All if God Wills…
Dear Ladies,
Please forgive the lack of posts lately. To say that things have been busy around here would be an understatement! Our family found out just over a week ago that we have been blessed with a brand new experience – our oldest child is getting married! In just six-weeks! None of us (our daughter, her fiancé, my husband, and me) have ever planned a wedding before, so on top of planning there’s the learning experience, but what a joyful one it is!
I have realized over the past several months that there is an unimaginable amount of information that pertains to womanhood that I don’t know. Frankly, as it stands now, my knowledge level, as far as how I can really help teach and reach women in our day and age, is sadly lacking; reaching and teaching women (including myself) who are thirsty and hungry for knowledge of how to reach the ultimate earthly success in womanhood, marriage, raising children, and homemaking has been, for many years, my heart’s desire. There are so many types of women I don’t know, so many family situations nowadays that I am not familiar with, and so much knowledge that I lack. For these reasons, as well as the fact that my parents are growing older several thousand miles away (and I need to learn more about senior care in our day and age), I have applied to our local university to obtain a Bachelor’s of Social Work degree.
Our university’s social work program is set up so that the majority of the studies can be done online from home, which will work perfectly for our family. I don’t have to leave home a lot and can study right alongside of our homeschooling children. I can study full or part time. Best of all, everything that I learn in the program will do nothing but make me a better wife, mother, homemaker, daughter, and woman.
I do not plan to work outside of our family home as a social worker part or full-time. I do plan to be on call should a local need arise that I can help with (for example, a large or homeschooling family needs the assistance of a licensed social worker), which would be a rare occasion. The very small amount of money I make from that will be used to fund local worthy charities. I am also the president (a non-paid position) of our local neighbor’s organization that is working on building a community center; much of what I am doing with that is considered social work, so I need to know exactly what I’m doing, and do it right, for the good of our community, which includes our family. I am studying this program to learn what I don’t know about women and families nowadays, not for a career inside or outside of the home.
I am also polishing-up my midwifery knowledge. I come from a long line of midwives and mountain herbalists and have continued the tradition nearly all of my adult life. I was in midwifery school several years ago, but quit because being a midwife would take too much time away from my own family, and it was with them that I needed to focus my learning. I have maintained an interest in midwifery and self-studied for some years, but it definitely took the back burner in my life. I am at the point now where I realize that so much information has been updated in the world of midwifery that I need to just start over and take a quality midwifery course. I know a lot of the knowledge, but want to be up-to-date – that’s important to me. There is a wonderful Alaskan, distance learning midwifery course that I plan to begin very soon. Since I fit our state’s “cultural exemption” law for practicing midwifery, I can take as much time (years) as I need to study and finish the course. Studying midwifery to me is like taking a mini-vacation, it is so enjoyable to me, the knowledge has always came very easily to me and I find it like taking a break from other things. I can study an hour a day, again, alongside our homeschooling children or while they’re asleep or at play. I don’t plan to work part or full time as a midwife, but to be available to Orthodox Jewish/Hebrew women in Alaska (there are a tiny number of them) and our family members to be their “Hebrew Midwife”. I don’t plan to make money from midwifery.
It’s important to note that I am older and am no longer having children - I am almost forty-one and have over twenty-one years of experience mothering and over seventeen as a wife. During my younger years, learning to be a thriving wife, mother, and homemaker was my main focus and where my learning was focused, and still is, I am just taking the learning level up to what I feel is the highest level attainable so that I can not only thrive in my role as wife, mother, homemaker, and woman, but to be an up-to-date, knowledgeable and helpful Grandma and source of dependable information and help to our grown children and younger women who seek knowledge, as well as my parents as they enter their senior years. I feel like I will have reached the pinnacle of thriving success by achieving these worthy goals of studying social work and modern midwifery and sharing what I learn to make the world, beginning with my own family, a better, more beautiful, thriving place. I want to always be there for our family members, and those young women who, like me so many years ago, hunger and thirst for some older woman to show them the way to thrive in womanhood - their roles as wives, mothers, homemakers, and deeply happy, satisfied, and fulfilled women.
Of course things may change in life and these things go unfulfilled – one never knows. But at least I will have given it my best try. I have said for years that all I can hope for as our children grow up and my husband grows older is for them to be able to honestly say, “She may not have been the best, but she absolutely tried her best.” I want them to know that I gave being a wife, mother, homemaker, and woman my very best, and I think that’s a worthy goal for any woman.
It has been hard for me to come up with posts on this blog since all of this is going on. I realized some months ago that I have to be *so careful* about what I write due to what I don’t know. Every word we say, and write, has weight. We will be judged for each of them by God one day. Words shouldn’t be shared carelessly, but with the greatest of care, for what any of us says and writes has a more tremendous power than most realize. This power can be for good/construction, or for evil/destruction, and even though a woman doesn’t intentionally set out to do evil/destruction with her words, she can certainly unleash it and cause it if she’s not very, very careful. It’s next to impossible for me, at this time, to feel like I can be as careful as I need to be on this blog, for it has a world-wide audience of women. What works and is good teaching in America, or even just one region of America, may be destructive in another culture or place.
At this point, I will be whittling back what is written on this blog. It’s time for me to be a student rather than a teacher and my time will have to be very carefully managed with the studying I plan to do. On the other hand, there is so much that I’ll learn that I’ll want to share with other women. So for now, I have discontinued the (near) daily encouragements and lengthy posts and will just post occasional links and information.
I do plan to take the knowledge I’ve gained through my life experience as a wife, the mother of twelve children, homemaker, home educator, authorized Fascinating Womanhood teacher, womanly community volunteer, and student of social work and modern midwifery , to write some books (which will be offered free of charge) in the future for younger women who are just beginning their journeys into the Wonderful World of Womanhood.
Thank you to all of you who are followers and readers of this blog. I really appreciate the support and online friendship you’ve offered over the past few years!
Most sincerely,
Nikki
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