Lisa Jacobson's Blog, page 9

How to Enjoy A Stress-Free, Debt-Free Holiday with Your Family This Year {Real Life with Lisa}

How does your family handle holiday planning?

“This is always such a difficult time for our family – trying to decide which family we see on which day and how long to stay.

I feel like the holidays are run, run, run and we don’t get time to sit and enjoy the company.

Every year I try to open the discussion with my husband, but I feel like the conversation turns into a defensive battle – each of us battling to get more time with our side of the family.

I have a large family with 4 siblings (each married with children) and my husband has only 1 brother.

Any advice would be very appreciated.” ~ Question from a Reader

Holidays. Family. Stress. Expenses. Busy. 

It can all conspire against us experiencing the joy that Christmas is supposed to bring, can’t it? It took us several years – mostly through trial and error – before we found some concrete ways that we could celebrate…and yet still enjoy this time as a family.

So today we’re going to be talking about the holidays and some very real, very practical ways we can make this season surprisingly stress-free and even debt-free (yes, it’s possible!). 

Continue reading How to Enjoy A Stress-Free, Debt-Free Holiday with Your Family This Year {Real Life with Lisa} at Club31Women.com

How You Can Bless a Single Mom and Her Children

Ask most moms what they want for Christmas and they will tell you they don’t need anything. Ask a single mom what she wants/needs for Christmas and she will never ask for anything for herself. She might ask for something for her children (but most likely she won’t). Today I want to share some ways to bless a single mom during the holidays or any other time of the year.

The Gift of Not Having to Cook a Meal

Every woman has those days where you just don’t think that you can cook another meal.  This feeling usually sets in for me right around 30 minutes past when I should have started dinner. My boys are not at the point where they can cook a full meal on their own.  In my home, if I don’t cook dinner then we don’t eat. Single moms are in a tough spot of not being able to sit one out when we get too tired. So my first gift idea is to share a meal with a single mom and her family.

Ideally, this would mean inviting her over for a meal and fellowship with your family.

Continue reading How You Can Bless a Single Mom and Her Children at Club31Women.com

The Problem with Keeping Your Head Down

I’m a head down kind of girl.  I’ve learned over the years that discipline works in my favor so when I need to get something done, I put my head down and just keep going.  Whatever I lack in talent I attempt to gain in focus and effort.  Push through.  Hustle.  It’s a strategy that the world often rewards.

Just this week I got to see the same strategy play out in the animal kingdom.  I watched a video a friend captured recently of two bull elk fighting.  It was stunning to observe these beautiful animals clashing in their native environment.  Their magnificent racks of antlers towered back from their heads and as they advanced upon one another they lowered their heads to use their natural weaponry.

God’s Amazing Creation

Captivated by what was clearly instinctive to them, I asked my husband. “Can they even see each other when they do that? Their heads are bent so low.  How can they see anything?”

We discussed how they were primarily feeling their way through the fight, using their other senses to guide them.  We thought about how their eyes and their internal organs were naturally more protected because of their fighting position. 

Continue reading The Problem with Keeping Your Head Down at Club31Women.com

9 Engaging Children’s Bible Story Books

“I know that story!”

I was just as excited as my five-year-old was to know he recognized the Bible story we were reading. While I grew up on flannelgraph Sunday School lessons each week, we keep our children with us during the church service so they can learn along with us. But we’ve realized that means we have to be more proactive about teaching our children not just the big truths of the Bible but also telling them the beloved stories of the heroes and kings, the saints, and sinners recorded in Scripture.

Retelling the Old

The beauty of telling and retelling the old, old story in different ways and with different books is the way our children learn to recognize the story within the story. And it’s humbling to realize that the more I explain the Scriptures to them, the more I see for myself the way the Old Testament points to the New.

While word for word Bible passages make up much of our family devotions and memory work, we also like to use Bible story read-alouds that reinforce biblical truths while instilling in our children a love for the story of Jesus and His love.

Continue reading 9 Engaging Children’s Bible Story Books at Club31Women.com

3 Reasons My Favorite Planner Makes Me So Happy

I am a planner.

You can ask my husband and he’ll tell you. It’s something he has learned about me and even come to appreciate about me.

Sometimes my kids appreciate it too – and sometimes it frustrates them.

And they all like to tease me about it.  Whispering in hushed tones, “It’s Mom and Her Planner” as if it’s sacred or something.

But it doesn’t really matter because planning makes me happy.

And if you’re wondering why….?

I’ll tell you.

3 Reasons A Planner Makes Me Happy

1.    A planner can help you live a more balanced life.

When you write down your schedule and add your current commitments, then you can better see what you really can . . . and cannot do.

When our kids approach me with some splendiferous (yes, it’s a real word, I looked it up) idea for the upcoming week –end?

But I can see that those days are already covered in pink, green, and blue? Then I can point to the rainbow already splattered across those days and answer cheerfully, “I’m sorry.

Continue reading 3 Reasons My Favorite Planner Makes Me So Happy at Club31Women.com

Overnight Sausage Egg & Cheese Breakfast Casserole

Holidays…Joy or Pain?

I love the holidays. As soon as October hits I’m counting down the days till I can officially start listening to Christmas music, stringing lights, and drinking coffee out of those cute little red cups (or whatever color they are this year). But before we can actually get to Christmas, we have to get to Thanksgiving.

The holidays are supposed to be a joyful time, and I know for a lot of us, that can be hard. Some of us have experienced deaths in the family during this time, financial troubles or maybe certain family members aren’t getting along, which inevitably seems to hurt more during the holidays. This time of year, while joyful for others, can intensify pain endured in the past.

I sympathize with those who are reminded of painful memories during the holidays. Thanksgiving feels like a marked holiday of sorts for me. As a child on a Thanksgiving many years ago, I was deeply hurt by a family member I trusted, and it’s not only left scars on me and my family but the memories I can suppress the rest of the year seem to rise to the surface once the holiday’s approach.

Continue reading Overnight Sausage Egg & Cheese Breakfast Casserole at Club31Women.com

The Best Advice From A Longtime Homeschooling Mom {Plus, Recommended Resources}

So many good questions!

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the thoughtful questions you’ve posed. Most recently our conversations have centered on homeschooling – how and what works, and why.

For those of you who’ve asked, our family of ten have homeschooled from “day one” with four high school graduates and one college graduate so far. But with our youngest being only ten-years-old, we still have a way to go!

Last week we talked about what a typical homeschooling day looked like in our home, and today we’re covering questions like:

How do you avoid gaping holes in your child’s education?

What do you do about teaching so many different ages?

And how do you keep up with it all??

What if you have an illness or new babies or other major setbacks?

What are some recommended resources?

Here’s some of the best advice I can think to offer when it comes to homeschooling…..

Recommended Homeschooling Resources:

State Homeschool Conferences and Events

Homeschool Legal Defence Association

Character-Building Resources:

One Exciting Series for Building Strong Character in our Tweens

For Instructions in Righteousness: A Topical Reference for Biblical Child-Training 

What We Use for Reading:

Pathway Readers

What We Use for Math:

Teaching Textbooks

Saxon Math

What We Use for Science:

Exploring Creation (The Young Explorer Series) (younger grades)

Exploring Creation by Apologia (older grades)

What We Use for Writing:

Institute for Excellence in Writing

Shurley English

*Just keep in mind that these are only some of the resources we’ve used over the years and every family is DIFFERENT!

Continue reading The Best Advice From A Longtime Homeschooling Mom {Plus, Recommended Resources} at Club31Women.com

Digging Your Marriage Out of The Hole of Selfishness

Let’s start with the anger that most every woman feels in the early years of marriage. He’s not spending enough time with you. He never does anything special for you. He’s not picking up his stuff or doing the chores you’ve asked him to help with a thousand times.

It’s not fair.

What about all the housework and bill paying and laundry you’re doing? Should you just stop doing all of it, because he doesn’t seem to appreciate your constant labor on his behalf?

You try, “Can we talk?” He listens but doesn’t hear you.

Nothing changes.

You ask to talk again. Again. Again. Again. He makes some promises in the moment, but you don’t see any change down the road.

Here’s what I have to say to you: This is normal.

Marriage is Refining

Do you know what marriage does? It refines you and your husband in a hot fire. In the refining process, all the impurities (dross) come to the top and are removed by the refiner.

The first nasty layer of dross is selfishness.

Continue reading Digging Your Marriage Out of The Hole of Selfishness at Club31Women.com

Living The Thankful Life

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

1 Thess. 5:18

The Thanksgiving holiday is approaching and I am sure many of us are already making lists, sketching out our menus, and creating a plan of attack for all of the cleaning we need to do. Those who are crafty put together Thanksgiving trees and other fun crafts, while others of us scour Pinterest to see what kind of Thanksgiving table decor we can copy and some simply keep a thanksgiving journal. For the Thorns, Thanksgiving also means family reunion.

But wouldn’t it be great if we put this much effort into cultivation a life of thanksgiving that goes beyond just the month of November? J.R. Miller said that,

“Christian thanksgiving is the life of Christ in the heart, transforming the disposition and the whole character.”

A thankful life will change who we are, and how we think about what we have, and all that we experience. The more we cultivate a thankful heart the more our heart will begin to beat like the heart of Jesus.

Continue reading Living The Thankful Life at Club31Women.com

7 Books to Help You Leave Legalism and Grow In Grace

I grew up in the average, conservative Christian home of the 1980s.  Each week I attended Sunday School, morning worship service, evening worship service, Wednesday night prayer meeting, youth group, and sometimes a Bible study with my friends.  Each summer I attended Vacation Bible School and when I aged out of attendance, I was there to serve.

At the end of sixth grade, I had a comprehensive understanding of Old and New Testament survey.  And by the time I entered my high school years, I could explain terms such as “individual soul liberty” and “dispensations”.  But ask me to define “grace” or “mercy” and I couldn’t tell you what they really were, let alone how they were different.

The Power of Grace

While I knew I was a sinner, that God sent Jesus to be my Savior, and that the only way to Heaven was by accepting this free gift of eternal life, I did not understand how that changed my life after the moment of salvation.  I looked at it all as a series of steps…a checklist for my spiritual life.  I read the Bible looking for the things I was to do or not to do and then began to comply.

Continue reading 7 Books to Help You Leave Legalism and Grow In Grace at Club31Women.com