Who I might have been

In my Bible study this week I was asked to focus on Psalm 124.

This Psalm which I can't paste onto my blog for some reason talks about what would have happened if God had not been on our side. The author of the Bible study then asked us to think about what our lives could have been like. As I pictured the life I had mapped out I see God's hand in so many ways.

I always knew I wanted a big family with lots of children. I also knew I wanted to be a stay at home mom. There is where who I am today collided with who I could have been.

You see I never even thought about raising my kids in a different way. I had a vague idea of what my marriage would look like, but not what it could be. Home was not a huge priority for me.

I was raised in a Christian family. Surrounded by men and women of the faith. We went to church every Sunday, faithful attenders of Sunday school. My brother and I even spent time in a Christian school. We said grace like a good Christian family. We attended Wednesday night prayer meeting. I spent plenty of time on youth outings, even when I did not want to go.

My mom, bless her heart, was the Provider for our home because my dad was disabled.

I do not complain about my childhood. It is what it is and it was happy. I was loved and cared for. I was given many opportunities.

As I got older I started really paying attention to sermons on child raising, marriage and family. I started to understand more and more about marriage. I desired it on such a deep level that whenever our youth leader talked about God calling some to remain single he would quickly add, but of course not Julie.

When I graduated from highschool I took a few college classes, got the required job, spent my evenings and weekends going out with friends and searching for The One. I dated different guys. Looking at each one as a potential husband.

I never knew there could be a different way. All the years I wasted money and time. Money I could have saved up to start my married life. Time I could have spent learning useful skills.

But even then God was changing me. I was meeting homeschooled families. I was interacting with married couples, families who understood God's word calls us to come out from among the world and be different. Granted at the time I thought it was odd, but God was still using it.

Even in the midst of all my young adult years being wasted our church hosted an Institute for Basic Life Principles seminar. That was my first exposure to teaching such as this. I think I was one of the few who actually appreciated the new outlook. :) It was the first place I was ever given justification for my belief that a wife's place was in the home and the husband's place was to be Provider.

I don't follow IBLP like some, but like I said it was my first exposure to what I now believe.

In 2000 my dreams began to be realized beyong my imagination. I married Roy. Of course God was still working on me. Boy, did He have a lot of work to do. Still does. :) Of course being married I had to have a nice apartment. Not something we could afford on just my husband's salary. So I went to work about a month after we got married. I was also on the pill because of course no one wants to get pregnant that first year or so everyone I knew told me. Oh, the sorrow I have felt over both of those choices. Funny thing, while my husband supported those choices had I been willing to open my eyes and see what God was trying to show me Roy would have been open to those as well.

We did the whole DINK thing. (Double income no kids) Buying what we wanted. Going out to eat. Not saving one penny.

It was during this time God pointed me to some sites on the web. Sites that talked about keeping the home, welcoming children, following your husband, homeschooling. WOW! Everything I read spoke directly to my heart. Yes! This is what I had been made for.

I would like to say here that we began to save up money for me to come home. That I spent weekends learning new skills to better my homemaking abilities. That God's truth became real in my life. I would like to say all of those things, but I can't.

We bought a house. Yeah. It was a great money saver. Not just any house. Nope. A brand new house built from the ground up. Yeah. A mortgage that was stretching both of our salaries. But I just had to have it. We'd been unsuccessfully trying to have children up to this point as well. We both came to the realization that the pill was not for us and we were open to God planning our family. God was bringing us around. He'd already won the homeschool battle. We knew that's what we wanted to do if we were ever blessed with kids.

Since we did not have any yet we began to look at fostering.

To be continued..

Be Blessed.