I've come to realize that I am NOT Normal

So, I have just about decided that it's time to admit something to myself....are you ready for it?

I am not normal.

Most of my life, I have never really been bothered by what others have thought of me.

As a child, if someone believed something differently as far as the Bible went, I would (very confidently) correct them (based on my knowledge) and move on with life, not really worried of their opinion of me. Mind you, I may or may not have always been correct.

In college, I had no problem going about a daily task in my sweats or comfy pajama pants. If someone thought I was a slob, oh well...hey I was in college and didn't really care.

As a young mom, I was doing good to get a shower and brush my teeth.... good for you if you had a matching, stylish outfit and make-up on, I didn't have the time or the energy.

The thing is, most of this time, I have felt pretty normal.  I felt like I was the same as most people. Maybe more passionate about somethings, but still within the normal range.

But here lately, I have been making choices that have put me out of the ordinary. They all don't necessarily go together, some have nothing to do with each other, and maybe one of the choices by itself, I would still be considered normal.

The problem is, you put all the decisions together and someone finds out about all of them at the same time (like when you are having dinner with your dh's work people and you are casually chatting about life) you realize, when it's all said out loud, wow, we are really NOT normal.

So here is it, all of the reasons that I am not normal (yikes, the list seems to be growing the older I get!)

We are adopting (even though we can have biological children). This is my favorite reason that we are not normal. Something that I have come to realize that as a Christian, God calls our lives to really look different and to stand out.  This is one way that my family wants to look different. We want to adopt because God adopted us, His heart is for adoption, and there are plenty of orphans all over the world. So we will answer His call to care for the orphan by bringing one or two or three....if my hubby is reading this, he is smiling and shaking his head, his blood pressure is rising and he is wondering about all the dollar signs ;-) ....orphans into our home and call them our own.

We are homeschooling our children. Now, in some circles, this is a big one. But, since I am so surrounded in our town and in our church by homeschooling families, I forget how different this is....until I get the "Wow! Really! I bet that's really hard" or "You must have a lot of patience, or energy, or insert whatever misconception people have about homeschooling moms." Really people, some days I have very little patience, probably less than you do if you send your kids to school because you had a break from them :-)

And yes, it's really hard, but I am doing it anyway. I believe, as I do with adoption, that God has called me to this. It didn't start out because of my beliefs, but it it has defiantly evolved into one of my main reasons. God just used the initial reasons to convict me and help me to see that this was the best option for my children.  Again, God calls us to look differently. Without sounding like I am trying to condemn those who send their children off to school (that is completely not what I want to do! This is just how God has shown me we need to look different), I feel like we as a family cannot look different from the world if my children spend the majority of their time being influenced by someone other than me (i.e. teachers, classmates, people whose beliefs might be very different than mine).  I feel like if I put them out in the world before they have a good foundation, I am setting them up to fail.  As a young man that has been homeschooled said, "A little sheltering is good.  Why stand out in the rain if you don't have to?"

We had (well, my hubby had...) a vasectomy reversal and will probably have more children (biological). I went a little more into this subject here, but in a nutshell...we are trusting that God will provide for our family.  I'm not sure how I will handle it, but I can see us with a large family.  Not Duggar large, but hey, with the American average family size at 4, we are already bigger than some.

The above things are big decisions, here are some smaller things that I do that really add to my abnormality ;-)


We had a homebirth.  Love, love, love this new decision that I made with Baby Sis, it turned out awesome and you can read about it here.

We are cloth diapering with this new little one.  Yes, I have gotten some serious reactions to this one.  Some are entertaining, some are a little hurtful, but hey, I love it so far.  I am even currently using the diapers that your great grandmother used....flats!  EEK!  You actually have to fold them!  Now, we have cool velcro tabbed covers to go over them, and really...folding them is a novelty, so it's fun.  By the time the novelty wears off, she will be big enough to fit in our cool, 21st century cloth diapers...

like these.....




Some things that are soon to come in our life of not being normal, but are not in effect yet....

I am leaning towards courting for my children.  I am starting to believe that dating and breaking up is just practice for divorce.  With Christian divorce rates almost exactly the same as secular rates...something has to change.

I would love to go live in Africa for a time period and help or run an orphanage.  Not sure this will ever happen, but I bring it up to hubby all the time....we'll see :)

So there you have it, I said it!  I am not really normal.  I'm okay with that, I still really don't care what others think.  I mean, sometimes I catch myself wondering, but I am striving to only please God.  I do want people to "like" me, so I need to work on that a bit more.  But, more and more I am trying to live radically for Christ, with my family and as an individual.