Hello, I’m Lindsey Jane! I’m married to Adam, The Pastor. We married right out of college and we’ve been in full-time ministry since (except for a few months between churches when we moved out of state for him to go to seminary).
The Pastor and I experienced infertility in the early years of our marriage. We went through all the testing, poking, and prodding only to be told there was little the doctors could do. We felt God very strongly asking us where we put our trust. Our answer was– in Him! So we told our doctors goodbye and they told us we’d never have kids on our own.
Spoiler alert! We had kids anyway! Nine of them!
I started blogging in 2007. Being a stay-at-home mom was extremely lonely and I had far less support around me than I needed. I began reviewing in 2009 and spent quite a long time in the top 500 reviewers on Amazon before opting to scale back on my reviewing. I still review, but I’m much more picky about what I choose to spend time on these days.
We homeschool our kids and have from the beginning. The life of learning is something we just grew into. The toddler years of reading books, exploring nature, and doing crafts just transitioned into the preschool years of reading books, exploring nature, and doing crafts. Before you know it– we were just homeschoolers! We’ve followed the Well Trained Mind pretty loosely since the beginning and incorporate a lot of Charlotte Mason ideas along the way. We’ve just built an atmosphere of learning and use real books, nature, and art as we learn and explore along the way. I find it an incredible blessing to get to learn and explore alongside my kids.
We’ve now graduated two from homeschooling and they are off to college! They’re both doing well in college, received above average scores on the SATs, and got scholarships to attend college. All that hard, homeschool work is paying off! They’re both involved in Ratio Christi on their college campus, having found a love for Apologetics while homeschooling.
I realized quite early on that raising godly children in the Christian faith is not something that happens without intentionality. Family devotions became an important part of our family life. I have learned that without priorities, faith is one of the first things that goes to the wayside. I aim to encourage other parents by creating family devotions and pointing them toward faithful family habits.
We also get asked quite often about feeding our large family. As a southern mama, I can tell you they are well fed! I learned to cook from watching my grandparents, mom, and out of cookbooks. We also have a suburban garden and backyard chickens to help bring some healthy food to the kids along with the experience growing your own food brings. I hope we can one day have a small farm for the kids to grow and learn on, but for now, we’ll be content with suburban living.