Home Schooling My Crew

William home schooling with his dog on his lap years ago.

I first started home schooling in 1995.  My son Stephen was struggling in a canned public school environment.   He was a high energy hard to handle kid. He was creative and had trouble sitting still.  He had no respect for authority other than me and my mom.  He was also extremely smart.  By the time he was starting 4^th grade, I had moved him to a different school every year trying to give him a fresh start.  

By the end of every school year the school was pressuring me to put him on Ritalin.  I was not going to do that.  He was totally fine in our home environment.  I was not going to drug him for their benefit.  So I prayed and prayed about what to do and pulled him from public school half way thru his 4^th grade year. 

 

Oh how I prayed.  I felt so inadequate to teach.  I had just had a new baby born (William).  I had a lot of people try to discourage me.  So, I learned all I could about home schooling and what programs were available.  I joined a home school group and I talked to a lot of people that were home schooling and saw the different ways and styles different moms had in teaching their kids.   Since I was starting half way thru the school year, I found I was at a disadvantage to buy curriculum.  So I scouted around and found some used books from different sets and pieced Stephen together a full rounded set of courses to teach him from.  I prepared my lesson plans for the week and handed him his stack of school books.  I told him to flip thru each book and kinda get familiar with them, that we would be starting schooling the next day. 

Bright and early the next morning Stephen came skipping out of his room for breakfast clutching his history book to his chest and set it down on the table.  He said “do you have any more books like this one?  It was great, I really enjoyed it!”   I said, “you read that whole book last night?”  He said he had and how great it was, did I have any more books like that one.  I told him that book was supposed to last the rest of the school year.  I went through it chapter by chapter asking him all the “follow up” questions and he got them right. 

We did a lot of hands on fun like shooting rockets with my dad!

We took a lot of trips trying to incorporate educational learning in all we did.

Right then, I learned something very important that saved me some frustration later on I am sure.  That is…….Every child learns differently and needs their curriculum tailored to them and the way they learn best. 

For Stephen, home schooling was easy on my part.  He loved to read.  He could just sit down with a history or science book and not be able to put it down.  He remembered easily all he read.  I just threw information at him in interesting book form and he devoured it.  I did a lot of verbal testing.  It saved paper and time.  He loathed taking tests.  They were boring.  As long as he learned and knew the information I was satisfied. 
 

Stephen with his first vehicle.
When Stephen was 16 I took him in to take his SAT test.  I did it as a practice session for him.  I was thinking he could retake it and raise his score later.  He asked me if he got a very high score could he graduate and start college.  He was pretty much finished with all his learning at that point.  He had done everything I could find to educate him for every grade level.  At that point I was just keeping him busy with more and more educational senior, high school learning materials that I could find used from people.   So he took the test and got a very good score.  I took him to a local college to take his GED and the school called me and said he had gotten such a high score could he walk in their graduation ceremony and wear a gold cord for such a good score.  As if he had graduated from public school he would have had that honor.  

 So we let him.  And at 16 he went on to college.  The rest is history. Several years of college and a good job.  Praise God!

God is so good to me.  He really led us thru the whole experience and guided me.  I prayed all the time about what to do and He opened my eyes and showed me the best way to educate Stephen.  I truly believe he would have flunked out of public school.  Not because of his intelligence but because of his lack of being able to conform to the current system in place.

I am not saying that home schooling was always sunshine and happiness with Stephen.  But over all we had a very good time and all went very well. 

With such a good home schooling experience, I realized I wanted to home school every child God blessed us with.  I loved being with Stephen every day all day long and being in control of what and how he learned.  I enjoy being with my children, being their mom and spending time with them.  I like educating them.  Educating ones child builds a special bond between ones self and them.  It also builds a very special bond with them and their siblings. 

What I was not ready for and took me by surprise was how much more of a challenge it would be to teach and educate a child with special needs.  Add on top of that many children, all with different special needs, all at different levels……at the same time....To be continued……….

Redeemed From My Personal Battle

Today is the first Monday of the Month which means over at a Place Called Simplicity it is Memorial Box Monday!  A day for people to share the miracles that God has done in our lives, to encourage each other in the Lord.  To give glory to God and build each other’s Faith!  What a beautiful scriptural idea.  I love it!  Thank you Linny!

Isaiah 12:2-6  Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid: for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song; he also is become my salvation.  Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.  And in that day shall ye say, Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.  Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth.  Cry out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee.

God has done so many miracles in my family’s life, that I never know what to share or where to start.  I did write a book of many of them but have not found a way to publish it yet!  Someday.  Someday.  The Lord willing.

I have prayed about what to write about and have been led to share with you something so personal that I have not shared it with many people at all in my whole life.  I don’t know why I am supposed to share it.  But I guess someone out there reading this needs it.  So in obedience I will do it.  Even though it makes me uncomfortable, exposed, and are pictures and truths, once out in public, in such a huge way, I can never take it back…..

Redemption means…compensate for the faults or back aspects of…to buy back….do something that compensates for poor past performance or behavior

Everywhere, all around me, all thru my life and days I see Gods redemption in our lives.  From my husband and several of our children, that should not be alive and were sustained and healed by Almighty God!  To my own slow path to healing in my health.  Also miracles on our farm and in our finances, over the years, many, many times.  

Redeemed, taken from hopeless situations to peace and joy and redeemed situations.  Many of the hard times we have went thru were so dark and so horrible.  We prayed and fasted........ and life would come down to the wire in the situation….when all hope was lost….and in the midnight hour….God, would heal, deliver, save,  come thru…. Redeem.  

Looking back on all those times, I think I know why He does that.  Not only because we are drawn closer to Him than ever before in those hard times of need.  But when no one, no doctor, no specialist, no person has the answers or ways to fix the situation.  God comes thru…..and there can be absolutely no doubt at that point….It was God Himself that did the miracle required.  Oh the great love of the LORD for us all.  It is so very humbling.

Today, I am going to share with you my struggle with food and eating.  To me it is a miracle where I am today in dealing with feeding my body.  It is personal.  It is exposing.  It is something I don’t talk about.  It is between myself and God but if He thinks it will help someone.  Praise and Glory to His name.

I was told by my mom and dad that the first time I had eating issues was when I was a toddler.  I am sharing this part because I think it might have played into my eating issues thru the years.   I was a picky eater anyways, or so I am told by my dad.  My family had a terrible flu go thru and being so young, I realized that every time I tried to eat I got sick.  So I just refused to eat or drink much even after the flu was over with.  My mom worked with me on it daily but it went on for a long while.  I am told I would stand at the bathroom sink and catch drops of water on my finger and lick it off, I was so thirsty but I still refused to actually drink larger amounts.  I was afraid I would vomit if I did, even though the flu was over with.  My parents took me to the doctors about it.  They started force feeding me and after a while I started voluntarily eating on my own again.  I don’t remember any of this. 

I actually realized I had an issue with food when I was about five years old.  I started to see that food and what I ate would often dictate my moods.  If I ate things I liked I was happy.  If I was not given a food I liked it literally put me in a bad mood and ruined my day.  If my siblings ate a food, I had wanted, at the supper table or a certain piece of food off a platter before it got passed to me I felt upset inside.  It would not only ruin my meal but also my mood for a while.  If I knew we were having a meal I liked ahead of time I looked so forward to it.  Foods that made me happy and I liked, I could not get enough of.  I would eat it till I felt sick if they let me.  Foods and what we were eating each day often controlled my moods a lot more than it should have.  I also sought foods to comfort me.

By the time I was a preteen my weight had bounced up and down throughout my childhood depending on how hard I was trying to control my eating habits.  My mom was a mom that’s love language was feeding us wonderful home cooked meals and deserts.  It was so very hard as I never remember her telling us "no" if we asked for seconds at the table or a cookie.  My sister was a fabulous baker so we also had huge amounts of made from scratch bake goods around all the time. 

When I turned 14 I started to obsess about food.  I worried if certain foods were healthy or not to put into my body, how many calories it had in it.  If it was an apple it had to be the best looking one in a certain size in order to allow myself to eat it.  If I ate I would try to exercise off the calories in the food I just consumed.  I battled with food all thru my life and teen years silently.  No one knew.  They didn't know what I did to purge the food from my body.  Or how long I would go with out eating.  Or the binging going on.  But in my late teens it became evident to all around me what was going on as I could not hide it at one point....I became very thin.....I had slid into anorexia/bulimia.  It was all finally exposed.  I will not go into detail about all I did to my body at that time to not gain weight…as I think it gives people (especially young people)  ideas who are prone to this type of thing.  But lets just say I abused my health and body and was taken to doctors for it and was hospitalized once for it because I was in such a weakened state.     I must admit the hospitalization scared me and I did try harder at that point to overcome it.  But every time I started to gain weight and got up close to 100 pounds I would panic and regress.  

When I got pregnant with my first child, Stephen, I was 18 years old and I weighed 85 pounds.  I was not walking with the Lord at all back then and I tried very hard to overcome my eating issues on my own.  I could not handle dealing with food and maintain a healthy weight.  It was either me being overly controlling or throwing all thoughts about food to the wind and using it to soothe my hurts of life’s daily struggles, that I had created by the way I lived.   I was told if I didn’t gain weight it would harm the baby I was carrying and so I went totally the other way in eating.  I went from 85 pounds at my first prenatal visit to 195 at the time of delivery! 

From that time in my life my eating was just abnormal and out of control.  My weight yo-yoed, in large amounts, up and down for 10 years till William was born.  My pregnancy with William catapulted my weight to what doctors would call "morbidly obese".  I am 5’2” and I never got below 250 after Williams birth and lived most of the next 10 years around 310 pounds. I have never liked having my picture taken so have very few pictures with me in them through my adult years but have found a few to share with you.

It was not my intent to ever have this happen to my body.  But I had struggled with food my whole life and just could not get on top of it. 

I could easily go totally without food (not think about it or eat it) but we need to eat.  I just could not handle dealing with  it. 

We had medically fragile children in the home by then and I had my family eating so healthy.  Grinding wheat, baking bread, our own goats milk and made cheese from it too.  Gardening.  I made sure my family ate so healthy.  I even blended natural whole foods to put into Antonio's and Elizabeth's G-tubes.  I knew the importance of feeding our bodies right.  But neglected myself terribly.  Often missing meals all day because I was so busy and eating  a huge meal right before bed to compensate. 

I tried and tried to change.  I tried about every diet out there.  I prayed and prayed to God to help me as I could feel how unhealthy I was becoming.  I could diet all week and lose 5 pounds and then gain it back on the weekend going out to eat just one time with my family.  The battle was so long and hard that over time I felt worthless, defeated, I had very low self esteem.  And I know this is not something people like to talk about….but I was treated badly by many people because of my weight.  

 

Now I must step in at this point and share……my husband is a gem of gems.  He has never in all my life said one thing negative about my weight.  He never put me down, never degraded me.  Never treated me any different.  His nick name for me has always been “Gorgeous”  He usually calls me that instead of my name.  Always has.  He has always looked at me as his lovely wife and acted totally attracted to me.  Thank you God for such a man.   

When my mom passed away at the very young age of 58, of congestive heart failure and complications from diabetes.  The way she ate and her being over weight for so many years had played a large part in her health and final passing.   I was scared.  The day before she passed she begged me to promise her I would lose the weight I needed to, to be healthy.  I promised and I did lose a small amount but I could not keep it off long term.  No matter how hard I tried. 

Then a few months after my mom passed, I had a health crisis from stress.  Many of our children were very medically fragile with lots of hospital stays.  We love all our kids and they are a joy but I would be lying if I didn’t say at times it was very stressful with all their life threatening issues…..but put on top of that working with DFCS though all those horrible, stressful cases, I was pushing for another adoption at the time that was not going the way we were praying for... and then to top it off, I had become very unhealthy and very over weight.  My blood pressure soared, my thyroid in the tank, anxiety attacks, extreme exhaustion and my health started to decline. 

I fell on my face before God…..I cried out to Him for help like I never had before over my issues with food.  I wanted my whole life to glorify Him.  Heavy or not I wanted to be healthy and be able to deal with food in a healthy way.   I wanted to live for the Lord and be here to care for my husband and children that God had blessed us with.  I didn’t want to take medication or be sick.  I asked God to be my weight loss partner and said I would be faithful.  To please help me get  my eating troubles under control.  And you know what????  He did just that.

I take the Word of God seriously.  I take Gods commandments seriously.  I fear and love the Lord God.  He is awesome and powerful.  And let me tell you…if you make God your partner in eating healthy or losing weight…if you are like me, you will not cheat or stray. 

He taught me...... I can still focus on eating healthy without obsessing.  That I didn’t HAVE to do heavy workouts to lose weight….I can walk as exercise and that was enough to get my metabolism back on track.  That the key to losing weight is not about losing weight. (new concept to me)  It is about eating to fuel your body at every meal, in a healthy way. (taking one meal at a time)  It is a life style change in eating habits that will make you healthy and once you are healthy your body will fall into line and your weight will normalize.  That you can eat a large volume of healthy whole foods, get full, have energy, and your weight will balance out.  It is not about loosing weight or being thin.  It is about being healthy and eating correctly.   

You may not believe this but this is the truth….God started showing and telling me what to eat and what not to eat.  At times He would tell me to put my fork down and not to eat another bite.  A few times I doubted what I heard and got sick from taking the next bite.  I kid you not.  To this day I will go into the fridge to grab a bag of frozen cauliflower and God will tell me no….to eat the broccoli instead….sigh….not my favorite.  But I do it in obedience.  Just as I am sharing this in obedience now.   

Since I have given my eating disorders over to God and left them there…..asked God to be my help in all I eat…I don't have a eating disorder any more.....I think about what to feed my body for a meal, make it and eat it.  The Lord has helped me lose and keep off for 7 years, 160 pounds or more.  

I can't explain how hard it was all my life dealing with these food issues.  How all consuming it was at times. How I would struggle and feel good about myself when I was doing well with it and feel totally worthless when I would fail.  This is the miracle God did just for me.  I am free!

He has set the rules of what I can eat and I totally stay within those rules.   Because He asked me to.   

I eat unprocessed foods.  Whole foods.  I enjoy the foods I eat even though when I fix it, I do very little to it. 

I am forever grateful to God for redeeming me from the issues I had with food and the extreme obesity that started affecting my health.  

Several years ago I had another health crisis and God has further shown me what foods to take out of my diet that were causing the debilitating symptoms I was experiencing.  He has told me exactly what I need to eat and how to eat it, to stay at my healthiest.  What a wonderful food partner!  God is faithful!!!!!!  I have been redeemed in so many ways from so many things.  All the glory to God!

Psalm 107:2  Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;

May the Faithful and True Lord God Almighty redeem you from the places in your life you feel held captive!

Blessings,

susan

Sequoyah Caverns Trip!

My sister had read in a news paper article that Sequoyah Caverns will be closing  and not be doing tours anymore after being open for 49 years.   They will be closing very soon, so my sister decided to plan a trip to take all that wanted to go, one last time and see the beauty of the caves, on the Ellis Homestead, in Valley Head Alabama.

The trip date finally arrived this past Saturday.  She came and picked up those going from my crew, William, Carolyn, Zeke and Elizabeth.  Also my sister-in-law and her daughter went as well.  Antonio and I stayed home and had a fun and very quiet I might add, time here at home watching movies.  All of the pictures today were taken by William on their fun outing with their aunts and cousin.   I will spare you the 280 pictures he gave to me to post that were in his file and just touch on the highlights!  :)

They left here in the North Georgia Mountains around 9:30 and headed to Alabama.  Here is one happy Zeke goofing around with William on their way.

They passed a lot of beautiful scenery.

  Are we there yet!!!!

Actually they were just being silly together passing the time. :)

The kids were all excited.  They arrived!!

The walk to the caves and entrance.

I think it is so cute that Zeke and Carolyn hold hands every where they go.  They are very close in age and always have done this, since they were very small.  They call themselves" the twins".  :)

They toured the caverns and saw some really wonderful formations.  But Zeke said he didn't see Batman.  After all it was not the Batcave.

After the tour of the caverns they had a picnic lunch on the premises with a local peacock.  I guess he snatched a piece of granola bar out of my sisters fingers!

Then they walked around a bit on the property and saw this cool cabin and way cool old Farmall Tractor.

When they got home, Antonio was over joyed to see them again.  We missed them so much even if it was just for a day!

Thank you Lord for keeping my family safe as they went away for the day.  Thank you for helping them make happy family memories that they will never forget. 

And a thank you to Aunt S for taking her time to plan a wonderful day trip away before the caverns closed. For planning a wonderful picnic to take with them and for making their time away so special. :)  Hugs!

Psalm 91:11  For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.

May the Lord God in heaven bless you and keep you in all you do.

Blessings,
susan

Time Alone with Hubby

Tim and I live a huge, big, busy life.  Seriously.   God is good.  We are blessed.  We are happy.  We work hard.  We fervently pray to God and work through the issues that come up.  We just take it a day at a time walking through the busy schedules we have.  We hardly ever stop.   Thru all this we are just human.  We struggle, have days we don’t feel well, days the kids act up or need serious medical attention.  Days there are many doctors appointments or surgeries.  Everything good you see in us, is God.  It is all God.  Praise the Lord.

Living this life…. one huge thing we now know and have learned after all these years.  One thing that when you have a family like ours and live the kind of life we are blessed to live is….as a married couple, we need to spend regularly scheduled, quiet time, together alone.  I think this is true for any couple, no matter what your life is like.  But often the busier life gets, the more time gets carved out of the husband and wife’s time together and sometimes never gets put back in.  No marriage is so good that it can run on auto-pilot for too long without damage and those two people start growing apart and never even know it. 

In our marriage we have to purposefully scheduled time together.  One of those times for us is Friday night movie night.  We don’t have piped in T.V. in our home (we haven't for 15 years) but have DVD players on the TVs.  The kids get to watch a show or movie, previewed by us, on Friday nights and sometimes on Saturday nights as well. 

So Friday nights the kids work together to plan a meal…like grilling burgers, hotdogs  or something special.  Then they plop down all over the living room floor to watch their movie and eat their food for the evening.   

As they quietly do that, Tim and I have a “date night” every Friday night, eating our dinner in bed, watching a movie together undisturbed. 

Well, relatively so.  ;)  Enough to either eat and enjoy a full meal together.  Or sometimes while the movie plays we sit and talk about our life and plans.  

 Often times we eat and then fall asleep during the movie.  :)

Tim has every Sunday off and one other day though out the week.  I am the Volunteer Chaplain at our local hospital on Sundays so it takes me all Sunday morning to do my rounds and visit with all the patients.  But when I get home, Tim and I spend the rest of the day together.   Even if it is doing something with the children we try to just enjoy the time together.  The other day of the week he has off, we try to spend at least a part of it together alone.   That does not always happen because some of his days off he takes a child to an appointment in Atlanta because I can’t drive that far.  But for the most part we either run to get a few groceries together or just go walk around a store together talking and planning.  Sometimes we just get away and have a short meal together.  But on his day off, we try to have at least a few hours, by ourselves together alone. 

On his last day off, he and I had to go and get finger printed for foster care.  Fun date huh?  But really it was so nice just to go to the next town together alone.  We got finger printed and then went and walked around Lowes dreaming and making plans for our home someday.  Ways to make improvements to make things more functional because some of our kids will never leave when grown.  

I have so many severe food allergies that I have no restaurant I can eat out at.  But I always pack me a lunch so Tim and I can go to one and he can eat out and get what he wants as a treat on our dates.  No matter how simple our time out is spent, it is always so much fun and so nice to just be together.  Talking, planning and growing together.

Every since Tim and I made it a priority in our home, to carve out regular time together, something amazing happened.  We have always been close and loved each other.  But I can honestly say now in life he is my very best friend.  He is the one I choose and want to spend time with when we have a little free time.  He is the one I want to call and chat with, share my heart with, cry on his shoulder and receive comfort and encouragement from.  I miss him all day and can't wait to be with him when he comes home in the evenings. 

God is so very good to us all the time.  Relationships are so important.  That all important relationship with God first and foremost.  Then taking that time to really connect with our spouses, to talk, listen and just be one together.  Of course then there is our kids.  Our time means everything to them.  Making time to make things special.  Taking time to really listen to them and make memories with them.  Lastly, but very important, our extended family and friends, the “not forsaking fellowship” part of our lives as Christians.  Truly, relationships are what make life so rich and beautiful.  It is not the stuff and things.  It is those relationships we build and pour our prayers and time into that grow and become so deep and rich.   That is what keeps our marriage strong and all relationships going.

Genesis 2:22-24  And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.  Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

May the Lord God in heaven make Himself so real to you today.  May He reach down and make those relationships in your life so strong.  Helping you carve out the time in your life not only for growing a wonderful relationship with Him, but all those around you that you love.

Blessings,

susan