Wherever the Cross Takes Me...

This is Altogether Separate's fortieth post. Forty is an interesting number. It rained over all the earth for forty days and nights. God led the Israelites through the wilderness forty years.  Jesus was on the mountain forty days and nights, tempted by Satan. A child is in the womb forty weeks...

But I digress.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled post.

As children, my friends' future careers changed on almost a weekly basis. Most of them still have no idea what they're ultimately going to do with their lives, and they rub their temples as they choose a major and pray for God's guidance on the road ahead.

I was always the odd one. I career-swapped a number of times in my early school days (though always pursuing similar fields), but well before middle school my love of animals and fascination with science fused into a steadfast pursuit of veterinary medicine.

My interest and utter enthusiasm in that area never waned (and if you find yourself particularly bored today or taking a curious fascination to strangers' childhoods you can read an essay about my peculiar and nerdy one), but as I grew older I began to wonder if doctoring animals was really what God wanted me to do with my life. After all, shouldn't I dedicate my blink-of-an-eye time on earth to serving people? Was this a God-given desire, or one to test me to see how much I was willing to sacrifice to follow Him?

It was during that time I learned of veterinary missionaries—veterinarians who abandon the comfort of their former lives to practice in less fortunate regions of the world, caring for the animals the native people rely upon for food, transportation, and income; educating them to increase the longevity of their livestock and equipping local veterinarians; and often ministering to the people in more conventional ways by distributing Bibles and helping churches and teaching English.

I came to realize there are at least as many ways to serve God as there are people to serve Him, and it was entirely possible I could serve through the veterinary field. Regardless of where life took me—overseas or here at home—I would be shining the Light He put in me by enabling me to live a holy life, and I would be fulfilling a necessary occupation in the world.

And what if this isn't what God wants? What if He wants me to marry and have children instead?

I suspect there is a good chance I am called to serve as a single woman (although honestly at this point I have no idea), but if I am to serve God by serving a husband, I will gladly devote my life to ministering to him and educating my children. If the latter, the knowledge and skills acquired in my time of singleness will probably help me in the future in ways I can't conceive of.

But the important thing is that I am content with God's plan, and I will carry my cross and follow Him wherever He may lead.

[By the way, I'm pretty sure I got all the facts right in the first paragraph, but I have the horrible habit of second-guessing myself and I don't have the time to double-check right now. So if I got anything wrong please let me know. =P]

Image credit GabrielaP93 on Flickr.

whatever are you going to do with your life?

I'm a senior in highschool. This brings up a lot of questions about the future, mostly from other people directed to me (not that I don't have questions myself, but I tend to not give them as much thought as other people do to the ones they give me). Top of the list are "So when are you gonna find a guy? *wink*" and "Where are you going to go to college?"

To the first, I usually just laugh and mumble something about waiting on God's timing (actually, I just can't find an old enough guy who'll have me, but I digress). To the second, I usually shock people. My answer isn't exactly the standard one, mostly because I don't jot out a name or even act properly conflicted about my future choices. In fact, by the standards of most people, I'm pretty sure about the whole thing. Except, still, they don't really like my answer.

My answer usually goes along the lines of, "I'm not going to college right off the bat, we'll see what God does, kthxbai." This, naturally, can worry some people, especially those who find it their duty to worry about other people's lives way more than said people do. Invariably, the person I'm talking acts as if I've committed some grievous error and goes out of their way to convince me that I do, in fact, need a college education.

I'm hoping there are some of you out there who can identify with this plight. We get questions, answer them honestly, and then are told (usually with a pat on the back and a little smile) that we're young and so very smart and we should totally go to college so we can get a good job. Even after one gives the most convincing arguments for why college really isn't necessary--the cost, the high unemployment rate among college graduates, the depravity that usually goes on, and the Mrs-degree-oriented Bible school atmosphere--people still carry on, usually by asking "Well then, what are you going to do with your life?"

My answer usually is, "I'm going to be a missionary with a side of political action and a healthy dose of motherhood." And here is where the real kicker comes in. With a look of confusion and an expression of pure woe, they ask, "So you're going to Bible college?"

Nope.

I'm not.

So stop asking.

Okay, so I don't actually say that. But I think it. A lot. So let me just dispel one myth before I stop talking. You don't need a degree to serve God. You don't need to spend $40,000 and four of the best years of your life to serve God. You don't need to get a fancy piece of paper and a bunch of lectures unrelated to your future life to serve God. God doesn't care about those things. When looking for someone to serve him, he doesn't look for what humanity views as the most qualified or the most learned. As the Bible says, he uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.

He picks a shepherd boy and a kid from the most dysfunctional family imaginable. He picks a prince-turned-slave. He picked a tax collector. He picked a temple prostitute. He used a murdering Pharisee.

Most of these people didn't have a college degree. Some of them didn't even know how to read. They were simple folk, people who had been radically changed by an Almighty God. That was all they needed, and it's all we need as well. College can be helpful, yes. It can teach you things that are necessary if you want to be a physicist or a doctor. But don't think that just because you want to serve God, you have to go to college. Because that's a lie.

Life Purpose Planning

College?
Online College?

CLEP Studies?

No College?
Do I need a college degree to fulfill God's desire for my life?
What is God's desire for my life?
Am I pursuing God's desire's or the worlds?
What is my God given life purpose?
Am I living a vibrant, set-on-fire for Christ life?
What in my innermost being do I love so much that I want to spend the rest of my life doing?
Do I have plans and goals set in place to accomplish and fulfill my life purpose?
...................................................................................

When you read the above questions, did they fill you with dread because the answers are elusive to you, or did they fill you with excitement because you could answer them?

As the time for my graduation drew near these questions (and so many others) were flying and whizzing around in my head constantly and I didn't have an answer to any of them.

As I look back over four years since that day of graduation, I can see how God has taught me many things and I'm glad that I waited on Him for direction rather that plowing ahead in my impatience and fustration at not knowing what to do.  As I mentioned above, I didn't have the answers to all the questions when I graduated.  I wanted to have them, but they weren't there.  I learned that sometimes God just needs us to prepare our fields (lives) in faith, trusting that He will bring the rain (purpose).  And He did, just not in ways I would ever have expected.

If I could give one piece of advice to each young person preparing for graduation or planning their future, I would tell them to seek God and His direction and to ask yourselves, "Am I planning or pursuing something because God desires it of me or am I doing it because the world expects me to?"

I would also suggest a very special tool that I wish I had known about earlier in life.  This tool helps you to find your life purpose and helps you prepare for your journey to fulfilling it.

The Tool:  "Life Purpose Planning Workbook" by Dewey Novotny.

If you have never heard of this book I would highly recommend visiting their website http://www.lifepurposeplanning.org/  Our family listened to two seminars by Mr. Novotny on Embassy Institute  (I wrote about Embassy on my personal blog) about a month and a half ago and soon after ordered the book.  We have just recently started working on it, but it has bee great!

The book encourages you to get your focus on God and find out what gifts, interests, traits, personality and circumstances He has given you to fulfill the purpose He made you for.

It helps teaches you how to become a better:
1. Person (a disciple)  "Living in uninterrupted fellowship with God and showing genuine love to others."
2. Provider (a servant) "Combining skill and vision to meet the needs of those whom God has called me to serve."
3. Proclaimer (a communicator) "Communicating Biblical truth to fulfill the Great Commission and live out a vital life message."
4. Partner (a teamate) "Honoring the marriage covenant in all my relationships."
5. Parent (a discipler) " Training those God entrusts to my care and rasing up many Godly generations."

For most of us the Partner and Parent title doesn't apply to us, but if we view those roles from the perspective of teamate and discipler then they do apply. 

This book helps you to find out what people group(s) God designed you to serve.  What ministries He can use you mightily in and so much more.

As I said above, our family just recently found this book and started working on it, (It's key that your parents be involved with this planning) and it's going on four years since I've graduated! So this book is fantastic for any age - even my parents want to do if for themselves =)

Finding the purpose to why God created you is key to unlocking the door to a vibrant, God filled, future.  There may be many doors in the future that you will have to find the right key to get through, but having a peace in knowing your life purpose will point you in the right direction.

Is this book a fix-all, find-all? No, the book itself will not point you in the right direction, but much prayer, direction from God and wisdom from your parents will help you find that special and unique key to your life purpose

Top 5 Advantages to Homeschooling

As homeschoolers, we have some amazing opportunities that kids in the traditional school system can only dream of. Here are the main five I've noticed in my life. I have had a pretty lenient school schedule—I probably classify as an unschooler—so maybe some things are unique to my style of education.

1. Freedom in Education

For me, education isn't a chore that must be completed before 3pm before I can have any free time. Learning is a lifestyle.

I was never forced to write essays or create models, so I didn't dread compiling books on equine psychology or drawing maps of the migration paths of Australian parrots—entirely on my own terms. I didn't waste time answering every question in the curriculum when I thoroughly understood the material—in fact, I never took an English course. Once I got the basics down, my history lessons came from whatever books and websites and field trips I could get my hands on, allowing me to corroborate the facts from various sources rather than taking one viewpoint's word for it. I adored science and supplemented my usual curriculum with the latest in the journals.

Plato said, "All learning which is acquired under compulsion has no hold upon the mind." Because I wasn't taught under compulsion, the knowledge I've gained has taken firm root and my mind blossoms with passion for learning.

2. Lessons in Self-Discipline and Time Management

Did I ever take advantage of my freedom and shrink away to less constructive pastimes when I should have been doing something educational? Yes. I learned my lesson, and it's a much better lesson to learn at this stage in life than later on, when it really matters.

I had the opportunity to learn essential life lessons like self-discipline and managing time and putting priorities in order the hard way before failing a college class or getting fired from my day-job. My experiences will give me discretion in the years ahead, when I won't have my parents around to ensure I complete assignments on time.

3. Free Time

Unless I put a time-consuming task upon myself there's really nothing to hinder me from pursuits that don't fall under core classes, like classical piano and drama and sewing and horse training and novel- and screenwriting. I can take an hour or two to practice that Bach piece or rehearse lines for a play, or spend the afternoon teaching my horse to play fetch, or dedicate the month of November to the National Novel Writing Month. Or just read. Or write this very post.

Each of these things could potentially lead to a career (well, maybe not writing this post), so they're important skills to develop.

4. Making Friends

Some people find it mind-boggling that homeschoolers actually make friends. (Really, if most kids don't make friends outside of school, what kind of sad lives do they lead?) But one of the great advantages to homeschooling is that we get to meet people with similar interests, be it at band practice, soccer games, robotics competitions—you name it. And among homeschool groups, we're likely to meet people who share our values, adding an extra level of intimacy to our friendships.

The main issue that spurred this blog was how lonely we homeschooled girls often feel surrounded by the worldly people around us, but at least, as homeschoolers, we do have more opportunities to seek out people like us. Just last week I was able to attend a Christian writers' conference (thanks to not having a rigid school schedule holding me back). It was my third time going, and each year I've made friendships I believe will last a lifetime.

I might not get to see my friends every day (which is mostly because I live a weird life and my friends live far away--they see their other friends regularly), but I do have a number of wonderful, true friendships that run far deeper than those portrayed by the media.

And if we are blessed enough to have friends nearby, as I once did, we can spend time with them while our school-going peers are in class or doing homework. I cherish the many daytime hours I got to spend with my friends before I moved away.

5. Spending Time with Family

I have been asked, "Don't you hate being around your parents all day?" If this is the mindset, something is wrong. That's not to say I don't long at times to stretch my wings, but living at home has cultivated healthy relationships with my parents and a stronger bond than would probably have formed if I only saw my mother in the evenings and weekends. (Which is probably why I'm not as close with my father.) It can be hard at times to be at home so much, but I endeavor to be nothing but loving. If I can't do that with my own family, I can't do that with anyone else.

I was an only child before my brother was born year before last, so I'm thankful I'm able to spend as much time experiencing sisterhood as possible before I go away.


Homeschooling has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. I thank God daily for the opportunity to have such an education and for an unquenchable love of learning.

What great opportunities did you have through homeschooling that you couldn't have had otherwise?

Photo courtesy mikebaird on Flickr

Treasures Found in Homeschooling

Nothing beats homeschooling :]

I am daily thankful for the decision my parents made when I was in second grade, to take my sister and I out of a private school and homeschool us all the way through till graduation!  There were/are so many blessings associated with being homeschooled that it is hard to choose one thing that stands out in my memory as something that was unique to being homeschooled - something that your average kid would not have been able to do.

I guess I'll go with the memory of training alpacas :] 

I have to preface this story by saying that my sister and I were involved in 4-H animal husbandry as soon as we were able to join (8 years old).  We started out with horses and stayed with them until 2002 right after I turned 12. 

It was a beautiful New England fall day.  You know, the one where your just entering fall and the weather is still warm, but not stifling.  I want you to picture a true to form agricultural fair.  You can hear the cows mooing as their owners spraying them down, trying to clean them before Fitting & Show; you can hear the announcer down in the infield announcing the placing of the horse show, and you can hear the sheep and goats baahing, waiting for their little trainers to come and feed them. You can smell those fries that you can only find at the fair along with those jumbo donuts that only come around once a year.

So, you can hear & smell, but what can you see?  Well, there is the 4-H Ice Cream Parlor where there is always a long line of people waiting to get there frappes, sundaes or just a bowl of hard ice cream.  There are the buildings filled with crafts that people have worked on all year and of course there are all the concession buildings selling unique items. But the important thing that you see, is the red and white striped tent.  Inside of it is an obstacle course made up of jumps, hula hoops, weave poles, and a kiddie pool.  And going through the obstacle course are a couple girls ranging from 9-13 years old, leading their alpacas.  They willingly handed over the lead ropes to us to let us play with their animals.  We were hooked:]

That October we joined the Jumping Jax Alpaca Trax 4-H Club and leased our first two alpacas, Black Mirage and Ace Ventura.  These two boys that had been donated to the club with several other alpacas from a farm in Ohio.

That day at the fair was a turning point in our lives.  We have since had up to 12 alpacas, but our numbers have fluctuated over the years and we currently have 11.

However, I want to get back to the point of this post.  "What is one thing that we were able to do growing up as homeschoolers that most kids would not have been able to do?"

A month before we joined the  4-H club, our mom took us on a field trip (a plus for homeschooling) to a farm about 50 minutes away.  This farm had miniature donkeys, sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, horses, dogs and guesss what...alpacas.  We hit it off with the owner and when she found out we were 4-Hers we clicked even more. (She had been a 4-Her and had raised her kids with 4-H).



A new born cria on the farm :]

 We visited the farm several times, as she had a fiber area where she gave classes on how to use the different fleeces.  One of the times we visited we got to talking about the different  training classes we had taken with our 4-H club on how to halter train, lead, and gain the alpacas trust.  She said that she had to train several crias (baby alpacas) every year to walk on a halter, stand still and allow people to touch them, so that she could bring them to the different breeders shows each season. 

~At this point I should mention that alpacas are VERY skittesh animals and it is not their natural instinct to ask for attention, but rather to run away from people.

With all the other things on the farm that kept her busy she didn't have the time to train them and would we be interested in training them?  We were shocked and honored!  The animals that she was asking us to train were the "cream of the crop" on her farm and would be representing her farm at the shows.

This is where it got exciting.  Because we were homeschooled  this was a terrific opportunity that we were able to take!  If we had gone to a public or private school we would never have been able to accept this offer.  We had to plan on two hours of travel time every time we went over and then at least 3 hours training and we had to be over at the farm a couple times a week. 

We learned so much about animal husbandry on this farm, as well as business management, and like anyone who spends time with animals, it gave us several opportunities to grow some character. 

We worked there for several years training each new year's crias and continuing to work as well with the previous years show animals.


Suri Crias - There are two different breeds of
alpacas. Suri fiber grows in long pencil locks.

 I usually worked with the Suri alpacas.  Something about them just drew me to them.  They were more skittish then the Huacayas, but once I gained their trust you could see a relationship building.  When we would bring them to the show, it would often times be their first time being away from their mom and because I was a familiar face and smell and my voice was familiar, they would cling to me.

God gave us so many opportunities at the shows to be a bright light for Him to so many people.  Because there were so few kids there, we were watched all the time and people would comment. 

We learned so much at the shows about the alpaca industry, the different businesses and yet there were so many little things we learned (although not little in the grand scheme) like responsibility, respect and using every opportunity to reflect Christ.

There were also the lessons that came with traveling, packing, and preparing for these shows.  We were taught how to be prepared for anything but to still be frugal.


Huacaya Crias - My sister trained these.
There fiber grows straight our like
a teddy bears :]


The life skills that we learned over the years would not have been learned if we had not been homeschooled.  The time needed to pursue these activities cannot usually be found with kids who attend a public or private school unless there parents actually own the farm or they live right next door to one.

We learned so very much in the 6 years that we did this and I am so thankful for the opportunity that we had and the lessons that we learned.  God is good.