Stay At Home Daughters Fellowship

I am very excited to share this with you all! Not long after I wrote this post, Meggie (Avonlea Dreamer) created this blog:
*drumroll*

~Stay At Home Daughters Fellowship~
sahdf.blogspot.com

Please click here to read Meggie explain her vision for the blog.
I think this will be a wonderful way for SAHDs to fellowship and encourage each other. If you are: a girl of 15-30 who is living at home, learning and preparing to be a helpmeet and mother, let me encourage you to follow/comment/post/get involved. Generally, I strongly dislike the expression "get involved". It's always what people (especially at church) say when they want you to join in with something that is difficult, uncomfortable and inconvenient. Well, rest assured "getting involved" with Meggie's blog won't be any of those things! :-)

The burden of trying to please Man

Mariana by Marie Spartali Stillman

"So what are you going to 'do'?"

A familiar question to stay-at-home daughters in or approaching their late teens, frequently put to them by well-meaning friends and acquaintances.

I'm not good at talking, even at the best of times, and when posed by the above question, I almost invariably end up a red-faced, stuttering mess! The truth is, I know exactly what I want to "do" - have a home and a family of my own! But you can't just say that. The simple desire to be a wife and mother isn't acceptable - you also have to have some sort of a career, even if said "career" is just a farce, a pretext.

***

Family friend: "So you've finished school?"

Me: "Um, er, sort of. I'm still doing a bit of studying, and always reading, so I guess I'm still learning, you know, even if I have essentially finished school," *nervous laugh*.

FF: "Okay, so are you going to uni?"

Me: "Um, ah, well, not planning to at this stage. . . but there are lots of options available these days - for doing courses and uni degrees at home, by correspondence - especially with the internet, you know. . ."

FF: "Mm-hm, yeah that's true. So - have you decided what you're going to do yet?"

Me: "Um, ah, well. . ." *stutters and stammers, eventually subsiding to red-faced silence*.

A couple of hours later:

Me: Despairingly wonders what this person must think of me. Only losers stay at home with their parents after they've completed school, without going to university, or going to work, or going somewhere and doing something, right?

***

How do I convey to that person that I am busy, I am happy? I am learning and - I hope - contributing? I may be at home almost all the time, but I am not just sitting around at home doing nothing! I am (I pray) learning and maturing a little more everyday; and I am a contributing member of this mini-community of sorts, called a family?

But I can't seem to help it, I always find myself trying to fight back the insecurity and the doubts that gnaw at me because I am endeavouring to follow a different path than the world's way. Nearly every time someone asks "the question", I find myself battling all those doubts, all over again.

*Sighs*. . . Anyway, the whole point of this post is that last night, as I lay in bed, I was thinking about all this, and feeling terribly weighed down by it all. Then it hit me: Elise, you're worrying so much about what other people think of you! About what the world thinks of you! Stop worrying about something so stupid! God loves you and accepts you just as you are, so you don't need to worry about all this. You don't need to try to "prove" that you are mature or intelligent or an adult by going to university or pursuing a career. As long as your heart and your motives are pure in God's sight, you have nothing to worry about!

And it was amazing - I felt the weight lift right off me! I felt so free and happy.

Now if I can just keep that in mind (God loves and accepts you, who cares what the world thinks?) over the coming months and years - if I can only bear that in mind next time someone asks me "the question"!

I know quite a few of my readers are stay-at-home daughters - any hints or suggestions as to how to deal with those inevitable questions?

BTW, I am SO GRATEFUL for the internet as a means to "meet" and be friends with other young women who are in the same boat as I am - being a SAH daughter can seem a lonely path at times, it's so counter-cultural!

Raising Homemakers

I am excited to share with you the new website, RaisingHomemakers.com! This looks like it will be a wonderful resource for anyone passionate about homemaking - not just wives and mothers, but daughters and younger women, too. They're hosting a giveaway to celebrate the launch of the site (which is partly why I'm posting this, hehe!), so head on over and have a look. There are several ways you can enter the giveaway. 

A "duh" moment. . .

If you're a Christian, you know how every so often you have a "duh!" moment where you suddenly see a Bible verse in a way that you'd never seen it before? One of those moments where it's almost like someone [The Holy Spirit!] switches the light on? I had one of those moments today. . .

~~~~~

Context: Jesus has just returned after being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. This is the beginning of Christ's public ministry.

Luke 4:14-20, NLT

14 Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. 15 He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
16 When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures. 17 The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
19 and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.”

20 He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. 21 Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you’ve just heard has been fulfilled this very day!”

~~~~~

Now this is what I had never fully realised, never really taken to heart about these verses:

As Christians, as followers of Christ, THIS is our calling! This is how we're supposed to live our lives - as described in verses 18-19. Let's declare this over our lives, and make this a lifestyle - bringing the Good News to the poor, releasing the blind and the captive, and fighting passionately for the oppressed!

Fashion dilemma. . . HELP!

How do you combine long skirts and modest tops with the fashion of today??? I've recently been going through my wardrobe, getting myself organised [edit: trying to get myself organised!] for the coming winter, trying to figure out what I need to buy and what I could get rid of.

I love the trench coats and warm woollen coats that are everywhere in stores this winter, but most of them seem to be designed to be worn with jeans. I don't wear jeans! This is the problem I'm stuck with - I like nice clothes, how do I reconcile them with "my" style?

I know many of you are young women of God who desire to please God in this area of your lives - how do you reconcile STYLE with MODESTY on a BUDGET?

Any ideas or suggestions? Any photos or links?

From your frazzled, frustrated friend,
Elise

Edit: I just realised this is the 150th post for Ribbons of Light!! Yay! 

Current mood: Frustrated

Deborah Drapper

Hey everyone. . . sorry for the delay in posting. . . 

Have a look at this documentary, aired in the UK a couple of weeks ago. It's about 13-year-old Deborah Drapper - one of eleven children, living with her family on their farm in Dorset, England. They homeschool. Deborah is passionate about God and telling others about Him. She shows incredible courage when witnessing to others about Jesus - I felt very challenged after watching this!

A lot of Christians have been saying that Deborah seems to be lacking in the "joy of the Lord" - but people, please bear in mind that the BBC captured over 100 hours of footage to make this 1 hour documentary! They would have ruthlessly edited the footage to make Deborah and her family appear as "weird" and religious and joyless as possible. This is disappointing, but it is only to be expected, I suppose - especially from the BBC.

To get a more rounded picture of Deborah's life, you might want to have a look at her blog. She's just an ordinary 13-year-old girl who loves God and loves her family.

Many thanks to Alex and Brett from The Rebelution for posting about this program.

"You've Come a Long Way, Baby" - an excellent overview of the history of feminism

This is the best thing I've seen on Youtube in a long time. Many thanks to Kelly from Generation Cedar, for posting the link to this series. Click here to watch Part 1 of Mary Kassian's message given at the True Woman '08 conference last year in Chicago.

Above Rubies magazine!!

I love it when a new Above Rubies magazine arrives in the mail! I always get so excited. . . Our copies *finally* arrived today. We always have two sent to us - one for me, and one for my mum, so that we can both read them at the same time! :P But seriously, it's good to have a second copy, to lend to people, or give away. It's a shame the magazines aren't fatter - I will usually have read mine from cover to cover within a couple of hours of receiving it. . . 

If you are passionate about striving to be a Proverbs 31 woman (BTW, I'm talking to my female readers here - Andy and Adam, you're excluded from this :P ), then you'll love Above Rubies no matter what your age. I daresay some of you already subscribe - do you enjoy them as much as I do? Leave a comment!

Oh and by the way - I discovered just today that there is an Above Rubies channel on Youtube! Check it out! If you have a YT account, then please subscribe and support them! I want to see more Above Rubies videos! They currently only have 43 subscribers - they deserve A LOT more than that!

Click here to go to the official Above Rubies website - www.AboveRubies.org.

Look - there's a picture of a bride on the cover! :DDD This issue is full of weddings and courtship stories! I had actually already read one or two of the courtship stories online at the YLCF Courtship Stories Index. (I have a link to the site in my sidebar, I don't know if you've ever noticed.) If you're a hopeless romantic, but desire God's best for you in this area of your life, you'll enjoy reading some of the beautiful stories in the YLCF index. :-)

And that was also the first picture of myself ever posted on my blog! Sort of. . . the only part of me you can really see is my hand. . . sorry it's a bit fuzzy, I took the pic with my webcam. As you can see, I'm sitting on the bottom bunk of the triple bunk beds I share with my 11-year-old twin sisters. :-) It's where I usually sit with my laptop. 

Current Mood: Pleased