PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 78 – MOTHERING AND HOMESCHOOLING

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Episode 78 - MOTHERING AND HOMESCHOOLING

Rocky Barrett: Welcome to the podcast, From Our Home to Yours, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies it is so great to be with you again. You will remember that last week I was talking to you about how we are to glory in our tribulations.

Well I’m wondering how you’ve been going this last week. I wonder if maybe you have been going through some difficulty and trial and how you’ve been getting through it? I wonder if you were able to glory in it. Oh my, we really don’t usually feel like it, do we?

But isn’t it wonderful to have the Word of God that encourages us? So I just want to encourage you again today.

This morning I was reading another Scripture that I just have to share with you. It is James 5:11 and it says: “Behold, we count them happy which endure . . ..”

There is another Scripture that doesn’t often quite relate to our lives. You mean to say that I’ve got to be happy when I’m enduring something and going through it?

Well, that’s the Scripture. That word “endure” is one of the hupo words. I haven’t got time to tell you all about them today but this one is hupomenō.

Hupo means “to be under” and menō means “to remain.” So it literally means to remain under your trial without saying, “Oh help, how can I get out of this?”

Sometimes something we’re going through goes on for a little bit longer than we really want it to. God wants us to go through it with patience.

There’s another Scripture in James 1:4 where it says: “Let patience have its perfect work . . ..”

There is another hupo word. “Let patience have its perfect work . . ..” But this time it means to endure with cheerfulness and hopefulness.

So when we’re going through our trial, yes, we’re remaining under it, but we’re not going under it.

What I mean is, we’re not just letting it take us over and we’re not coming under the stress of it. Even in the midst of our trials we can actually live above them.

We remain under them, but we remain under them with cheerfulness and joyfulness knowing that we can live above them because we are living above them in Christ.

We are seated in Christ, in the heavenlies, at the right hand of the Father. We are in Him and He is in us. So we can go through them with joyfulness.

I was thinking about that this morning and I wrote this little ditty. I wrote:

“Be patient in your trial, but not with resignation.

Instead remaining under with cheerful jubilation.”

Well I read it to my husband, and he said, “Well Nancy, it sounds a bit over the top. Do you think people will really be jubilating when they’re going through their trials?”

I said, “Well, what about Paul who said: “I glory in my tribulations. I take pleasure in my infirmities, persecutions, and trials.”

We may not really be having a special celebration party, but I do believe that as we look to Christ that we can go through them with cheerfulness and hopefulness.

That’s how God wants us to go through our trials. “Behold, we count them happy which endure . . ..”

Well here is another little quote. It might be a bit more to reality.

Dr. Daniel Gregory says:

Common patience says: ”Grin and bear it.”

But Christian patience says: “Sing and bear it.”

How do you like that? That’s so good isn’t it?

Even though we still have to bear it, and we’re still going through it, we can sing as we bear it. So be encouraged.

Here is just a couple more Scriptures: First is Romans 2:7. Here it is talking about if you are buffeted for your faults. That word buffeted actually means “to get a wrap with a fist.” It’s like being hauled over the coals because something we’ve done is not right and we deserve it.

But when we do good things and pour out love and minister to people and then they come back at us with hateful words and persecute us then when we bear it, what does the Bible say? “With patient continuance.”

Do you like that? See, sometimes we think, “Oh I need patience” or we think, “Oh, if only it could last just for today or till tomorrow or just one week.” But it’s patient CONTINUANCE. Yes, it goes on longer than we think, but by “ . . . Patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life.”

In other words we go through these things because we are looking to glory that will be revealed in us on that day in eternity.

First Peter 2:20: “ . . . But if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” So there we go. Be encouraged again, ladies.

But today, I have something so special for you because I am going to introduce two lovely mothers to you. First of all, one of these mothers is one of my granddaughters-in-law. I guess that’s how we say it, yes. I have Stephanie with me. Stephanie is married to my grandson, Crusoe. Crusoe Johnson in one of Evangeline’s sons.

How did it happen? Well, Stephanie came to be an Above Rubies helper. She was another one of my wonderful Above Rubies helpers. I think some of you have got to know that some of our helpers have got married to our grandsons.

We never sort of planned that to happen, but it’s happened, and it’s been so wonderful and exciting.

So Stephanie is with us today. She’s now married to Crusoe and they have a little girl called Hosanna.

Say hi Stephanie!

STEPHANIE JOHNSON: Hi!

NC: You can hear that Stephanie is filled with joy and filled with light! She is such a joy to have around wherever.

When she came, in fact she was only 16 years old when she came, and I usually like our girls to be older than that, but I gave in for Stephanie.

She wasn’t like a normal 16-year-old; she was just so mature. The lovely thing about Stephanie and her whole family, it’s just part of their family, they will say, “Oh, can I pray for you?”

If there’s some problem we’re talking about they don’t just talk about it, they say, “Oh, let’s pray about it!”

It’s just so great; I love that about you, Stephanie.

SJ: Thank you!

NC: Yesterday I had a YOUNG MOTHER’S LUNCHEON at my home.  I always love to have things happen around my table.

I had this desire to have all the lovely young mums because all these beautiful couples are getting married and all of their babies are coming along.

As we sat around the table I said to the mums, “Now tell us, what are some lovely things you enjoy about motherhood?”

So Stephanie, tell us, what did you say?

SJ: Oh well, being a wife and mom is definitely the best job I have ever had. I love it so much. One of the things I love is nursing Hosanna. It is so amazing just holding her in my arms and seeing her cute face. When she falls asleep it’s so cute.

I also love playing with her. She’s at the age now where she loves to tickle, and she’ll come up and touch my feet and start laughing. She’ll start laughing to get me to start laughing. It’s so cute. I love tickling her, hearing her laughing and squealing, and chasing her around the house.

Crusoe is such an amazing dad. One of my favorite things is when he comes home from work. She’ll go running outside and spread out both her arms just waiting for him to walk from the car to her.

Once he comes, she gives him a huge hug and then he will come and play with her. Just watching them play together blesses my heart so much because it’s so special to see them playing together.

I love being a wife and mom, it’s just so fun.

NC: I love now just seeing these beautiful couples and seeing their delight and joy in motherhood. I love to see what beautiful fathers they are. It is just so wonderful.

You were telling me, Stephanie, that you are actually reading The Power of Motherhood at the moment. Tell me, are you finding it a help to you?

SJ: Oh my goodness, yes, I love it. Nana had given it to me a few months back and I just started reading it and it is so good. Every day I get so excited,  so excited when I read it. I’ll read a section and it’s so powerful, everything that’s in it.

I was just reading about nursing and how healthy it is for your body. I had already loved to nurse, and I knew it was so healthy for the baby and I had heard that it was healthy for me. Reading the lists of everything that is so good for you was just a reminder of “Wow, this is so healthy!”

I definitely want to keep nursing because it is so good.

It also makes me know how important my role is as a mom. I love all the Scripture verses and how Nana goes into the meaning of different words in the book makes it so powerful.

Like El Shaddai, one of the ways of describing God is one of the ways that women are described, the mothering-type side of God.

For example, how Jesus longed to gather Israel together and how God has that heart too, that tender heart and how we’re supposed to show that to our children and to the world, that tender, compassionate, loving heart of God. It’s so important that we represent God correctly.

NC: Amen, you’ve got it, Stephanie! You’ll be able to take over from me and tell the world about motherhood! That is just so wonderful.

Thank you for coming and being with us today.

SJ: You are so welcome!

NC: Oh, I have got to tell you something else! I have got to tell you where Stephanie lives.

Now, you’ll just love to hear this because Stephanie, Crusoe, and little Hosanna, they live in the Trim Healthy Mama Poddy house, can you believe it?

SJ: Yes, it’s P-O-D-D-Y, as they say!

NC: That’s right! When they are doing their podcasting, of course, Stephanie has to get out.

SJ: Yes, I do my grocery shopping.

NC:  With all our couples getting married and currently we have another three couples that are courting, we’re just getting all these houses. Wondrously you were able to go into the THM Poddy house. But it’s just temporary isn’t it?

Because they have fixed up an old barn on Pearl and Charlie’s property and they have built a new Poddy cabin up on top of the barn. It’s going to be wonderful, but they are just waiting for some more equipment. Then you will have the whole Poddy to yourself, won’t you?

SJ: Yes!

NC: Well thank you so much, Stephanie.

And now I’m going to introduce to you Stephanie’s sister! Well there’s actually four girls and three boys in your family, isn’t there?

BRITTANY is Stephanie’s older sister and she is staying with Stephanie at the moment. They come from Florida.

Brittany was with us at the luncheon yesterday and we got to talking of course about all the things to do with marriage and motherhood. It’s never ending what we can talk about.

I said to Brittany, “Oh goodness me, you’ve got to come and share on the podcast today.”

So here she is this morning before she goes back to Florida.

Now Brittany and her husband have five children and actually your oldest son is adopted, isn’t he?

Brittany Howell: Yes, he is.

NC: Tell us how that all happened!

BH: Well thank you, first of all, for letting me be on this podcast. Like I said yesterday, it’s been such a blessing to me to listen to it.

NC: So you listen to it yourself?

BH: I have never missed an episode, ever!

NC: And now next time you’ll be listening to you!

BH: I share it with my friends and every week they will say, “God knew exactly what I needed to hear. Nancy spoke exactly what I needed to hear.”

It’s been such an encouragement to all my friends and me so I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to do this and to invest into so many of us because it is a huge blessing.

So yes, my oldest is adopted. My husband and I had been married for about six months and we had just found out that we were pregnant with our first baby.

We received a call from a friend of mine saying that her nephew needed a place to go and wondered if we would be willing to take him in? We said yes and five and a half hours later he was dropped off at our house. We didn’t have nine months to become parents. We had five and a half hours!

NC: I think a lot of parents would love that miracle to happen.

BH: Thank you, yes! Just skip straight to it. We had custody through the state of him for about three years and then we were able to adopt him before he turned four.  He is seven now and such a joy. He fits right into the oldest role in our home.

NC: So when your first biological son was born, how old was he?

BH: They are 14 months apart, so he had just turned one.

NC: Well that’s lovely. Actually, you were blessed because I think the firstborn take more time than any other child in your family because you’re not just mothering them. There is no one else to play with them, look at them, goo with them and so you are their playmate 24/7 as well.  But you had another one that as they grow, they are best mates!

BH: Yes, yes.

NC: When you have a second child it’s amazing because they learn to play with one another, and you can actually do something while they’re happily playing together.

BH: It’s so true.

NC: I know, it’s amazing.

BH: I tell moms that when they ask about having children. I said that having one or two was harder than having four or five because when I had just one or two, they needed me constantly. There was nobody to play with them or help them get a drink of water except me.

So when I hit the stage of having four or five, my house was cleaner, the meals were better, because they all played together and they had each other, so it freed me up more.

NC: Oh I know, and I really think that’s something that you new mothers, dear mothers, that you need to know. It is your most challenging time when you have your first one or two.

You think, “How can I keep doing this?” But as Brittany said, it gets easier because they play with one another.

There is this modern philosophy that every child has to have so much attention each day. Well, they think that in their brains, but the people that think that are typically the ones going out to work in their careers anyway, so they usually can’t do it.

But that’s not how family life is. God didn’t intend for our children to grow up with that entitlement that they have to have so much attention from my mother or I have to have this or that. No, that’s not the way it’s meant to be.

In fact, I think mothering can often be portrayed as MOTHERING MOMENTS. When your child is a little baby or toddler you are just their soul sustenance and so on.

But they get older and then it’s mothering moments. They play happily for a while and then maybe they hurt themselves and they run to mummy.

They need you and so you comfort them and cuddle them, and you just bless them, but it only takes a few moments and off they go. They run off all happy again because they know mother is there.

That’s such a beautiful thing, isn’t it? For children to know that their mother is there. One of the names of God is Jehovah-Shammah ,“The Lord is there.” He’s always available. That’s another thing about motherhood and how we show to our children what God is like, that He’s always there.

Mom is not out in some career. She’s not out somewhere. She’s there. She’s there when I need her.  Whenever they need her, they come running and we give them that mothering moment.

They’re also gaining from one another and I think that happens the older they grow.

See, God created family. He didn’t create independent people to live on their own. No, He puts the solitary in families.

He brought your son into your family. This is what God does.

In a family we interrelate with one another and we’re all gaining something from one another. As the children grow and more children come into the family it’s not just totally on mum and dad. IT’S THE FAMILY, isn’t it?

BH: It is. They get more helpful as they get older but not just practically. I’ve seen them helpful emotionally, too.

Like the other day, I forget why, but my two-year-old was crying in her bed but I was nursing and couldn’t get to her at that moment. But my six-year-old, he jumped up, ran into her room and I overheard him say, “Naomi, what’s wrong? I can help you out. Do you want me to tell you a story until you fall asleep?”

He rubbed her back and told her a little story until she fell asleep. He did that on his own initiative. I didn’t even ask him to do that. He saw that.

So I so agree with you, Nancy, the thought of having so many children can sound overwhelming like, “How can I give to them practically and emotionally?” But God multiplies that love through your children and what you pour into each child, they then have a chance to pour out to the next sibling when you give it. So they have four or five older siblings who can help them if they get hurt instead of just mommy.

NC: I know! That is beautiful. I think that is the most beautiful story. I love it. And they are learning how to nurture and care for one another. I mean, it’s just beautiful, isn’t it? I just love it.

Now your children are getting a little bit older, so what are you doing about schooling them?

BH: My oldest is seven and my next child is six. It is interesting to see different personalities. The oldest one is very active. He loves to be running around, outdoors, hands-on. The second one does prefer to sit quietly and work with his hands.

My husband and I are taking the perspective of praying and asking God what He’s called each child to be and not putting them in a box or putting our homeschooling or curriculum choices in a box, but really being open to let them explore what they’re interested in and what God could have on their life.

We’re not pressuring them to know their letters by the age of five and recite all their facts, but really be hands-on learning.

NC: Yes, that is so good because children each learn at a different pace, don’t they? I think it is so good for us to know and understand this, dear mums. I didn’t understand it when I started, and I so wish I had.

In fact, I didn’t home school my younger ones who are now in their fifties. Back then in New Zealand I had never heard of homeschooling. I was just a victim of society and thought I just had to send my children off to school. To tell you the truth, I hated it. I wasn’t one of those who wanted to get their children off.

I thought, “If only I could teach my children at home.”

But I was a victim and didn’t know I could do it. It had to be pioneered. Sometimes I look back and think, “If only I had pioneered it.” I remember when I was homeschooling Serene who was the youngest until we adopted others. When I started homeschooling her when we had moved to Australia, I didn’t know one other family in my whole city that was homeschooling. It was back in the early days but now that has changed so much.

I remember once when my oldest son was at school and I had to go to the parent/-teacher interview and the teacher said to me, “Your son is at school but he’s not aware of anything that’s going on. He sits at his desk and I look at him and he’s looking out the window. But I do have to concede that he’s not daydreaming because he has his brow furrowed and he’s thinking, and I know he’s in another world.”

I thought to myself, “Yes, I know what he’s doing. He’s planning and inventing.”

Because when he came home from school he would begin to create and make all these things.

He had spent his whole day at school just working it out in his mind, planning it, and getting it aleady to go. Really, school was just a waste of time.  In fact, he never really learned how to read. He had a block there. I would try to teach him when he came home.

This is what I couldn’t understand because I had always been a book learner. Not everybody learns from books. I had been a book learner. I loved to read, I loved to study, and I still love to study. It’s just my life and suddenly I had this child who couldn’t really even read and who didn’t want books.

He was hands-on and creative, and I thought, “Oh goodness me, what kind of a child do I have? Is he a little dumb or something?” only to find out as he grew that, goodness me, his intelligence is far beyond mine! I mean, I’m just kind of down here on the lower scale compared to him.

But you see, it wasn’t like mine, this great learning from books. He learned in a different way.  As he grew, of course, he grew into the giftings that God had given him and has moved into them in his life and is so successful today.

But I don’t think there was a day of school that did anything for him.

Another problem that happens is that, because we’ve had in our psych this school system, and it is a place that it is so anti-God and anti-family and anti-marriage and against everything that God has created that when we know we have to bring our children out of it.

We are putting them into such an absolutely foreign environment. We could have gotten away with it years ago, but not today.

The homosexuals have come in with their ideologies and it’s being taught in our schools and now transgender is even sanctioned in schools. Our children are taught about the Islamic faith and not the Christian faith.

Really, how would any God-fearing and Bible-believing parents send their children into this foreign environment?

But apart from that, they bring them home and think that they’ve got to school them just like they do at school. But really that’s not always the way that they will learn.

Some will learn that way. More likely girls are prone to book learning and some boys, but not every boy.

In fact, the majority are really not book learners; they are more hands-on learners.

I think we have got to come to that place to see what is learning. Is it just sitting at a desk going through some curriculum or filling in some questions? Is that learning? Half the time they don’t even remember what they were doing!

I think you were telling me a statistic about that yesterday, weren’t you?

BH: Yes, I had read a statistic that said by the time a child graduates at the age of 18 they will have forgotten 95-97% of what they have learned in school.

NC: That’s amazing. What does that do for them? I think, to me, that education is LIFE. It’s not just in a few years of schooling. In fact, we are the best teachers. Mothers, we are born teachers. By the time a child is four or five we have taught them so much, haven’t we? We teach them how to speak. We teach them about life.

In fact, from the very beginning they are just little babies and we’re touching their little nose and saying, “This is your nose, your little nose.”

We say, “These are your eyes.”

We don’t have to go to college to learn how to teach! We are the greatest teachers! We teach them so excitedly and creatively. We’re amazing!

You’re an amazing mother. You’re an amazing teacher and you don’t have to stop. Just keep on teaching them the way you started. Teach them about life.

BH: Homeschooling has gotten more popular and more common than a while ago, which is great to have so much more support and more groups and moms helping moms, which I think is great.

One of the negatives, I think that has come with that, too, is that there are now hundreds of thousands of curriculum choices and conferences. So many moms that I interact with on a regular basis feel so much pressure from that each child has to be finishing this curriculum by a certain day.

I had a mom contact me crying saying that she needed a private tutor because her six-year- old’s reading level was at the level of a five-year-old and not a six-year- old. My heart just grieved for this mom who felt like she was failing her daughter because her daughter wasn’t reading according to some standard some person out there has put on it.

I think it’s great, it’s so much more support for homeschooling.  But I think we have to be careful, too, that it doesn’t become a pressuring thing that we lose the joy of homeschooling and the joy of being with our children or make our children hate or despise learning because they’re sitting at a desk for hours doing worksheets and learning things that they’re going to forget.

NC: Yes, it’s so true and we only really passionately learn and remember what we’re interested in.

If we just have to do it because we have to do it our brain may learn it for now and it may even learn it for a test, but it will forget. We only really take in what we’re passionate about.

Our God is such a creative God. He has created every person differently. Every precious child you have is unique. There has never been any children or people like them in the history of the world and there never will be again. There is no one except them and God has put different abilities and passions in them that He wants to use for His glory.

Let’s not bog our children down with all the other junk that they’re never ever going to remember. I mean they do, yes; they do need to learn to read, to write, to spell, to do basic math. There are basic things that they need to know as a foundation for life.

Even those we will teach differently to each child and at different times.

I have another friend, a dear friend of mine, her son is grown now, but when he was young, he had such a baulk at reading. He couldn’t read and she was just giving up. She thought something was wrong with him too.

But when he was 12 years old—12  years old, can you believe it? He lay down on the sofa and started reading medical journals. That’s how he learned how to read, he just suddenly started reading them. He got interested in that. He never started to read before, he just somehow didn’t do it.

BH: Well, my husband didn’t read his first book on his own until he was an adult. He had a hard time with reading, and he was a slow reader. Now he teaches at schools. He reads way more books than I do and devours them.

NC: My son that I was telling you about who never learned to read at school, he learned everything when he left school because he was getting on with life.

Goodness me this school, it was just nothing to do with life. It was just his waste of time.  Then he moved into life and he learned everything he needed to learn. He reads huge books and he does so many things. I could just do a podcast on the things he does today!

BH: In the Bible times they were moving on to the next part of their life, adulthood/marriage closer to the age of 13 or 14. Here we’re holding back what God put in them to rise up at about the age of 13 and 14 and we’re forcing them to stay in a confined environment five additional years past the age that God designed it to be.

NC: That is so true because just a few months back I was doing a study about the age of the disciples and found out that very truth that at about 13 or at the very most 15 they had finished their education. Actually, they were well educated. Many of them could recite the whole Torah. They were well educated.

At that time, they would either get into their father’s business or they would go with a Rabbi who didn’t sit at desks.

Like the disciples that Jesus brought to Himself. Jesus, who was one of the rabbis in Israel at that time, because you had to be thirty years of age to become a rabbi back then. They would take these young disciples, these 13, 14 and 15-year olds, and that’s who Jesus’ disciples were. They learned with Jesus as they walked by the way just as it says to parents to teach your children as you walk in the way (although we drive in cars today!).

We’re to teach them as we’re sitting, lying down, or going about life. That’s how Jesus taught His disciples. They weren’t sitting at a desk.

They were young teenagers, ready to get on with life!

Some mothers have problems when they’re sons start to get into teens. They think, “How can I control this man? He’s starting to get into manhood.” You’re still trying to keep him sitting at a desk doing some little curriculums? Goodness, he’s ready to take on the world!

Oh goodness me, it’s time we stop keeping our sons as little boys and let them grow and become mature as the Bible says: “That our sons may become great even in their youth.”

That’s how it’s meant to be, isn’t it?

BH: Amen, I agree.

NC: Be encouraged today, dear mothers. You homeschooling mothers, you are doing such a great job. I want to encourage you today. Don’t get bogged down in feeling all that responsibility on you that if they don’t get through all these paces how will they make it?

Lovely ladies, they are going to make it because they’re going to make it according to what God has put in them.

You see, I talk to you not as a fellow young mother. I am talking to you from an older mother. I am now in the fourth generation. I have great-grandchildren coming on and I am looking back.

I look back and I see all of my children fulfilling their destinies. I know it is because of the goodness of the Lord and because we have prayed so much for them over the years. Their destinies did not come through their schooling; it came through their God-given gifts that God put innately within them. They are gifts that even my husband and I don’t have. They come from God.

As we give them opportunity to develop them and as we pray over their lives, God will do it. He will do it in His way.

I remember going to an Above Rubies retreat. This is when I would take the girls with me. One time we came as a huge entourage. It was Serene, Pearl, and Vange. They had little ones with them who were babies and still nursing. They may have had an older child to help with the little one.

Someone came to pick us up and they came with this big fifteen-passenger van to fit us all in and all our luggage and books.

Anyway, this lady got out and she was this young, beautiful woman. She was just so gorgeous. I thought, “This is so strange. She’s got this fifteen-passenger van and she only looks as though she’s got two children.”

We were driving along, and I said, “Well, how many children do you have?”

She said, “Oh, well I have fourteen!” And she was this beautiful, gorgeous mother.

Any way, we had a fun time at that retreat. But I met her a few years ago when she came to another retreat. This was a few years gone by now. It was testimony time and she got up and began to share about her children.

She said, “As I was mothering them [fourteen children!] I just felt a failure so much as I was homeschooling them. I would feel like, how was I getting them ready for their lives? I didn’t feel capable of teaching them as I should, but I just plodded along the best I could.”

Then she began to share what was happening with her children and the openings and the doors God had opened for them. They were doing things that young people who have been to college for I don’t know how many years weren’t even doing. You know, God had opened the doors and they were all fulfilling great things.

God is faithful. You just be faithful, lovely mum.

Okay, let’s pray:

“Lord Jesus, we just thank You that You are with us in our mothering. “Oh Lord God, You are the One Who has created us to be mothers. You have given us our children and Lord, they’re not just our children, they are Your children. Oh God, they are in Your hands and we’re just stewards to be faithful and impart Your ways to them. To make a home that’s a beautiful place for them to grow up in and become settled, stable, mature, and strong so they can go out into this world.

“Lord, we thank You that You are the One Who is working in them and You are the One Who is going to fulfill their destinies.

“We thank You that we can lift each one of our children into Your wonderful, wondrous care and guidance and we thank You in the name of Jesus. Amen.”