PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | Episode 31 – Growing In Motherhood
Episode 31: Growing In Motherhood
FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell
Rocky: Welcome to the podcast FROM OUR HOME TO YOURS w/ Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy: Hello ladies. I'm blessed to have Pam Fields with us again today, so I know you're going to enjoy her. I think we will find out a little bit more about you today, Pam. Now, when you started motherhood, tell me what it was like in your beginning days, and what thoughts did you have when you went into motherhood?
Pam: Well, while my husband and I were dating, he said he wanted to have four children because that's what he grew up with, was four. I thought, well, that's a lot, but I always planned to have one or two. I thought I'd have one or two and work full time. That was so much of what you heard.
Nancy: That's what your mother did, didn't she?
Pam: Yes, there were three of us, and she worked full-time, so I always assumed I would have one or two and work full time. When he said four and I want you to stay home with them, I thought, “Wow, what a deal. That sounds great.” We had one and then 17 months later the second.
Nancy: Isn't that interesting? Oh wait, you had Emma 17 months later. I had my twins 17 months later.
Pam: Yes, so I had Caleb then 17 months later, Emma and then the twins. It was four under four years, so that was it. We had our plan; we had four. It takes a little while to get your feet under you after the twins and the toddlers, organizing everything and the busy years, and then we realized, if they all come within four years, they are all going to leave within four years. You hear about all these empty nesters and how hard it is to adjust, and boy, we better do something. We don't want to be lonely and bored too soon, so we thought, “Well, we better have one more because we don't want to be bored, and we don't want to be lonely too soon. They are all going to go within four years.
Nancy: What about those who stop at two? Then they have all those years, all those years, and the children grow so quickly. To me, it was like one blink of my eye and my children were grown, and then it's a whole new life. I couldn't imagine just having two children. I wish I had more around me.
Pam: It doesn't feel like it when they are all little. The perspective of when you're a new mom or a young mom with only little ones, and people say the days are long, but the years are short. It didn't make sense to me until I had adult children. It was like, are they ever going to grow up? Then you shake yourself and go, wait, they grew up; it's done, and it's like, oh my goodness, that's beyond you.
Nancy: I always used to think I didn't have enough time. I wanted more time to input into their lives. It just goes so quickly.
Pam: That's true, so we had one more, our fifth. Our plan was that we would have just the one more so that we would not be lonely and bored. It was purely selfishness on our part, we just wanted the next one for us. It was funny, during her pregnancy, well, the funny part is I had been reading Above Rubies since my firstborn was a few months old. I had been reading that, and I had read about large families, but I didn't catch a vision for it.
Here, I'm pregnant with my fifth, and it was during her pregnancy that I started seeking the Lord on it. I was thinking, “Maybe we were making this decision on our own, maybe not weighing in so much for what the Lord wanted for us. My husband was saying this the other night here, I had forgotten about it, but I put a book in the bathroom about sterilization options and the choices and all of this, and it had a real godly focus, so I just put it in there. Apparently, on his own and on my own, we were both traveling this journey, and then we kind of decided after that. If the Bible says children are a blessing, and they are a gift from God, who are we to say that I just don't want any more blessings from You, God? Please stop giving me gifts, enough is enough, stop right there. It was during that fifth pregnancy that our hearts changed, and we said, “I accept these blessings and these gifts from You and thank You for them.” On they came, six, seven, eight, and nine. They are all blessings, and they are all gifts.
Nancy: How old is Eli now, your youngest?
Pam: Eli is five and a half, so it's new stage of life. Lots of fun.
Nancy: No more little ones coming on. It comes to that stage, doesn't it?
Pam: Yes and no, because no more little ones are coming in my house. My daughter is now married, and she has a two-year-old and is expecting another. It's so natural; God has moved us straight in from parenting our own to having toddlers. It's a beautiful thing.
Nancy: That is how it is meant to be. That's how God designed it. That is why He made mothers to be in their childbearing years until they reach menopause. That can be round about 50 years of age but some younger, sometimes some a little older. Oh wow, am I going to have children until I'm 50? The average time that mothers become infertile is about 45 today. Anyway, it’s not a very long window in our lives, even twenty to forty is only about twenty years. It's so short in the length of our lives. It's the years of visitation where God can bless us.
As we get older, fertility is not like when we were younger and some stop having children sooner than others. Sometimes they come slower as you get older, but we are in those childbearing years, and then by the time you have stopped childbearing, you have children who are at the age of getting married, especially if they are prepared for marriage.
We have so many young people today who are in their mid-twenties, late-twenties, early-thirties, who are not getting married, but I think one of the reasons is that they haven't been mentally and spiritually prepared for marriage. They haven't grown up in families where there are children around, and the society doesn't really talk a lot about marriage.
Young people shack up together and even Christian couples may not want to do that, but many times, they do fall into fornication because they are not getting married. They are hanging out together and getting older, and their very natural instincts they cannot fulfill, and that's not how it's meant to be. I think God intended young people to get married at a reasonably young age. Then, as they embrace children, which hopefully they will if they're not brainwashed by our society. Then, like you are enjoying. Your children have stopped coming, but now, your daughter's children are coming. There's always babies around, and there's no empty nest.
Pam: No, we will never have an empty nest. Ever.
Nancy: God never planned the empty nest syndrome. It's not meant to be.
Pam: That's true.
Nancy: Isn't that wonderful?
Pam: Yes, so when I look at knowing we had a had a plan for four, and then we decided on five and then when God took over, that was the other six, seven, eight, and nine. It's funny. I'm not a real emotional person, but sometimes I look at those little faces, and they come up, and they talk to me, and all the sudden, it hits me. I could have chosen to never have you. By my choice and my will, you could have never been here. I just have a heart of gratefulness that they are here, and I have no idea what God has planned for them. We never know the plans we would miss out on, or the blessing we would have missed out on had we said, “That's it, tidy up, we're done, make this finished, I'm complete.” I'm not generally an emotional person, but sometimes it brings me to tears when I look at those. I've even told some of them, “You're a bonus. Most people wouldn't have you because you're number, you know, whatever.” They say, Really?” I say, “No, but I'm so glad I have you.”
Nancy: That's beautiful. Yes, and they are meant to be here. You think of children that God intended to be here, and they're not here. Not only stopping children through contraception but even when we go to the abortion field. To think there have been 60 million babies aborted since Roe vs. Wade.
You think of 60 million people in the workforce in our nation. Can you imagine how many of these could have been amazing people? Geniuses, inventors, wonderful fathers and mothers who would have had more children. We would not have to be bringing into our nation all these people from foreign countries to help the workforce because we would have had our own. We have gone so far away from God's ways by rejecting children.
Many, even in the Christian church, sadly, will stop having children, but they are not only stopping a baby, they are stopping a dynasty, a whole dynasty. Think of how many children they actually do stop because one child is not an island of itself. They will grow, get married and have children, so we stop a dynasty. We stop the filling of eternity. You know, I've had people say to me, “God's not interested in the natural. In the New Testament, it's all the spiritual.” Well, yes, it is spiritual but still practical. God wants souls born into His kingdom. How are souls going to be born into the kingdom of God and enjoy the glories of heaven if they are not born into this world. We deprive people of eternity. Imagine it, these children that you have are going to enjoy the glories of eternity. How sad that they could never have enjoyed that just because you said, “No, I don't want anymore.”
Pam: Yes, and that first article I wrote for Above Rubies, it was in issue 91, and we had a pyramid that we showed. My husband's grandfather and grandmother. I believe he was first generation Christian, and from the two of them, they had seven children, and from those seven children, each of those had at least three or four, most of them had four, if I'm remembering right. Then there's the cousins which is my husband's generation, most of them had children, and then the next generation down would be my daughter's.
Nancy: That's a fifth generation.
Pam: Yes, and I asked my father-in-law's aunts the other time, one of them is the statistician in the family, and she messaged me last night with the numbers, and she said we are about up to 150.
Nancy: From two people.
Pam: Yes, from two people. You think what I do maybe isn't that important and the impact that I make maybe isn't that important. It's just these small little things I'm doing. But these small things multiply in God's hands. It multiples, and we may never see our five generations down, but it doesn't mean that God isn't there in that and working. To be part of that is an amazing thing.
Nancy: As your children grew, did you send them off to school or did you have a vision for homeschooling? What did you do with that?
Pam: I had never heard of homeschooling before. I grew up in public school my whole life. I had never even heard of it. One day, I went out to my mailbox to get my mail, and there was another lady that lived on our cult-de-sac going to get her mail, and she had all her children with her, all six which I thought, “What in the world? You have six.” I only had two, and I had never known anybody who had six, ever. They were home, and I thought that was the oddest thing. Why are they home? Shouldn't they be in school?
She invited me over, and I came in, and her children played with mine and we became good friends. She told me, “Well, we homeschool, and this is why.” It was an unknown concept to me completely, and I started to have a curiosity. I told my husband, “I think I might want to homeschool; I think I might want to teach them”. He said, “Well, I'm not sure if they are going to get the academics. I'm not sure long term, so I will let you do it for kindergarten, first grade, maybe second or third, but by third, they will need to be in school, for sure.”
“Ok, let's do it.” We started kindergarten with my oldest. When he was in kindergarten, the twins were just toddling around, and I was feeling overwhelmed and can I do this? So, for three months, we sent our son to the local public school, just for three months, and started around spring break until the end of the year and I noticed behaviors in kindergarten. He used to play with the toddlers, the little boys, and he'd play with his sister, and he'd come home saying things like, “I'm not going to play with her, she's a girl. I'm not going to play with them, they're babies.” When we brought him out for the end of the school year, we said, “That does not cultivate family and the love between siblings that we want to cultivate. We are going to go back to this homeschool.” We never went back to public school or private school. We've been on the homeschool journey.
Nancy: You got convinced along the way.
Pam: Part of it was when we brought him home, and I think I was a little bit still on probationary period but somewhere between that first grade to third grade, we went to our local homeschool conference, which was not high on his list to go to. He'll tell you that. It was an anniversary gift for me.
I said, “For our anniversary, will you please go to the homeschool conference with me?” And he said, “When is it?”
“It's a two day.”
“Well, I can give my time for one day, but I don't feel the need to go back two. By the end of the first day, he said, “What time does it start in the morning?”
Nancy: Wow! Amazing!
Pam: We went back for day two and then continued every year. I think we've been twelve or thirteen years now. Now, my husband is a great homeschool advocate, and we ran our homeschool association where we live in our town and yeah . . .
Nancy: Of course, Pam, you're not in the throes of homeschooling little ones, but you've got children who have graduated. Tell me, how did it work out?
Pam: As far as the final product?
Nancy: Yes, because you've got four of them now that have graduated.
Pam: Yes, I do. I can't believe that four that have licenses, four that have graduated, and every time one graduates, “Oh, we did it, this is done.” They are all completely successful. My oldest works within the family business. My husband says he's the best employee he's ever had.
Nancy: Yes, well, your husband was telling me last night, as a business man, how difficult it is to get good employees. How he has employees who've got degrees after their names, but they are really hopeless.
Pam: I think that something that has really become apparent to me over the years and given me confidence in my homeschooling is that we can train academics, and we can seek after and run after academics and a rigorous academic schedule. But if we do not raise children with biblical values, with virtue, with loyalty, and a heart of discernment, then we've kind of wasted our time a little bit. We can add the academics later.
We live in a time of information overload. You can go and get information so quickly that the academics aren't as high on our list anymore. Many times, my husband has employed people, and he says, “They are smart, but they don't show up to work, and sometimes they steal from you, and there's all sorts of things.” I would rather have a child of less academics and still be all these good character with godly values, to know the Word, and that's truly what the anchor needs to be. He said, “I can always teach an employee what the academics need to be.”
If we raise our children with godly principles and values and a love for Him and a knowledge and thirst for how to get that information when they do need it, then they will always be employed. You don't need to worry that they aren't going to have the right academics, so they won't get employed. No, they will always be employed. The workforce is thirsty for people who show up to work and show up to work in time with a good and cheerful attitude, who are respectful. They are thirsty for that. Your children will always have a job if you train them. You can fill in the gaps of the academics later. I graduated from public high school with honors, and I still need to fill in my academics. I didn't learn everything there.
Nancy: Your husband was telling me last night about a study, and I was very interested in it. You might have to help me remember it, but it was about how they were checking out these children in high school and then as they went through college. They found that these people leaving high school and as they went into college, that each year they actually became dumber. Because our colleges now, instead of trying to impart the real knowledge that they need, they are just brainwashing places for the leftist ideology. They are only concerned about brainwashing the young people of this nation with the leftist and socialist ideas, and they are less worried about real knowledge. They found that every year they become dumber, and by the time they graduated college, they were actually dumber than when they were at high school.
Pam: They kind of lost some of their critical thinking skills.
Nancy: Yes, because they are no longer able to debate and reason and talk out things. I think this is something that is very important in gaining knowledge. Discussion, and other people's ideas, and being able to talk about them, and then see right through as you have both sides, and then you've got to see truth. They are not allowed to hear anything that is of God or original truth. It's all leftist ideology. That's all they get. They no longer even reason. They don't know how to reason or anything. They've become whatever they are told. That's what they believe. That's it.
Pam: I think at one of the homeschool conferences, truly, instead of spending $60,000 dollars to $100,000 dollars on a college education for your child, you'd do much better to get a franchise and have them go work a franchise. Don't get into that academia.
We have a son who is pursuing dentistry. For him, he will have to go to college. Dentistry is something you can't really YouTube. You have to learn how to do it through the school, and you have to get your certification and all that. He'll have to but he may be a unique one out of our nine. He may be the only one who ever goes to college. I think we've been brainwashed by society that says, “Oh, they have to go to college. They have to go to college.”
I think we are at a time that we, with our critical thinking skills, need to sit back and say, is college truly necessary? Where are we going and what is our ultimate goal? You'll know by each one of your children. They all have a different bent and different personality and passion to strive after. You're asking about my homeschooling, and I tell people we are kind of homeschool light. We don't pursue it hard. We're not crazy hard on the academics, and I don't stand up in front of my children and lecture and teach. We do a lot of self-taught. We border on unschooling. I'm not the academic one; that's my husband.
Nancy: He is a very academic man.
Pam: He is very academic, and for him to say, “You know what, the academics aren't that important to me, I'd rather focus on these.” That was a big statement.
Nancy: Because he has seen it and experienced it with his employees.
Pam: Yes.
Nancy: He was telling me also that many businesses today, because of the type of people that are coming to them, they would rather get a young man or woman who is diligent and intelligent but get them before they go to college because they can teach them what they need to know for their business. They will be able to teach them far better than when they've been propagandized with leftist ideology and have not really been trained, ready to be the kind of employee that they want to have.
Pam: Looking at my oldest four, the ones who have graduated, the one who needed to have the academics, who does intend to be a dentist, you know what, God gave him a passion for science. He gave him a passion for knowledge, and He gave him a skill to take tests amazingly. You know what, that's not the skill that his twin brother has, but God had a different purpose and a plan for them, and He will put that in them because that's the one who needs it. Isaac needs to pursue that dentistry; he needs that academic. God put that in him. It's nothing I did. I didn't say, “You must have college.”
Then, there's the twin, Ben, who is much more physical. He's much more active. He couldn't stand any test. He couldn't stand any academics, so he is perfectly suited for what he is now doing, which is why we got to enjoy this trip with you because we are going to see him at his army graduation. He's done amazingly well.
Nancy: They are all succeeding in the different areas. He's already been chosen to be the leader of his squad, because he has got that. He's someone who's going to make things happen. He gets what he wants. He's already a leader.
Pam: Right and he's eighteen. He's just eighteen. There was no way I could train him. “Oh, someday I think you'll be in the army therefore we are going to study this. I think, you are going to be a dentist, therefore we are going to study this. I think you're going to do, etc.” Instead, let's teach them godly values, let's teach them the Lord, let's give them a general knowledge and a general education, and let them pursue passions and follow, and the Lord will fulfil His purposes in them.
Nancy: Yes. I think we have often the wrong concept of schooling. I myself believe that knowledge is very important. Proverbs 19:2 says, “That the soul be without knowledge it is not good.” I love that Scripture because it says: “that the soul.” It doesn't even say: “that the mind.”
Sometimes, we try to fill our minds with knowledge, and yes, we've got to; that's part of it. We are going to stimulate our minds, and we are going to study to find out these things that we are passionate about. But there's something about the soul being filled with knowledge. I think that having a passion for knowledge is in us. I believe that it is in every person, a passion and a longing for knowledge. Because our God is the God of all knowledge. That's who He is. Everything, every attribute of God is not, “Oh, this is a little attribute of God.” No, God is the fullness of every attribute, the fullness. All knowledge is found in Him. Colossians 3:3 says: “In whom are hid ALL the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Because that's “in Him” and we are created in His image, there should be a desire and a longing and a passion for knowledge. I believe this is the greatest thing we can do in our schooling, in our homeschooling. Give our children this passion for knowledge so that they long for it. It's not so much, “Ok, I've got to teach them this.”
This is how my brain thinks. First of all, we start off with public schooling. I often think, “How come we are such victims?” There was some person or a group of people that decided these are the subjects that the children of our nation are going to learn, and we will create the textbooks, and we will put in them what we want them to know.” I have one of my lovely Above Rubies helpers, who is with us at the moment. She was mostly homeschooled but did go to high school for a year or so. She said her history textbook had one paragraph on Christianity and a whole chapter on Islam. Some group of people are deciding what the children will learn. What authority do they have? How crazy are we, as victims, who say, “Yes, we will follow that. Yes, whatever this person decides. They didn't have any authority to say what my children will learn. But no, I will do that.”
So, we send them all off to school. Of course, there were years ago when they could get away with it. But now, they can't get away with it because this indoctrination, this propagandizing of this leftist ideology is not just in the colleges. It's starting right in the beginning of kindergarten now.
Then we come to homeschooling, and do you know that many homeschooling mothers do the same thing? We go to our homeschool curriculum fairs, and we see all these amazing curriculums, and they are all wonderful. We go home and because we have paid all this money for it, well, we are going to have to use it. Our children have got to finish that lesson, and they've got to get through it because I've paid all this money. This is what they've got to learn.
I beg your pardon? There was somebody who got that together, and it was a great idea for their family, but is that what my children have to learn? We become victims. We are just like little sheep. Oh goodness me. God has given us as parents to be the parents to these children, and we are different, and our children are different than any other children on the face of the earth. In fact, everyone in our family, each one of them are different.
I think the greatest thing that we do, as you were saying before, number one, is teaching them in the ways of God. His character and embedding them richly in the Word of God. As they go out into this world, they are going into a world of deception, and there is only one thing that exposes the deception, and that is the Word of God. If we are not filled with the Word, we can be deceived because we don't really know what truth is. We have to fill them, fill them richly with His Word and His character and the values of life. This should be so much a part of them and giving them a longing and a desire for knowledge.
It may not be just having to go through certain lessons. We we don't have to be stuck with that. We've got to do it the way we feel this particular child will learn, but we dare not put them off. I think so many people have put off school and put off knowledge. They've put off knowledge. I remember, as I went to public school back in my day, I'd never heard of homeschooling, but there were subjects, I mean, science. I hated science because I went to these boring lessons, and it was so boring. I think, “Oh, I hate science, but I should not hate science because God is the originator of science. Everything comes from Him and even scientists are only discovering. In fact, that's the problem with scientists today. They tell us one thing, we go a few years down the line, and they have greater equipment and microscopes and whatever to find out more, and they find that what they thought before is actually wrong and now it's new.
Pam: It's changed.
Nancy: Their science is changing all the time, whereas God is eternal, and He knows it all, and we should have such a longing for the knowledge of this world and how it works. I got put off science because of boring classes, and I got put off math. It was only when I was homeschooling my own children that I got a love for math. This is exciting.
Pam: I think that we let academics and schooling get in the way of true education, which is the knowledge and the wisdom. I would say, don't do that. Don't get caught up in the school and the education or the school and the academics that we forget what a true education is, and that is the wisdom and the knowledge.
Nancy: Yes, and knowledge is powerful because knowledge is God. God has all knowledge, and you see it. Not just, “Ok, I've got to school my children.” I mean, learning and knowledge are for life. Here I am, getting into the older part of my life, I still feel so young. I think I have an even greater passion for knowledge today. Every day, oh, I hear about something. I want to learn so much more about that. Oh wow, I've got to find out more about that! I do not have the time to find out all that I want to study and find out. Firstly, in the knowledge of God and who He is, but then in the knowledge of His world, which is all God. This is what we have to put into our children so that when they are questioning about something, forget the little lesson they are learning, just let them go for it to discover this, and then there will be something else. Let's discover what is enticing us and interesting us at the time. That's how we are filled with knowledge, and that keeps that excitement and knowledge in our lives. Don't you think?
Pam: Yes. for sure. I've learned a lot more aa a homeschooling mom than I did during my years in school myself.
Nancy: Yes, absolutely, so dear, darling mothers, be encouraged today. Some of you think, “Oh, I've just got to get through all these lessons, and I've got to get through this curriculum.” No, you don't. Who said you had to? You just put that on yourself.
I remember a friend of mine. They were going through a very, very difficult financial time in their lives, and she was homeschooling, but she couldn't even afford to buy any books or any curriculum for the new year. She complained to her husband, “Oh, what are we going to do? Our poor children, we can't even afford books for them.” He said to her, “You've got the greatest book in your hands; you've got the Word, teach them from that. Well, she had no other alternative. She couldn't buy the books, so she did. She began teaching them from the Word. Those children grew up, beautiful young girls and they had all the education they needed for life.
Pam: Absolutely.
Nancy: We've got to have another session with Pam. What do you reckon, ladies? Let's pray now, shall we?
“Dear Father, we thank You that we can talk together and discuss all the things that we face each day. I pray again for every mother and grandmother and daughter, everyone who is listening, Lord, bless them. Homeschooling mothers, Lord, bless them. I ask that You give them Your rest. Take away their overwhelmingness. Lord, let them know that You are the author of knowledge. It's in You that all knowledge is hidden. Lord God, we are not bound by certain lessons that we have to teach our children. Show us what You want us to teach them. And give us and our children such a passion and desire and longing for knowledge. That our whole families will be seeking after knowledge that comes from their own heart and their own desire. We ask this is in the name of Jesus. Amen.”