Hello, I’m Lindsey Jane! I’m married to Adam, The Pastor. We married right out of college– Bible college for him and nursing school for me. 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).
I have a nursing degree from Wallace State Community College, a degree in psychology from Trevecca Nazarene University, and a certificate in childbirth education from Birth Arts University. As a nurse, I worked in the operating room for a couple years. Needing a little break from the hours, I worked at a state committed psychiatric facility as a nurse.
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!
We welcomed Imogene in 2006 and I became a stay-at-home mom. In 2007, we welcomed Aidan via c-section. That was far less than ideal. In 2009, when we were expecting Emery, I decided I wanted to try for a VBAC. It was much harder to navigate that than I anticipated and I became involved in our local birth community. I had a successful VBAC and went on to have a second VBAC in 2011 with Ransom. In 2013, we have our first home birth with Topher. Peregrin (we call him Pippin) was a planned HBAC (2015), but that one turned into a hospital VBAC when I developed cholestasis (ICP) at 31 weeks pregnant. Daisy (2017) was another hospital VBAC with cholestasis. Sue Ellen was our pandemic baby, she was also born in the hospital in 2020. Juniper (2022) was born at home.
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.
I realized quite early on that raising gold 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 chicken 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.
Fun Facts About Me
- I play many instruments, not all of them well. I play the piano and banjolele regularly. But I have also played the cello, guitar, bass guitar, ukulele, French horn, trumpet, and flute at once point or another in life.
- I’m a reader. My kids are readers. Friend me on Goodreads! I got into reviewing by reviewing books. In 2012, I was a finalist in the non-fiction category for Goodreads’ Independent Book Blogger Awards .
- When I was a kid, my dream was to be a writer or a veterinarian. I’m deathly (well, I haven’t died from it quite yet) allergic to cats, so that narrowed down my list a bit.
- In the apocalypse, you definitely want me around. My wound care skills are superb (thanks to my time in the OR) and I know thousands of natural remedies off the top of my head. I’m currently working on my gardening skills.
- I love creating! But I’m not much of an artist. So my “art” tends to stick to the crafty side.