My Testimony

The Early Years   

I was born in a small town of Arkansas.  I have one sibling, my brother, who is 14 months older than me.  My mother and father divorced when I was about 2, and my father was granted full custody of my brother and I.  We attended a little Pentecostal church that my Grandfather pastored.  When I was about 10 years old, I began to feel convicted after one service.  I knew I needed God to forgive me of my sins, and I wanted to make Jesus Lord of my life, but I was embarrassed.  Well, I guess you could say that I was prideful!  I felt like if I got saved, everyone would be shocked that the preacher's granddaughter wasn't saved yet.  I look back on it and laugh now.  I mean I was only 10, but this is how I felt.  So one night, I slipped a note to my Aunt (who lived with my dad, her older brother, to help out for several years) and left it on her pillow.  I don't remember what that yellow piece of paper entailed...it was just fluff, but I do remember putting at the bottom:  "P.S. Wanna be saved."  When I heard her come home, I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep (I wanted to be saved, but I was also somewhat nervous).  Later, she woke me up and we knelt by my bed, and I made Jesus my Savior.  I will never forget that night, or even how full I felt afterwards.  I was only a child, but I had such a heart and desire to serve Him.  This was the beginning of my journey that has led me to where I am today.

Teenager and College Years

As a teenager, I was fortunate to have really good friends.  They encouraged me in my walk with the Lord, and although I often felt peer-pressure, I didn't really give in to much temptation that would be extremely consequential.  After graduation, I went to a local community college with several of those friends.  It was there that I found a college ministry group.  It was Chi Alpha (Assembly of God based), but it was an inter-denominational group.  It was such a wonderful experience!  I learned what it was like to worship with my brothers and sister's in Christ who didn't always see eye to eye with me on everything...but we all had one thing in common: to win souls for Christ!  God taught me a lot through those years.
It was here that I met my future husband, Mark.

Meeting My Future Husband

He certainly wasn't my type at first.  He was quiet, real country....totally opposite from me!  Little did I know at the time, but he was JUST what I needed!  As the months went by, I began to get to know him on a more personal level and learned that he was different from the guys I had dated before....despite not having much in common with him.  After about 6 months, we began dating.  I'm not going to bore you with all of those details, but we dated for 3 years, then got engaged.  We were engaged for 1 year, and then we became married.  We have now been married for almost 7 years now.  We have two beautiful girls and feel so blessed.

Having Children

When you're dating, everyone can't stop asking you when you're going to get married.  Then, once you're married, everyone can't stop asking you when you're going to have children.  Well my response was, "NEVER!"  I didn't want kids.  Sure Mark always wanted one or two...maybe a boy to carry on his family name, but he has always been respectful to my feelings in this department.

Most of the kids I had been around seemed like "terrors"...yes I knew it was because of the way their parents raised them (or didn't raise them).  I had been around some good kids too, but honestly, I was selfish.  I wanted certain things in life, and I knew a kid would be a "burden" or a "hindrance" in me getting to those goals.  Sounds terrible, right?  Well, it was.  But that is exactly how I felt...primarily because that is how media and schools were teaching you.  Children were a burden.  So I adamantly did not want children or any other burdens in my life!

About a year and a half into our marriage, something intrigued me.  I can't remember exactly what it was (may have been the new Duggar show on TV), but it struck me.  I believe it was when they were talking about how after they miscarried, their doctor told them that it was likely due to their use of birth control.  This shocked me, and yet I wanted to know more.

I guess this stuck to me because years prior, I had this discussion with a family doctor I worked for.  He and I were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we often enjoyed debating in the break room about hot topics.  I enjoyed debating with him because he was knowledgeable and he would debate, not argue.  At the end of the day, we always agreed to disagree.  I still have a lot of respect for him.

One day, he told me that he couldn't understand how I was so pro-life and believed that life began at conception, yet that I felt birth control was okay.  I had no clue what he was talking about.  I was not sexually active, so I had honestly never even thought about birth control.  But I knew that about everyone I knew, including the women in my church, used it....so it must be okay, right?

I immediately went home to study this topic.  I usually always knew immediately my position on our debated topics, but this is something I had never even considered studying.  So I did your basic Yahoo Search for things like "Does birth control cause abortion,"  "Does birth control cause a miscarriage."  My results?  Well on the entire first page, at that time, everything I found said that birth control did NOT cause abortions or miscarriages.  So I kinda wrote the argument off, and I don't think it ever came up again.

So here I am, now married, and on birth control (which is funny that I even began taking a pill every day because it takes a lot to get me to even take a Tylenol), and this topic has come back up (like I said, probably from seeing a Duggar episode or something).  There had to be something to this.  I immediately had to go and do some more research.  This time when I did my search, I found out WHY all of those websites said birth control did not cause an abortion or a miscarriage:  those same sites don't believe life begins at conception!

When I did the research, I found that birth control actually thins the lining of the uterine wall, preventing the fertilized egg from attaching, thus killing it.  I was shocked!  All of those sites agreed how this birth control pill worked, but that they felt it was okay "because it was just a fertilized egg."  But in my book (as in the GOOD BOOK), that was a life!  Thus, that was an abortion!

I later found a book called "Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions," by Randy Alcorn.  You can get a condensation of the book for free here.

This book is actually very helpful.  It found all of the same information that I did, but he puts it in lamens terms.

I immediately got off the pill!  I didn't want to cause an abortion.  I continued my research, trying to justify a way to take the pill, but I couldn't!  Thus, I had to get off the pill.  But my heart hadn't changed about children.  I still didn't want them!  How was I going to keep from having them?!  I was unable to use condoms and such, so this became a huge scare that I could become pregnant!  I often didn't want to become intimate with my husband for fear of pregnancy.  This fear controlled my life!  It took about a year of prayer and my husband reminding me that God really will take care of us. (Don't you hate it when your husband is right, and you know it, but just don't want to admit it because it's hard?!)

But how could I let go?  I mean this wasn't just trusting God in the little things.  In fact, I had felt like I had always trusted God in most things...mainly because I never had to trust Him in something that was so big to me before.  I wanted to trust God, but I honestly felt like I knew what was best.  I knew people who had used things like the Rhythm Method, but they still had several kids, and I had no clue how I was going to keep from having even ONE!

Sounds crazy, right?  I finally realized, after about a year, how crazy I actually sounded.  We think it's crazy, those people out there who go to sperm donors and pick out their future child's dad, in hopes of having the perfect child.  They try to find a doctor or lawyer, someone who is good looking, all in hopes that their child will have the same qualities.  But honestly, I wasn't doing something that much different.  I wanted to determine how many kids, if any, I would have: when I would have them, where I would have them...and basically my entire life.  It was all about CONTROL (hence the name, 'birth control')!  I wasn't trusting God with my life, and it's a shame, because God has always shown me that He knows better for my life, even better than I know for myself.  I often heard people say things like, "God gave us common sense to use...that's why we shouldn't just have 10 kids!"  But if they're saying birth control is that common sense to use, well, I don't think God would approve of something that kills a life.  So that threw that argument out the window for me.  Others would say things like, "If we all had 15 kids, this world would be overpopulated."  They're right, but not everyone IS going to have 15 kids...the average family only has 2.1 children, so I'm pretty confident if a few thousand families out there want to have several children, we'll be alright.  Actually, overpopulation is a myth.  We are actually, UNDERPOPULATED!  If we keep this rate up, our economy will suffer according to history.

Therefore, we decided, that it was best to leave the amount of children we have up to God.  God says they are a blessing.  If He were to give us any other blessing in our lives: a new car, a million dollars, wonderful friends, etc., we wouldn't hesitate to receive His blessings.  We would be so thankful.  So if God says children are a blessing, why would I not want to receive them as a gift as well (it's because I didn't truly believe they were a blessing...I was actually calling God a liar in my heart).  So reluctantly, I began trying to trust God (my husband had been trusting Him in this area for awhile now), and not too long down the road, I got pregnant.

I had mixed emotions, I was scared to death, but I was so excited!  God had already shown us He was in control.  He allowed us to move home to my dad's home (which he didn't live in) for rent free, and my husband, about two months before becoming pregnant, received a job offer for a job making what he and I, currently, were both making!  This allowed us to either live a nicer life, or for me to stay at home!  We chose for us to have me staying at home and for us to make the same amount of money!  That way, if times ever got tough, I could still go to work.  If I was already working and times got tough, we wouldn't have a backup plan.  That has been the best decision for our family!

We see the fruits of me being able to stay at home with my children.  They have made me a better person.  I am learning patience, self-control, love, kindness, and so many other character qualities that have been lacking in my life.  Don't get me wrong, I still have a long way to go, but day by day, hour by hour, my children are making me a better person.  I love teaching them and playing with them!  Children really are a blessing!  I can't believe it!  I was so sure I didn't want them, but God really does know better for my life than I do myself!  I have learned my lesson after this one!  God's Word must always come before my fears or feelings!  He will guide me through and take care of me!  He is always right!!  And even though I like to pretend I'm always right, I know the truth!

You can read more about my decision to have as many children as God would bless me with by clicking here.

You should also check out this great video by Moore Family Films.  I encourage you to purchase the DVD though, and not just the download (the DVD has bonus features that are really amazing, it doesn't come with the download).  You can watch the trailer for Children are a Blessing, here:

Homeschooling

I went to public school, myself.  I had a good experience, but I want something different for my children.  Schools are having a hard time with what can and can't be taught...they are teaching the theory (often not as a theory, but as fact) of evolution, and won't teach Creation, even as a theory.  As hard as some teachers work, often they are overworked.  I substitute taught Middle School when I was pregnant with my first child.  It was the same school I had went to my entire life.  Much had changed.  Kids weren't even required to bring a pencil to class because they might not be able to afford it.  I have no problem with the office staff offering free pencils, but the child should still have to be responsible to bring their free pencil to class (they are in middle school)!  I found, despite my earnest efforts, that teaching all of the children in the class (especially in classes such as math and science), it was impossible to reach EVERY child, EVERY class period.  Some were bored, some were really far behind, and some just didn't care to learn.  I thought about the little girl in my belly.  I didn't want her to be left behind if she couldn't figure something out, and I didn't want her sitting there getting into trouble and/or causing disruptions for those trying to catch up because she was bored.  I knew that no one would care about my children's education as I would!!  You can read more about my decision to homeschool, and how we're doing now, under the Home School tab!


And that is pretty much bringing you up to date to where I am now.  I am a wife, a mother, and a woman who is simply trying to live her life for God.  My blog will show my many imperfections, but it will have lots of tips, love, and fun times!  I encourage you to follow my blog and to take this journey with me!  You can also follow me on pinterest and facebook!

Please feel free to leave me your testimony in the comments below.  I'd love to hear how God is working in your life and I think it would be a great encouragement to other Christian moms out there!