Being a Stay-at-Home Daughter Means...

Being a Stay-at-Home Daughter Means:

Doing laundry. Lots of laundry. In fact, doing more laundry than you thought 4 people could generate.

Sometimes trying to help with the cooking. Even if it does take you twice as long as your mother, and you make even a bigger mess than your father.

Cleaning: Vacuuming, polishing, and dusting. And trying not to break anything in the process.

Driving your brother around when your parents can't.

Spending time writing that story that you just know will be a national bestseller someday. ;)

Teaching lots of piano lessons. And realizing the interesting ways God answers your prayers for patience.

Babysitting & nannying for church families. Getting invaluable experience for when the kids you spend time with are your own. : )

Playing the piano for an hour at a time...just because you can and you love it.

Getting to know Jesus more and more every day.

Realizing that God's plan and timing are PERFECT.

Making new friends and cherishing old ones.

Realizing that no family is perfect, not even yours, but yours is pretty amazing anyway.

Diving deeper into God's word.

Communicating with God daily through prayer.

Realizing that as great as your dreams and plans are, it's not about you. It's about bringing glory to God.

A Winning Story: The Greatest Gift

Hi everyone!! I'm excited to tell you that I recently entered a small short story contest, and I won!! Glory to God for this wonderful exciting news. :) It was a wonderful moment for me as a writer. Many people have been wanting to read the winning story, so I am sharing it with you all here. It is called "The Greatest Gift." I hope you like it. Enjoy!! :-)

The Greatest Gift

I will never forget the year that we gave away Christmas.

Scott and I had been married about 10 years. At the time we had 5 children: David was 8, Abigail was 6, Timothy and Sarah were 5, and Peter was five months old. We had chosen to homeschool our children, so that kept me really busy while Scott was at work.

One day in early December Scott came home to the usual hubbub: Timothy, Sarah, and Abigail running around the house playing some version of tag; me rocking Peter on my hip to stop his crying while simultaneously trying to explain pronouns to David.

He stood there for a moment and then loudly announced, “We are going to give away our Christmas this year.” Everyone stopped. Even Peter stopped crying.

I stared at Scott. “What…are you talking about?”

He sighed. “We are so blessed. And we take it for granted. I feel convicted- we need to give away our Christmas this year to people who need it more than us.”

Over the next few days the two of us had many conversations. Originally I was not on board with his plan. He wanted to give away everything: our Christmas tree, all the Christmas presents we had bought (both for each other and the kids), and even all the food that was planned for our big Christmas Eve dinner. I was against nearly all of this; I saw no reason why we needed to go to this extreme. But he kept insisting that this was what we needed to do. Finally after much prayer, the Lord convicted me that I should submit to my husband and do this thing he wished, even if it seemed extreme to me. When I told him this he smiled.

“I love you Annie. This is going to be so amazing. I just know it.”

I couldn’t help smiling back. “I certainly hope so. But Scott, who are we going to give our Christmas to?”

He considered this for a moment. “I don’t know yet. But I’m sure God will provide us with some opportunities.”

And we left it at that.

It was not as difficult to explain it to the children as I thought it was going to be. Scott told them that this year we were going to give Christmas to people who wouldn’t have a chance to have it otherwise. Together as a family we talked about how God wants us to be giving and unselfish. The two older ones weren’t sure about it at first. Scott assured me that they would come around. Every night I prayed that they would, and that God would send us the opportunities that Scott was so sure about. We took all the presents we had bought and marked and sorted them as either for a boy, girl, woman, or man. Scott said that if we didn’t get the opportunity to give them all away, whatever was left over on Christmas morning we would keep. I could tell he was hoping that wouldn’t happen though.

For a while nothing happened. Then one day in mid-December, Scott came home extremely excited. The first opportunity had shown itself. One of his coworkers had a 5-year-old daughter who had cancer. As she had needed to have many costly treatments over the year, her parents now had no money to buy her Christmas presents. As Scott told me the story, my heart went out to this family. Of course we had to help. We loaded up all the presents we had, bundled up the kids, and paid a visit to this family.

Mr. and Mrs. Anderson were very welcoming. We sent the kids to go play while we sat and talked with the parents. It amazed me how much they had been through in that year. They had watched their daughter, Mackenzie, go from a normal little girl to a very sick little girl. As we talked I realized I wanted to do whatever we could to help them. When we gave them the presents they didn’t want to accept them at first.

But Scott was adamant. “We want you to have these. The best Christmas gift we could have is knowing that we helped you.”

I hugged Mrs. Anderson and told her I would be praying for her family. As we drove home that night I started realizing that Scott’s idea might not have been so strange after all.

Another week passed uneventfully. I prayed for the Anderson family everyday. We had put up our Christmas tree and decorated it. Seeing its twinkling lights always made me smile.

One afternoon I was at the dining room table checking some school work. The younger 3 kids were down for a nap, while the older 2 were playing outside.

Suddenly David and Abigail came running inside screaming, “Mommy, Mommy, the neighbor’s house is on fire!!!”

“What?!”

David had a horrified look on his face. “No Mom! It really is! The Stanleys’ house is on fire!” I jumped up.

“Stay here with the younger kids!” I commanded. Then I ran out the door into the front yard. The Stanleys lived 2 houses away from us. And there were large, orange flames rolling out of the front window. I called 911 from my cell phone, then ran over to their front yard. Their whole family was standing there, just watching in disbelief. Mrs. Stanley saw me coming.

“Oh Annie it’s just horrible!”

“Sarah- what happened?”

She shook her head. “It was the Christmas tree I think. I hope the damage won’t be too bad…”

I placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. The fire trucks drove up then. I realized there was nothing more I could do, so I hugged Sarah and went back home. I told David and Abigail that the Stanleys were okay.

“How did the fire start?” David wanted to know.

“Well they think it started with the Christmas tree.”

“They won’t have a tree for Christmas? That’s so sad,” said Abigail.

They were both silent for a moment. Then David had a sudden inspiration.

“Hey Mom! Couldn’t we give them our tree?”

I considered this for a moment. “Well I don’t know why not. But we’ll talk to your father about it when he gets home.”

Later that evening Sarah called to let me know that everything was alright. The fire had not spread very far, so they had very minimal damage. But their Christmas tree was all but ashes.

When I approached Scott with David’s idea to give our Christmas tree to the Stanleys, he was surprised.

“But you love the Christmas tree.”

I nodded. “Yes I do. But they need it a whole lot more than we do right now.”

He grinned. “Let’s take it over right now.”

So we did. The Stanelys were very surprised, and very happy.

“It’s so beautiful,” sighed Sarah.

“And the best part is, it’s artificial, so I don’t think it will burn down easily.” I smiled at her.

We went to bed that night with a big empty space in our living room, but our hearts were full.

It was only 1 week until Christmas. The excitement of the holiday was upon all of us. It didn’t even matter that we didn’t have any presents. No one cared that we didn’t have a Christmas tree. Not only was our family excited regardless, but the children kept talking about the gifts we had given away.

“Do you remember the look on Mrs. Stanley’s face when we brought her our tree?”

“Won’t Mackenzie be surprised when she sees all her presents on Christmas morning?”

And so on. It was at this point that I was incredibly thankful that we had decided to do this whole thing. I told Scott some of the things the children had been saying.

“You know, I wasn’t really sure of your idea at first. But now, I’m so thankful we have done it. It has really helped to show the kids, and me, how we should be unselfish and ready to help others,” I told him.

He smiled at me and took my hand. “I can’t take any credit for this. It was God’s idea.”

A few short days later, it was Christmas Eve. We normally made a big Christmas Eve dinner and enjoyed it together. At about 2 in the afternoon I started thinking about fixing this large dinner. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that we didn’t really need a huge dinner. But maybe there was someone who did. I thought about this some more. I called our pastor. Did he know of anyone in the church who would benefit from a Christmas dinner? He said he did. One of the elderly couples in our church, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. They had no family living nearby. Normally, one of their children would come visit them on Christmas, but this year they had to celebrate alone. I thanked him, hung up, and got to work. Four hours later I had an elaborate feast prepared! There was ham, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, rolls, yams, and pecan pie. Scott helped me pack it all up and we took it to the Johnsons. Once we got there, we rang their doorbell. Once they opened the door we all started singing “Silent Night.” Then we brought in all the food. Mrs. Johnson’s face just lit up. She looked at her husband.

“Now we can invite all of the neighbors over for dinner!” We all laughed.

That evening our family ate a normal meal of macaroni and cheese with hot dogs. But everyone agreed it tasted amazing.

The next morning, it was Christmas. Our whole family gathered in our living room where Scott read the story of Christ’s birth. Then we talked about what we had done to give away Christmas, and how that was a way to show Christ’s love to others. We had barely concluded this when the doorbell rang. Scott and I looked at each other. We hadn’t invited anyone over. I opened the door to find the Stanleys, with steaming dishes of food in hand.

“Merry Christmas!!” They all yelled.

“What’s this about?” I asked laughing.

“Well dear, your family was so kind to us, we just had to return the favor. So we were wondering if you would like to share Christmas dinner with us?” replied Sarah.

We invited them in and had a delicious meal. As we were finishing up, the doorbell rang again. This time, it was the Andersons.

“You were so kind to us,” said Mr. Anderson. “We wanted to do something for you. So I brought something for the children.” He revealed five hand-made wooden sleds. The children squealed a delighted thank you.

As I stood outside watching my children sled down every hill they could manage to find, I thought about what I had learned that Christmas season. By submitting to my husband and giving away Christmas, God had retaught me one of His basic truths: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” I thought of the Gift He had sent so long ago, the reason we celebrate Christmas. And I realized that the greatest gift we can ever get, is to give.

By: Brooke Reninger

What?! No Way!!

Well readers, I am excited. VERY excited. You see, I found out a very exciting fact today. One of my favorite writers, quite possibly my favorite writer EVER, has come out of hiding. I'm talking about the one and only Jasmine Baucham. Many months ago she published her book (which I have yet to read), and after that really left the blogging world, except for an occasional post here and there. Well today I found out that she has a new blog!!! This is beyond amazing!!! Because it means I can again read her amazing posts with her wonderful wisdom, encouragement, and humor. I love Jasmine's writing. I hope and aspire to someday write with the conviction and maturity that she does. I would like to believe that I am on the road to improving in that direction; I can only hope and pray I am.

You can find Jasmine's new blog at All She Has To Say. :)

~Brooke

Graduation - One Year Later

My parents and I at my graduation
ceremony last May. :)

One year ago, I graduated high school. It was a very monumental day in my life. I had been homeschooled "all the way"- from preschool through high school. I was privileged enough to participate in a state-wide graduation ceremony for homeschoolers. There were about 125 of us!! It was a wonderful ceremony though, and the speaker gave a wonderful message about always remembering how God is right next to us. I was also thankful to celebrate it with my family and several of our close friends, who had been inspirations to me as I grew up.

I knew that I did not want to pursue college. I felt that the Lord has called me to be a wife and mother someday. I also feel that He has given me a talent for writing (at least I hope so), and He has definitely given me a passion for it. I chose to pursue medical transcriptioning as a way to work from home. Hopefully this is something I could do before, and possibly even after, I have a family. But of course I still plan to pursue writing.

And now here I am a year later, and I am about to graduate again. This time from medical transcriptioning school. I'm not there quite yet, but I'm in my final session and should graduate in June. I'm getting very excited!! I am so thankful for all the support I've had from my friends and family, and from the Lord. My future is unknown to me, but I'm excited to see what He will make of it. :)

~Brooke

The Preacher and the Teenager

This is a short story I wrote recently. I appreciate any feedback and/or comments. I hope you like it. :)    

 The preacher closed his Bible and began giving his closing remarks. He looked out through the crowd gathered in church that morning. His eyes again rested on that girl. Normally she paid attention to what he was saying up there, but today she had been texting throughout the entire sermon. As he finished up and sat down in his usual seat, he was still thinking about her. He shook his head. Teenagers. What was to be done with them? He was going to have to have a talk with her now.

    Church ended, and he quickly made his way to her pew. He grabbed her elbow and pulled her to the side.

     “Elizabeth, I need to talk to you,” he said.

     “Okay… what’s up?” He could tell she was slightly puzzled.

     “Well, when I’m preaching, I can see everyone. A lot of people forget that. They think they can do things secretly, and no one will know. But God knows, and more often than not, I do too,” he paused for a breath. She was silent. He tried again.

     “Look Elizabeth, I saw you texting during church today. I know that you texted throughout the entire sermon, and you probably can’t remember a single point from my message.” He fixed her with a look that he hoped would make her feel remorseful.

     But to his surprise all she said, in a very quiet voice, was “You’re right.” They stared at each other for a bit longer, waiting.

     “I really need to go now,” she said and walked away, pulling out her cell phone again.

     To say the least, he was very surprised she hadn’t tried to defend herself or argue. She didn’t even seem sorry. She probably didn’t even care. He went on his way, wondering what good teenagers even were.

*******************************************************************

     The next Sunday the preacher noticed with a smug smile that Elizabeth didn’t pull out her phone even once during church. He also saw that she had brought a friend with her. Probably another rebellious teenager, he thought. But he decided to be nice and went to introduce himself, welcome her, and ask what had brought her there.

     He was shocked at what he heard.

     “I am so thankful to be here today sir. You see, last Sunday I was going to kill myself. I didn’t think I had anything worth living for. I had the gun to my head.” Tears filled the young woman’s eyes.

    “But then my cell phone went off. Elizabeth had texted me. Just to say hi and that she loved me. And I couldn’t help replying. Because it had been a long time since someone had said that to me. So we texted for hours, and she told me of this Jesus who loves me too. And well… that stopped me. So now I’m here to hear more about this Jesus. And I have. And I realized he loves me more than any human ever could. And I want to love Him too.”

     When everyone had left church that day, the preacher was still there. He knelt on his knees near the front row. And there he prayed that God would forgive his foolishness, as tears filled his own eyes.

*******************************************************************

     ‘Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?’ –James 2:2-4

      “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” -1 Timothy 4:12

~Brooke