PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 322: Courtney’s Story

LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell

EPISODE 322: Courtney’s Story

Courtney Kelly joins us today to tell her story. Every mother’s story is so unique. Growing up, her mother owned a bar. How did Courtney end up raising ten children for God’s kingdom?

Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.

Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! Great to be with you again. This morning, I have another visitor coming to this podcast with me. Her name is Courtney Kelly. Courtney and her husband, Rob and family, have come to be with us here on the Hilltop. They’ve been here about a year now, haven’t you, Courtney?

Courtney: Yes.

Nancy: Yay! So great to have you with us!

Courtney: Thank you! Thank you for having me on.

Nancy: Oh, you're welcome. Courtney and her husband are blessed with ten amazing, wonderful children. In fact, little Zion was born after you got here. He’s the most gorgeous little baby, just such a good little baby. I can never get over how good he is! He’s so amazing.

But anyway, why don’t you tell us about all your other children? Just quickly go from top to bottom. The ladies love to hear the names you choose for your children. That’s why, in Above Rubies, I always put all the names of the children, because people love to see the names. In fact, I know that many have used names that they found in Above Rubies, even the names of some of our children!

Courtney: I love reading the names in Above Rubies and I’m always looking for new names when I read it. My oldest is Elias Lee and he is 17. My second boy is Addison Brennan and he’s 16. My daughter is Auden Alaney, and she is 14, almost 15. Then it goes down to Arden, my third boy. Arden is 10, and then Josiah Afford. Down to Addley. Hadassah Grace is our second girl. Then we had three girls in a row. Hadassah Grace, Remeny Rain, and Solly Joy. Then down to our sixth boy, Zion River. That’s ten!

Nancy: Oh, so wonderful! And I love all those names.

Courtney: Thank you!

Nancy: So beautiful! It’s lovely to see their family growing up here. They’re all growing up in the Lord. These young children, from the teens, right down to little Zion, are always at the prayer meetings. I love to hear her children pray. Even some of your young boys! They pray like older men! It’s amazing! Oh!

Courtney: They impress me. And surprise me. They prayed for Netanyahu.

Nancy: No one was trying to coach him along. He just comes out with these most amazing prayers. Then watching your little darlings just worship the Lord with their hands raised! It’s coming from their own hearts. It’s so amazing! You are so blessed. The hand of the Lord is upon your family.

And I look at Auden. She’s only 14 and so mature, so grown-up. I was thinking of my own granddaughter Breezy. My sister Kate called this morning, and she is sort of laid up with a very bad leg and back.

She said, “Oh, Breezy came over this morning and she brought me a cup of coffee. And she prayed for me.” I thought, “How wonderful! Young people usually don’t think of anybody else. But she’s so mature too, like Auden. All these beautiful young people are growing up so mature in the Lord. It’s so beautiful to see.

So, Courtney, you arrived, sort of on our doorstep, unexpectedly! [laughter] You didn’t even plan to come here, did you?

Courtney: No. No.

Nancy: Isn’t that amazing?

Courtney: I did not plan to come here. As a matter of fact, when we were in Alaska, we looked at real estate in Primm Springs. There was nothing. On Zillow there’s all these little dots all over the place, but Primm Springs, there was nothing. “We’re never going there!”

Nancy: I know! So many people want to come to Primm Springs and want to come near the Hilltop. They can’t find any land and you found some.

Courtney: It was the Lord and His timing. That’s all I can say, because it was out of our provision and out of our sight.

Nancy: Yes, and they live just down the road from us! It’s amazing. But tell us where you started and where you lived until you got here.

Courtney: How far back do you want me to go? Where do you want me to start?

Nancy: When you married.

Courtney: Just the journey of coming here?

Nancy: Tell us where you lived.

Courtney: We started out in Ohio. I was actually born in New Mexico, but we lived in Ohio since I was young. My husband lived in Ohio, so we both grew up there. Then we moved to Oklahoma to go to Bible school. My husband had gone before we were married, but then we went together. Then we went back to Ohio to join back in with the ministry that we had grown up in, in our teen years.

Then we were traveling. One summer, we were trying to break free of the nine-to-five job, and do road-schooling, and go on a big adventure. So, we did that. We packed into a little pop-up camper that cost us $1,000 and we hit the road. We started traveling. It was when we were out west that my husband thought he could breathe. He was so excited! He said, “We’re going to move west!” It was not on the agenda at all. He was Mr. Steady, and I thought we would stay forever.

We did move. We went home and sold everything and bought another camper that we retrofitted for our family. We moved to Alaska, sight unseen. Had never been there and never thought we would ever go to Alaska, but looking back, it felt like the Spirit of the Lord was driving us. The things that we were able to leave behind, our amazing families, and all our possessions, precious possessions that we left, the grace of the Lord was on us to do that.

And when we showed up the Lord had a place for us there, just like He provided here. There was this little community nestled in the middle of the wilderness, a Christian community that was desperate for young families to come in. They were all older, in their 80’s, and they welcomed us in with open arms. We lived there for a number of years.

Sometimes I feel like it’s the Scripture about the Spirit of the Lord. You don’t know where it’s going. The Lord has led us. It hasn’t made sense, but we tried to always be open to the door the Lord was leading and be able to drop anything. We haven’t had a lot of things tying us down, so the Lord has really done that. But it’s been very difficult also. It’s not all hunky dory. But God’s in charge.

Nancy: That’s great. Let’s now hear your story. Why don’t you start now, from when you were young, listening, and what God has done in your life.

Courtney: OK, just a little bit of background. My husband and I have been married for almost 19 years. We have ten children. Our oldest is 17, and we homeschool our children. We’ve homeschooled them since the beginning. But none of these things were ever on our plans, or our agendas. It’s something the Lord did in us.

My husband was raised in the church. They were Methodists. He went to a private Christian school growing up all through his growing-up years. Went off to Bible school and prepared to be a minister.

I was on the opposite side. I was not raised in the Lord. My granddad had turned away from the Lord. The whole family really fell apart and there was mental illness, and suicide, and immorality. The family just went to pieces.

Nancy: Just picking up there, Courtney. Isn’t that amazing? The decisions that we make as parents, how they affect the coming generations. You said your grandfather turned away from the Lord, and then it just went down. I see that in our own family. My father was one of five brothers. His father had an incredible conversion and came to know the Lord. His parents raised him for the Lord. Then they all married, and were having children, and were all growing up together.

Then the sad thing happened. The oldest brother, because of an offence; someone said something to him, and I wouldn’t have a clue what it was. But he got offended and he left the church. He never went back. Well, that line of the family still doesn’t go near a church. That’s about four or five generations.

I can remember my father going to his brother and saying, “Oh, but what about your children? What about their salvation?” He said, “Oh, when they’re old enough, I’ll take them to an evangelistic meeting, and they can decide for themselves.” Well, he never did. And those children never walked with the Lord, nor the grandchildren, nor the next generation. Isn’t it powerful, the decisions we make? They’re not just for us, certainly. They affect coming generations, don’t they?

Courtney: They do.

Nancy: But anyway, carry on!

Courtney: Well, I was just thinking the other day how I can look at my grandfather, and how the family fell apart. I think, “Lord, somewhere in my line, probably, there was someone who followed the Lord, and it’s the reason that I came back.

Nancy: And kept praying!

Courtney: Because it was the generations before that the Lord sees. It would be interesting if we knew who our greats and our great-greats were, their heart for the Lord, or their opposite, because we can know so much about ourselves.

OK, so my mom, at that time, she was really young. She ended up marrying really young. She was 15 when she got married. She never came to the Lord, but when she was younger, she had experience in the presence of the Lord because she had a relative who took her to prayer meetings in the Jesus movement. She remembers falling asleep on the floor in the prayer meetings and feeling the presence of God.

So, she had a longing for the Lord through all these years, but she just never came, she never came all the way. She never was born again. She raised us. She did her best as a mom in that situation. She left my dad when I was two-and-a-half and my brothers were about four, six, and eight. She left and moved in with an old boyfriend.

Our life was very typical of someone in a downtown area who had divorced and doesn’t have a lot, and lives in darkness, really. The Lord was drawing her all these years, but she didn’t really come until I was 11. I was 11 when she came back to the Lord.

Nancy: Didn’t she own a bar? You were kind of raised in a bar?

Courtney: She didn’t marry. She lived with that man, and they moved to East Liverpool, Ohio, and they bought a bar. I guess I was probably four at that time. So, from the time I was four, up until eight, yeah, we owned a bar. I spent my days there in the bar. My brothers were in school.

But during that time, the funny thing is that I was being homeschooled because she had known a Christian woman in her past who used Rod and Staff curriculum, all the way in New Mexico. That impacted her, and she thought, “I want to give my children a good foundation before they go to school.” So, she homeschooled us.

Nancy: I can’t imagine Rod and Staff curriculum being used in a bar! [laughter]

Courtney: In a bar! And I thank God for that curriculum because my mom didn’t, we didn’t grow up reading the Bible. There was never a family devotion. I share this with my children. “Do you realize what you have and how much light and sunshine there is?” Because this was not any part, any hint. We had never even heard of these things.

But I thank God for that curriculum because it’s all Scripture. It’s completely Scripture. All your reading, all your writing, everything is Scripture. So, we did have a little bit of foundation in those early years in the Lord.

My mom wanted out of that life, so even before she came to the Lord, she wanted out of the bars. She sold the bar to my stepdad. She ended up marrying the man she sold the bar to, so they kept it a while longer. Changed the name and did some turnaround. But it wasn’t until I was 11.

There was a woman who she had met through the business where she worked, which was bringing her the gospel regularly, and was hounding her. I mean hounding her. This woman’s name is Kay Price. I’d like to honor her. She just passed away recently. But this woman hounded my mom, hounded her at her work. She’d tell her, “Roberta, you've got to come back to the Lord. You’ve got to come back to the Lord.”

My mom, her belief at that time was that she could never return because she held onto the Scripture in a bad sense. She held onto the Scripture that said those who have tasted of the goodness of God can never return. She said, “I can never come back because I’ve done so much bad in my life. I can never come back.”

But finally, after Kay had annoyed her so much that she didn’t even like Kay anymore. She really couldn’t stand her. Finally, Kay was able to break through to her by the Spirit of the Lord! It really broke through.

Nancy: Is that amazing? The tenacity in never giving up!

Courtney: Yes! Yes! And this woman wasn’t an evangelist. I actually called Kay. I hunted her down about a year and a half ago on Facebook. I found Kay lived down the road in East Liverpool, maybe 15 minutes from where we lived.

I was able to talk to her. This woman became one of the most precious people in the whole world to me, because Kay, and I wanted to be able to tell her. I felt this urgency of, “I’ve got to find Kay before she’s gone, because I want her to know this side of heaven what she did for my family.”

When my mom came to the Lord, she came to the Lord, and He redeemed her. We went from darkness, I mean darkness, darkness, drinking, and parties, to total light. I’m so thankful for this woman, and to be able to say, “Kay, our whole lives, and generations to come, all these children, this life that we’ve been given. We owe so much to you because you were willing to hound my mother and not take no for an answer.”

One of my pet peeves is that people say, “If you shared the gospel properly, or in the right way, people would receive it. If you're sharing it, and they’re rejecting it, you must be doing something wrong.”

I’d like to set the record straight that I am so thankful that Kay hounded my mom in a way that she didn’t like, and it was uncomfortable, and annoying. Even my mom was rejecting the truth, but the bottom line is that the Lord was after her, and the truth is that we need to share. It’s God’s responsibility to do the rest. We just share. I’m so thankful for Kay.

Nancy: Oh, that’s a beautiful testimony.

Courtney: She’s such a beautiful woman to me. So, my mom came to the Lord. I was 11. She started going to church regularly and then she put us all in Christian school. Thank God, she put us all in Christian school. Then it wasn’t for a couple of years (even though I was in the church, and I was on the worship team, I was getting involved), but I didn’t come to the Lord for two years. But I just thank God.

My testimony is to say that God redeems. He plucks out of darkness, and He sets on a Rock, against what we deserve and anything that we’ve earned. But when we came to the Lord, we came solely because we came to the Lord in a mainstream church where having families wasn’t really encouraged. Homeschooling certainly wasn’t encouraged. We didn’t really know other people who were homeschooling. Around that time, when we had two little tots, was the time . . .

Nancy: Oh, but you should tell us how you met Rob! Oh, you can’t leave that part out!

Courtney: [laughing] That should be a separate podcast! I met Rob when I was sent to the Christian school. He was in the Christian school. He was a senior and I was in seventh grade. We saw each other because it was a small school. We ate lunches together, we did chapel together, and sports were combined. Things like that. We were around each other, but of course, at a distance.

I was a perfect heathen, and he remembers me as being such. But he graduated and went off to Rhema Bible School. I stayed, and I was born again in that school. Rob and his parents had left the Methodist church when they were filled with the Spirit. They had started a new fellowship.

The church grew and became a really beautiful outreach to the city’s youth. Sunday morning services may have had 20 people in it, but the Thursday night outreach to the teenagers would have 70 to 120 kids coming.

My mom was very reluctant to let me go because on the street, on Thursday nights, it looked like the outside of a club! Gothic kids, you know. It was somewhere my mom really didn’t want me going. But there was a boy in school. He was a senior, and he was delivered from drugs and alcohol. He would say, “It’s Fire tonight! It’s Fire tonight! Everybody’s got it!” He’d go down the hall. “You’ve got to come to Fire!” That was the name of the ministry, was “Fire.”  Fire Youth Ministry.

Finally, my mom let me go, and it was there that I experienced the presence of the Lord and was baptized in the Holy Spirit and jumped into the leadership program. It was a really intensive discipleship program that really taught me how infinite God is, and how to truly draw near to the Lord and be close to Him, something that I hadn’t been taught yet. The nitty-gritty of having a morning devotion, and growing in the Lord, and having Him change you. So, I thank God for that ministry too. Just totally transformed my life. The Lord was so faithful to give me that.

So, while I served in the ministry and the Lord really matured me, kind of quickly, Rob was looking for a wife in Oklahoma at the Bible school. He had this dream he would meet someone at Bible school. It’s a great place to meet someone your age, probably.

But when he would come back, we would see each other. We’d serve in the ministry, so my life went from attraction when I was 13 to being interested in him as a husband. It came over the years. By the time I was 16, Rob and I were good friends, serving in the ministry together. I had my strict list of things I was looking for in a husband, and they were very mature things, like he had to be undignified enough to dance but humble enough to bow. This was truly something on my list! [laughter]

The Lord was faithful, because everything on my list was slowly being crossed off. I was lost in love. I would love to find the list now to see what other ridiculous things were on there. But it was what the Lord really used to show me that “This is the man for you.” I didn’t have parents necessarily who were guiding me in that. The Lord really fathered me so much in my youth to make good decisions. He was faithful.

Rob and I were married when I was 17 and he was 23. We’ve been married for almost 19 years this month—Nineteen years!

Nancy: So, tell us, how you began your family. Did you plan? What did you do about children? Were you planning to have ten? Or that was not even on your radar?

Courtney: No, it wasn’t. I came from a family that had two older brothers. My husband came from a family where he had two older sisters and a younger brother. We never talked about it, just to be honest. We did have premarital counseling, but we never talked about any of the things that maybe you would think you would talk about.

But now I see the hand of the Lord in that, because I see that we haven’t really done anything that we assumed in our own minds that we would do. The Lord was faithful anyway. We thought we’d have three or four children. Rob assumed we would send them to private Christian school.

I wanted to be a missionary. Rob wanted to be a pastor. Our first two children came very quickly. I had Elias when I was 19 and the next year I had Addison. Then my vision became, “Well, they’re coming really close together.” After I had Auden, I became pregnant with Arden, and I thought, “I’m going to have my children very quickly! Have three or four, raise them up fast, move them out of the house so I can go on the mission field.”

That seemed like a great plan to me, but it was during that time that the Lord started giving me the vision. Like everyone else, I had seen the Duggars on TV. That planted a vision in my heart. I had also come across a family that was a beautiful homeschool family that had their house ordered so amazingly. That put a vision in my heart for what . . .

Nancy: You were telling me the other day, how you weren’t happy about having many children because you thought many parents didn’t know how to keep the house clean. You couldn’t stand all that.

Courtney: Yes, I thought that to have a big family, everything would fall apart and be messy. You wouldn’t have enough money, and your children would be ragamuffins, and your home would smell bad. My experience was that, any families that were bigger, that was my experience as a young person, and I thought I did not want anything to do with this.

So, I went to babysit for a beautiful family in our church who happens to be an Above Rubies family, but I didn’t know that at the time. I think they had six children, which seemed like a lot to me. Their home was so clean and organized, and their children were so well-behaved, and they were so sweet. I remember seeing the chore chart on the fridge, and it seemed like God spoke to me, or gave me this vision. If your children help in the house, then there isn’t so much work, and things can be nice and be orderly.

It was like the Lord connected it all for me and gave me this picture. It really started transforming my picture of what life could be like. At the same time, I started receiving Above Rubies magazine. I saw the Duggars on TV, and my vision completely changed. I thought, “If we can have godly children, why wouldn’t we have as many as we can?”

Nancy: And raise all these missionaries! Not just you be a missionary, but all these children as missionaries!

Courtney: Right! Perhaps I would never be a missionary, as I thought, but maybe my children would be. And maybe one of my generations.

Nancy: Every mother is a missionary. In fact, when you think about it, what did Jesus (who came ultimately to die for our sins, to pay the price of our sins), His whole mission, while He was ministering on earth, was making disciples. That’s what He did. He trained disciples. He chose 12 young men. They were only young men. Sometimes we think, “Oh, the disciples were older men.” No, they were just young teenagers. He chose them and He trained them.

That’s what every mother is doing. You’re doing the same ministry as Jesus! Isn’t that incredible? Jesus trained those disciples who went on, after He went back to heaven, to turn the world upside down. Really, we have the most incredible mission, the most incredible task in the whole world, to train disciples.

As you said, the more you have, the more impact you have for God, because the more disciples you are training, the more missionaries you are training, and the more of God’s love and His truth and the image of Who He is goes out into the world through our children. It's incredible, isn’t it?

Courtney: So true. Something my husband and I loved to do, and we used to do when we had young ones, we would serve in the summer camp in our church. All those children would come in, and we’d share the gospel with them. It was something that we loved. It was near and dear to us. So, our boys, this summer, went and served in Missouri at a camp, sharing the gospel.

That was so precious, because that’s something we would normally do, but we have our family now. It’s not as much in our ability to do that, but here we are, we’re at home discipling our children. Our two sons in Missouri, they’re serving too. Two of them giving their full attention to the ministry there while we’re here. The other one goes here, and the other one going here, and this is just the beginning, right?

Nancy: Oh, absolutely.

Courtney: It’s got to be amazing, to be you, and to see your arrows all over the place that you shot out. It is a multiplication. One of the things that I realized is that so many things I thought I would have to give up as a young person when I was starting to have children. I thought so much would have to die in me, and I would have to say good-bye to so many things. I DON’T THINK I’VE HAD TO SAY GOOD-BYE TO ANYTHING

Anything that was of value, but I remember thinking, “Well, we’ll never get invited over to supper anymore. No one will have a big family over to dinner. There will be too many of us. We’ll never get to go out to eat.” They’re just lies, really, lies is what they are. “You’ll never get to travel.” Or “You’ll never have alone time with your husband.” Or “Your house will never be clean again.” All these things. They’re just not true.

Nancy: No, no. I know it’s just the lies of the enemy. The devil is a liar, and because he hates God, he hates motherhood because God is the One Who instituted motherhood. He’s lying to women. He’s constantly calling lies into our minds. Even you lovely moms who, even though you love motherhood, the devi’s still going to come along and try to put these little lies into your mind. These little subtle things, but don’t listen to him.

That’s why you need the podcast, because you need to come every week and be encouraged in the Word, and in the testimonies of other women, to know you're walking in the perfect will of God, and you're doing the greatest career that you could ever do as a woman. Amen.

Courtney: I’ll agree. When we started having children, we still didn’t have a vision for having our full trust in the Lord though, either. We had three, and then we had four. I think we had five under five. They came along quickly. It was a lot, and my husband was saying, “OK, let’s slow down!”

In the meantime, the Lord was moving in my heart so much, just to trust Him with our family size. That was interesting to figure that out. But over the years, the Lord has really moved on my husband and changed his heart too. Everything that I’ve read and that the Lord’s showing me, I’m always pouring out to him, because he works, and he’s busy. As the Lord’s showing me things, I’m sharing, and he’s coming on softly, just like it came on softly with me.

Over the years, finally, I think we have had six when we decided that we were going to fully trust the Lord, and stop preventing our children. And let go of the fear, “Oh, you're going to have 19!” I thought, “Well, why would that be so bad first of all?”

But then, as I got bold enough to ask women, older women, “Did you trust the Lord? And how many did you have?” It was amazing to hear the testimonies of people who fully trusted the Lord, and had three, or had four. The Lord knows, and He sees, and He knows our lives and what His plan is for us, and the arrows He would give to us.

I started researching, “Well, a quiver full. How big is a quiver, Lord?” The thing that came back to me was “Well, people have different size quivers.” I thought, “How can that be?” You don’t go out with just one arrow in there.

But we have to leave some of our dogmatism behind and realize that the heart of it is to be willing, and to say, “God, I want whatever you have for me, beyond what the culture is saying, or what my body is saying, or the situation that’s present.” Because so many reasons that we limit our family for are temporary. They’re financial. It’s contained in a moment.

They’re emotional stress or anxiety, so many things. Even in a home situation, where your house is too small, or your car is too small. Many of these things, God changes the situation. I have never wanted to base my decisions on those things because they change so quickly.

We’re talking about eternity. Our children aren’t just for this life. They’re not just for when our home can be filled when we’re old. They’re for the kingdom of God, and He wants His kingdom FULL. That’s the vision. If we can just pass all these other things. It’s not about eating out or traveling the world. Even if we had to give up everything. I said that if I had to live in a tent so I could stay home with my children, I would do that, because . . .

Nancy: That’s so interesting.

Courtney: And I have! [laughter]

Nancy: You have lived in a tent!

Courtney: Not for a long time!

Nancy: It’s so funny, because I haven’t really met anyone else who said those exact words. But that’s exactly what I used to say when I was raising our children. With everything that was in me, I could not even bear to think that I could put my children aside and go out and do something else. I would live in a tent, rather than give up my children! I never had to, though. It’s amazing, isn’t it? God is so faithful.

And what did David say? “I have been young, and I have been old, but I have never seen the righteous begging bread” (Psalm 37:25). It’s so true. God is so faithful. I love that Scripture in Deuteronomy 28. That’s the blessing chapter. It’s wonderful to read all the blessings, but the interesting thing is that it’s also the cursing chapter, because it has all the curses as well. There are more curses than blessings.

But the blessings are so wonderful. It says that if we walk in the ways of the Lord, He will bless us. The first thing that He mentions is “And I will bless the fruit of your womb.” That is the first blessing. Then it goes on to say, “I will bless your cattle, and your sheep, and your store.” Everything around you, meaning your business and your provision.

You’ll notice that that comes after the blessing of the womb. God says, “I’ll bless your womb, AND I’ll bless you with all these other things.” That is what God does. When He blesses us, He blesses our womb, and we bring forth another child, well, then He blesses us to provide for that child.

I get so many testimonies of women saying, “You know, we had our sixth baby. We were wondering how we were going to survive. But God did this amazing thing, and my husband got a raise.” Or another testimony; “Well, the Lord just miraculously provided this big van for us!” It goes on and on and on. It’s always some great provision that happens with every new child. Have you found that too?

Courtney: Yes. Maybe not with every child. I haven’t sat down to prove it, but I realized that we were younger when we had Elias and Addison. They were just little tots, and I remember going to a food pantry because we had nothing in the house.

I look at us now, and I think, “Nothing has really changed financially for us.” Rob still works a job. He hasn’t gotten some big raise or amazing promotion, but we feed all these children, and we have a storehouse of food. The Lord has provided through the years. It doesn’t mean that you don’t go without. There are people who have one child who go without, and people with no children who go without.

Nancy: Paul said, “I know how to abound, but I know how to be abased.” And we go through those times. But I’m amazed that there are many families who will say, “We cannot, we cannot manage unless we have two incomes.”

But it’s only because they’re thinking that way, because I look at all these families who the Lord is blessing them. They have six, seven, eight, nine, or ten children, even as you have. And their husband doesn’t have some great incredible career. He’s just a very ordinary working man, just making ends meet. But you're eating and God is providing. You don’t have to have extras to enjoy life, do you? You just have to have what we need! Just food and clothing, really.

Courtney: A home that’s nice. [laughter]

Nancy: That’s so great. Who wants things, really? Your children are riches, aren’t they? If we had a fire or something, what are we going to save? We’re going to make sure every child is safe. We don’t even care if we lose everything else.

Another thing you were telling me about, how when you were first married, you met this Above Rubies lady. She sent you the magazine, didn’t she?

Courtney: Yes, the family that I watched their children in their home . . .

Nancy: Is that the lady?

Courtney: She passed the magazine to my best friend, who was a new friend in the Lord. We had just started our family. She was starting hers, and she had just come completely out of the world radically in her salvation. She was starting her walk of faith, and we were getting together every Tuesday.

This lady, I’ll say her name; Paula Ricardi, if you’re listening. She passed the magazine to Danielle, and Danielle started sharing these stories with me every Tuesday. She started sharing stories from the magazine, and they were amazing, with what life could be like. The stories that she would share about people’s children helping to run the home and taking care of everything while the mama had the baby. The mother actually takes a nap while her little ones are awake! We were amazed!

These stories were like nothing we had ever heard of, nothing we had ever seen. It was like coming to a foreign country for us. We were so excited to hear the possibilities of what life could be like for us. It really gave us a vision for our lives. It was so powerful.

Nancy: That’s so wonderful! So great. I see our time is coming to an end. But, Courtney, maybe you could just share with the ladies. Now you have teenagers, and you have little middlings, down to little baby Zion. Just tell us, what is your biggest passion you have for your children as you’re raising them.

Courtney: Oh, my. My biggest heart is to see them follow the Lord. My prayer is always, “God, may their hearts be after You. May they be for Your praise, and may they be for Your glory. May they be ready for Your kingdom.” One of the biggest things we need is God’s wisdom. We need His wisdom for everything.

I think this is the issue with money, and all of these things, is that God is the ultimate Father. The family was His idea. So much of the time, we’re relying on our own wisdom, and the wisdom that the world’s given us. But God has wisdom for how to do things His way. We need it, and we need to ask for it daily. “God, I need Your wisdom for today. I don’t know how to raise teenagers. I don’t know how to be married for 20 years. I don’t know how to homeschool. I don’t know how to do all the things that I need to do.”

We need wisdom, and we need our children to have wisdom from God. They’ve got to be seeking the Lord. They have to be seeking the Lord for themselves. They have to be in the Word. That’s the big thing. They need their Bible time in the morning. From the time they’re toddlers until they’re 100. When you’re a toddler, you read your picture Bible. It starts young.

But I’ve had the blessing of seeing my older ones. It’s something that’s so ingrained in them. My sons get their Bibles open while they’re eating their breakfast. I never have to say a word. It’s something they do, and they take an hour in the Word, daily. I’m so thankful that I forced, I forced that.

People would say, “Oh, you don’t want to force it. They’ll spit it out.” Well, no, it’s something that we decided is going to be a priority in our family. We homeschool, and we do all kinds of other things very loosely, but this is going to be something foundational in our lives. I thank God for that. This is wisdom.

Nancy: And you're seeing the fruit of that in their lives. It’s so beautiful. Thank you, Courtney, for sharing.

Courtney: Thank you so much for having me on. It’s such an honor.

Nancy: Let’s pray.

“Dear Father, we thank You so much for the way You work in our lives. Every single one of us has a testimony of Your work in our lives, and leading us, and showing us Your ways. Oh, that is one of the most wonderful things, to learn of Your ways.

“I pray for every mother listening today, that You will encourage them, that You will come to them today, and show them something new that You want them to do in their home, some new idea, some new thing to strengthen their marriage, to strengthen their home life.

“Because, Lord, that’s what it’s all about. We as the mothers are the anchors of the home. As we are building our homes, help us, oh God, to never get stagnant, never get in a rut, but always be seeking You for new ways to bless our husbands, bless our families. We ask this in the precious Name of Jesus. Amen.”

Blessings from Nancy Campbell

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Transcribed by Darlene Norris

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