Fear comes from Lies

It's so easy for lies to seep in and steal peace and joy from me.

"When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the ground."
Psalms 104:29-30

I've realized over the last couple years that I have a fear of death. A lot of that has been taken away but there is still some there. But when I really sit down and meditate on God's goodness to me and how much He loves me and takes care of me. And then look at those verses and realize if He is the giver and the taker of our breath, then what in the world do I have to fear? But as I am not reminded of this truth day by day it is easy to forget and Satan is right there at the door of my mind and heart whispering lies to me. And because I'm not taking in this truth daily it is easy to begin to believe these lies: "You have to fend for yourself." "You're all alone." "God is too busy to care about you." "He's forgotten about you." "You're not good enough for Him...." etc. etc. etc. Now maybe I'm not actually hearing these things (although sometimes I am) but the fear I've taken in is making me believe and live these lies out in my actions. I need to be hearing truth every day to stop these lies in their tracks.

Ps Not to mention hasn't God overcome death? :)

My journey with homeschooling

I feel like I'm being freed more and more by God in a lot of areas. Most recently I felt it in the area of mothering and even more specific in the area of education. I realized I was trying to earn my salvation and my worth/value with making sure I was doing whatever our culture expected us to do with educating your kids. It's crazy what a hold this has had on me. So much un-rest and anxiety and fear. And for what?

I'm really beginning to question a lot (most) of how our kids are educated in our culture. What if the bulk of my kids education was gardening, farming, and learning the story of the Bible? Would that be the worse thing in the world? What if that's the best thing for them? It's just there's so many voices telling me that would be the worse thing for them: internal and external. One of the problems is you could fill up your kids brain and time crossing your T's and dotting your I's and making sure they're on track with where the culture says they need to be and miss so many opportunities to be experiencing and learning what God has for you kids.

I was gardening with my family yesterday in our backyard and I was thinking of how 50 years ago there were whole families and generations who were farmers. And that's all they did with their life. Maybe they learned how to read and write, but probably most didn't. And these people were looked down on as being "un-educated." What does that even mean? Maybe we're the un-educated ones. And 100 years ago or maybe 150 years ago farming was a respectable thing to do. And you didn't feel like you had to know math really well to feel like you were doing okay in life. Our culture has a code of what an educated person is but is it really better than what was around 150 years ago? What changed between then and now? And is this a good change and one we should adopt? It's crazy to think that our industralized education is only 100 years old if that. Is it really better or have we lost something?