Cultivating Readers

I have not begun homeschooling my 3-year-old, Wesley, who is pictured above looking at a book, I just thought it captured my children's love for books. Books are invaluable in our house, and all of us enjoy getting together and looking and reading, either together or alone. I will often find my 2-year old daughter curled up on the couch paging through a book (the book sometimes upside-down).

I hope to cultivate avid readers in my family, or at least individuals who value books as a wonderful resource for information and relaxation. Above all else, I pray they would enjoy reading so when reading the very most important book, The Bible, it would be thrilling!

I can't stress reading aloud to children enough. The reason we chose our homeschool curriculum, Sonlight, is because of its literature base and how they include reading aloud as a huge part of educating your child.

Other benefits of reading aloud to your children:

• It helps our children master language development
• Bonding time
• It is proven to foster a love for books
• It helps develop attention spans
• It develops a child's curiosity and creativity
• Expands a child's vocabulary
• It's a vital tool in helping our children learn to read themselves
• Exposes children to a variety of situations and is a tool for teaching proper behavior

 So, go, read to your child!!

Revisiting a Helpful Resource

Over the last few weeks I have been re-reading "Created to Be His Help Meet" and it has been a huge challenge and blessing to me. It has also underlined how I feel toward the other book I have been reading, "Boundaries." I have struggled with this "Boundaries" book since the moment I bought it, and I may go into that a bit deeper later. But for now, I thought I would underline some points I have found particularly challenging and encouraging from the Help Meet book lately.

• You cannot be pitiful enough to force your husband to love you.
• You can practice joy and thanksgiving. Every day, every right response makes the fingers of your soul find the notes of joy and thanksgiving easier and easier.
• Thankfulness is how you think; joy is the abundance it produces.
• Discontentment is not a product of circumstances; it is the state of the soul.
• Having hurt feelings and being angry are just different sides of the same controlling coin.
• God entrusted to a man and his wife the opportunity as a married couple to be a living picture of this great mystery.
• She is reverencing God by reverencing her husband, not because her husband is a fit representative of Christ, and not because he is a worthy substitute, but because God placed her in subjection to her husband.
• A good marriage is good because one or both of them have learned to overlook the other's faults, to love the other as they are and not attempt to change them or bring them to repentance.
• She is a fool to expect him to be a good husband when she is not being the help meet God has created her to be.
• Deference to your man is the height of true femininity. It makes a woman beautiful, gracious and lovely to all.
• A good help meet provides an oasis for her man.
• "A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones." Proverbs 12:4
• A wise woman gauges her husband's needs. She seeks to fulfill his desires before he's aware of them. She never leaves him daydreaming outside the home. She supplies his every desire.

Ch. 1 Ultimate Meaning of True Womanhood

"In order to learn what it means to be a woman, we must start with the One who made her." Elisabeth Elliot

What is my purpose?
What is my role?
Why is life so difficult and challenging at times?

I'm sure you could think of dozens of other questions that plague women during life at one point or another. These questions seem tough. In fact, perhaps answerless (if that's a word).

They do have answers though! This first chapter of "True Womanhood" is focused upon what everything is all about. What is (or should be) central?



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Book Updates

I have been reading this book, Jungle Pilot, which is the story of Nate Saint who was a pilot/mechanic with Mission Aviation Fellowship after World War II. You may be more familiar with the movie, "End of the Spear," that came out a couple of years ago which also tells the story of the five missionaries who were killed by the Waogani indians in Ecuador. God's plans are perfect, and this story shows how He takes a seemingly tragic event glorifies Himself and brings others to Him for generations to come!