Almost 8 years ago when my husband and I were expecting our first child an overwhelming realization hit us. We now had a ton of decisions to make that would be more important than any we had ever faced before! Of course we had made decisions before, like when we got married, where we would live, our work, and how we would budget. But, now every decision we made was going to affect another life. At the time, I was a full-time special education teacher, my husband raised support to work in full-time ministry with our church, we did some online sales on the side for fun. So the questions stated coming. Would I keep working? If I stayed home what would we do for income? Would we need to use daycare? When the time comes what will we do for school? How will we discipline? I could go on and on. The further down the road you look the more questions come to mind. One thing we knew, we didn’t have all the answers!
I know couples find themselves in a similar place daily! So what do you do? Here’s what we did. We started to make decisions for our family based on what we did know! We knew we wanted our children to grow up in a loving home that served the Lord first. We knew that we wanted them to be taught and be confident in the fact that they can accomplish anything they set their mind too. We wanted them to work hard and pursue their goal or dreams without fear.
Now almost 8 years and 3 children later, I truly believe these desires have influenced almost every decision my husband and I have made for our family. We definitely have not followed the “norm” in our choices for our family! We have worked hard and made decisions that would allow us to have as much time with our kids as possible. I stopped teaching after our second little boy was born so that I could be a full-time stay-at-home mom, and begin homeschooling our children. My husband continues to work part time with our church and has put everything into building his online sales business. It took a leap of faith to say good-bye to our guaranteed check every month! We knew it would be challenging, but, I knew that my husband could do it! Building a business is not easy, by any means, and takes tons of work but every second has been worth it. Our schedule is our own. My husband and I get to be home, work together, and spend time with our amazing little boys. There are challenges and opportunities but we continue to work hard and, we believe the possibilities for growth in our business are endless!
We realized the best way we could teach our children was to live it out in our life. We challenge our kids to learn and work hard in everything they do. We want them to see us push ourselves to work hard to accomplish what we set out to do. I’ve been talking about starting this blog for years! I’ve made one excuse after another why not to do it. But that’s what they are, just excuses, because it’s easier sometimes to give in to fear, make excuses and not try. One thing I have realized is that life is not always easy! Home school can be difficult sometimes. Building a business is hard work and can be a little scary. Raising kids is definitely challenging and a 24/7 job! However, we have been given all these things, so we will put our complete time, focus, and energy into them. We decided that we wanted to know what are goals are, and then do everything we can to accomplish them!
So that’s why we do what we do. We spend our time working to teach and show our children to trust God, believe in who they have been created to be, and work hard towards their goals. This is what has brought me to where I am now: sitting on my couch, late at night, after everyone has gone to sleep, writing this post to start my very first blog. That’s why I’m doing this! I want to work toward my dream of starting a blog, show my children anything is possible, and I want to share what I have learned about how we make this crazy life work. I am so excited to share with you how we do school, build our business, and live our life all entirely at our home! I hope the things that I’ve learned and the choices my family has made can be an encouragement to you as you make choices for your life.
So wonderful, and so incredibly encouraging. Now on the cusp of bringing a second child into the world, ourselves, I find myself plagued with the financial questions of it all. It can totally be scary, but always doing the best you can is so important! I definitely will be homeschooling my children as well, which I’m sure is an entirely different challenge in itself. Thanks for sharing! <3
You’re Welcome!! It is Challenging but has been completely worth it!! Thank you for your comment! It was very encouraging!!