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Tag Archives: Elisabeth Elliot

Encouraging Resources for Christian Moms

01 Sunday May 2022

Posted by Lauren Scott in Home and Family, Living Faith

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biblical womanhood, Christian life, Christian mom, Elisabeth Elliot, motherhood

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This spring has been full of life: with garden work, schooling, spring cleaning, taxes, and adventures. I just wanted to hop on here today to share some of the wonderful things that I’ve been enjoying (mostly in my earbuds) lately. I’m on a bit of biblical womanhood kick, and whatever the world may bemoan about that subject, I’m incredibly refreshed by reminders of what God has both called me to and given me grace for in this life as a woman made in His image.

The Simplified Organization Podcast by Mystie Winckler (also available as YouTube videos). Mystie interviews Christian moms to get their best tips for parenting and home management to the glory of God. There’s a great variety of topics and tips. The practical and the spiritual don’t have to be kept in separate categories. 🙂 That’s what I love so much about this podcast (and other resources from Mystie)–not just life hacks, but real help toward godly faithfulness in both our homes and our hearts.

Fruitful Homemaker Podcast This is hosted by Emily Drew, a young mom (and fellow Arkansan!) who interviews older women in the faith. I love that she’s seeking to bring the Titus 2 wisdom of truly older women forward for today’s younger women to hear! Some notable guests include Martha Peace, Nancy Wilson, and Abigail Dodds.

Women Encouraged Podcast, Good Theology: As Mothers – with Nana Dolce This particular episode came recommended by a sweet new mom at my church. It’s a great encouragement to think carefully about what we believe and how that affects the relationships in our home–especially our lives lived out before our kids.

Dwell Podcast: Pouring from a Full Pitcher and The Difference between Peace and Self-Care These two episodes were a breath of fresh air from moms who (two out of three of them) have raised all their children and can now share a great deal of perspective on the long, hard seasons of motherhood and homeschooling.

Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot. This is an old classic–one I read in my early twenties and then lent to a friend…never to be seen again. I finally repurchased the book last year, and reading it the last month or so has been such a breath of fresh air in the midst the smoggy mess made by our culture’s current state of confusion.

Speaking of the current state of things, since finishing Let Me Be a Woman, I’ve begun listening to That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis. This third book of Lewis’ Space Trilogy confronts totalitarian scientism and many of the themes addressed in The Abolition of Man. It may seem like a strange addition to a list of “encouragement for moms,” but I’ve found it to be great food for thought. Elisabeth Elliot tells about being a woman. Lewis shows it. His character Jane wrestles through it, and Lewis, as the author, lets her be a woman. I’m not done with the book, but I’m finding it quite instructive and freeing, as I tend to have some of the same modern-woman hang-ups as Jane.

What encouragement have you found lately, mama? Not just to get through the long days of noise and messes, but what has been encouraging you to thrive in you role as a wife and mother? What resources help you lift up your eyes (Psalm 121)?

Books Read 2015-2016

15 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by Lauren Scott in Books

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Tags

Books, Bradley Method, childbirth, CS Lewis, devotional, Elisabeth Elliot, homeschooling, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House, micro book reviews, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, Own Your Life, Story of the World, Susan Wise Bauer, Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, Unbroken, Valley of Vision

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I’m a little late in posting this, but here are the books I’ve enjoyed over the past year (June to July).  I hope you’ll enjoy some of them, too.

Embracing Obscurity by Anonymous  No, this isn’t a book written by the infamous group Anonymous, it’s a book written by a Christian author who decided to practice what they preach.  I found this to be a great read, challenging the pride and selfish ambition that I wrestle with from time to time.  A great read for any disciple of Jesus, but perhaps especially for those in or pursuing some form of leadership.  I heartily recommend it.

Own Your Life by Sally Clarkson  Do not come to this book expecting a Bible Study.  It is most definitely a self-help book.  If you come expecting something along the lines of John MacArthur, you will be disappointed.  If you come expecting the fluff and gospel-neglect of Joel Osteen, you will be very, very pleasantly surprised by the God-glorifying, scripture-filled content that Sally brings.  I don’t mean this as criticism, but since many of my friends are in Christian circles that prefer books that read like bible studies and may have an aversion to self-help books, I’m trying to give you a perspective from which to approach this book and really appreciate it for what it is.  Sally makes many assertions that are more philosophical than they are directly backed up by scripture.  She herself writes much more like a philosopher than like a Bible teacher.  She borrows a lot of language from the current self-care trend.  This may be a bother to some, even a concern, but the central message of the book and its emphasis on taking responsibility while simultaneously trusting everything to the Lord is indeed a rock-solid exhortation.  So, if you need the encouragement and inspiration, this is a great book.  Just don’t treat it like scripture (not that you should treat any work by fallen man as such).  I feel blessed to have happened to enjoy this book while simultaneously reading Embracing Obscurity, reviewed above, which I believe balances the message of this book quite well.  In fact, I would recommend that you read them together so that you can hold in tension Sally’s idea of “dreaming dreams for the glory of God” with Embracing Obscurity’s challenge to make sure we are building God’s kingdom and not our own.  Really, reading these two books together is a win-win situation, in my opinion.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand  When I attended my ten year high school reunion a few years ago, one of my former classmates recommended this book to me.  I wasn’t disappointed.  This riveting true story follows Louis Zamperini from his troublesome youth, to the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, to a fateful flight over the Pacific in WWII.  As a Japanese POW Louie is completely broken—or is he?  Read this book.  If you think you know the story because you watched the movie, you really have missed so much.  Read this book.  It will move you to the core.

The Silver Chair, The Magician’s Nephew, and The Last Battle by CS Lewis  I finally finished the Chronicles of Narnia this year!  Not much else to say except that these were a lot of fun to read and quite encouraging and thought provoking.

Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling  This was on several homeschool booklists, so it caught my attention.  Paddle is a picture book following the adventures of a boy’s wood-carved model canoe as it journeys through the Great Lakes and out to sea.  My boys loved it and picked up quite a bit of geography.

Assistant Coach’s Manual  by Susan Bek  I’ve had the privilege of attending two births as a doula in the past eighteen months, and Lord willing I will get to attend another within the week.  I benefited greatly from taking classes in the Bradley Method of Natural Childbirth to prepare for the birth of my two sons.  I found the training and support invaluable.  One day I may pursue certification as a class instructor and doula, but for now I’m staying up on the subject through reading and supporting some of my friends as they welcome their children into the world.  Thus, this book.  It is a great resource for those coming alongside a woman and her husband who are using the Bradley Method.  It is an “assistant coach’s” manual because the husband is to be his wife’s primary coach.

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder  In my listening to podcasts from the Circe Institute, I jotted down a mental note when David Kern recommended introducing little boys to the Little House series with Farmer Boy because it follows the boyhood story of Almanzo Wilder and is replete with descriptions of rich, enticing farm food.  Hat tip to Mr. Kern for the excellent recommendation.  My boys were sucked into the whole series after we listened to Farmer Boy on audio from our library.

Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot  I have come back to this book again and again for refreshment and encouragement–and let’s face it, tough love.  Elisabeth Elliot brings timeless wisdom to the struggles women face.  Timeless, of course, because her thoughts are so saturated by the word of God.

CS Lewis on Joy  This wasn’t a book written by CS Lewis as much as it was a collection of excerpts from several of his works, all relating to the subject of joy, and all packaged neatly into a coffee-table-ready little book complete with classical artwork.  Can’t say I’d recommend it, because all it really did was make me want to read more of Lewis’s works in their entirety, but I did enjoy it.  Not bad for a quarter at a garage sale anyway.

For the Children’s Sake by Susan Shcaeffer Macaulay  It’s no secret on this blog that our family homeschools, and it’s no secret in the world of Charlotte Mason homeschooling that For the Children’s Sake is a classic.  I think my mother-in-law read it when my husband was little.  My mom gave it to me for Christmas this year since it was on my wish list, so I gave it a read for the first time this winter.  So much of it clicked with me.  I even started up a Schole Sisters group with a few local homeschool moms this spring, and Macaulay’s book is the first one we’re reading together (which means I’m reading it for a second time now).  A friend of mine has already written an excellent review here.

The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins  This was my second pass through this trilogy, and I did it in a week.  I didn’t have quite the same sense of PTSD at the end of Mockingjay that I did the first time I read it (that entire novel in one night).  This story and its characters and themes stick with me.  And for good reason—these are themes and characters that have compelled human interest for millennia.  This is not just another young adult series.  I think these books will stand the test of time.  If you’ve read them before but missed the rich historical and literary allusions, why not pick them up again and see them with new eyes?

Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder  I think I read this back in third grade, but this year I read it aloud to my boys.  A fun read and a great way for kids to imagine life in the latter half of the 19th century.  My seven-year-old just picked it up to read it for himself this fall.

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers and The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions edited by Arthur Bennett  These two books were my daily companions over the past year.  Chamber’s classic devotional was often times very edifying and sometimes simply something I read.  Many of his exhortations were challenging—to pray, to surrender completely to Christ, to love Him supremely.  Overall a great read, though some entries were simply a little too disconnected with the face value meaning of scripture for me to really “get” them.  On those days, I simply read and moved on.  One thing is for sure, by the time I finished a year of reading Chambers everyday, I was eager to simply read the Scriptures for myself.  I don’t mean this as a fault to Chambers—in fact it should be more to his credit for whetting my appetite for more of God’s word.  After all, man shall not live on devotionals alone, but on the very word of God.  In addition to Utmost, The Valley of Vision was a very encouraging guide in personal prayer and worship.  Many times I find I don’t have the words.  These puritan prayers helped me in the discipline of praising and depending upon the Lord, even when my flesh was weak and my mind would rather wander.  I will probably revisit this book in the future.

The Story of the World, Volume One:  Ancient Times by Susan Wise Bauer  This is another gem from our homeschool reading.  Our whole family has enjoyed this overview of ancient history written for elementary aged students.  We are reading through the four-volume series together, and then the plan is for our boys to read it a second time for themselves.  There are activity books available to flesh this out into a very full history curriculum, but for now we are simply enjoying them together and looking up the places we read about on our inflatable globe (the best kind of globe as far as little boys are concerned).

What have you been reading lately?  Have any recommendations for me?

My Cross to Bear

09 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Lauren Scott in Living Faith

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Cancer, devotional, discipleship, disease, Elisabeth Elliot, home church, insomnia, my cross to bear, trials

“So you want me to use this turkey meat, but what seasonings do I add to it to make it into sausage?” my sweet husband called up to me as I was closing my Bible and about to make the bed.

“Uh…” I said out loud with wide eyes, thinking, I never measure the herbs and spices, if I try to tell him a guess as to how much to put in, it’ll be more than my brain can handle this early in the morning and he won’t know where to find half of the spices anyway… “How about I come do that for you?”

A few minutes later I was dressed and downstairs, and he had the ground turkey already beginning to sizzle in the pan.

It was Sunday morning and we were getting ready for church. My disposition was remarkably cheerful this week. Sunday mornings can be the most stressful time of the week when you’ve got two small children to get ready, a meal to prepare, toys to pack, Bibles to load—and if you’re homeschoolers, it’s also the only day of the week that you actually have to be out the door by a specific time. Having a history of emotional Sunday mornings is part of what inspired my husband to take over the breakfast prep for me several years ago. Usually it involves pancakes or waffles, but this week it was sausage. Either way, having such a servant-hearted man is an incredible blessing.

But on this Sunday I may have been particularly happy because instead of having to make lunch to bring along with us, I had bought a frozen lasagna the day before and all I had to do was pull it out of the freezer and take it along to our friends’ house. (Who says you can’t ever buy peace of mind?)

Anyway, I’d just pop it in the oven at our friends’ house. Yes, that’s where we were headed. For church.

You see, we are a part of a small fellowship that meets in homes. This week church happened to be at a house only ten minutes down the road from us (perhaps another reason for the minimal stress of our morning). Other than the three year old coming downstairs in a white polo shirt and having to be instructed to wear something different (because I could do the math in my head: White Shirt + Lasagna = Disaster), getting ready and out the door was pretty smooth sailing.

The boys hopped in the van, I buckled up the three-year-old, my husband grabbed his guitar, threw it in the back, and we were set. We got in our seats, closed the doors, looked at the clock, looked at each other, and thought, “We’re early!”

Yes, indeed. It wasn’t yet 9:45 and we only had a ten minute drive to make. Sure, we’d like to have left sooner (maybe one day we’ll get there), and 9:55 is hardly early when the meeting is supposed to start at 10am, but this was progress, and progress is worth celebrating.

To our surprise, as we pulled into the rocky driveway ten minutes later, we found the parking area in the back of the house already full of vehicles. Apparently we were not so very early after all. Oh, well. At least all I had to do when we got inside was turn on the oven and sit down on the couch.

Nathaniel found a chair and set up his guitar while the boys and I found a place on a couch next to my sister-in-law. After singing praises and scripture songs, my father-in-law taught from Mark chapter 8. I was quite tired and admittedly had a hard time paying attention to the first section of verses he covered, but then I woke up a bit when he got to Jesus’ call of discipleship at the end of the chapter.

“Many Christians like to borrow this metaphor of taking up our cross and apply it to trials, saying ‘This trial—whether it be cancer or loss of a loved one—is my cross to bear.’ But that isn’t what Jesus is talking about. Those trials are involuntary—they happen to you. Jesus is making a call to His followers to do something voluntary—to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Him. Even those who don’t follow Jesus experience trials like illness and loss. Those things are common to life, and certainly there are instructions for us in scripture about those things, but here Jesus calls us to deny ourselves for His sake—to be willing to endure whatever loss comes, not as a result of being human, but as a result of following Christ.”

I mulled over these words, trying to mesh this understanding with my own physical trials—a pregnancy related autoimmune disease and issues that accompany both it and its treatment—even as we moved on to another teaching, and then prayer and singing. After the meeting ended, we enjoyed some good discussion on the subject during lunch, fleshing out what “taking up our cross” might look like—living in obedience to Jesus even when it brings persecution or ridicule, loving Jesus more than this life even though our neighbors might think we’re lunatics, loving the lowly like Jesus did, spending time with them rather than seeking self-promotion and pridefully distancing ourselves from the needy. Our time of fellowship lingered into the evening before we all went home to prepare for the work week ahead.

That night I couldn’t sleep. As often happens when I so desperately need some shut-eye, my mind kept wandering to lesson plans and books and other nerdy and exciting things. Then I began to think again about Jesus’ words in Mark 8. “If anyone will deny himself and take up his cross and follow me…” And then I thought about my father-in-law’s comment that taking up our cross is not an involuntary thing, but a voluntary thing. Despite the practical application we had hashed out over lunch, I still wondered about its application to my trials. So if it’s not the disease and pain that’s my cross to bear, I thought, What is it?

I nudged Nathaniel, who was not quite asleep yet. “You know how your dad said that taking up our cross isn’t an involuntary thing like cancer?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I was just thinking about it some more, and I still have a lot of questions. But I was thinking: Okay, so maybe my disease and whatever pain or other symptoms it causes aren’t my cross to bear, but maybe my choosing to joyfully serve others, to serve the Lord, in the face of that pain would be.”

“That sounds about right. I think that’d be a pretty good application of it.”

“I guess I’d be denying myself the ‘privilege’ of feeling sorry for myself or grumbling, choosing to be joyful instead. And not just for my sake. But for others.”

Nathaniel agreed.

After a pause I lamented, “That’s pretty convicting. That’s not what I usually do.”

We said our goodnights and my sweet, sleepy sounding-board husband drifted off as I lay contemplating this concept in light of the countless believers whose lives I have admired, and in light of Christ’s example. The people I have most looked up to for their faith and strength are those who have joyfully served others despite great physical pain, setbacks, and trials. The Lord Himself laid down His privileges, just in becoming a man! But even more so when He took upon Himself the wrath of God and the pain of public scorn and crucifixion, all the while praying, “Father, forgive them.” The cross wasn’t a hindrance to God’s plan, but the vehicle through which He would bring blessing to the whole world.

From what I can tell, my physical limitations and pains, should the Lord continue to choose not remove them, will be with me in this life whether I embrace them or not. So the ball is in my court: Will I shirk responsibility to respond joyfully and choose to grumble instead? Or will I take up the cross of humble surrender to the Lord’s will, seeking to rejoice in every circumstance and persevere in service to God and to others? On one side is a life of pain and inner turmoil with it. On the other is a life of pain overcome by the grace of God. One choice leads to bitterness and condemnation, the other to eternal joy and glory.

I let out a deep sigh, a kind of physical surrender to the supernatural peace of God that comes when at last we say, “Ok, I trust You.” And finally, too, a few moments later, I surrendered myself to restful sleep.

Here is what I read that evening from Elisabeth Elliot’s devotional, “Keep a Quiet Heart”, that prompted my late-night thoughts on this subject of taking up my cross. God is very kind to ordain even my reading schedule for His purposes and my benefit.

“The worst pains we experience are not those of the suffering itself but of our stubborn resistance to it, our resolute insistence on our independence. To be ‘crucified with Christ’ means what Oswald Chambers calls ‘breaking the husk’ of that independence. ‘Has that break come?’ he asks. ‘All the rest is pious fraud.’ And you and I know, in our heart of hearts, that the sword-thrust (so typical of Chambers!) is the straight truth.

If we reject this cross, we will not find it in this world again. Here is the opportunity offered. Be patient. Wait on the Lord for whatever He appoints, wait quietly, wait trustingly. He holds every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year in His hands. Thank Him in advance for what the future holds, for He is already there. ‘Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup’ (Psalm 16:5, NIV). Shall we not gladly say, ‘I’ll take it, Lord! YES! I’ll trust you for everything. Bless the Lord, O my soul!’”

~In the essay entitled Maybe this Year, page 51

I’ve many a cross to take up now,

And many left behind;

But present troubles move me not,

Nor shake my quiet mind.

And what may be to-morrow’s cross

I never seek to find;

My Father says, “Leave that to me,

And keep a quiet mind.”

~Poem by an anonymous author, page 52

“For those of us who are not at the moment in pain, may we not let slip any cross Jesus may present to us, any little way of letting go of ourselves, any smallest task to do with gladness and humility, any disappointment accepted with grace and silence. These are His appointments. If we miss them here, we’ll not find them again in this world or in any other.”

~ In the essay entitled Love’s Sacrifice Leads to Joy, page 68

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Lauren Scott

Lauren Scott

Christian. Wife. Mother. Homemaker. Home Educator. Blogger. Book Addict. Outdoorist.

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