“Several years ago I saw a young surgeon who had gone to Harvard Medical School, as had his father and grandfather. He had the finest cars and opportunities along the way. And yet something was amiss. By the time he came to see me, he was shooting heroin into the heels of his feet (the heels being the only parts of his body where he had not abused the veins). He had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital in an attempt to save his life.

While working with me, he expressed his childhood dream of driving a truck.” Dan Miller goes on to explain that this young man now drives a truck during the week and makes a good income working on the weekends as an emergency room physician. He moved to the country and is getting his life together.

I believe that we put a lot of pressure on people in our culture to be someone that they aren’t meant to be, and we shame people that don’t meet up to the world’s standards. I have heard parents tell their children that, “It’s time to get a real job,” while their kid is trying to pursue his or her dreams. We are reading 48 Days to the Work You Love as a family right now, and this story about the young man was shocking to all of us. It was a great reminder, especially to Cory and I, that we should be so careful to encourage our children to follow their desires and talents that God has given them, and not try to misdirect our children or pressure them to fit into our will for their lives.

Cory and I tell our kids to try a lot of things while they are young, and not to be afraid to fail. That old saying of, “If you can’t do it right the first time, don’t do it,” never gets said in our house. In fact my husband and I give great examples of failures all the time, because we don’t seem to be afraid to do most things. Ha! Dan Miller says, “The challenge of parenting is to discover how God has uniquely gifted each child and how the parent can help the child excel in that area.” Loving our children unconditionally means accepting their career choices (as long as it doesn’t break God’s law), and helping and encouraging them in whatever way we can, even if they don’t want to go to college, or work in a particular field.

Are you living your dream or someone else’s dream? Do you live for the weekend, or do you love what you are doing so much that it never feels like work? When I left my job as an RN about 16 years ago, I felt ashamed and guilty because stay at homes moms weren’t appreciated like they used to be. After I had my first child, I knew I wanted to stay home and take care of her, but I was never encouraged to do that, and I worried too much about what people thought about me. People will tell you that things are different today and that women can’t afford to stay home anymore. Thankfully I never believed that.

I tried to push this desire out of my mind for about five years, and thought about the American dream instead. Then I finally realized that material things would never make us happy, and I wasn’t going to get that time back with my kids. We were both really stressed, and our kids were suffering. My husband wasn’t so sure about me staying home, but he gave me his blessing. I still feel such gratefulness to him for his sacrifice! While I was more of a liability in the beginning of my time at home, the Lord opened my eyes to so many things that I could do to save money. After a few years of applying these, I did some calculating and figured that I was able to save our family more money than I could have made working as an RN. That was even with feeding our family on a 100 percent organic diet. Not only that, but my husband’s stress level went way down, and he realized the huge blessing of having one of us home. Because of my extra time at home, the skills I had learned, and our home-centered life, we were able to start a business in 2006.

As this has grown, we have realized how much we love farming and helping people to acquire good quality food and natural products. In order to increase this and try to meet our demand, my husband recently came home as well. I am so thankful to God for changing both of our hearts, because I can’t imagine where we would be if He hadn’t. This jump is a huge leap of faith, because we don’t feel like things are perfectly in place, but will they ever be? There’s always one more thing! We have already witnessed the Lord at work in this and His provision. Nothing in this life is perfect. We experience struggles daily, the work can be challenging, and the hours can be long, but we truly love what we do. We both look forward to serving more people, and we are willing to live with less material things if need be. If you are craving a change, I highly recommend the book 48 days to the work you love by Dan Miller.

Do you struggle with worry about what other people think of you or your children? We love to hear from you!