FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Episode 61: A Motherhood Journey: Miscarriages, Ectopic Pregnancies, Down Syndrome Child

Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy: Good morning, precious ladies or good night. Maybe you're listening as you're going off to bed. Anyway, great to be with you again today. Let me start with a poem. I love poems about motherhood. Here's another poem from my book that I do have available in Above Rubies. It's called, Quiet Reflections for Mothers. It has poems I have saved over the years. This one is called, “I love Johnny.”

"I LOVE YOU, JOHNNY!"

I love you, Johnny, said mother one day,
I love you more than I can say,
Then she answered his questions with,
“Don't bother me now!"
And just didn't have time to show him how
To tie his truck to his tractor and plough,
But she washed her windows and scrubbed the floor
And baked and cooked and cleaned some more.

"Bring the boy next door in?" "Well, I should say not,
You'll mess up the floors and I don't want a spot."
"No, we don't have time for a story today,
Mother's too busy cooking, so run out and play,
Maybe tomorrow," she said with a sigh,
And Johnny went out almost ready to cry.

"I love you, Johnny," again she said,
As she washed his face and sent him to bed.
Now how do you think that Johnny guessed
Whether 'twas he or the house that
   she really loved best?   

That's a real challenge to us all, isn't it?

Today, I have a very special guest. This guest is my wonderful niece, Melissa. Melissa is the daughter of my brother. I come from a very small family, sadly. My sister lives not very far from me here in Tennessee. My brother is way over in New Zealand where we all originally came from. In fact, I often think that I was deprived. I only had two siblings and then as we grew up, we hardly saw one another. My sister immigrated to Canada, and my brother joined Youth with A Mission (YWAM) and traveled the world. I didn't see him for years. We really missed one another.

Anyway, now Melissa lives right here, just around the corner and a bit further down the road from us. I always think that Melissa actually looks more like me than my own three daughters. She has always been a bit special to me. Melissa has twelve children, twelve wonderful children. I want to tell you the names because I love names. All of Melissa's children start with J. I love it when people do that. Did you plan to do that, Melissa?

Melissa: We didn't plan to initially but the first two names we liked started with J, so we thought, Oh, I guess we'll just carry it on.

Nancy: Yes. Here I am, asking you a question before I've even said, “Say Hi” to the ladies. Anyway, here's Melissa.

Melissa: Hello.

Nancy: She has Josiah, Joshua, Jahna, then their four boys. I always think of them in a row. Jonathan, James, Jesse, and Joseph. Then she has Joycie and Joanie (Joyce and Joan). Two little princesses with beautiful, blonde curly hair, and I love them. Every time I see them, “Oh, here's my princesses.” That's your nine biological children, but you've got more.

Melissa: That's right.

Nancy: Yes! She has an amazing story. She also has three other children, two adopted from Liberia, Jeremiah and Jemima. Jemima, oh goodness me, she's like a queen. How old is Jemima now?

Melissa: Fifteen.

Nancy: Fifteen, yes, she carries herself like a queen. I think she must have come from some royal stock somewhere because right from the time you got her, she's always had this queenliness about her. They have two adopted from Liberia, then at the very tail end, no more children were coming along, so Melissa and her husband, Cal went to China and adopted a darling little Down syndrome girl from China. We are going to hear about her story.

Anyway, Melissa, your story really starts before you were married, doesn't it? Tell us what you were doing before you were married, in Hong Kong, wasn't it?

Melissa: Yes, well, as a young girl, I think I always wanted to work in an orphanage, so after I finished high school, I did some nanny work for different people, a theater company, and then I still wasn't married so I thought, What am I going to do with my life? My sister had been in Hong Kong, so I heard about a place called Mother's Choice. It's an orphanage, so I worked there for a year and a half.

Nancy: Yes, while you were there, I think you began to love some special little children, didn't you?

Melissa: Yes, I always wanted to adopt children after I married. While in Hong Kong, we had a lot of special needs children and most of those children had Down syndrome. The babies that were “normal” had a waiting list of parents who were waiting for their babies, but our special needs children sort of languished there for several years while people searched for a family for them.

I became very attached to a little girl who had Down syndrome, and I took her everywhere with me on my time off, and that's when I looked into her eyes and said, “If you're still here when I get married, I'm going to adopt you.” That's where God changed my heart to adopt a child specifically with Down syndrome

Nancy: Yes, and then when you got married, did you ever find out about that little girl again?

Melissa: She did get adopted.

Nancy: She did?

Melissa: Yes

Nancy: How wonderful. Anyway, you started off, you got married to your wonderful, handsome prince, Cal. Well, his name is actually Dean, but he's always called Cal, short for Calhoon, their last name. That didn't start too well either. You weren't conceiving. Tell us about that.

Melissa: Yes, well, we both wanted to have a large family, and we were both open to adoption too, but we thought we would have biological children first. I got pregnant without any problem, and I continued to get pregnant without any problem, but I couldn't keep the babies. I miscarried the first three and then I had an ectopic pregnancy.

Nancy: Yes, tell us what happened with that.

Melissa: That was a desperately hard time because my husband was actually away in Japan.

Nancy: He's in the Marines.

Melissa: Yes, he was in the Marine corps, so he was away, and the doctors weren't sure if it was a miscarriage or an ectopic. I was reluctant to do a D&C in case it was going to be a miracle and the baby would be fine. Finally, they saw the embryo in my fallopian tube, so I had to have emergency surgery. They ended up removing that tube because they couldn't stop the bleeding. I remember sitting in the hospital. I was fine. I was all composed. I was going to accept it.

Nancy: You're all by yourself, without your husband?

Melissa: Yes, that's when I lost it. They said, “Do you have anyone to call?” I couldn't stop crying after that because I thought, “I have no one to call.” We were newly married in Hawaii, and I didn't really know anybody yet.

Nancy: Your parents were in another country and your husband in another country.

Melissa: Yes. Thankfully, some ladies from the church we were going to came, and looked after me and took me home.

Nancy: Here you are, desperate for children and now you've had a fallopian tube taken. Wow. Now, what happens next?

Melissa: Well, I got pregnant again and because of my history with the ectopic pregnancy, I needed to go right away and make sure this one wasn't going be ectopic and unfortunately, it was. Then they realized that that tube also had a problem, so they referred us to the IVF clinic. That's when Cal and I thought, “Well, that's why God gave us a heart to adopt. It must be what He wants us to do.”

Nancy: Then you started the adoption procedures.

Melissa: Yes, we started the proceedings, and I should have known I would get pregnant again and at that time I was so demoralized, and I thought, “This is going to be the same result.” I did my duty and made the appointment to go and have an ultrasound to make sure it wasn't in my tube again because that can be life threatening.

 My husband asked me if I wanted him to come to the appointment. I said, “No, don't even bother. I know what's going to happen. Stay home.” When I went, they did the ultrasound, I was six weeks along, and they saw Josiah in my womb, and they saw his heart beating, and I remember the doctor saying, “Once we see a heartbeat, you're almost guaranteed you'll have a baby in nine months. I started crying so much, and the nurse started patting my arm asking, “Is this a good thing for you, dear?” I was like, “Yes! I just can’t believe it.”

Nancy: How wonderful.

Melissa: When I came home, it was like an hour drive, I came home and I had that little picture of the ultrasound, and Cal met me at the door and I was like, “Look at this!” We broke down and dropped to our knees and thanked God.

Nancy: How wonderful. Now, Josiah has his own baby, and you're a grandmother. Isn't that incredible? Isn't he the most adorable little child?

Melissa: I know. I saw him on the way here walking around. So cute.

Nancy: Yes. Dear precious mothers, there could be some of you listening today and you're struggling to get pregnant. Maybe you're having miscarriage after miscarriage. Maybe you've even had an ectopic pregnancy but don't ever despair. God is good. Keep trusting Him. You never know what God can do, and you always keep trusting Him. I believe that that is our responsibility. We are to trust God, walk in faith, and then let God do what He will do. Amen?

Then God blessed you with nine precious babies from your womb, with one fallopian tube.

Melissa: Yes! The first few times I went and made sure the baby wasn't in my tube, but after that, I thought, No. I think God has a special journey and relationship with each of us, and He wants to teach us things. Before I was pregnant with Josiah, I remember walking one day, angry with God. This is not fair. This is all I ever wanted, to have children. Women who abuse their bodies are able to carry a baby and what's wrong with me? Why can't I? I remember God saying, “Melissa, can you have joy if you never have children? Am I enough for you?”

Nancy: Wow. That's a challenge, isn't it?

Melissa: Yes. I couldn't answer immediately. I really had to think, and I realized, yes, I can have joy even if God never blesses me with children. He is enough. God is enough for me.

Nancy: Yes and I had a little thought. You mentioned how that when you were pregnant with Josiah, yes the baby was in your womb, not in the fallopian tube and the doctor said, “When we can see a heartbeat, we know that you're going to have a baby in nine months.” That's a powerful statement because when they see that heartbeat, they know, right then, that it is alive. Josiah was Josiah right then, not when he was born!

Melissa: That's right.

Nancy: I was talking to a lady the other day who came and visited us last weekend, and she was raised a feminist. She was raised to believe that the baby in the womb was a bit of nothing. She had no idea. She was totally brainwashed that a baby in the womb was a bit of tissue and didn't have any value at all.

She also had a miracle. Her three children she does have are all miracles. When her first baby was born, and she held this baby in her arms, she said, “The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “This baby is alive, alive?” The nurses said, “Well, of course she's alive.”

She said, “You don't realize what I'm saying. This baby came out alive. It was alive in me all that time?” That was the first revelation she knew of being raised a feminist that this baby in her womb had been alive all that time, from the moment of conception. It was a huge revelation to her. From that moment, she knew that abortion is murder and that the baby in the womb is alive. That baby is that person, that same person when they are ninety years old than when they were first conceived!

Melissa: That's right.

Nancy: It's amazing. Anyway, your journey is quite incredible. You had Josiah and Joshua. That's another interesting thing. I look at Josiah and I look at Joshy, and I can't believe it.

Melissa: They are opposite people.

Nancy: Yes, you couldn't believe they are brothers. Here's Josiah, the real hardworking cowboy. He's got his cowboy hat on, looks so handsome in it. Joshy with all his curly hair everywhere, and he's a computer nerd. I mean, it's where his brilliance is. They are so opposite, aren't they?

Melissa: They are so opposite.

Nancy: You can't believe it. It is amazing, dear mothers with little ones, to see what God will do with your children. We have to say, I guess you feel like this too, Melissa, I know I do. I'm further down the line with grandchildren and now great grandchildren coming on. You look at what God is doing in their lives, you look at the gifts God has given them, and you realize, it's God. I couldn't have made my child like that or I couldn't have given them that gift. No, God makes everyone unique.

Melissa: That's right. If we were to make them, we would probably make them all the same way.

Nancy: Yes, the way we wanted. Our children are so different to us, aren't they? I mean, could you be a computer nerd like Joshy?

Melissa: Absolutely not.

Nancy: No, I couldn't do one quarter of the things my children are doing. It's unbelievable, isn't it? Anyway, your next baby was Jahna, a little girl. What happened then?

Melissa: Yes, she was our first and only hospital birth. That happened because we had moved to Hawaii again, and there was no birthing center like we had had our two boys in, and my husband wasn't comfortable with a home birth. We went to the hospital. We had Jahna . . .  the birth, we waited outside, went in, had her in ten minutes.

Nancy: You had all your babies so quickly, didn't you? Just like your mom. Must be in the genes. I think, in your genes. Didn't come through mine, it came through your side. Your mom had her babies quick, even big ten pounders. She popped them out.

Melissa: Yes and she said she didn't feel any pain at all. I didn't inherit that part. I felt it. She was born very quickly and fine and she nursed right away. I thought there was no problem, but the midwife came over and told me that they had called the pediatricians to come and check on her. She was sort of skirting the issue, looked very uncomfortable.

I don't why I even said it, but I said, “Do you think she has Down syndrome?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Ok.” The pediatricians came ad looked at her, and they fussed around looking for the signs of creases in her hand and things like that, but she was very healthy. The pediatrician said nothing to us. I think that the fact that she had Down syndrome sort of became overlooked because I wanted to go home.

Cal and I had birthing center births where we could leave after a few hours. We wanted to go home, and they didn't want to let us. Being in the military, in a military hospital, there's the rank situation, so my husband felt like he couldn't really demand of the officers that we were leaving. It became a big thing. It took several hours of them lecturing us and telling us off basically while we sat  there continually saying, “We want to go home. We are fine. We want to go home.” But they never once said, “We think she has Down syndrome. Can you stay and we will do the karyotype blood test?”

Nancy: Really?

Melissa: Never did it. Finally, we had to sign against medical advice papers, and it was Sunday, so they had to call in the doctor to sign the paper, and she was very upset with us. Jahna was wrapped in the hospital blanket, and I said, “Do you want me to take that off and put on my own blanket?” They said, “No, just go. Take the blanket and leave.” They were so angry with us.

We came home and I do remember saying to my friend who was watching the boys, “Do you think she has Down syndrome?” She said, “No, she doesn't.”

We had to take Jahna to the pediatrician the next day per our arrangement of leaving the hospital early. I asked that doctor, “Do you think she has Down syndrome?” It's interesting. In the military, you have a lot of doctors who don't speak English very well. This lady didn't. She kind of clucked around and then said, “No.” We just carried on life like normal.

Nancy: Yes, which was a good thing.

Melissa: Yes! I would think it sometimes. I had worked for a year and a half with babies with Down syndrome, you would think I would recognize it. When I look back in pictures, I absolutely recognize it. Nobody said anything to us. Jahna was feeding well and doing well and meeting milestones pretty normally.

When she was about five, almost six months old, we had a work picnic, and the commanding officer had a sibling with Down syndrome. He looked at us from afar and said to himself, “Their daughter has Down syndrome I think, and they don't seem to know.” He didn't say anything because even he wasn't sure. Then, a month later, there was another picnic and then he was like, “That little girl definitely has Down syndrome, and they don't know it.” On Monday morning, he called Cal to his office and said, “Do you realize your daughter has Down syndrome?” Cal called me and as soon as he said that, I knew. Absolutely she does. We did the karyotype blood testing and of course, she did. I think God blessed us with that beautiful time of just enjoying her and being normal.

Nancy: I think that's wonderful because then you continued to treat her normally, didn't you? You treated her like one of the other children and for many of those years, she grew up very normally, didn't she? She was the perfect Down syndrome child with all this love oozing out of her. I can remember every time she would come to the door . . . so lovely to love a Down syndrome child and get all the love that they have. It was amazing. You had quite a long honeymoon time with Jahna, didn't you?

Melissa: Yes. She's very high functioning, and she never had any health issues which really helps.

Nancy: You had a honeymoon for how many years?

Melissa: Twelve, almost thirteen.

Nancy: Yes, about twelve or thirteen years, until she reached puberty.

Melissa: Yes, we still don't know what caused the change in her. Someone described it to me, and they said it's like a perfect storm. It could be puberty, could be the fact that we moved a lot of times. It could be something in the environment. It could be anything, and we still don't know what caused the change in her. Now I know it’s depression, but she started to not want to get out of bed, and flop around everywhere. She would laugh or cry hysterically in the middle of the night. We were living in a very small house, but we slept sort of away from everyone because she would wake everyone up, just loud screaming laughter or screaming crying.

Then she started getting a lot of different ticks and walking in circles and leaping up and running out the door. We were living on fifteen acres that backed to a forest. She would run off into the forest, and once, I couldn't find her for hours. I finally called Cal to come home from work thinking we are going to have to call the police. What are we going to do? Thankfully, he was able to find her. She had just been wandering around in the woods.

Nancy: This was an amazing, difficult, challenging thing for you to face because she had been so normal and perfect for all those years, hadn't she? Even for me. Suddenly, what's happened to my Jahna? This gorgeous darling, lovable girl and suddenly, she's not relating to you.

Melissa: No, she was absolutely in her own world.  She would stare off into the corner, up to the ceiling and have angry conversations at nobody. You'd ask her who she was talking to, and she would say “Nobody” and go back to her crazy talking. Things were always changing. Something would get better and something would get worse. The worst was when we moved her, and you guys saw her like that, where she would throw screaming tantrums for absolutely no reason. She did a lot of repetitive scribbling on papers until the whole paper would be covered in ink, the  pens run out. She could be doing that and then leap up from the chair, screaming at the top of her lungs in a massive tantrum and kicking and thrashing. You never knew when that would happen. She would do that several times a day.

Nancy: You kind of put up with it for a while and tried things?

Melissa: We were always trying special diets. We have a more alternative approach to medicine so putting her on any kind of drug, we had thought about it but then you think about the side effects. We tried this diet and that diet. Finally, we got her in to see a child psychologist. That appointment took about a year to wait for. She was wonderful, and she gave her a diagnosis of autism and depression. She had a lot of autistic behaviors, a lot.

Nancy: Yes, it had never appeared until that time.

Melissa: No, never. None at all. I don't like labels, but they do open doors. By her being labeled autistic, she was able to get ABA therapy. She has a therapist come to the home twice a week now which is wonderful. Even the therapist agrees now that she doesn't really need her. It's just someone to come and visit. At that time, she was also labeled that she was suffering with depression.

Nancy: These were all apart from the Down syndrome, weren't they?

Melissa: Yes, she had a dual diagnosis. We said, “Look, this is terrible. It can't get worse. We might as well try medication,” so we put her on an antidepressant. Within a month or two, we suddenly started thinking, she's not screaming any more or she actually gets out of bed. She comes out and says, “I'm here! Good morning.” Now, it's been such a blessing. There's a lot of stigma with antidepressants, but I think there's definitely a place for them. It brought Jahna back.

Nancy: Of course, it wasn't what you ever planned.

Melissa: No, but it brought her back to who she is.

Nancy: Yes but that is so great. Another interesting thing too, when we are talking about Down syndrome is you had Jahna when you were young. Then you never had any more Down syndrome children, even as you were getting older having babies. A lot of people think, “Well, I can't really have another baby now. I'm getting into my late thirties, maybe forties. What if I have a Down syndrome baby?” You know, you had Jahna when you were young.

I have another niece in Australia. She had a Down syndrome baby, I think it was their first baby right when she was young. It's not really determined on age. In fact, this is what gets me. How do they say that? Apart from those who have learned to know God's truth, that we are in our childbearing years until we reach menopause or until God doesn't give us anymore, out there in the secular world and in the Christian world, most women are not having children in their forties. They have stopped having children much earlier than that so how do they have any statistics anyway?

I know hundreds and hundreds of mothers who have babies in their forties, and they have perfect children. Of course, every now and then, someone has a Down syndrome baby. You've talked about the challenges you faced with Jahna, what about blessings? There's always challenges in everything. Tell me how you feel about the challenges at this moment.

Melissa: The challenges now? Well, it's wonderful now because we don't have any challenges. But during that time, we did face that, and Cal and I would often think, “What if this is how she's going to be for the rest of her life?” There were still blessings, even though she was totally out in La La Land, there were still moments. As Cal said once, there were enough moments where she would be affectionate or show some spark of joy in something, even that was enough to carry us through.

Nancy: Yes, well God has brought you right through. Well, our time is up again so can you stay on for the next session because we haven't even gotten to talk about Jewel yet?

Melissa: Yes, I can stay

Nancy: We will close this session, and I know it’s been a blessing to you because not everybody's journey is perfect, and I know that many of you face different issues in your lives and with your children. Not all of you have “perfect children.” We put that in quotation marks because why is it that we think our children have to be perfect children and how we want them. Children are eternal souls. They might not all be perfect on the outside and may not be doing everything correctly. A lot of children have autism today, and they have this or that, either mentally or physically, but even in having a child that is like this, God comes through.

I think it's in the challenging and difficult times that we really find God more than when everything is wonderful and perfect. Wouldn't you agree? You are going through a difficult, challenging time. You have a child who is a challenge because of their disabilities, either mentally or physically, know that God is with you. Know that this child has as much worth as any other child in your family, and this child is an eternal soul, and this child is going to one day live forever. That is the amazing thing, isn't it? You are preparing this child for eternity. I think we have to often be reminded that this is the real world. I've got a wonderful Scripture to talk to you about. We will do it in the next session.

Let's pray, shall we?

“Lord, we thank You so much that we can hear another story today from Melissa of the ways You deal with each family individually. We thank You that in whatever we face, You are with us. You are bigger than every challenge we face, every circumstance we are in. We thank You and we praise You with all our hearts. We give You thanks for whatever circumstances we are in now, whatever we are facing, we give You praise. We worship You, our Lord, in the name of Jesus.” Amen.

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Podcast 60 - You Are The Queen Of Your Home

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

Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies. Today I’m going to start by reading you a little poem. I love poems and I love poems about mothers.

I have a lovely book called “Quiet Reflections for Mothers.” It has got loads and loads of poems about mothers. I put this together a number of years ago with poems that I had saved from over the years. It is available through Above Rubies. You can go to the webpage aboverubies.org and do a search for “Quiet Reflections for Mothers.”

If you would love some lovely poems to read while you are nursing your baby or you just need a little uplift, well you would love to get it.

Let me tell you this one. It’s called “They Forgot to Tell Me.” It’s about a mother having a baby:

“They said that I was crazy to let myself get fat
And to give up that super job that I delighted at!
They told me I’d be sorry as each morning I was sick,
But they didn’t tell me how I’d feel when you began to kick!

“They told me how my life would change and that I’d sit and weep
For time to make a peaceful bath, for uninterrupted sleep,
They said my home would lose its shine and that I’d get depressed,
But no one ever mentioned that you’d sing while nursing at my breast.

“They tried to raise my consciousness to think about myself,
They begged me to go out alone to help my mental health,
They told me that by leaving you I could improve our bond,
But no one told me that you’d notice I was gone!

“They said that Day Care’s just the thing and Nursery’s all the rage,
To encourage “independence” in a baby just your age!
They said there’d be no money with the mortgages all due,
But they all forgot to me how I’d fall in love with you!”

 

Erin Harrison: Aw, that’s beautiful.

NC: Alright, lovely ladies. I’m going to start a new subject called “The Queen of the Home.” I believe that God wants us all to be queens in our home.

There’s a beautiful Scripture, Song of Solomon 4:8. In the Knox translation it says: “Come to me, my bride. My queen you shall be . . ..”

 

The Song of Solomon can be taken as a revelation of the relationship between Christ and His bride. It can also be between the husband and the wife. I think that is a rather lovely statement, “Come to me, my bride. My queen you shall be.”

I think that our husbands are meant to be king, don’t you, Erin?

EH: I do!

NC: By the way, Erin’s with me again today, hallelujah!

EH: Yay!

NC: Praise the Lord! It’s so good to have her here. We often talk about being queens in our home, which is why I wanted Erin to join me for this subject because I know it is so close to her heart too.

EH: It is.

NC: I think many mothers think they’re just insignificant in the home and what are they doing? They’d rather be out doing some job or career. But actually, you go out to some job and you’re not a queen there. You’re just a servant working for somebody. In your home, dear mother, dear wife, you are a queen!

EH: What could be better than that?

NC: Nothing! You have the opportunity to run your home the way you want to run it. To manage it the way you want to manage it. To make it be the way you want it to be because you’re queen.

I do believe we should see ourselves like this because it’s biblical. Our husband is the king. We are the queen. Our children are princes and princesses. They’re royalty because we all belong to royalty. We belong to the King of kings and Lord of lords.

This kingdom that we belong to is a royal kingdom. It is the greatest of all kingdoms. It is royal. We are a royal priesthood, a kingdom of priests. The Bible says we are kings and priests unto God . So I think we should live like that, don’t you?

EH: I do.

NC: Yes. It’s so good to see yourself as queen of your home.

Now we had another question from a lovely lady who emailed in quite a long time ago and I’m just answering now.

She says here “You say on your podcasts that home is what you make it. I agree, but I am struggling to make my home what I want it to be. Just the basic responsibilities are hard. My feet hit the floor and the next thing I know it’s time to bathe everyone and get them changed into jammies, ready for bed. I have run all day and yet the house looks the same as when I woke up. I feel as if I’ve barely seen my babies, let alone enjoy them or spend quality time with them. Now I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining or self-pitying, but it’s just what it’s like. I have three little ones, five years to five months. Often my days end after the children are asleep with tears and feelings of guilt or failure because of wrong reaction or attitude. But here I am with them every day and I just so want to change. I wondered if you have any practical tips or advice that may be of help because I want my home to be a wonderful place that my children, husband, and I can take refuge in and enjoy being in.”

What do you say, Erin?

EH: Well, I have a lot to say on this actually.

As the queen of a home, you might want your house to look like a castle, right? You wouldn’t want it to look like a messy junk heap. I used to be the messy junk heap girl, I was a slop and I was a hoarder; I saved everything. I used to have cupboard doors that you would have to duct tape closed, otherwise everything would come piling out all over the floor. It was a mess!

I just decided one day that I wanted to have a nice house. I was a young married woman with five under five years old. I decided that there must be, just like the Bible says, a time for everything.

NC: You had five under five?

EH: Yeah.

NC: Wow!

EH: And I felt like I was running ragged and I just knew that there was a time and a season for everything just like the Bible says.

So I just simply put together a little schedule and I got my life ordered because I think that God is a God of order. He’s not a God of chaos. He doesn’t want us running around putting out fires all the time.

My husband says there is just people that coral their children—they don’t actually train them.

NC: That’s right.

EH: So I believe it’s really important first and foremost to train your children to do what you say they’re going to do and when you want them to do it.

I never asked my children, “Would you like to get dressed?” or “What would you like to wear?” or “By the way, are you hungry? What would you like to eat?”

No, I never did that. I always said, “It’s time to get up. It’s time to get dressed. It’s time to go to the table and eat, and this is what we’re having, and this is what you’re wearing. Isn’t that lovely?”

I kept it always positive and they always did what I asked them to.

When I was cooking in the kitchen, I had them cooking with me. When I was cleaning, I had them cleaning. They were my buddies. They did everything with me.

I’d have the five little children on the floor, and we would all be sweeping. I had little brooms for them. They would be sweeping at the same time I would be sweeping. I would even dump crumbs on the floor just because my house had gotten so cleaned up and organized after I decided I was going to have a clean home and put all my messes aside and get rid of stuff.

Then the house was so clean I had to make messes just in order for us to clean them.

We had so much left-over time! We would wake up at seven in the morning and eat breakfast. We would sit at the table and I’d feed them. They weren’t allowed to each make a different thing.

Some mothers just run themselves ragged because “This one wants pancakes and this one wants oatmeal. This one wants cereal and this one wants bacon and eggs.”

No way! Don’t do that! If you are doing that, STOP IT! It’s not a good way to be because you are not their waitress. You are their mother and you are the queen of your home.

You don’t need to be their servant. You are in a kingdom together. Mothers are not meant to be their children’s servants. They are meant to be their mentors and teachers.

You have to switch it around in your brain. Everything you do, have them do it with you because they are learning along the way.

Instead of them playing with toys, why aren’t they just working with you? That’s more fun for them than anything! All little children want to do is to pull up the chair next to the countertop or bench, as you say in New Zealand.

They want to be right in there, mixing the eggs in. They want to be cracking the eggs. You might have a little extra mess, but that’s more fun because you get to clean up the messes together! That gives you more to do.

NC: Yes, and I think too many mothers think that they are the servants. Of course, when your children are little there are lots of things that you have to do for them as you’re training them.

That is one of the wonderful blessings of more children coming on because the other children get older and you have more older helpers whom you’re training.

Sometimes young mothers can look at older mothers with eight, maybe ten children, and think, “Oh, how do they survive?”

They don’t understand that they are the queens of their homes. They have trained their children and really, if they have another baby, they can just sit and nurse their baby and the whole home is organized around them.

EH: I always had a rule, too. If they were playing with one thing, they weren’t allowed to get the other thing out until they were done with that thing. Then they cleaned that up and went to the other thing.

I didn’t coral my children. I had my children trained to always be right with me under my skirts, all the time. They were right there with me. They weren’t off playing something in another room, making a big mess.

I had control over my children in a way that it was fun. It was fun for all of us. We had great fun!

But so many mothers I watch all the time come over. They look so worn out and frazzled. They just look like they don’t enjoy motherhood because their children are running over here and they’re running over there.

Instead of training them they’re waiting until there’s just a fire to put out. Then the child runs over here, opens up a door and starts shoveling everything out. Then they have to run over there, and you hear the mother let out a big sigh and put everything away for her child.

Why not train them not to go into the cabinets? I never let my children go into other people’s cabinets. I didn’t let them go into my cabinets. If you let them go into your cabinets, then they go to other people’s houses and they go into their cabinets. They don’t know the difference!

It’s the mother’s responsibility to train their children in their homes so that when they go other places, they’ll act the same as they do at their house.

Don’t let them jump on people’s furniture and tear around, run around, grab things and pull books off people’s shelves or pound on people’s pianos. No!

NC: Or jump on people’s beds!

EH: Oh, I’ve had it all! And it’s disgusting! I can’t believe people don’t want to train their children. It is actually way more freedom. You feel like you have all the time in the world.

Every afternoon when my children were little, they had their nap from one o’clock till three o’clock.  I felt like I was on a vacation every day from one until three.

I thought, “Well what am I going to do now?” I ended up doing computer work or painting pictures in the afternoons because I love doing creative things.

I had all this free time because my house was gloriously clean, and the laundry was done because we did it all together.

They were taking a nap and I thought, “I can write a song on the piano. I can do this or that.”

If you have them trained, you have yourself organized and you have control over your environment, you have so much unlimited free time. It’s unbelievable and you feel so relaxed.

NC: And this is what God wants it to be. In fact there are some Scriptures in the Bible. In 1 Kings 17:17 it talks about the woman, the mistress of the house.

Now today the word mistress can have some negative connotations in some countries. Men are married to wives and they have mistresses on the side.

But this is not talking about that kind of mistress. The word in the Hebrew is ba`alah. It is just the feminine of ba’al, which means “to be master, to have dominion over.”

There is another word, too, for mistress in the Old Testament. It’s gĕbereth, which is the feminine of gĕbiyr, which is master, meaning “to be strong, valiant, to prevail.”

Part of managing our homes and being the queen in our homes is to be taking dominion over our homes and being in charge. It’s managing your home.

When God spoke the very first words to the man and the woman He said, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”

But He didn’t stop there. He went on to say, “Subdue and take dominion.” He said that to both the man and the woman.

There is that desire in us to take dominion. We want to take control. This is where deception comes in because many women take that desire to have control and be in charge and they take dominion over their husbands.

EH: And that’s not the right way to do it.

NC: Yes, that’s not where we’re to take dominion.

Then others, because of the revelation of God’s heart, they think, “Well, what am I doing in this home?” and they go out and get into a career where they think they can take dominion there.

But you see, this is deception. God wants us to take dominion in our homes.

We go to the New Testament and over in 1 Timothy 5:14 it says: “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully [bring reproach among the name of Christ].”

Now the word for “guide the house” is a word that means “to take dominion, to be master, to be the manager.” To guide the house means to manage the house, to be the ruler of the house. It comes from the word that means “to rule, to manage.”

That is where we understand that we’re meant to be queens. A queen is someone who manages her realm. She manages a whole realm.

We are to manage our domain, our realm, which is our home and our garden, if we are to be totally and absolutely biblical, because we always go back to the beginning. The prototype of the first home was what? It was a garden home. It was the Garden of Eden. It was the first home, the prototype of all homes to come.

God loves us to have a garden as part of our home, to beautify our home, but also to grow food for our families.

Now some of you are in situations where you don’t have room to grow anything. Maybe it’s just impossible for you to do a garden. But you can grow something on your deck. You can grow some herbs on your windowsill—you can grow something so you can be a garden home.

But now back to managing your home. Some people don’t have much to manage. They have their one or two children, send them off to school, then what are they going to do? Look at their four walls and stare into space?

But when we have a vision for the enormity of the power of motherhood and we are open to God’s plan for us (now sometimes it is true, some God only gives us one or two or three and no more come. Others He will give more children).

In this day in which we are living where there is so much evil, deception, and falsehood coming into our public schooling, many are homeschooling, taking their children out of this deception.

How can we, if we’re godly Christian parents, send our children for hours a day to be trained in ungodliness, deception, and lies, because that’s what they’re getting today? I mean the homosexual agenda has just taken over our school system. They’re just getting their claws into it, right down even to kindergarten.

We better be aware of what we’re doing when we send our children into these places.

And so we have a lot to manage over. We become the managers, the queens, of our home and we’re teaching our children to be princes and princesses.

Now you were telling me the other day about a little girl who didn’t quite know how to be a princess. Tell me about this.

EH: Well, we were having this glorious tea party. I did it really on the spur of the moment. It was the night before that I decided that we were going to have this lovely tea party.

So in the morning I was cleaning my whole house and by ten o’clock in the morning we had this big tea party with about ten different ladies. I had the tablecloth and all the china.

One of the ladies didn’t get the memo that it was more for the adult ladies and brought her little girls along, because if I have a tea party for the little girls, then I bring out all the little tables and chairs and I have the tea party for the little girls.

I was kind of feeling a little bit stressed because I hadn’t planned for these little girls. So I was trying to hurry up and find all the little dishes because I was trying to make it special for them too.

You know, when you’re on the spur moment like that things can happen and you still want to make it very nice as a hostess of your home, as the QUEEN of my home.

Well at the end of it all, the two little girls were racing around the house, pounding on the piano.

I came in there a couple of times and I said to her, as if she were a special princess, “I have this rule, you see. The rule is that you either can only play the piano if you have an instructor with you, or you have to have had three years of experience on the piano.”

So I asked her if she had either and she said, “No.”

I said, “Well, I guess you can’t play the piano.”

She said, “Okay.”

She got off the piano and they were racing around, playing hide-and-go-seek. They kept leaving things behind. When the mother was ready to leave, the girls were scrambling around saying, “I don’t have my purse” or “I don’t have this.”

So they were running back into my home and tearing around into every room, looking for their things. 

I kind of felt a little bit leery of people just tearing around my house going into who knows what rooms looking for their things and who knows what drawers because they were opening up all cabinets and everything.

She was about to run in again and I said, “Listen, I think I saw you had that in your hand so you can’t go back in my house.”

She said, “No, I put it on the chair in there!”

I gasped and said, “You’re talking to the queen of this home in that manor? That’s not a good idea. You are a princess and I am a queen. Every woman who is a mother in her home is a queen, did you know that?”

She said, “No, I didn’t know.”

“Well, you have to talk to the queen of the home like she is the queen. You have to be kind and stop and think before you talk because you’re talking to royalty, you’re talking to a queen.

“Instead you must think about it and say, ‘I might have left something inside. May I please go back in and look for it?’ Then the queen would say, ‘Yes.’

“So let’s try this all over again.”

She stopped and I said, “Wait a minute— just think about it when you talk because you are talking to a queen, remember?”

She said, “Yes, I think I had something, and I think I set it on your chair on the way out. May I please go in and look for it?”

I said, “Yes you may.”

She went in and I applauded her for learning to talk nicely instead of talking back to me and treating me bad.

I said, “Listen, if you’re nice to the queen of the home, she’ll invite you back. But if you’re not nice to the queen, well, I was nice enough to have you for this tea party, but I might not invite you again.”

She gasped, saying, “But I loved it here!”

“Well now you can come back because you asked so nicely,” I told her.

NC: How lovely. That’s so beautiful. I think we do have to teach our children these ways, don’t we? Even for our own children to realize we are the queen.

EH: Yes. Even her own mother said, “Thank you so much. I never thought of it that way, but that’s so good.”

Any mother can do that. I always did that when my children were little I would say, “You’re going to this person’s house and they’re so nice enough to have us over. We mustn’t touch anything. We mustn’t jump on the furniture. We must sit there nicely, ask politely and kindly, and treat everything with respect.

I always wanted them to be respectful when they went to somebody’s house, not just tearing around, jumping all over the place, ramming around and going into people’s cabinets.

NC: I think too many children are untrained today.

And I’ve actually just thought of that word I wanted to tell you. It was in 1 Timothy 2:15. It was oikodespoteō, coming from two words, oikos, meaning “home” and despotēo, or despotēs, the noun, which you can perhaps imagine we get our word “despot” from there. That word means to “rule and to reign and to manage.”

The Word tells us that this is where our dominion is to take place. We are to rule and take dominion in our home. That is the place.

When we do that, we find we have this wonderful domain over which we can rule. We have the freedom to do it how we want to. We can make it as amazing as we want to!

EH: It’s so the truth! The key to all of this is training and order. If you can master those two things, you’ve got it all made in the shade and you’ll have the most amazing time.

NC:  I think, too, that the day starts the day before, because often we are up too late ourselves to get up and start managing the day.

Also, we allow our children up too late. Of course, that gets more difficult when they get into their teen years.

But I notice even today that teens are up much later than we were as teens. It seems as though it’s the nightlife. But really, God didn’t give us light to be up at night. He didn’t; He gave us the day. We’re meant to work in the day and the night is for rest.

Of course we just have that balance as they’re getting older.

I remember when my little ones were young, they were down by seven o’clock. Then we had this whole evening together.

Then as they got older, it was eight o’clock and in the bedroom. They were all in bed and we had a lovely time together.

Then it got to nine o’clock . . . then it got to ten o’clock . . . then it got to “Okay children, make sure the doors are locked and lights are out, we’re going to bed.”

It’s still like that now—we’re usually to bed before the young people.

But I do think, especially with young ones, that we should get our children to bed at a reasonable hour. I believe that is good for their health. It is also important for starting the next day.

We need to start the day at a certain time. That’s going to be different in every home. Many homes it’s seven o’clock in the morning. For others it might be a bit later. It depends on your circumstances and how you are.

We do need to get everybody up, teaching them to make their bed before they come out of their bedrooms and come and have breakfast at a certain time.

EH:  It’s a schedule.

NC: I’m not one of those who is all about a rigid schedule. But I believe in having an underlying schedule so that it’s the underlying foundation of the home.

EH: Well does God have a schedule?

NC: Well, does He?

EH: He does have times for things, doesn’t He?

NC: He does!

EH: He appoints things.

NC: He gave the day and the night! He gave seasons!

EH: Exactly, and so shall we.

NC: I think if we’re really going to be managers of our homes, we’re not going to be sleeping in.

This is something that I found quite a challenge when I first got married and once I had children. I had quite a few little ones early and close together.

I had always loved to read. I still love to read and am a good reader. I could read into the night, but then, of course, you can’t get up in the morning. Therefore I had to really discipline myself that I wouldn’t do that, so I could go to bed and be ready to get up to face the day.

So I’m a great believer that if you want to be ready to face the day, it starts the night before. We have to discipline ourselves, not hanging out, watching movies, on social media, etc. and it can get carried away. Then you’re too  tired and can’t get up at a good, decent hour.

In fact, who of us really get up when we should? The day breaks really early, doesn’t it? We get up and, “Oh, it’s light! Okay, it’s time to get up!”

We need to get the children there for breakfast. I don’t know how a mother can cope with children coming at all different times for breakfast. Could you cope with that in your home?

EH: No!

NC: I couldn’t cope with that at all! Breakfast is when it is breakfast and when it’s off it’s off, we clean up and that’s it. You don’t have breakfast if you’re not there on time.

I like to have breakfast on time because we then have family devotions after breakfast. How could we gather all of our family for family devotions if they’re not even up? They need to be up.

I like to have lunch at a certain time. Then we have supper, not at the exact time because it depends how long it takes to get your meal, but I like to have it between six and six thirty.

Some people have it at five. In fact your children were over here on the volleyball court and I think we were just going to sit down to have our meal.

I said, “Wow, have you had your meal?” and they said, “Yes, we’ve had our meal and cleaned up!”

EH: Yep, all cleaned up and everything. Well we have a schedule. I like schedules.

NC: I know, I have mine, too, but ours is just a wee bit later and yours is a bit earlier. You have whatever is best for your family, but you have it.

EH: Yes you do. You need to do yourself a favor and don’t be cleaning all day long. Here is another really good tip, especially if you have older ones. You give each person a special job. Everyone works for 20 minutes; you manage and watch how everybody’s doing their little jobs.

Somebody might be cleaning a toilet and a sink in one bathroom. That’s their 20 minutes. We all pitch in because they’re living there for free. We work together as a team. We’re all a family, so we do teamwork.

One might be sweeping the kitchen, another might be sweeping or vacuuming the living room. Another might be putting the dishes away after they were done the night before and another might be washing them. Someone’s clearing the table.

Everybody has their little 20-minute check point.

Right after breakfast the house is gloriously shining and gloriously clean. That’s what I would always say, “Well, we can’t start the next thing till the house is shining and gloriously clean!”

It would shine and it was glorious. Then we would start school and the house was just glorious!

Then we would eat lunch and do twenty more minutes each person. It’s twenty minutes of actual time. But think about it—if there are five people doing twenty minutes, how many minutes of work is that?

NC: That’s pretty cool!

EH: Is that pretty cool, or not? So twenty minutes times five children that’s what? A hundred minutes total? That’s a hundred minutes of pure work.

Instead of one person doing a hundred minutes like this lady who wrote in was so frantic and frazzled.

Instead of that, you have twenty minutes that you’re just managing it all and making sure everybody’s doing their job but then you’re getting 100 minutes of work in. Isn’t that great? I love it that way.

NC: Yes.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t do spontaneous things and we can’t be free. I find that if you have the underlying, basic sort of schedule, then that lays a basis for being free to go and do other things.

EH: Oh, every afternoon we had freedom.

When the children were older, we would go for a picnic. We had done all of our schooling; the house was shining and gloriously clean. So we would pack a picnic and go do a walk in the countryside, lay a blanket out and have a nice picnic next to a little pond or whatever. Or we would go to the park one day or do a little shopping trip.

We had so much fun! We had so much free time.

Then we would always be back by four and we’d all work together to get our meal on the table. When Daddy came home at five thirty, we always had the meal ready on the table. We all did our part. We did everything together.

NC: That’s the thing. You have the meal ready for your husband because he gets in at five thirty.

I think that’s the thing, is knowing when your husband is going to come in and having the meal ready for him. Don’t you think that’s such an important thing?

EH:  It’s so important and so many women fail to appreciate what their husbands are doing for them all day long.

My husband is up on a roof. He’s in a hot building and he’s building the whole day, working his muscles all day long, sawing wood, pounding nails, and using these different saws and things. He’s carrying big things and putting things together.

He works so hard for our family and I want him to be able to come home, relax, and have a nice meal after a long day because he actually has earned it. He’s worked hard and he pays for the groceries.

So many women are like, “I slaved away all day long and my husband comes home, and he just wants to sit and watch TV. He doesn’t want to do anything with the family or do devotions or anything and wah, wah, wah.”

Instead, why don’t you think about he’s sacrificing all day long so that you can actually go to the grocery store and buy the groceries and make a nice meal for him.

NC: Yes, I think it is one of the greatest privileges of us as wives to have a meal ready for our husbands. I think it is just basic number one rule.

EH: It is. Why can’t we be a blessing to our husbands who are blessing us?

NC: That’s what we’re meant to be. We’re meant to be a helper, which is a blessing and a help. It’s the same word that is used of God that He is our help.

Goodness me, we’re meant to be like God, just helping them.

Let me just close with this beautiful quote from Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage:

“Thank God, Oh women for the quietude of your home, and that you are queen in it. Men come at eventide to the home; but all day long you are there, beautifying it, sanctifying it, adorning it, blessing it. 

“Better be there than wear a queen's coronet. Better be there than carry the purse of a princess. It may be a very humble home. There may be no carpet on the floor. There may be no pictures on the wall. There may be no silks in the wardrobe; but, by your faith in God, and your cheerful demeanor, you may garniture that place with more splendor than the upholsterer's hand ever kindled.”

EH: That’s beautiful.

NC: “Father we thank You just that you have ordained for us to be queens of our home, managing our homes, ruling our homes, keeping them in order to make everyone’s life happy and contented.

“We pray that You will help us to do it the way You want us to do it. That we can fill our homes with Your presence and keep them in an order that You want us to have Father.

“We ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Podcast 59 - Motherhood is an Eternal Work

Rocky: Welcome to the podcast, FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy: Hello ladies. Well, we are now at last starting podcast number 59, and we are getting back on track after catching up on our series, HOW DO WE CHANGE THE WORLD? Now, I do want to mention before we go on today some thoughts of something, I was telling you last week. Remember, I was talking about how we are God's sheep, and if we are His sheep, we hear His voice, and we don't listen to the voice of the stranger?

I was thinking of another Scripture. I didn't share it with you last week and it's in the Old Testament. Hosea 8:12: “I have written to him the great things of my law, but they were counted as a strange thing.”

Isn't that the saddest verse? To think that God has written to us great things. Now, that word “great” in the Hebrew means “multitude, abundance, excellent things,” and His whole Word is filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and the way He wants us to live. It's all there. Everything is there. No matter what need we have in our lives, no matter what question, we can find it answered in this Book.

Yet, isn't it amazing that even amongst Christian people, God's Word can be strange to them? I find this even with a lot of young people in the church today. They don't know the Word. I can't even hear them speaking about the Word. I hear them speaking about loads of other things but not very much about the Word. Shouldn't we be speaking about the Word if it's the most wonderful thing in the world?

I think of the Scripture in Isaiah 59:21 where God is speaking and He says: “As for me, this is my covenant with them saith the Lord. My spirit which is upon you and my Word which I have put in your mouth . . . ” Notice, He doesn't say “in your heart” He says “in your mouth.” “My Word which I have put in your mouth will not depart out of your mouth, nor out of the mouth of your children, nor out of the mouth of your children's children, henceforth and forever, saith the Lord.”

Wow. This is God's mandate to us: that we will get the Word of God into our children’s hearts so that it's in their mouths, speaking it out, and it's not a strange thing to them or to us. May God save us from that. That word strange is the same word used in Psalm 144 when David was praying, and he prays and says twice in this one Psalm. He says: “Deliver me out of the waters from the hand of strange children.”

Again in verse 11: “Rid me and deliver me out of the hand of strange children whose mouth speak vanity and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood.” Who are these strange children? It's the same word, zoor, in the Hebrew that’s used in Hosea 8:12. It means “unrelated, foreign, hostile, profane, to turn aside, to deviate from and it's people who speak words that don't belong to God. They don't come from the Word of God. They don't come from God's heart. They come from another source, and the basic source is the Enemy himself, and he uses people to spread his lies and his deceptions, like we have in our nation today.

We have the fake news, but we have more than the fake news. We have a lot of fake stuff that we believe. Because we live in this world that is so filled with humanism and feminism and now socialism and all these isms, and somehow, they become part of us, and we think like that. We think feministically. We think humanistically instead of thinking God's thoughts. Here, David is saying, “Deliver me from all this fake news and this fake junk and these deceptions and lies and all these isms” because of this reason. Do you know the reason?

It's in verse 12: “That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; and our daughters as cornerstones polished after the similitude of a palace.” If we want our children to grow up in the ways of God and have young men who, even in their youth, are like grown up, mature men because they have been brought up in the ways of God, and the Word of God is in their mouth and coming out of their mouths.

We have daughters who are living godly lives and know who they are and are not affected by the spirit of this world and feminism and humanism. We have to get rid of the fake. We have to get rid of the falsehood. We have to get rid of all that is hostile to God's Word.

Today, really, I think the most normal thing in the church today is that we are really caught up with more stuff than what God wants us to do. We are caught up with more lies from humanism and the isms than we are with the Word of God. I want to encourage us again today that this Scripture in Hosea 8:12 will not be our testimony, but it will be the opposite. Remember it says: “I've written to you great things in my law, but they were counted as strange to you.”

May God's Word not be strange to us. May it be familiar and powerful in our lives. I think of how it's a strange doctrine to many Christian families today to have more than one or two children. They think, “That's strange. That's weird. How can you afford more than a couple of children?” But really, they're talking the strange doctrine. That is not the doctrine of the Word of God because God's Word, as we read it, is about blessing us with children, and when He wants to do us good, what does He do? He blesses us. When He wants to have compassion on us, what does He do? He multiplies us and blesses us with children. This is the heart of God. We've got to get into the Word and see what it says and live by it.

 Anyway, ladies, today is a great day because we've got a special guest. I have got here, sitting right beside me, Erin Harrison. If you have ever listened to the TALK SHOW that I do with Erin, you'll already know her. If you haven't, we'll talk about how you can find it. First of all, say “Hi,” Erin.

Erin: Hello ladies, so good to meet all of you.

Nancy: Can you believe it? I called Erin just a few minutes ago and said, “Hey, Erin, Arden's coming. Can you be free in half an hour?” “Oh, maybe.” she said. “I'm just finishing off canning about seventy jars of tomatoes.” She's been out picking and canning, but she left it all. Well, she finished up; she's so quick, and here she is.

Erin: Yep!

Nancy: You were having a busy day.

Erin: I sure was, but it was fun, and your daughter, Evangeline, was out there helping me.

Nancy: How amazing.

Erin: On our last TALK SHOW that we did this last week, you were with us, you joined us, and I thought there was no way I could ever get Evangeline to bottle things up or can anything with me because she's like, “Oh nonsense, I don't have time for that.” She's always busy running here and there but then I said, “Well, why don't you ladies come and help.” We did this, and she got it in her blood now. She wants to keep on doing it now. She's so excited because she figures that she has so much she can give to her family now. This garden is miraculous though.

Nancy: Oh, Erin's garden! Now, I have to say, ladies, I love gardening, and I've always had a wonderful vegetable garden, and I'm getting things out of my garden this year, but it's not prolific. I'm feeling such a failure. I go to Erin's garden, and I've never seen anything more prolific in my whole life. It is amazing.

Erin: I think we've grown enough produce in there for about five families.

Nancy: At least.  Anyway, Erin and I actually do a TALK SHOW every week. It's live.

Erin: Tuesdays at 2 pm central standard time on the Keeper of the Homestead blog Facebook page, but I also upload the video to YouTube as well. If you go to Keeper of the Homestead on YouTube, just search it up and you'll find all the ones that are recorded on there.

Nancy: Yes, and then last week, we were bottling. We don't say that word here in America.

Erin: We were, and we looked terrible, didn't we?

Nancy: Yes. Anyway, in New Zealand, we call putting all your stuff in your jars bottling. I think it's really what you are doing. You're putting stuff in bottles, so we're bottling them. Of course, you say canning here in America. We did do it the old New Zealand way which is pouring the tomato puree into the jars.

Erin: Well, it has to be boiling first with the hot jars and the hot lids, piping hot.

Nancy: Oh yes, sterilize the jars while the puree is boiling, and we sterilize the seals and the rings and everything.

Erin: Then we turn it upside down and it pops and seals.

Nancy: Exactly. Did you know what? I must have mentioned I was doing that, and someone piped back on my Facebook, “Oh goodness me, you're meant to do it in the canning thing.”

Erin: Oh, you've gotten a message from the canning police, have you?

Nancy: Yes.

Erin: Oh, I always get those because I never do it by the blue book. I call them the blue book canning police.

Nancy: Yes, well, most Americans do use, what do you call them?

Erin: Pressure cookers. I saw the comment.

Nancy: You did?

Erin: I did, and I started laughing. I thought, “The blue book canning police found me again.”

Nancy: Well, the funny thing is, in New Zealand, we don't own these canning things, so we've always done it this way, and the population of New Zealand is still alive.

Erin: Well, we're still alive. I've been bottling and canning now for about 17 or 18 years. I've done thousands and thousands of jars, and I can always tell if a jar is off.

Nancy: Well, of course. If it's sealed, it sucks under, doesn't it? It indents.

Erin: It does, and I always smell my jars before I use them, and I always boil them again because you're heating it all up anyway. I know I can't technically, by law, tell you how to do it that way, but you have to can at your own risk, and that's what we do.

Nancy: Well, I didn't even know there was a risk because it's the only way we did it in New Zealand.

Erin: I know. It's the only way the Amish did it too, so yeah.

Nancy: Anyway, it's such great fun.

Erin: It's so fun. We had the time of our lives, didn't we? We were laughing, and you were crawling around the floor.

Nancy: If you are going to watch it, it's pretty raw, especially with Evangeline on it, but I will have to make a disclaimer now because we got on to talking about all kinds of subjects. Well, what happened is I got there because we were going to do this bottling or canning, whatever you want to call it, and Erin says, “I'm going to film this. This will save us doing a talk show. This will be our talk show.”

I had arrived in my oldest clothes with my dirty apron with stains on because I knew that we were going to be getting dirty. We look pretty raw and terrible. Anyway, that's why I love doing podcasts. Did you know that, ladies? I love it because I don't have to get dressed up. I can talk to you here, in my home, in my working clothes and never put on a little bit of makeup, which I never do at home. Only if ever I have to go out.

Erin: For my talk show, she always puts beautiful make up on, she combs her hair, and she puts a beautiful necklace on and beautiful tops. She always looks so glorious.

Nancy: Yes but it always takes time to do that, so this is the fun about podcasts. You can imagine what I'm like. Oh no, don't imagine. Anyway, we got talking about all these things and we got on to talking about...

Erin: Debates with the family.

Nancy: Yes. Our family, because we were saying how it's good to do this kind of thing together. Evangeline was saying how she had been reading how one of the most wonderful things for the brain is for people to be discussing and talking and dialoguing together. Togetherness is very important. I was sharing how this is how we grew up and how we raised our children, and I'm sure you do this too. How you gather your children around the table, and you talk, and you fellowship.

 What I love to do is bring a subject to the table for discussion because I do find that often if we leave the conversation to go anywhere, it goes nowhere, and nobody says anything much. It's a great idea to bring something, an idea, a question, a subject for people to talk about.

Evangeline was saying what amazing times we used to have, and her memory was embellished because she was thinking of the wonderful amazing times we had together, and she got way out on her embellishing of these great memories. She said, “Yes, I can remember how Mom and Dad would get up and stand on the table.”

“I beg your pardon!” I said to Evangeline, “I've never done that in my life.” Anyway, if you hear her say that, you'll know it's just her memory being embellished.

Erin: It's so fun, isn't it?

Nancy: Oh yes, it's all fun but the table actually to me is very sacred. In fact, if children even put their knees up at my table, I'll be telling them to put their knees down because that is not the place to do that. I like to teach our children etiquette at the table.

Erin: What about putting your elbows on the table?

Nancy: We try not to do that because I must admit sometimes, I do that myself, but it's not the right thing to do. It's not as bad as sticking your knees up. I've had young people come to my table and put their knees up on my table. I cannot believe it. I think, what do their parents teach them?

Erin: Would you believe it? I used to be a knee table sitter. I was. I used to always have my knees up, and I'd put my plate between my knees and my chest, and I would balance it there, and I would eat, shovel the food right in my mouth . . . when I was a young child growing up, all the way through my teen years. And when Mark met me, his mother was very proper. She would not have it. She was so gracious to teach me. Then I started to sit like a normal person at the table. I couldn't imagine doing it now.

Nancy: It is just training, isn't it? I mean, we do have to train our children correctly.

Erin: But there's hope, if I could. Now, I have these glorious, beautiful tables, and I am so prim and proper at the table. You would have never thought I was like that, would you?

Nancy: Oh, never. You might have seen some of my pictures on Instagram because I usually will put one if we've been down to Erin's for a special meal. We always call her table a “Gloriana meal” because it's so beautiful.

Anyway, that was my disclaimer. I will have to confess our table with our children was loud because they really debated. I can remember Rocky getting up on a chair to get his point across but never the table. My husband is very proper at the table, and he would never allow such a thing in his wildest dreams, let alone do it himself.

In fact, my husband always comes to the table, usually in a suit or dressed very proper. He has never ever come to the table in my married life of 56 years ever in just causal working clothes. There's something special about the table. He feels its right to come and come dressed appropriately.

In fact, I remember reading the book Faith of our Fathers by John McCain. I have to say that I wasn't in any way a fan of his beliefs, even though he was a Republican, I think he was a RINO. I do have to admit that his book was a wonderful book as he wrote about his very patriotic grandfather and his patriotic father. It was wonderful to read about them. Also, of his time in prison in Vietnam. It was a very good book, but he says in that book that his parents would come to the table each night, his father dressed in a suit and his mother in an evening gown.

Erin: That is beautiful.

Nancy: That was the emphasis they put on the supper table. Isn't that interesting?

Erin: That's what I want to do every night, but I dress in my dresses every day. I must confess, even in the garden this morning, I was wearing a dress. I can't help myself. I always feel like a queen though.

Nancy: Yes, well, that's the thing, and we are going to talk together in our next podcast about being queens, but before we get on to that, I have some questions here. I'm sorry, ladies, I keep forgetting to answer your questions. I have so many things I want to tell you, but we'll do a couple of questions today. Don't forget, you are welcome to ask any questions. Write into my email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and you can send them in.

Erin: I have a question.

Nancy: Oh, you have one! Yes?

Erin: I keep meaning to answer this question. One of the ladies who watches our talk show had this special question that I keep telling her I'm going to talk to you about or ask you. The question is, “What do I do if I have a guest over at my meal table, and they have a potty mouth?” They say bad words, cussing words, in her home. It could be someone they're trying to minister to. Does she correct them?

Nancy: It's not something we ever want to have in our home, but if we are really reaching out to the real gutter-most perhaps, and we have done this over the years . . . in fact, I can remember in Australia how my husband and I had one of these real bad gangs. We had a guy who came to the Lord and he kind of knew them and brought them around and brought them to our church. Then, he asked them to come to our place for lunch, and we said yes, we'd love them to come for lunch.

Well, they arrived up in their Harley's in our neighborhood. I guess the neighborhood wondered what they struck. Back in New Zealand and Australia, the most times the people who ride Harley's are gang members. That's not true in America. You have wonderful, fine people who just love Harley's. Down under, it's sort of different. It's usually the gang members.

One was called Snake, one was called Dapper Dan. We were really reaching out to the real raw. We've had all kinds of people into our home. When you're inviting guests for fellowship, it's going to be different than if you're really ministering to people. If you are doing that, well then, you're going to have to accept the fact that they're going to say anything because they are not yet converted.

Erin: Exactly. That's the truth.

Nancy: Of course, if they're using the name of Jesus in vain, you could say, “My, do you love that name? You use it a lot, don't you? That name is so precious to me.” God can usually give you something to say about that.

Erin: That's beautiful. That's great.

Nancy: Anyway, this precious lady listens to my podcasts. She says, “I listen to the podcast all the way from Port Orchard, Washington, and it is the highlight of my week. Every Tuesday, I think to myself, 'Yay! It's Tuesday, a new podcast.' It gives me a spring in my step.”

She has a question which she wrote in and asked if we could discuss it on the podcast. “My husband and I are in our early parenting days. We only have a six-month-old boy. We have a lot of debt from our young, dumb single years, and he works 70-80 hours a week just to barely break even. I do everything I can to cut costs, but I feel useless staying at home with a six-month old. I feel like I have a load of extra time that I should help out financially. On top of that, we believe in letting God decide the number of children that we have, but it scares me to death of how we will afford more mouths to feed and more bodies to clothe if we are barely making it with one baby. Does God want us to be irresponsible and take on more babies than we can afford?”

Well, I think that's a very good question because so many of you could be asking those very same questions. What are your thoughts?

Erin: For one, little ones don't cost very much to care for. It's when they get to be teenagers that it gets more costly. When they are little like that, my goodness, they don't really eat any extra food. I mean, you're worried about finances, there's so many ways to save money. When you go to the grocery store, you can buy basic ingredients instead of packaged goods which cost a lot less. You can buy big bags of rice really cheap. When turkeys or chickens are on sale, you can buy them when they are only 90 cents a pound.

There are certain times of the year, stock up. Stock up on things. Buy big sacks of flour or wheat berries to grind, and you make a lot of your meals from scratch. That way you can save quite a bit of money. You can do cloth diapers. I've done all of this because we were very, very poor. I never went to work when my children were little. My husband had a job that only paid minimum wage for many years. He worked at a junk yard and was always coming home burned. We made it work because we believed that we were doing God's will for our lives to raise these children. We even grew some of our own food. That's how I got into the whole homesteading thing because of necessity. “Necessity is the mother of invention” is the old saying.

Nancy: Yes. I do think that we can live a lot less expensively than most people do. In fact, I notice that we are a throw away generation. We have so much. Do you know that we don't even need a quarter of what we have in our homes? Look, we could get rid of maybe 90 percent and still live basic good lives.

Erin: You could sell it on eBay.

Nancy: Oh yes.

Erin: Your grandson, Arrow does all sorts of sales on eBay, and he makes quite a bit of money. You can make a little money on the side selling things that you don't need.

Nancy: Well, that is true. A lot of people do that. They even go around buying things that are cheap and then selling them for more. Actually, you were saying, lovely friend, that you have your darling little baby, six months.

Erin: You are not useless. It bothers me because she is not useless. That is a huge undertaking, to care for a little six-month-old baby. They need you, and she's doing such a great work.

Nancy: Absolutely. There's nothing more powerful. You could try out and get an extra job, but really, you're doing something lesser, something that's going to fade away.

Erin: That doesn't matter in eternity.

Nancy: No, it does not. Really, this is the amazing thing about motherhood, ladies. It is an eternal career. Everything that you pour into your children, into your baby, into your children, it's all working for eternity. You see, God has given you the privilege of training and nurturing eternal souls. Yes, you're preparing them for this life but more than that, for eternity. Every moment counts. You may think, “I'm not actually out there earning money.”

No but God sees. God sees. You are earning. God sees that time. It's all going down and building up for eternity. I was reading the other day where Jesus said: “If you will give a cup of cold water in my name, you will not lose your reward.” I've often read that and thought, goodness me, a cup of water. What's that? It isn't anything, but Jesus is saying, even if we do it as unto the Lord and in His name, we are not going to lose our reward.

I thought to myself, wow, if someone will not lose a reward for just a cup of water, what about us mothers who prepare not just a cup of water for our children but meals. Breakfast, lunch, supper . . . breakfast, lunch supper. Day after day, month after month, year after year.

Erin: Or nursing a six-month-old baby.

Nancy: Oh yes, that's more than a cup of water.

Erin: There's so many nutrients in breast milk. That's huge. God created your body to pour that forth. You have to take a little inventory, look at your spending., do a little budget planning and maybe you and your husband could cut a few corners here and there. Because having children and having a little brother or sister for your little six-month one day will be such a blessing to your little one. They'll have each other for the rest of their lives. You would never regret having a child, but you will regret if you don't have children because when you're old and you only have one or no children, then you look back on your life, all the work you did, all the money you earned doesn't show for anything. All that you show for are the people gathered together around you at the end of your days. That's what matters the most, isn't it?

Nancy: Yes, that's so true,

Erin: When somebody is on their death bed, what do they want? Do they want money? No, they want to be gathered around with their children and their grandchildren to see them off and bless them before they take their last breath.

Nancy: Exactly. That is absolutely true. I'm thinking because this lovely mother says that how on  earth, as you were saying, how would we manage, would we be irresponsible if we are barely making it with one baby? Dear mother, this is the thing. You think you're barely making it now, but you are making it. You're not on the streets. You've got a house over your head.

Erin: Thank God; He's providing for you. Thank the Lord.

Nancy: You have meals, I'm sure, every day. Goodness, the Bible says, if you have just food and clothing therewith be content (1 Timothy 6:8). Often, we want more all the time. We have to get back to this being content. I was saying before, we are a throw away generation. Now, I'll have to get on to one of my pet peeves. Actually, the other morning, we had a lovely ladies' morning tea, didn't we?

Evangeline said, “Ok, let's go around,” because we always love to think of something we can talk about, “and let's talk about our pet peeves.” Someone said, “Oh no, that's too negative,” so we didn't. We talked about what thrills us most.  That was so wonderful. Sometimes, I do like to talk about my pet peeves.

Erin: I like to talk about my pet peeves too.

Nancy: I do. Maybe we'll have to have a podcast about it one day. Anyway, one of them is people taking so much on their plate and then throwing half of it in the trash can at the end.

Erin: There's nothing worse.

Nancy: I cannot stand it. Of course, I am a little older. I grew up in the days when you don't waste food. When we grew up as children, if we didn't eat what was on our plates, it waited for the next meal, and we ate that at the next meal, and we learned to eat what was given us. We didn't ever have stuff left over on our plates and throw it in the trash can.

The other night, I had about fourteen around our table, and we're cleaning the table and some folks are helping and getting the stuff and throwing it into the trash. It wasn’t anything on someone's plate, it was a serving dish, and there was a little bit left,  but if there is anything left from a serving dish, I will put it in a container, put in the fridge, and it's leftovers for the next day.

This person was just throwing it in the trash. I said, “Oh, just a minute, that hasn't touched anyone's plate. I'm going to save it.” She said, “Oh, I'm just use to throwing everything away.” I thought to myself, “I can't believe it.” We say that we don't have much or don't have enough, yet we throw away more than we need. I think we should train our children not to be part of this throw away generation.

Erin: Teach them to portion control.

Nancy: Yes, that's what I believe.

Erin: Even here on Sundays, I see certain children that come and load up their plate, and it's heaping full, and it sits there, and it's full, and it makes me want to cry because there's children that are starving in the world.

Nancy: Maybe we will have to get our bucket and cry into it.

Erin: We should. We could see how many tears we could collect, how many cups. The thing is that a mother should train her children to take a little of this and a little of that, a spoonful of each thing. If you don't like it, then it's not throwing away so much.

Nancy: Exactly. That's what I always say to the children. I say, “Look, take a little bit and then you can come back for as much as you want.”

Erin: You can always come back for more. It's actually more fun. You teach them it's like a little taste testing plate. Then you know what you like the best, you taste it all, you take a teaspoonful for each thing. See what you like. Come back and load it up with what you like the most.

Nancy: We have a big crowd. Our family when we get together is pretty large. At Christmastime and Thanksgiving, we will have up to a hundred people for a sit-down meal. Always at the beginning of our big meal, we have the food put out and it's so much food because everybody brings something. I will do my little lecture, “Now children, all listening to Nana. Remember, just take what you can eat and then you're welcome to come back for more. But I don't want to see any food left on any plates.”

Well, I give this lecture every year but every year, I go around and there's big pieces of chicken and turkey and lamb left on plates. I want  to cry.

Erin: Want to know what the Amish do?

Nancy: What?

Erin: Well, it's really interesting. I'll quickly explain it. They have this big, long spread of food. They have a lot of carbs; there are quite a lot of carbs. Noodles, they call it nootlan. They have pies and cakes and cookies and puddings and this jello and all this stuff but then they'll have a little bit of meat. Well, they go through, and they have always the women with the baby children, the littlest ones, then after, that is the men. The men go next and the young folks (they call the teenager boys that are working age all the way up till they're maybe 25) if they are not married. Then the young folk girls. Then the ladies go last. You know what they do? It's a little trick. I learned it. When they go in line with their little ones, they pile a lot of food on their plates, with their little ones because they clean up their little one’s food after that. They never put any of it to waste. They know so many people going through the line, that they might not get anything. That's their little trick. Isn't that a fun trick?

Nancy: Yes, it is.

Erin: They never let anything go to waste.

Nancy: No. We have to teach our children this. I wanted to give you this Scripture. It's in the blessing chapter of Deuteronomy 28, and it says here that God will bless us if we walk in His ways and His commandments. The first blessing is verse 4: “Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb.” That's the first blessing but then God adds other blessings. “And the fruit of your ground. The fruit of your cattle, the increase of your kind, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed shall be your basket and your store.” I

It's talking about abundant provision. Now ladies, that provision, when it comes, it doesn't come before you have that baby, or number two baby, or three baby or four baby or number 10 baby. It comes after! You see, blessed shall be the fruit of your womb. When God blesses your womb, then he will add those extra blessings to enable you to feed the blessing that comes from your womb. This is the wonderful thing. No matter how many children God gives you, whether it's two or it's 10, God will provide.

I have received so many testimonies from mothers who share, “When we had our sixth baby, we didn't know how we were going to cope but God is amazing, my husband got a raise.” That happened so many times. Another one will write, “God provided miraculously this big van so that we could fit all our children in it.” All these little blessings come along the way to provide for this new baby that comes into the home.

Dear precious mothers, don't worry, you don't have to think of the future. Trust God and He will provide. All our lives, we've been married 56 years, we have lived from hand to mouth, trusting God from day to day. Here we are, 56 years plus down the road married, and we are still alive, and we still have everything we need. We don't have everything we want but who cares about that? We have all we need. We have a home over our heads, and we have food to eat. We have clothes to wear. What more do we need? God is so good. He is a God who can be trusted but we need to close.

“Lord God, we thank You so much for Your wonderful goodness and faithfulness and provision. We thank You that You are the God of provision, and You have stated in Your Word, which cannot lie, that when You bless the fruit of the womb, that You will then bless our store and our basket and all that we need to provide for the children You give us. We thank You.

“Lord, I pray for all these listening who have worries about finance and will they be able to provide, and can they do this or that? But I pray that You will lift their eyes up to see who You are. That You are a God who can be trusted. I pray that You will help them trust You more and more in the name of Jesus. Amen.”

Erin: Amen.

If you need further encouragement about God providing, I know you will be blessed by this article:

http://tinyurl.com/CanGodProvideforBaby

 

FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell

Podcast 58 - How Can We Change the World- Part 24 (last podcast on this subject)

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

Nancy Campbell: Hello ladies. I mentioned in my last podcast that I would explain to you more what the word “meditate” means.

When you look it up in the Hebrew it is the Hebrew word hagah. It has a number of meanings.

The first is, of course, as we would imagine, “to meditate, to ponder, to think about.” Now that’s about how we would think of meditating on the Word. But there is more to it.

In fact, this Hebrew word actually means “to emit a sound, to murmur, to mutter, to read in undertones, to recite quietly.” So it’s speaking about when we read the Word that we’re meant to speak it out loud. Either very loudly or very quietly, but we’re speaking it under our breath. But apparently the best way we are to read the Word is to verbalize it.

Thirdly “to speak out loud.” which I had mentioned. It can be quietly, sort of muttering under your breath; or it can be loudly. Back in Bible times that’s what they did. They read the Scriptures, always reading audibly. Either to themselves, just quietly under their breath, or they were reading them aloud to others.

Now I’m quite challenged about this because I love to read but I don’t always bother to read out loud. That always takes a little more effort. And so I am being challenged about that, even when I am doing my personal reading to start doing that out loud, or if someone’s around, to read it quietly under my breath.

This word also means “to study, to memorize, to moan or groan.” Have you ever groaned with conviction when you read God’s Word? I have. Have you ever moaned with the weight of a revelation that God gives you as you are reading a passage, or even God’s judgment on sin?

I mean, you go through some of the major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on, or even the minor prophets, and you read the prophetic words of God’s judgment upon Israel and then of His coming judgment on the day of the Lord. Wow. Oh goodness me, they are so powerful, and you can just moan.

That’s why I believe we need to be people who are constantly reading the Word because as we read the Word, we get the fear of God into us.

I often say to people that it’s a good idea to read the book of Revelation every now and then. It puts the fear of God into you. We do need that. I believe the fear of God is missing from so much of the church of God today. People don’t walk or live or act as though they live in the fear of God.

Often, it’s the opposite. There’s no fear of God in their lives by what they say, do, or watch. There’s no fear of God. The only way we get the fear of God is in the Word of God.

As we’re reading it, we realize that this God that we serve here is a loving, merciful God, but He’s also a God of judgment and justice. And at this present time of grace, with great patience, He waits for more and more to come to repentance. For He is not willing that any should perish, but He waits, and He waits.

There is coming a time when He will deal with sin. He will deal with the nations. And He will deal with people personally. As you read in the Word, that’s not going to be a nice time. It’s a fearful day of judgment. Sometimes you can even moan and groan as you read it. I just cry out to God and say, “Oh, God, I just want to be walking in your fear, I want to be right with You. I don’t want to be in that place where I’m going to receive that judgment for sin.”

Of course we know that every sin that we bring to Him and to His forgiveness that He forgives and forgets, and it comes under the blood of Jesus and will be remembered no more. But if we are walking in sin, when Jesus comes and the Day of the Lord comes and the judgment comes, we will have to face that.

It also means “to growl.” In Isaiah 31:4, it talks about the lion growling and just as a lion growls, chews, rips, and tears its prey to eat it, so that’s how we’re meant to eat the Word of God.

We get into it and we chew it and bite it and, oh, we just want to get into it! It’s far more than just having a little read. We’re to be just like that lion that’s tearing its prey and just wants to get it into his mouth.

This is also one of the pictures of that word, “meditate.” Meditating in God’s Word is the opposite to the alternative meditation people like to do today— yoga meditation, or Buddhist meditation, which is so pacifist. No, when we’re meditating on God’s Word it’s not being passive at all, it’s getting into it. It’s speaking it aloud. It’s studying. It’s using your mouth.

In fact, we can also look at Joshua 1:8, which is similar to Psalm chapter one that we read in last week’s podcast. It says: “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth[Do you notice the word “mouth” there? It’s our mouths. We have to get the Word of God into our mouths. We’re to be speaking the Word of God. This is very important]; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night [exactly the same as Psalm chapter one], that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.”

That’s exactly the same promise in Psalm chapter one where we meditate “day and night” and “you will prosper.”

The word for “prosper” actually means “you will be wise, you will get wisdom and understanding, and you will know the right thing to do.” All when we have the Word in us.

We notice this mouth business. Then I think of Isaiah 59:21: “As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy MOUTH. . ..”

Do you see it again? “Thy words which I have put in thy MOUTH.” Have you got the Word in your mouth? Is it coming out of your mouth? That’s where it has to be, dear ladies. In our mouths.

It goes on to say that it: “. . . shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed [your children], nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed [your children’s children], saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever.”

What a powerful Scripture. I believe that this is the vision that God gives to us parents and mothers. He wants us to have the Word abiding in us, not only in our hearts, but in our mouths so we can speak it.

We’re always speaking it out when we come together at breakfast time, and after breakfast, our Bible reading time. So often before my husband even reads the Word, I’m bursting to share what God has already given me. “Oh, I’ve just got to tell you what God has said to me this morning through His Word!” and so I’m speaking it out.

When you speak it out it becomes more part of you. That’s why God wants us to get it into our mouths.

But then it says He wants us to get it into the mouths of our children. How much of the Word is in your children? How much of the Word comes out of your children’s mouths? Do they really have it in their mouths?

Dear lovely ladies, this is our responsibility. Yes, this is what God says, “This is My covenant, this is what I want you to do. I want you to get it into the mouths of your children.”

Now, that’s going to take a lot. That reminds me of that wonderful book, Ten P’s in a Pod. I’m sure many of you have read this book. It’s an old book, written many, many years ago, but I still have it available for sale at Above Rubies. I’m doing a sale at the moment so if you pop on to the web page at www.aboverubies.org you can order Ten P’s in a Pod.

It’s a wonderful story of this family. The father had a great vision to get the Word into His children. He didn’t have only his Bible reading time once a day or even twice a day.

In our home we do it twice a day because we believe that is a Biblical principle. If you want to know about it and understand the Biblical principle you can go onto my web page and put in the search, “The Evening and Morning Principle” (or it might be “The Morning and Evening Principle”). It shows all the Scriptures there of God’s principles of getting His Word into our hearts morning and evening and coming to Him in prayer, praise, and worship every morning and evening.

The morning and evening really are a minimum of coming into His presence as a family each day.

But this father—oh, he had an even bigger vision than that. He wanted to fill his children with the Word! So he would read to his children for an hour after breakfast every morning. After lunch, he would read to them for an hour again. After suppertime, he would read to them for an hour again.

Then as their children got a little older and they could read for themselves, he encouraged them to have 15 minutes before they came to breakfast. As they got older, they had to get up to an hour.

They were in the Word for four hours a day, so consequently most of the children could recite the whole of the New Testament verbatim and so many passages of the Old Testament because the Word was in them. But not only was it in them, they had all these opportunities for reciting it out, so it was getting out of their mouths.

Now this guy, the son of father, he wrote this book and it’s not only about that. It’s about their exciting million-mile journey as they went through the whole of USA and Canada preaching the Gospel, all the things that happened and the funny things that happened.

He also said that they stayed in many Christian homes along the way because people would host them. But his father would never deviate from this principle. So even if he was staying in someone else’s home, a lovely Christian home, he would say to the host and hostess, “We love to read the Word of God after our meals, so would you mind if I read the Bible to my children?”

They would always say, “Oh, of course, go ahead! You’re so welcome.”

Then he would say, “Would you like to join with us?”

Well, the son wrote in his book that not one person ever said yes. They were Christian homes. But not one ever stopped to stay with them.

Anyway, my husband and I were blessed to meet this guy recently. He’s now a grandfather, the son who wrote the book when he was only 21. He came to visit, and oh, it was so delightful to meet him.

God has blessed him throughout the years and now he has children and grandchildren. It was so wonderful to talk with him and see the blessings and the fruit of their lifestyle still continuing down the generations.

Recently I was staying with some folk and visited a most lovely family. Some of you will know this family, Brayden and Tali Waller. He’s the oldest son of the Waller family who is doing this incredible ministry in the heartland of Israel on the West Bank. Ha Yovel is the ministry. They take families and young people from all over the world to go to the heartland of Israel, the West Bank and harvest the grapes and the olive orchards, minister and bless the farmers on the hills of Samaria there.

Anyway, I wasn’t in Israel, but I was staying at their home in Missouri. It was so amazing to see their four little children. Their little children got up and recited to me a whole chapter of the Bible. They did it together. They’re just little ones and they knew the whole chapter. In fact, they already know chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew, and chapters 15, 16, and 17 of John. They can recite Isaiah 40, plus many of the Psalms, they know hundreds of the Psalms.

Here are these little ones already being filled with the Word of God and speaking it out because they have lots of opportunity to say it together and speak it out. The Word is coming out of their mouths.

So I want to encourage you in that, dear ladies. That’s what the word “meditate” really means. Did you get it? Not just to think about, but to speak it quietly under your breath or out loud. To study, memorize, or even moan and groan, or even to growl. It’s all to do with coming out of your mouth!

I trust that you will be an Isaiah 59:21 family!

That’s a great vision to have. You can tell your children about that. Say, “Children, we are going to be an Isaiah 59:21 family.”

You could print this Scripture out and put it up on your wall, reminding you all to get the Word of God into your mouth, and into the mouth of your children, and into the mouth of your children’s children and henceforth forever. It’s meant to carry on for generations.

We don’t want to be, like we were talking in the last podcast, like the generations that are degenerating. We want to be regenerating for God. Amen? Absolutely!

Let’s carry on, shall we? We are going to move on today to our last two points. I think that we will complete them today.

No. 18. ECSTATICALLY REJOICING

We know God wants us to rejoice. It tells us: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice.” We all sing that little chorus, don’t we?

Once again, we have an adjective. God not only wants us to rejoice, but to EXCEEDINGLY rejoice. What does it say in 1 Peter 1:8? We’re to rejoice with “. . .joy unspeakable and full of glory.” That’s a great description, isn’t it?

Let’s look at some other situations where God wants us to rejoice. God doesn’t only want us to rejoice when everything’s going good. That’s easy. We all rejoice when everything’s great. We’re happy, we’re having a good time, we’re laughing, we’re rejoicing. But the rejoicing God talks about is rejoicing when everything’s not going so well.

We’re going to talk about when people speak against you. I wonder— have you ever rejoiced when someone has spoken against you? It’s certainly not the thing that we would naturally do, is it?

No, we want to do the opposite. We get very offended and quite mad. How dare they say that about me! That’s not true! Help, I can’t even believe it! And we get indignant and we get offended.

But what does the Bible say? Matthew 5:11-12: “Blessed are ye [that means happy. Happy are ye], when men shall revile you, and persecute you [that’s even more than just saying something a little derogatory about you] and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.”

Those words, exceeding glad, is a word in the Greek, agalliaō. It means (listen for it, ladies!), “to jump and leap for joy, to show one’s joy by leaping and skipping, ecstatic joy and delight.”

That’s absolutely the opposite to how we feel when someone speaks about us.

Maybe you have friends who just think you’re a nutcase because you’re have more children than the 1.9 that American’s have.

They think you’re a nutcase because you’re homeschooling. Maybe they even talk about you behind your back and you can get so sad and upset.

But here Jesus says when people revile you, persecute you and talk about you falsely, rejoice and be exceeding glad! Now I wonder, have you ever in your life jumped, skipped, and leaped with joy when that has happened to you? Well, if you haven’t, you haven’t been biblical.

I must confess, I don’t do that all the time but because I know the Scripture and I know what it means I have tried to do it a few times. Yes, I have jumped and leaped and skipped around the room when I’ve heard of horrible things spoken about me because I know that’s what God wants me to do.

It really does work because there’s something about bodily action. You start jumping, leaping, and skipping, “Oh hallelujah, Lord, I’m just so rejoicing in you! What does it matter what they say? I’m trusting and I’m jumping and I’m leaping!” Really, you can’t feel mad or upset after that if you’re leaping and skipping because you’re jumping it all out of you.

So perhaps you could try it the next time that maybe this happens, because it’s sure to happen. I don’t think there’s one of us who have ever missed out and will certainly face it again. We will always have to face these things in the future. So let’s know what to do.

Another thing that we should do is to pray for them and bless them. In the same Scripture, in Matthew 5, it talks about that, too. Matthew 5:44: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

The Bible never lets us off, does it? It always shows us what to do. God’s Kingdom principles are always the opposite to how we feel. We don’t want to do that; we don’t want to do any of it. But if we do, amazing things happen. We get free inside. All the bitterness, hurt, and feeling upset, it goes as we bless those who hurt us, do good to them, pray for them and skip, leap, and rejoice!

The next one, when you go through temptations and difficulties. First Peter 1:6-7: “Wherein ye greatly rejoice [greatly rejoice. Actually that “greatly rejoice” is the same Greek word that means to jump, and leap for joy, and skip with ecstatic joy and delight. So, when you’re going through trials you greatly rejoice], though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: whom having not seen, ye love. . .” So there it is.

Now the third one: When you’re going through a fiery trial. First Peter 4:12-13: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

There we have it again. Not just joy, but EXCEEDING joy. Even when we’re going through trials.

Of course our greatest, exceeding joy will be on that day. Even when we’re going through trials here, we can trust God, we can know that this is only a season, it’s only for a little time. There’s going to be a day of great rejoicing.

“If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. . ..” (1 Peter 4:14).

And so lovely ladies, not only in our homes with our precious children, but even going through difficult times, fiery trials, temptations, and when people speak against us, in all these Scriptures God tells us to exceedingly rejoice.

Once again, we’re not going to be normal people. We’re not going to be average. We’re not going to be status quo. We are going to be those who are totally different, over the top, above and beyond, because we are mothers who are going to change the world. Even when we go through these tough times we will rejoice with exceeding joy. We will just skip, leap, and jump around the room. Do you think you could do that?

I wonder if I could just tell you the rest of these quickly so we can finalize this amazing series of CHANGING THE WORLD.

No. 19. GREATLY PRAISING

God doesn’t want us to only praise Him but praise Him with our whole hearts. David was continually confessing in the Psalms: “I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart.”

Here’s one of hundreds, Psalm 11:1: “Praise ye the Lord. I will praise the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation.”

We like to sing to end our Bible reading and prayer. Do you like to do that? It is important to also sing when you come together for Bible reading, because when we come together morning and evening it is a type of how they lit the altar of incense every morning and evening. The altar of incense speaks of prayer, worship, and praise unto our God.

So as we come together as a family it is important to sing. When you do sing, how do you sing as a family? Do you sing boringly? Do you sing just averagely? Or do you sing with all your hearts?

My husband has taught our children to sing with all their hearts and our grandchildren, too, because this is how he grew up. His whole family, the children (there were nine children in the family), lived on a farm, and they had to milk cows every morning and every evening. They would sing in the cowshed. They would sing at the top of their voices! The neighbors could hear them for miles around.

They still all love to sing today. They open their mouths wide and they sing with all their hearts. It’s such a wonderful thing to praise the Lord with all our hearts.

Sometimes if he notices the children are not singing, or are singing very boringly, Colin will say, “Come on now, we’re going to do it with all our hearts! Stand up, put your heads back, open your mouths wide and sing with all your hearts!”

Often our children, when they sing the chorus to one of their favorite hymns, “On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand” (oh how they love that one!) they open full throttle and sing it.

So let’s do it with all our hearts.

The last one . . .

No. 20. WHOLEHEARTEDLY SEEKING

God wants us to seek after Him. Not only to seek Him, but to seek Him with all our hearts, with every fiber of our being.

Psalm 119:2: “Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the WHOLE HEART.”

Psalm 119:10: “With my WHOLE HEART I have sought thee. . ..”

Hebrews 11:6: “. . .He is a rewarder of them that DILIGENTLY seek him.”

Mark 12:30: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with ALL THY HEART, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. . ..”

Amen?

So, precious ladies, let’s be those who change the world because we’re never going to be boring or average. We’re going to do everything unto the Lord with our whole hearts. Amen?

“Dear Father, I ask that You will bless every precious soul who is listening—every mother, grandmother, daughter, and child. Pour out Your blessing all over them.

“Father, we have to confess we have been so slack in getting Your Word into our mouths and the mouths of our children. Oh God, I pray that You would pour out Your Spirit over each one listening. Give them a new love and longing and delight in Your Word, Lord God.

“Lord, give them such a heart and such a passion to make sure that they have these times with their children each day. A minimum of the morning and evening, Lord God, of the principle You have given us.

“That You would help them get Your Word into their mouths that their children would be Word-speaking children, as Your Word says. That they would be Isaiah 59:21 families, Lord God, filled with Your Word, speaking it out of their mouths to one another and wherever they go in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.”

P.S. This transcript was transcribed by Morgan Roth, who was one of my previous Above Rubies helpers. Morgan transcribes all the even numbers and Kayla Lewis; another previous Above Rubies girl transcribes the uneven numbers of the podcasts. They do such a wonderful job. I’m so grateful to them.

P.S. I mentioned Brayden and Tali Waller of HaYovel. You can check out this wonderful organization at www.hayovel.com

P.S. Talking about singing loudly to the Lord, I read this Scripture the other day:

Psalm 105:2 (Msg): “Sing him songs, BELT OUT HYMNS, translate his wonders into music.”

P.S. I mentioned the book, TEN Ps IN A POD. Here is further information for you to order.

TEN P’S IN A POD

A Million-Mile Journal of the Arnold Pent Family

By Arnold Pent III

This book is one of my favorites. It has always been a challenge to me of the impact of reading God’s Word to our children. The author of this book wrote it when he was 21 years old and it is still popular today. Recently my husband I enjoyed meeting this wonderful couple in our home and he testified of not only the impact of the Word in his own life as a young person but in the following generations. This habit is now continuing with his grandchildren.

It is the story of the million-mile journey of Arnold Pent, Jr. and his wife and eight children as they travelled through US and Canada together. The father preached along the way. But no matter where they were, or whoever they stayed with, they never gave up their practice of daily Bible reading and memorization.

Go to: https://tinyurl.com/10PsBook

WHAT DO PEOPLE SAY?

“TEN P’S IN A POD should be required reading. I still count it among one of the handful of most important books I have ever read.” 

~ Andrée Seu Peterson, World Magazine Columnist

“Your book is a breath of fresh air.”

“In a society where the Bible is rarely read, even in Christian homes, this book should be necessary (but enjoyable) reading for EVERY Christian family.”

 “How this husband and wife were able to take a family of eight children across both the United States and Canada throughout the 1950s and early 1960s in various old cars is a story worth reading.”

 

This book is also available on Audio.

TEN P’S IN A POD AUDIO CD BOOK

A Million Mile Journal of the Arnold Pent Family

Read by the author.

Join a family of ten on a million-mile journey of evangelism, home education, and discipleship. Journaling his family’s travels, experiences, and ministry, Arnold Pent III (the third of eight children) first published this story in 1965 at the age of 21. You’ll learn of his father’s commitment to family Bible reading, Scripture memory, and singing together, as well as enjoy all the antics one might expect from piling eight children into two old cars and hitting the road to take the gospel message anywhere they found a group willing to listen.

Gather the family around and hear the story read by the author himself (now 75) and enjoy this heart-warming story. You and your family will be inspired.

Also contains music and Scripture recitations from the Pent Family Archives. Seven discs.

Go to: https://tinyurl.com/10PsAudioBook

What do people say?

“We have so enjoyed your print book and the audio version that we play several times a year in the car.” 

—

“My husband and I listened to your book with our children during a road trip from South Carolina to Maine. Then on our way from Maine to Ohio, we listened to it again. The last CD we listened to three times, repeating track 13 eight times.”