How to Live Guilt Free and Allum-inations about Spirit-Led Living

Hi there!  I know I mentioned it on Facebook a while back, but don’t think I mentioned anything here…  I’ve joined up with Heidi St. John and will be posting once a month over at her blog, The Busy Mom.  This week, I wrote over there about how to live guilt free in a Pinterest world.  Not that Pinterest suddenly spawned guilt in women world-wide, but it seems to be one of the current avenues that women feel lures them into the comparison trap.  So I’m tackling that and sharing my secret for avoiding the comparison game that we can fall into whether we do so with our day-to-day interactions with others or in social media with blogs, Facebook or Pinterest.  Yes friends,  it’s possible to live free – comfortable in your own skin, living out the life God has for you.  Head on over to read more of my thoughts on this topic!

And well, I’m going to give you a hint because it seems to be a recurring theme that God keeps bringing back to me over and over again!   Walking in the Spirit.  How do we resist temptation?  Walk in the Spirit and you don’t feed the flesh.  How do we boldly walk out what God has for us this day, at this moment?  We walk in the Spirit.  It is amazing the peace and purpose that God fills you with, when you surrender your life, even the day-to-day insignificant moments to Him.  Sometimes I look at life and feel overwhelmed.  I’m called to so many things right now – my marriage, my home, raising and educating my children, this blog {I’ve tried to quit so many times and God typically uses my husband to gently nudge me back}, our ministry to the homeschool community…  How does one balance it all?  It comes down to fiercely pursuing the Lord and laying everything at His feet.  He guides and directs.  He works THROUGH us to accomplish His will.

Last week, I finally made it to my first blogging conference.  Allume is so much more than a blogging conference however.  Someone mentioned on Facebook that she went thinking that it would be a blogging conference with a little “Christian” thrown in.  Instead, we encountered a sweet time of encouragement to pursue God first with a little bit of blogging thrown in.  I came back refreshed.  Over and over again, words like “stewardship” stood out at me.  Our homeschool focus for this fall is Stewardship too as we learn about taking care of our bodies (through nutrition, rest and exercise), managing our time and our money, taking care of our natural resources.  It is no wonder that God continues to teach me these same themes as I left my family to travel to this conference.  We are called to be good stewards of all God has given us and all He’s charged us to do.

And we can’t do that without being seeped in the Word of God and being led by the Holy Spirit.

Another bonus of the conference was finally getting to transform “virtual friendships” into real-life one’s!  I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical of this a few years ago…  But over the years, I’ve gotten to know a few ladies through their writing and grown to love them.  Amanda is one of them!  We both share a passion for drawing children to Jesus.  I hoped we’d hit it off in person!   She’s the real deal and I loved getting to sit down and chat with her.  Can you tell?

Oh and my amazing roomies.  They blog about {real} FOOD.  It was a match made in heaven.   Seriously, go check out The Nourishing Home  and Don’t Waste the Crumbs!  I was so blessed by our late night conversations.  Their love for the Lord, their families and others inspired me.  And well, they were just plain fun.  It’s pretty obvious, right?

I also enjoyed connecting with a few fellow homeschool bloggers: Candace, Amy, Erin, Dollie and Stef to name just a few.  And just to prove that Twitter isn’t a total waste, God orchestrated an opportunity to meet Kathy Schwanke.  It was a delight to meet her in person.