Author Archives: Heidi St. John

About Heidi St. John

Heidi has been married to her husband Jay since 1989. Together they have seven children and three grandchildren! The St. Johns homeschooled their kids all the way through high school. Heidi is the the author of seven books, host of the popular podcast "Off the Bench," and the founder of MomStrong International, an online community of women learning God's Word and how to apply it to every day life. She and her husband Jay are also the founders of Firmly Planted Family and the Firmly Planted Homeschool Resource Center, located in Vancouver, Washington.

Welcome to “Quiet Times for Busy Moms”

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Hi Moms! I’ve missed you over here at my blog in the past couple of weeks. You may notice that my blog has gone unloved since September 6th. We had four days of company followed by a week at outdoor school, followed by the early arrival of our first grandson, Noah. Wow. I can’t believe it.

All this excitement left me with little to no time to write—and I’ve made my peace with it because it’s just where I’m at right now. Thank you for your grace!

Fortunately, my husband carved out some time to help me with something that’s been on my heart for some time—and that is sharing my morning quiet times with you.

We are recording what God is teaching me through His Word as I spend just a few minutes with Him each morning. I hope you’ll join me—I’ll be talking about everything from marriage to mothering, and I’ll be encouraging you to take out your Bible and get it all “inky” with me. I’ll be asking you to devote just a few minutes each morning either reading the blog or listening to the podcast, and then, if you have time, sharing what God is teaching you as you spend time with Him.

Get a journal if you can—and record what you hear from the Lord as He teaches you how to discern His voice from all the other voices.

Listen to the very first podcast here:

Keep up to date with RSS or iTunes

I recorded this first podcast in the studio with my very pregnant daughter, and she has since had her baby 🙂 So my life has changed in the past couple of days. I’m now wearing a new “hat.” Can you relate?

Be encouraged, busy moms—encouraged to meet with the Lord right where you are, to talk to God in the noise of your day. If you’re ready, I can guarantee you that God is waiting for you. So, let’s get going!

Our first devotion is based on I Chronicles 15:11. Get out your highlighter and ink up your Bible … let’s talk about prioritizing our time!

Go to the first Quiet Times For Busy Moms:

Letting the Lord Direct Your Steps

Be encouraged,

Organizing your Homeschool {Blog Hop}

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homeschooling

When I first began homeschooling, the most challenging thing for me was figuring out how I was going to do “that” on top of all my other household responsibilities. I saw all those “other moms” who looked like that had it all together—and I felt less than qualified. After all, I didn’t bake my own bread from wheat that I grew and ground into flour. I didn’t have the uniform. And I didn’t speak the language.

I soon figured out that I was right to be a little nervous. Homeschoolers, as it turns out, DO have a language all their own. The trick, though, is to learn to speak your language. And that takes time.

Last month, after much reluctance, I wrote a series on homeschooling. I was reluctant, because I’ve learned that homeschool moms like me are easily guilted into thinking we’re doing it wrong. I don’t want to share our strategies and them have them become someone else’s burden (if that makes any sense.) Truthfully, we’ve tried just about every method and schedule out there from year to year. Why? Because things move at the speed of life. And you’ve got to be flexible and move with them if you’re going to stay in the game long term.

Homeschooling is a marathon, not a sprint. You wouldn’t just sign up for a marathon without training and planning, would you? Homeschooling is the same way. It requires some up front planning and thought, but once you get the hang of what generally works for you, you’ll just change it up and essentially repeat the process the next year.

Don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t worry about failure. Keep trying until you find a rhythm that works for you and your family. Here are my five “essentials” to getting organized for a new year of homeschooling. Click on the image to read the entire post.

Need more encouragement and ideas? You might like:

Homeschooling with Toddlers
Notebooking
The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Daylight: Managing Your Days Through the Homeschool Years
Lapbooking Made Simple (eBook)

You can do this!

Read all of the posts “Organizing Your Homeschooling” on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

Organizing Your Meals {Blog Hop}

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meals

I used to dread dinnertime. For me, around 4pm is the hour that I want to throw in the towel and just quit being a mom. Unfortunately, it’s also the time my kids start asking for dinner. Why do they want dinner every.single.night? So, like all good moms, I check Facebook and see all the great dinners that all those “other” moms are making for their families. And then, I feel inadequate. Can you relate?

Lucky for my family, I’ve become a huge fan of slow cooking. I use it all summer, too, for things like pulled pork and slow cooked mac-n-cheese. I’m not much for menu planning but I will say this: when I do it, I’m so glad! It makes my life so much easier! Menus really only take about half and hour to put together, and VOILA! Your brain is free to do other things, like remember to take the toddler to the bathroom on the hour.

So, here are my three top tips for organizing your meals:

Have a plan.
Use your slow cooker.
Enlist your children to help. (See my chores post from yesterday.)

A few of my favorite recipes for slow cooked meals are:

Chalupa
Chicken Curry (Made Simple!)
15 Bean Soup (pressure cooker version)
Split Pea Soup

LUNCH:

If your kids are home for lunch like mine are, keep simple things around to make simple, healthy lunches. We almost always have leftover dinner for lunch, so I like to make sure we have extra at dinnertime. Here are some ideas for easy lunches:

Quesadillas
Sandwiches
Grilled cheese and canned tomato soup
Leftovers!
Mini-pizzas on english muffins (a favorite at our house)
Anything pre-made from Costco (our kids like corn-dogs, which are not very healthy but great in a hurry)

Try making a menu and see if it makes a difference in your stress level. Need a menu planner? Download mine if you’d like and remember, keep it simple! Find a few meals that you enjoy making and use them frequently if you’d like. If you can make it and the family enjoys it, who cares if every Tuesday is TACO TUESDAY?

Download your free printable menu below—be patient, it might take a minute to load 🙂

You’ve Got This,

Read all of the posts “Organizing Your Spiritual Life Posts” on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

Organizing your Chores {Blog Hop}

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chores

If you’ve been following me for very long, then you know I am a huge fan of training children to work.

Here is a chart from my friend Toni over at The Happy Housewife—a list of age-appropriate chores that children can do. This does not mean that they do every chore, but it’s a list of ideas for you. If you’re wondering, “What can my four-year old do?”, this this might help you:

Around here, we use a weekly rotation for the “big things.” Here is what ours looks like this year:

If you like this one, you can download a printable version of it here!

Bottom line: Have a plan. Teach your children to help and the value of hard work. You’ll all be better off for it!

Work the Plan,

Read all of the posts about “Organizing Your Chores” on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

Organizing your Laundry {Blog Hop}

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laundry

Laundry gotcha down? Say the word and even seasoned moms like me cringe. It’s just.so.daily.

Or not! Unfortunately, when I don’t do laundry every day, it piles up. I was in fall-decorating/school prep mode this week and so the laundry was sorely neglected. We paid for that today when all the piles of clean laundry were dumped out on the family room floor to be folded and put away. The upside: five people folding and putting way makes short work of Mount Never Rest.

Families are all different, and different methods work during different seasons of life. Here are a few quick tips I’ve learned for beating the laundry blues!

Don’t leave your laundry to chance. Develop a system! I wrote about our system in my book: The Guide to Daylight
1. I’m a fan of chore charts. Here’s a printable chore chart with many suggestions.
2. Get your children involved in doing laundry. In our house, everyone is responsible for running their own laundry through if they are eight years old or older. One person is assigned to make sure the hampers are being run through and then the clean laundry is given to it’s owner to fold and put away.
Organize your laundry room
1. Use hampers to sort clothes. In our house, each bedroom has it’s own hamper. We keep a wicker hamper in the kitchen for kitchen laundry and two in the laundry room for towels and clothes I find strewn around the house. 🙂
2. Put laundry detergent within easy reach.
3. Use laundry baskets for individuals or for particular rooms (we have a basket per each bedroom).
4. Install a hanging rack if at all possible. We found one that I love two years ago. Now clothes to be hung up can be hung up straight out of the dryer.
Choose a regular day for washing sheets. Children can strip their own beds and put clean sheets on with some help. We chose Thursdays—since Friday is errand day and we generate the most laundry over the weekends.
Try to be consistent with the schedule you come up with. We do laundry every day at our house, but there are 10 of us here on a regular basis. Remember, everyone has bad days/weeks. Sometimes, it just piles up because more pressing things need to be done.
Let go of perfectionism. That’s all I have to say about that. You can have your perfect laundry scenario back when the kids are grown. (We’ll miss this too, I’m told.)

I have never come up with a system that I love for socks. I’ve tried them all—and right now we just put the mismatched socks in a big basket. We dump it when it gets full and try to match socks. About twice a year, I throw the others out. (I know I can save them for all sorts of Pinterest projects, I just know that I won’t ever do them.)

I’d love to hear your ideas!

Scrub-a-dub,

Read all of the posts “Organizing Your Laundry” posts on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

Organizing your Spiritual Life {Blog Hop}

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spirituallife

About twenty years ago, I remember getting into a fight with my husband. (Don’t look at me that way. There are more where that one came from.) My husband and I rarely have “heated” arguments. They’re more like intense conversations, since he’s the more mellow of the two of us. I used to joke and tell him he was no fun to fight with since he’s so rational and patient. 🙂

This was a little different that our normal spat, though. Here’s what happened:

Right in the middle of our argument, there was a knock at the door. A couple from the church where Jay was a pastor had stopped over for an impromptu visit. Now these two had been married much longer than we had; and they had five children, which at the time put them in the “saint” category as far as I was concerned. I revered this rock-steady couple. So it was just a little bit embarrassing to have them dropping by when my house didn’t look like something out of a Martha Stewart magazine.

I could not hide my emotional state, either. You see, my husband and I were having a hard time with a particular parenting course that was being offered at our church. I am a sort-of “Type A” personality by nature. I like formulas. Jay, on the other hand, felt that much of what was being taught was too rigid and legalistic. Twenty years later, I can tell you with certainty, he was right. But that’s not the point.

My friend Carol sat down on my couch and we began to tell she and her husband why we were arguing. We just laid it out there. I will never forget her words to me. “Heidi,” she said, “I’ve noticed that your coffee table is covered with parenting books and magazines, but I don’t see your Bible here. Your Bible is the most important book. If you never had another parenting book or program to follow, the Bible would be enough. Reading it is the most important thing.”

I was even more embarrassed. I was a pastor’s wife without a Bible on her coffee table. Surely there is some law against that! I’m sure I turned 50 shades of red. But these two, they were telling us the truth.

Carol’s husband smiled. They weren’t being mean or judgmental—there were pointing us to the only place where we can ever find the answers we really need. Parenting books are great, but none of them—not a single one—has all the right answers. As moms, we must be grounded in God’s Word! It’s not enough to read someone’s advice. We must take our concerns and questions to the Lord and ask His help in discerning what is best for our children.

It was the best advice I’ve ever received from another mom—and it changed the way I parented. In fact, it set us on a different trajectory as a young married couple. It’s fine to read parenting and marriage books. In fact, as an author, I highly suggest reading other people’s books! 🙂 But at the end of the day, we listen to the Author of life. We listen to the Lord.

We’re talking about “organization” this week—but I’m here to bear witness to the fact that if I’m not in the Bible on a consistent basis, even my best organizational efforts fall flat. Why? Because without God’s perspective fresh in my mind, the kids are stuck with mine. … yeah, that’s not that amazing.

Listen for the Lord. Read your Bible. Know what it says. Let your children see you reading God’s Word.

That’s the most important thing. Be in relationship with the Lord, Busy Mom. He has the answers you’re looking for.

Be in the Word,

Read all of the posts “Organizing Your Spiritual Life Posts” on these blogs! And read all about the Blog Hop going on HERE!

Accepting Change

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Good morning moms!

Well it’s 6:15 here and the sky is just starting to get light. Fall is definitely on it’s way. I’ve moved from the deck outside to a comfy place on my striped couch by the window. I dug my slippers out and found my favorite sweater. I expect it won’t be long and I’ll move to the fireplace. Even though I hate to see the summer go, I love the change of seasons. Change is just part of life, isn’t it?

Change happens with our children, our families, and our friendships. It happens in politics and in our churches. Sometimes change is very hard. Sometimes, it hurts. Sometimes I struggle to accept change as it comes into my life and disrupts the way I like things. Sometimes, I resist—but I’m learning acceptance is better.

I’ve been thinking lately about all the changes my husband and I have been through over the past 25 years. From ministry to marriage, we’ve seen a lot of ups and downs. When I was younger, I thought I knew so much more than I do now! I didn’t know there would be so.many.changes. in my life. From my parenting style to the realization that I had a lot of growing up to to … change has just become part of life. Isn’t it funny how the older you get the more you realize how much you DON’T know?

For example, I didn’t know how hard it would be to accept the fact that I was not going to have any more babies. Sure, I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I was thinking it would be on my terms. Looking back, I can see that very few of the painful changes have ever happened on my terms—and many of the good ones were on God’s terms, too. His terms, His timing.

I still have so much to learn about God’s timing.

Accepting God’s timing is just part of accepting the changes that inevitably come. I find myself very nostalgic as I watch the kids grow and leave the nest we’ve spent 25 years building. But then, I remind myself, “that’s why we built the “nest” … so that the kids could grow and leave it! Funny, isn’t it? As I get older, changes in my life have given me another reason to be grateful for God’s Word. His mercies are new every morning. He is so faithful. He is trustworthy. That means that even when I’d rather things were different, I can trust God’s heart for me. Listen to what the prophet Jeremiah said about God’s unchanging nature:

Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

God never changes. He’ll see you through whatever you are facing today. His mercies are new for you right now, busy mom!

Hang on tight to the Lord in every season of life. He’ll get you through.

Thankful for an unchanging God,