your Grace 

My only readership, Your eyes that seek to and fro to find a heart hard after You. 

Make this so, oh Lord… 

Yahweh, You alone are my God, not Google 

Jesus, You alone are my Savior, not site meters 

And Holy Spirit, You alone are my Comforter, not comments 

So be it, today, yesterday, and every post to come. 

This is my prayer I have made on earth and over this keyboard… let it be ratified in heaven. 

Amen. 

Copyright 2010, Ann Voskamp @ www.aholyexperience.com   All rights reserved. Please do not copy, paste text or reprint.

You can read her whole article here.

May you all have a blessed, spirit filled 2011 and to all my Blog Friends, may this prayer also be your prayer.

With love

Linnie