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Helping Moms thrive in Business & Motherhood!

Helping Moms thrive in Business & Motherhood

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Listen, Love, Repeat. A Book Review

Listen, Love, Repeat.listenlovecover

I was so excited when I received my copy of Karen Ehman’s upcoming book,  Listen, Love, Repeat: Other-Centered Living in a Self-Centered World. I have been a long-time fan of Karen Ehman and followed her speaking and writing with Proverbs 31 ministries. She is one of those authors whose writing makes you feel like you are real-life friends. As I read this book, it almost felt like I was sipping coffee, sitting on a barstool at Karen’s kitchen island…while she baked cookies and shared her practical, life-changing wisdom (hey, a girl can dream, right?).

Anyways. This book. It is the antidote for our self-obsessed culture and the answer to every woman who has prayed, “God, I want to serve and love like you do, but what does that look like in my ordinary life?”

You see, I read books like, Kisses from Katie and Compelled by Love and my heart was stirred in a way I can hardly explain. I was wrecked. The American dream lost its allure and I wanted to be like these hero women missionaries who sold all they had and went to the ends of the earth to love the poor and broken. I wanted for my ministry and love for Jesus to ripple beyond the doorstep of my home. I wanted to love multitudes to Jesus. I had one little problem… I was a single, homeschooling mom. A full-time student. A nanny. A waitress. And I couldn’t go to Africa.

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So I wrestled with what this life of laid-down love could look like right here in the cornfields of Illinois. I did my best to live out my definition of “other-centered living in a self-centered world.” And I don’t believe my efforts were futile or in vain. I just didn’t really know where to begin. I probably wasted a lot of time spinning my wheels and trying to figure out the how. I didn’t know how simple it could be.

But this book. I’m telling you…this book…

Karen puts feet to your desire to serve God right where you are.

She gives your mind creative, surprisingly simple ideas for how to scatter kindness. She gives your hands practical tools to use in loving your friends and family as well as the lonely and broken who surround you. She makes it easy. Really easy.

And if you are in a place where you’re not even sure you have the desire {or let’s be real…TIME} to serve anyone extra {husband+kids=enough}, this book will serve as a loving wake-up call for your heart that you can and really should embrace this message.

“If our perspective each day can be, ‘I am in it for you’ instead of ‘What is in it for me?’ we will discover the joy of serving Jesus—without expecting anything in return and done only for an audience of One. We may show this kind of love to family or friends. Or we might demonstrate it in a random encounter with a stranger. Either way, the stage is set for us to showcase God’s love to a watching world,” (Listen, Love, Repeat, p. 48).

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Karen shares that sometimes this love is shown in helping a teenager with homework. Sometimes it is delivering a meal or sharing our home. Sometimes these things seem like an inconvenience, even a sacrifice, and…they are. But it is so very pleasing to God when we pause, listen for His voice, share His love, and then… repeat. And it is also so fulfilling and joy-giving to our own souls.

The world would tell us that we get by getting. God says we get by giving. We tune ourselves into God by spending time in prayer and in His word. And then we refuse to sleepwalk through life. In the mundane, every day dishes, laundry, and carpooling…we listen for His voice.

“Focus on the face in front of us… What are they thinking? What are they feeling? Can you climb behind their eyeballs and see the world from their eyes, if only for a moment?” (Listen, Love, Repeat, p. 30). Maybe this is your husband. Maybe it’s your server at Chili’s. Maybe it’s your postman or the nurse at your doctor’s visit. Maybe it’s the single mom you brush shoulders with when you pick up your kids from school.

I recently had the privilege of meeting another one of my favorite authors, Ann Voskamp. Ann says of Listen, Love, Repeat, “Her [Karen’s] words here speak my heart language—and echo the heart of God. Live these words. Repeat. Have a profoundly beautiful life right where you are.”

I am sharing Karen’s message with you because I believe it is important….and it’s important because it is Jesus’ message.

This is how we show the world who He is.

Jesus is calling us to listen for heart drops, to really look at the faces in front of us, and to scatter kindness. His kindness. Then repeat.llrmeme5




Good luck, everyone! A random winner will be picked next week!! (I’ll comment below with the winner and share on my Facebook page.

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Comments

  1. Laura says

    November 17, 2016 at 11:29 pm

    This sounds so great!! Love that you are doing this! For me, I was goin through a difficult time, and I had s few very special friends who walked through that time with me. They were there to talk whenever I needed and they would drop by the house for a visit or take some time and go shopping to try and forget the real life struggle. It made me feel like I mattered and what I was going through did not label me. I was valuable in spite of the trial.

    Reply
    • E Oschwald says

      November 18, 2016 at 1:35 pm

      Laura! It’s so good to hear from you?
      Thank you for sharing…I know what those difficult times are like and how crucial good friends are in the midst of them. Your story is a good reminder to me of how much of a difference we can truly make by doing “small” things that we already love to do…but including someone in them who needs to know and FEEL God’s love. Shopping with friends might be the best form of therapy ☺️

      Reply
  2. Catrina Wagner says

    November 19, 2016 at 8:12 pm

    In 2006, I had just turned 30, and my husband and I had decided to try to start our family. God had other plans for us. I was diagnosed with stage 3 Ovarian Cancer, instead. I gave it all to God, and God gets all the glory for my outcome. We were brand new to our church and barely knew anyone. But we quietly asked for prayer from our church leaders. The next thing we knew, people, perfect strangers, were sending us messages, praying for us, showing up at my appointments to pray over us, and bringing us meals. What was the darkest time in my life, was also the brightest. We definitely started our family during that time…. our CHURCH family. Three years later, we adopted our beautiful twin babies. God is SO good!

    Reply

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❌Giveaway closed ❌ We have been dreaming and p ❌Giveaway closed ❌ We have been dreaming and planning for this day for months - and it’s finally HERE! We have all the feels - nervous, excited, scared, hopeful…. Kinda want to do a happy dance. Kinda want to hide. Here’s a little of the back story…

We met in July 2018 (thanks @pedromadao) and instantly hit it off because we had 3 major things in common: 
We loved Jesus. 
We wanted to change the world by impacting moms. 
We were called to be Kingdom entrepreneurs.

What started out as running in separate, but parallel lanes... building courses, coaching, & helping moms step into freedom & abundance... over time, this led to collaboration - and then finally partnership. 

This podcast is the culmination of 23 years of our best attempts at Motherhood the Kingdom way - we are sharing wins, hard lessons, funny stories, and all the keys about Homeschool, Business, and life we have picked up along the way. 

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We’ve been planning something for a while now an We’ve been planning something for a while now and it’s finally happening! Who wants to guess what it is?
James Clear talks about the effects of “compound James Clear talks about the effects of “compounding”. It goes like this: 
•If you don’t enjoy something you won’t stick with it. 
•If you don’t stick with it, it won’t compound. 
•Being interested precedes the results. 

👉Let’s apply this to Homeschool. If we want to compound (reap huge rewards from “seemingly” small actions) we need to enjoy what we’re doing. We need to find purpose & joy and dare we say delight in it. 
Its ok to find that joy in the big picture of what you’re doing for your family through homeschooling & in the overall rewards of getting to spend time with your kids, or getting to fill their wonder buckets, or whatever it is that compels you to Homeschool. Maybe it’s as simple as just finding joy in your obedience to do the thing God has put before you to do. 

•If we can find joy in it, we will stick with it when it’s hard. 
•If we stick with it, we will reap huge rewards (as will our children) from the consistency of showing up, loving our kids, multiplying ourselves out into them, etc. etc. 
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Want to know the biggest mistake we see Homeschool Want to know the biggest mistake we see Homeschool Moms making?
We've been around for a while. We know A LOT of Homeschool Moms like yourself and there is one thing that stands out to us as the biggest mistake that we see Moms making all the time. 
Do you want to know? 
You do? Ok here we go...the mistake we see so often is that Moms often focus on the wrong things. 
They focus on Curriculum and get caught up in metrics instead of prioritizing relationship and as a result they end up dealing with power struggles, frustration, and overwhelm.
They focus on making Homeschool a Pinterest perfect experience instead of being Spirit-led to impart to their kids what God is calling them to impart. 
They forget to enjoy themselves because they're plagued with feeling that they're not doing enough or that they or their kids don't measure up. "Comparison is the thief of joy" is an overplayed quote for a reason!
They make Homeschool hard because they don't have a long term, God given vision in mind that keeps them going even through the ups and the downs of life. 
They get burdened by schedules and lessons and extracurricular activities instead of being able to easily adapt season to season, week to week, and day to day by living from a rhythm that's always guiding them. 
And finally, they end up doing "Christian Homeschool" instead of Kingdom Homeschool and miss out on the beauty of the Gospel at work in their daily lives. 
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As Christian homeschool moms, we were completely o As Christian homeschool moms, we were completely overwhelmed.

Unraveling under the pressure, high standards, & need to live up to the "ideal" model of wife, mom, & teacher.

❌ We were doing all the things we thought we were "supposed" to do, but still felt so much stress and like it was never enough. 🙇‍♀️

What's worse - the pressure we put on ourselves leaked onto our kids. Because we felt like WE weren't doing enough, we made them feel that way too.😢

We were reading the Bible and praying together! Checking all the proverbial boxes and expectations.  

💣👉 But we discovered that God being in your homeschool curriculum might make it Christian,... but it doesn't make it Kingdom.

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🎯 Modeling heaven in our homes
🎯 Exemplifying how the Father teaches in how we teach
🎯 The law of Grace over performance & achievement
🎯 Freedom instead of control & pressure

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