Newspaper Interview, Part 8

The final installment of the Q&A from a newspaper interview for a newspaper called The National, which is printed in the Middle East.

What is your message to other women and other families about the lifestyle you have chosen?
I guess if I had to say anything to others about being a Quiverfull family, it would be that this lifestyle is one in which there must be a commitment made before jumping in.  A lot of ladies get romantic when they think about having babies.  Having babies is great.  I love being pregnant, giving birth, and breastfeeding….everything about babies.  But then the babies grow up.  It takes years for those sweet babies to grow up, along with lots of patience, discipling, hard times, and teaching.

What do you think is the biggest misperception about the life you lead? 
I think one of the biggest misperceptions about the Quiverfull movement in general is that all Quiverfull families have large families.  I know some couples who are Quiverfull but have no children.  Some have 1, 2, or 3.  I have a friend who has 7 children, but is not Quiverfull.  They just wanted a large family.  When they hit the number 7, my friend got her tubes tied. 

Another misperception is that we are all conservative, right-wingers.  As I mentioned before, this is not true.  Of course Darin and I are, so I guess we are contributing to the misperception.  LoL

Another misperception is that some men and women think they “could never do it.”  Anyone can have lots of kids and enjoy it.  It just takes us allowing God to renew our minds (Romans 12:2) to get away from what the world says about children being a burden.

Another misperception is that Quiverfull Moms and Dads are perfect parents.  We never lose our tempers, never get discouraged, and always know the perfect thing to say to our kids in every situation.  We are human, too!  We make mistakes, sometimes lose it and yell at the kids, get grumpy and wish for time away.  ;-)

Newspaper Interview, Part 7

More from my interview with the reporter from The National....a newspaper in the Middle East!

6. You see a lot in the media these days about women feeling overwhelmed by motherhood, either choosing not to have children because they want to pursue a career, or struggling to do both. As someone who has two small children, and also works as a writer, I can say personally that they are the best thing that ever happened to me, but motherhood is also the hardest thing I have ever taken on. How do you do it and stay so positive?
I haven’t always been so upbeat about parenting – I used to complain about my kids and wish for a Mom’s Night Out.  Then when God changed my heart about the nature of having children, so did my attitude towards them.  I grew up being told that children were a burden, expensive to raise, and that we should all make time for “me.”  Those are all lies.  Look at what God says about children:

Lo, children are a heritage of The Lord; and the fruit of the womb is His reward. Psalm 127:3

He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD. Psalm 113:9

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
       within your house;
       your sons will be like olive shoots
       around your table. 
 Thus is the man blessed
       who fears the LORD.  Psalm 128:3-4

Children's children are the crown of old men...;  and the glory of children are their fathers.  Proverbs 17:6

When I began to understand how God felt about children, my attitude about them changed, and now I’m glad and prefer to be here “stuck” at home with them all day, every day.  John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”  God doesn’t teach that I need to make time for me.  He says that I need to lay down my own wants and desires for those around me.  Even my kids, of all people.

All this takes us back to self-discipline.  If I can get myself to remember, then for the most part, I can make it through the hard days when the kids are being constantly disobedient, doing dumb stuff like lying about brushing their teeth, speaking harshly to their bros. and sisters…

Paul wrote, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ…” Philippians 1:6

Newspaper Interview, Part 6

more from the interview...

5. The Quiverfull movement is growing quickly. Do you see it as a rising political force in the US?
I’m almost not sure how to answer that question.  The Quiverfull people I know are not following the lifestyle to affect politics.  While many in the Quiverfull movement are conservatives, I also have heard of others who are not.  So Quiverfull families don’t necessarily fall under the same political umbrella.

More than political influence, the goal is to affect our culture through our daily lives.  Paul wrote in Hebrews 12:14, “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord…”

Some Quiverfull supporters speak of building an army for God. Can you talk about/explain that concept? 

I’ve never really heard the phrase “army of God” in reference to the Quiverfull movement.  While there is a lot of talk about impacting our culture FOR God’s glory, there is nothing militant or freaky about it.  LoL  As Quiverfull parents who believe in Christ and follow the teachings of the Bible, it is very important for us to raise children who will do the same, and whose children will then do it, too.  And so on and so on.   The idea of the impact that we, as parents, could have on future generations, is very real. 

Think about Jonathan and Sarah Edwards.  Look at how they impacted the culture through their family:
By 1900, their family included
13 college presidents
65 professors
100 lawyers
1 dean of a law school
30 judges
60 doctors
1 dean of a medical school
80 holders of public office including 3 Senators
3 mayors of large cities
A Vice President (Aaron Burr)
A controller of the U.S. Treasury
MANY involved in the ministry
100 overseas missionaries
Many serving on missionary boards
135 books were written from members of the family
18 edited journals and periodicals

Some verses that some may quote in reference to this subject are Psalm 127:4-5:
“As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are the children of youth.  Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies at the gate.”

These verses don’t really have anything to do with an army for God, but are explaining how having many children to care for and protect their parents is a blessing.

Newspaper Interview, Part 5

More from my interview with the reporter from The National....a newspaper in the Middle East!

What do you teach your children that you feel is lacking in US public schools? 
What Darin and I give our children that they could never, EVER get in public school is dialogue.  All day the kids and I talk and talk and talk.  And you know, it doesn’t always have to be about deep and mysterious issues, but just the fact that we talk, make eye contact with each other, and for the most part, get where the other is coming from is huge.  I certainly never had that with my parents.  From Junior High until the end of High School, I was gone from 7:30ish until 5 or 6 at night.  When I was in 10^th grade, I went to a boarding school, so I saw even less of them after that.  Most of the values I picked up as I was growing up, I got from my teachers and friends.  There are many subjects that I could not really tell you for sure where my parent’s beliefs are.  I had some really good teachers that were excellent advisors.  I had some “good” friends.  We were considered “good” kids.  But when it all boils down, by the time my public education was over, I was really lacking in character.  I had no steady guidance during all that time.  My parents didn’t understand all my character issues because they didn’t see me as much as they should have. To them, I seemed okay, I guess. 

Darin and I understand the issues that our kids need to work on.  We are able to talk with them about them every day. 

Because we know exactly what the kids are studying, we are able to have intelligent conversations about that.  We can guide them through difficult issues that they might not be able to tackle with an adult if they were in the public school.  Talking with another kid their own age, who is equally clueless, seems like a lame alternative.

Newspaper Interview, Part 4

I'm posting the answers I gave to a woman who interviewed me about mine and Darin's Quiverfull lifestyle for a newspaper in the Middle East called The National.  It will take a few days of posting to get it all up. 

4. How does your home school work? Do you have a "classroom?"
We do not have a classroom.  We have a room in the house that we call the “schoolroom” but we don’t actually do much school in there.  It is our dining room, which has three large bookshelves with our small library.  The kids have their own shelves for their schoolbooks, and I have some shelves for teacher manuals and such.  We also have our piano in there. 

We end up doing school all over the house.  The living room, kitchen, office, the back porch, and sometimes the kids go to their bedrooms if they need to really focus on their work without distractions.

Our day goes like this:
6 a.m.: Darin and I wake up.  Darin takes a shower and hopefully I drag myself out of bed to exercise.  Depends on what time I got in bed the night before.
7:00-7:30: wake up the kids.  the older kids get dressed, Darin dresses our 3 year old, and I nurse and dress the 1 year old.
7:30-8:00: Darin reads the Bible to us and we pray. 
Darin leaves for work at 8.
8:00-10:00: breakfast, chores, piano practice
10:00-12:00: seatwork.  that includes math, language arts, handwriting, spelling….
12:00-2:00: lunch, finish chores, go outside
2:00: babies in bed for a nap.
the older kids and I sit down to listen to our favorite pastor, John MacArthur through our iPod that we hook up to our stereo in the living room.
After this, I read 3 chapters of the Bible to them.
2:45-3:30: Science or history
3:30-5:00: finish up unfinished seatwork from the morning
5:00-6:00: outside to play with neighborhood kids
6:00: inside to set the table for dinner, pick-up the downstairs
6:30: Darin is usually home by this time.  We eat dinner, the kids all help clean the kitchen.  Darin leads the kids in this.  I rarely have to clean the kitchen these days.  I spend this time folding laundry, cleaning bathrooms, & etc.
8:00: babies in bed
8:30-9:00: read aloud time with the older three.  Darin will read, or we’ll listen to an audio book.
9:00: bedtime!  The kids can sit in their rooms with their lights on until 9:30, then it’s Lights Out!

What subjects do you teach?
We cover just about everything.  Bible, History, Science (Darin does the experiments!), Math, handwriting, Language Arts, Reading, Writing, Spanish, Art, our oldest is learning Koine Greek, and I teach the kids piano, and Darin is teaching our oldest the guitar. 

In one blog you spoke about the challenges of designing new lessons for the eldest. What is the hardest part and what is the most rewarding?
The hardest part of homeschooling is the time it takes, and the discipline to give the time.  A lot of ladies will tell me that they are not organized enough to homeschool.  I don’t believe that being organized is the make-or-break ingredient.  It’s discipline.  On many days it is very hard to do what it takes to make homeschooling successful.  Just about every night now, I stay up until 11 or 12 o’clock working on lesson plans, printing stuff out for the next day, researching curriculum for future use…for the most part I would rather read a book.  J  I haven’t read a book for pleasure in a really long time.  These days, I spend all my time reading the kid’s books.  At least they’re interesting.  ;-)

With all the time spent in trying to keep things going, it could be easy to forget why we homeschool and get caught up in the workload.  One of my favorite pastors said…(I’m loosely quoting!)….the key to lasting through the hard times is to remember what we knew to begin with.  Darin and I have a reason for homeschooling, and it would be so easy to forget that reason in all the toil and work.  It takes discipline to remember.  So when I can’t exercise like I want to, or keep the house as clean as I would like, or hang out with friends, or go get a job so we can have that leather couch, I have to remember and discipline myself to give up the time for the goal that we agreed on back when we started this in 2000.

Newspaper Interview, Part 3

I'm posting the answers I gave to a woman who interviewed me about mine and Darin's Quiverfull lifestyle for a newspaper in the Middle East called The National.  It will take a few days of posting to get it all up. 

3. Had you always planned to have a large family or was there an awakening for you?
Darin and I never even discussed children before we were married.  We met as theater majors in college, and our only goal at that point was for him to be an actor and for me to be a director.  Kids did not factor into that.  After plugging away for a few years, we realized that we would never see each other if we continued in the theater.  It was hard to find jobs at the same theater.  We decided to “retire.”  I got a job at a publishing company (I was also an English major) as a proofreader and he got a job as an assistant manager of a fish store (he was also a music minor. haha).  We never planned for our first baby.  I just turned up pregnant one day.  J  That’s when life started to change for us.  All during the pregnancy, I just assumed that my mother-in-law would watch the baby while I went back to work.  But once he was born, I knew I couldn’t do it.  I was able to stall work for his first four months before finally resigning from my position.  We did the numbers, and figured we could make it if I got a part-time job somewhere.  I worked at a bookstore in the evenings, when Darin was home to stay with our son.  My mother-in-law did keep our son at times, but for the most part, we tried to keep it so I was at work when Darin was at home.

By the time we had our 3^rd, we were beginning homeschooling.  I started a new homeschool support group at our church, and by the time our 3^rd was 2, I was stressed out with the support group, homeschooling my own kids, and other church responsibilities Darin and I had.  I couldn’t imagine having another baby and talked Darin into getting a vasectomy.  Before he had the vasectomy, we started questioning if it was the right choice.  We talked to a pastor at our church who told us we would be crazy to have more kids – how could we have time to care for them all?  But we were reading some things that were really speaking to us.  Before we knew it, Darin’s appointment for his vasectomy was upon us, and even though we weren’t sure, he went ahead and had it done.  When he got home from it, we both cried.  We knew we had made a bad choice.

From there, it was difficult.  I’m the kind of person who makes a decision and wants to act immediately.  Darin is not.  To me, it seemed logical to get a reversal.  Darin thought we should just stick with what we had done – he considered it too late to turn back.  Who could blame him?  I wouldn’t want to have to go through a reversal either.  So we went back and forth over that for another two years before I finally gave up harassing him about it, and asked my prayer partners to pray with me about it.  I didn’t say another word about it.  A few months later, Darin told me he was ready to have the reversal.   That was in the fall of 2004.  He had the reversal in the spring of 2005, and we were pregnant by June.  Henry, our 4^th, was born in March of 2006, and then Sophia in December of 2007.

Can you talk about the reasons why your faith teaches you that a big family is the wish of God?
One of the things that is important for Darin and me is to have God find us being faithful.   Psalm 33:18 says, “Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, on those who hope in His mercy.”  We believe that God says children are a blessing.  We believe that God says we should “be fruitful and multiply.”  Because we believe that God says these things, who are we to tell him that we won’t obey His word?  We want to be hardcore.  God doesn’t always ask for the easy things so if we truly want to be counted as His children, we have no choice but to obey His teaching.

Newspaper Interview, Part 2

What does your husband do for a living?
My husband is a Web Developer.

Do you work also?
I do not have a job outside the home.  Because we don’t have a second income, I look at part of my job for our family to be as frugal as possible. 

In short, I guess, how do you manage it? 
It’s not easy!  When I was pregnant with our 3^rd, we thought I was going to have to go back to work part-time.  I wandered around, looking for a place that I thought might be interesting, as far as retail goes, but just never felt comfortable with it.  My husband and I finally started really praying hard about our situation.  About a month later, my husband got a new job with a raise in salary that was equal to what I would have made at a part-time job at a bookstore.  A definite answer to prayer.  Since then, I have never again tried to look for a job.  Every time my husband and I wonder how we’re going to make it, God just provides in amazing ways. 

Recently, Darin received a 6% pay cut.  That is what our grocery budget was!  It’s been very tight since that took effect, but God is still providing.  Darin does freelance work when he can get it, and is about to start a new job, but it seemed there was nothing else on the horizon.  As I was driving home from the store about three weeks ago, I prayed and told God, “Darin really needs some freelance work.  I don’t know where it could come from, but You do.”

The next day, we were sitting here in the office and Darin was chatting about a friend from high school.  I told him to look him up on Facebook.  We found him, and from that contact, we found another guy that Darin used to work with 13 years ago.  Darin added him as a friend, and as they were catching up with each other, it turned out that this guy needs a new website.  Darin is going to build him one.  Three others have also turned up.  God is good.

Besides relying on God for provision, we also do without the things that most people think are absolute necessities.  We have received most of our furniture for free from relatives or friends.  None of it is the leather couch we would like to have, but at least it holds us.  ;-) 

We rely on hand-me-downs for the kids.  I have many, many storage bins full of clothes for the kids.  They are all labeled by gender and size.  We are blessed by people who give us things.  There have been a few times when I worried that we weren’t going to have what we needed, but I just “pray it in.”  ;-)  I tell God what we need, and He sends it our way.

We eat out as little as possible.  It costs up to $50 for our family to go to a sit-down restaurant.

We line-dry our clothes as much as possible.  Amazingly, this can save us up to $100 a month on our electric bill.

Newspaper Interview, Part 1

Somehow, a writer for a newspaper in the Middle East found my blog and asked if she could interview me about mine and Darin's Quiverfull beliefs.  The paper is titled The National.  I can't even begin to imagine what she's going to write, but thought I would include my answers to her questions here.  I'll have to do it over several days.  By the time I was done, I had 10 pages in a Word document!  :-)

First for the easy stuff...

1. As I understand it from your blog, you have five children all of whom are home-schooled. Where do you live and how old are the kids? 
We live in a suburb of Dallas, TX.  Our kids are 13, 10, 8, 3 & 1.

2. How do you manage expenses, grocery bills?
Grocery bills:  Our weekly grocery bill is usually somewhere between 120-150.  I try real hard to keep it closer to the 120 end. 

1)      I do this by rarely buying processed foods.  I stick to the edges of the grocery store where the produce, meat, eggs and milk are. 
2)      I make as much from scratch as possible.  It’s so much cheaper that way, and really, healthier for us since I don’t have any hydrogenated oils sitting around my pantry.  ;-)
3)      I use coupons.  I regularly save $25-$50 a week with coupons. 
4)      For personal care items, I take advantage of the CVS Extra Care Bucks program.  I can get soap, diapers, toothbrushes & etc. at deeply discounted prices when I combine the Extra Care Bucks with my coupons.  It’s such a blessing!
5)      I wrote a blog entry on what we do with a turkey.  Our family can eat an entire week on one turkey – not just turkey sandwiches, but good food.  Here’s the entry: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/BeccaBeard/668226/

For other expenses, we budget so much per month and try not to spend more than that.  Our ongoing budgets in which we have money especially set aside are: car, clothing, school, birthdays (3 of our kids were born within a month of each other.  On year, we were broke by the time it was over, so decided to start a fund.), pest control, medical, and we have an emergency fund of $1000 set aside for unexpected stuff.

How big is your house?
Our house is 2300 sq. feet.  We have four bedrooms.  The oldest has his own room, the 2 girls share (10 & 1) and the other 2 boys share (8 & 3).  We are blessed with a bigger-than-normal sized backyard for our area.  Our house is on a half acre, rather than the .25 acres most houses around here are built on. 

That's My King

Misc.

My older brother came for a visit this past week.  OH MY GOODNESS.  What a nice time we had.  I come from a family of six and he is10 years older than me.  He left home when I was in 2nd grade, and I haven't seen too much of him since.  When I was a teen, he was beginning his family.  When I was starting my family, he was on the tail end of raising his....busy, busy, busy.  Now he's a Papaw and has time to travel to see his little sister!  Love it.  I almost cried when we went to church together and sang the hymns and praise songs standing side by side.  Is that corny?  Whatever.  I loved it.

Here's a picture of him and my sister-in-law, Shirley, holding my babies.  This is when we went to pick-up our goat's milk and fresh eggs.  The kids love to go visit the goats and feed them leaves from the bushes that grow by their pen.

Oh my.  I just tried to download those great once in a lifetime pictures, but they're gone.  NOTE TO SELF:  Do not allow 8-year-old to play with camera anymore.

In other news, I did it.  Someone sent me one of those cheesy questionnaires that are so fun to fill out.  In the one I got, we could only answer the questions with one word. 

When it came to this question:  Hobbies?

I took the plunge and typed: Family.

GASP!  REALLY?  Yes.  Really.  I know that these days that is total sacrilege, but yes, really, I love doing things for and with my family.  Why can't that be my hobby?  Yes, I do stuff like cross stitch and knitting, but that's for during those times when Darin is reading a good book to us in the evenings, or when we sit down together in the afternoons to listen to one of our favorite men, John MacArthur.  Really, it keeps me from falling asleep, which is what I tend to do if I'm sitting still.