Author

Kelly Crawford

Hello! I’m Kelly and I’m glad you’re here. I’m a wife and mom, just like you. I get it. I know how hard the days can be, and how you might feel like you’re spinning your wheels or that no one sees or appreciates your work.

The Old & Young Were Meant to Live Life Together

by Kelly Crawford June 19, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Mount St. Vincent, a nursing home in Seattle, Washington is experimenting with a new idea: sharing their day with a preschool. A filmmaker, Evan Briggs, captured on film the sweet interactions and obvious benefits to having young and old share life together.

This film ripped my heart open. Not because of the tenderness or beauty of it, but because we finally recognize the power, healing and growth for all humans when they interact together, in life, yet because of our unnatural social choices, our sacrifice of the sacred, our disdain for both the old and the young, we have to manufacture an environment that should be naturally-occurring in every community.

Something our culture didn’t figure into the practice of severely limiting children, is that children serve a crucial role in our lives, throughout our lives, and were given to us for reasons far beyond our social status.

Since a woman’s childbearing years last until around her mid-forties, nature tells us that families are supposed to be raising babies until around then. That’s right about the time a mother will likely become a grandmother. Those years literally overlap, when we let them, and I don’t think it was an accident that babies naturally occur in every stage of life.

Babies and toddlers were meant to be a constant, integral part of our lives because they bring life and vitality, and help us see as Jesus wanted us to see (“unless you become as a little children…”).

Beyond that, nursing homes have robbed the elderly from real homes where children and grandchildren should abound, where experiments like the above one don’t have to be fabricated. It’s God’s natural way of keeping our lives full of joy and wonder and importance.

Statistics mentioned in the film said:

“43% of older adults experience social isolation, which is closely correlated with loneliness and depression, as well as mental and physical decline.”

“The number of adults 65 years and older is expected to double within the next 25 years.”

What will happen to an ever-increasing aging population if they are removed from homes and the joy of life through the eyes of children?

And what will happen to children, and us, when we aren’t allowed to glean from the aged, honor them for their sacrifices, and care for them in their weakness, which makes us stronger and better?

We lose so much when we live for today, making choices that have detrimental effects on our tomorrows.

Life is precious, at every age. Let us celebrate every life!

June 19, 2015 12 comments

Portrait of a Courageous Woman of God, Elisabeth Elliot

by Kelly Crawford June 18, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

A beautiful woman of faith, a true saint, fearlessly courageous, bold and devoted to her God, died this week. She was an early mentor of mine through books and audios, and her faithfulness has left an indelible impression in my life.

Elisabeth walked through some dark places and maintained that God used it all to make her more like Him. Her first husband, Jim, was brutally killed by the tribe he sought to minister to, but his death opened the door for Elisabeth to bravely push open, bringing many of them to Christ.

She remarried, but three years later, lost her second husband to cancer. Throughout her life, she has remained a steadfast soldier.

You will not regret reading any of Elisabeth Elliot’s books.

Let the Lord speak through her words as her legacy reaches into our generation, bringing glory to His name.

“The routines of housework and of mothering may be seen as a kind of death, and it is appropriate that they should be, for they offer the chance, day after day, to lay down one’s life for others. Then they are no longer routines. By being done with love and offered up to God with praise, they are thereby hallowed as the vessels of the tabernacle were hallowed–not because they were different from other vessels in quality or function, but because they were offered to God. A mother’s part in sustaining the life of her children and making it pleasant and comfortable is no triviality. It calls for self-sacrifice and humility, but it is the route, as was the humiliation of Jesus, to glory.”

“The world looks for happiness through self-assertion. The Christian knows that joy is found in self-abandonment. “If a man will let himself be lost for My sake,” Jesus said, “he will find his true self.” A Christian woman’s true freedom lies on the other side of a very small gate—humble obedience—but that gate leads out into a largeness of life undreamed of by the liberators of the world, to a place where the God-given differentiation between the sexes is not obfuscated but celebrated, where our inequalities are seen as essential to the image of God, for it is in male and female, in male as male and female as female, not as two identical and interchangeable halves, that the image is manifested.” From “The Essence of Femininity: A Personal Perspective”

“I have one desire now – to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it.”

“I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.”

“We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.”

“God is God. Because he is God, He is worthy of my trust and obedience. I will find rest nowhere but in His holy will that is unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what he is up to.”

“Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person’s seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next.”

“The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world.”

“Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.”

“One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”

“The principles of gain through loss, of joy through sorrow, of getting by giving, of fulfillment by laying down, of life out of death is what the Bible teaches, and the people who have believed it enough to live it out in simple, humble, day-by-day practice are people who have found the gain, the joy, the getting, the fulfillment, the life.”

June 18, 2015 6 comments

frugal living/saving money motherhood/family/parenting

Why “I Can’t Afford It” Could Be the Best Thing For Your Children

by Kelly Crawford June 15, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Americans are pretty obsessed with “affording” stuff. I saw a quote recently, though I can’t recall it, that said something like:

“We work all the time to afford all the things we never have time to enjoy because we’re always working.”

We’ve afforded bigger homes, nicer cars, longer vacations, but we can’t afford for mom to stay home and raise her children, and little by little, we can’t even afford children. (Hands down, THE most common question we get about both the number of children we have and my staying home is, “how do you afford it?”)

But I think we’re usually lying. I think we have a grossly skewed idea of what “afford” means, and few of us are really in dire situations that call us to sacrifice the important things.

Johnmary, Mark, Godfrey and George spent the night with us this week. They are orphans traveling across the US with a choir from Uganda.

Back home, they eat three meals a day, which is a privilege not every child in their country has, and each meal consists of posho and beans. (Posho is made up of finely ground white corn flour mixed with boiling water until it becomes solid.) They might get chicken at Christmas. Let that sink in…posho, three times a day.

They have very few toys or materials goods. They play soccer together and do school, but that’s the typical life, day in, day out, for these children. They live in conditions very few of us can imagine, though much improved for them, with hundreds of them living together in a big room.

The oldest boy said, “There are no hardships in America.”

How has this poverty affected them?

They are happy. They are grateful. Boy, are they grateful. They are kind, respectful, polite and very affectionate. They are smart, energetic and helpful. They love Jesus. And they dance and sing like there is no tomorrow. (I observed it, but I also talked with one of the missionaries who travels with them who confirmed it.)

Is that any less than I could hope for my own children?

Contrast that. Across the landscape of our country, at the now-adults who were just children a few years ago, spans an ugly, disconcerting scene. They call it the “Me Generation.”

Apparently, the generation who seems to be more self-centered than ever before, who demands to have what they want when they want it, was raised by a generation of parents who meant well, and only wanted their children to “have more than I did.”

This was the generation (and it continues) who said things like, “We can’t afford to live on one income” while driving a Mercedes and vacationing at Disney Land. Or who said, “We can’t afford more children and besides, more children would take away from the one(s) we have.”

But see, living on one income (a by-product of the simple decision to be the one who raises your own babies) forces us to make choices we might not otherwise make if we could afford to. More children naturally does the same thing.

Understandably, some families find themselves in difficult circumstances and I’m not judging those. I’m trying to speak to a general mentality in our country that believes we have to sacrifice what’s important to achieve a certain standard of living.

Our children have never needed more to be better. In fact, children who grow up in homes where they are taught that stuff costs money and money must be earned, and there is a big difference between needs and wants, rather than having everything given to them, fare much better as adults.

Children who grow up in homes watching parents sacrifice material things for meaningful things usually grow up to embrace what is meaningful.

I am not an advocate for seeking poverty or avoiding wealth. I am for seeing things as they are, avoiding the love of money and embracing what has eternal value.

We need to stop fearing the inability to afford things–that doesn’t hurt our children. Let’s focus instead on the things that help our children become the kind of people that make the world a better place.

June 15, 2015 43 comments

homeschooling large families pregnancy/birth control

Why I Agreed to Do a National Interview About (Not) Being Quiverfull

by Kelly Crawford June 10, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

They wanted to tell my perspective, in light of the Duggar’s recent presence in the news, of what it means to be “Quiverfull.” It was a radio show that airs on NPR.

My first thought was to decline. Publicity typically doesn’t go well for people and the farther we can stay away from it, probably, the better. Besides, I’m already the brunt of public, mean-spirited, dishonest and distorted information, and it’s not fun. But precisely because of that, I decided that maybe it was a chance to tell the truth and dispel of few misconceptions.

I told her I would do it, but that we don’t adhere to the label “Quiverfull”, though it is the label others have given us.

First, I get the need for labels. Sometimes it aids discussion and helps us say what we mean with fewer words. But most of the time, labels turn into unfair categorizing, painting whole groups of people with broad brushes on the actions of some. (I’ve been guilty of doing the same thing.)

In case you’re unaware, “Quiverfull” doesn’t carry a very positive connotation, and often gets lumped in with discussions about cults and parental and/or spiritual abuse.

Which is why the label doesn’t fit us.

The truth is, there are large, homeschooling families (the most obvious criteria for “Quiverfull”) that make a mess of things. Some are bad parents, even abusive. Some don’t understand marriage or compassion, or how to balance relationships in a family. And it’s ugly.

But, there are just as many of those examples among “normal” families.

The truth is, in every type of family there are great examples and terrible ones.

We must discern the difference or we risk being labeled and stereotyped ourselves. Not only should we discern the difference, we should be demanding integrity and truth in every conversation, not willing to abide slander or misinformation. Because when we accept it, the truth about everything slowly dies. Nothing has made misinformation more prevalent than the Internet, but when we blindly accept what we read without being discerners of truth, we participate in the greatest destroyer of relationships there ever was. (Which is where the problem originates: the ability to tear people down behind a screen because we don’t have relationships with them and in fact, don’t perceive them as real people.)

I gave an example to the host in my interview: I am constantly seeing a new story in the news about a public school teacher who has been arrested for sexual crimes against students. It seems like an epidemic. Since there are so many, is it fair or right for us to make the whole lot of public school teachers suspect? Of course not. There are still many, many honorable people in that profession and we should recognize that and defend them if someone tries to mar their reputation by imputing another’s negative behavior onto them.

The second reason “Quiverfull Movement” doesn’t fit us is because we don’t follow a group or person. We don’t ascribe to any list of rules or ideology outside of God’s Word. We follow Jesus Christ.

So at the end of the interview she asked me, “Since you don’t see yourself as ‘Quiverfull’, what do you want to be called?”

Me: “A normal person.”

Seriously though, why must we be labeled? So I mentioned to her that the widespread acceptance of birth control has only been for the last 70 years or so. A “movement” implies a deviation away from what is considered normal. Before birth control was made popular, it was normal to have a larger family. In fact, throughout history, it’s been normal for thousands of years, compared to the few decades where strict prevention of children has been practiced. If there’s a movement at all, it’s “The Birth Control Movement.”

Let them answer questions for a while.

(Thank you, Interfaith, for letting me tell my story. It was an honor.)

I’ll try to let you know when it airs. To God be the glory.

June 10, 2015 35 comments

homeschooling

What if You Can’t Teach Your Child? (A Big Sigh of Relief to Homeschooling Parents)

by Kelly Crawford June 3, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Homeschooling has had to fight some pretty deep-seated myths because the machine that runs the government system of education plants those myths deeply to keep it running.

Every homeschooling parent has heard at some point:

“What if you’re not qualified to teach your children?”

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.”

― Isaac Asimov

Many people even lobby to have home-educating parents required to pass a certification.

That unconstitutional quest is driven by the myth that a child can only learn when there is a teacher (expert) to teach him.

Nature proves that to be false, as does history and experience.

A child begins learning when he is born, about the world around him, his language, psychology of human behavior, physics and everything else needful to him. He would have to be locked in a dark closet to be prevented from learning, so strong is his innate compulsion to learn.

“I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
― Ray Bradbury

As he gets older, he doesn’t loose that amazing ability and curiosity to gain needful information, process experiences, and learn about the world around him.

A child needs little more than real life experiences, a person willing to converse with him about the world, and some good books to give him a well-rounded education. Many of our most brilliant ancestors were educated this way.

“All I have learned, I learned from books.”
― Abraham Lincoln

Self-education is our aim (should be our aim), not the crippling assumption that a child can’t learn without being fed information.

Most of our own school experiences remind us that “forced-learning” as John Taylor Gatto calls it, doesn’t stick for very long. Our aim should be to open up the world of possibilities, show our children how very easy it is to learn and that they don’t have to wait for a teacher, but have the power in their own hands.

“Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life.”
― Brigham Young

As homeschoolers, understanding the science of learning should free us up tremendously and help us relax as we help our children grow in knowledge, wisdom and truth.

More than a teacher, our children need someone to lead them to a world full of new things to learn.

Want to learn more about a relaxed method of homeschooling? Less stressful to parent and child? Check out Think Outside the Classroom.

June 3, 2015 30 comments

marriage

8 Ways to be a Modern Day Proverbs 31 Woman

by Kelly Crawford June 1, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

“She is a woman in control of her thoughts, feelings and emotions. I can almost see her, stately, svelte, smart, winsome…the kind of woman people clamor to be around.”

1. Proverbs 31: A Must-Study for Christian Women

Proverbs 31 is a must-study for any woman serious about her God and her Christianity. Period. I have committed to refresh my vision every morning by reading through the passage of the virtuous woman.

Here’s my snap shot of the virtuous wife for today’s woman:

2. The Virtuous Woman: A Lifetime of Traits

The descriptions of the Proverbs 31 woman, I believe, are somewhat seasonal. That is, the passage encapsulates all that a virtuous woman strives to be in a lifetime, not necessarily all at once. We need not read the condensed version and feel overwhelmed; this is the course of a life, activities and responsibilities waxing and waning with the seasons. But, there are some traits that run constant in her character.

3. Trustworthy and Good: The Heart of a Virtuous Wife

“The heart of her husband trusts in her…She does him good, and not harm, all the days of her life.”

I don’t know about you, but this verse gets to my heart. This woman’s husband trusts her with everything–his reputation, knowing she speaks well of him, his money, knowing she respects his hard work, his feelings, knowing he is safe in her presence. She “does him good.” Pause here and reflect on that. If I only read one verse each morning, it will be this one. I want to do him good, to be a “crown” and not “rottenness” to him.

4. The Resourceful Diva: A Woman’s Business Ventures

“She considers a field and buys it;…She makes linen garments and sells them; she delivers sashes to the merchant.”

She is an income-earning Diva. Or, for modern-day application, she was resourceful, and maybe being thrifty and saving her husband’s income is equivalent to earning one. I love this about her. But, she prioritized this part of her life too. She earned income by several different means, all allowing her to be flexible and tend to her priorities first. Her business wasn’t one dictated by someone who ignored the needs of her family. She was able to pick it up or lay it down as her time demanded. And her business savvy served only one purpose–to provide for her household.

5. Prioritizing for Success: The Virtuous Woman’s Strategy

We know from the passage that whatever business ventures she pursued, her home was well cared for, they had no needs she hadn’t met, she had prepared for winter (probably through storing food and securing necessary clothing), and she was busy serving her family as well as those around her with physical needs. This is such an important thing to understand as we allow Scripture to shape our understanding about our roles as women. We are so NEEDED…sometimes to the degree it feels we’re pulled in every direction. But the virtuous woman guarded her priorities. She was able to be an asset to her family by earning an income AND take care of her household and those around her. That takes careful strategy.

6. Strength and Dignity: The Clothes of a Virtuous Woman

“Strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the time to come”…

Twice the passage refers to her being dressed in strength. This image is particularly important because it flies in the face of what feminists claim an “unliberated” woman is. The Proverbs 31 woman is NOT timid or inferior or incapable. All those years ago, despite what the culture steeped in paganism thought of women, God exalted them, giving them the highest rank of dignity. A virtuous woman is strong and free from anxiety about tomorrow. I love that! She is a woman in control of her thoughts, feelings and emotions. I can almost see her, stately, svelte, smart, winsome…the kind of woman people clamor to be around.

7. Productive and Industrious: The Busyness of the Virtuous Woman

She “does not eat the bread of idleness…works with willing hands….She rises while it is yet night…Her lamp does not go out at night….”

She is PRODUCTIVE. She is not idle. She spends her time on things that will benefit her household. She is industrious and busy. But in all of that, she is “a woman who fears the Lord.” And you can be sure she did not neglect, amid the busyness of life, the training and instruction of her children in the things of the Lord.

8. Chiseling into Rare Worth: Reaching for the Standard

The virtuous woman is not some picture of perfection so unattainable we skip over her; she is a standard for us to reach for, as we pray for the Lord to chisel us into this woman of rare worth.

(For a great, encouraging resource, check out The Excellent Wife.)

June 1, 2015 21 comments

motherhood/family/parenting

Growing Children With Pluck: On Making Excuses Not Like Benjamin Franklin

by Kelly Crawford May 29, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Growing Children With Pluck: On Making Excuses Not Like Benjamin Franklin:

As a mother, as I’m sure you do, I deal often with helping my children take responsibility, be determined and diligent, and for Pete’s sake, not make excuses for everything.

I had a child tell me the other day that he “can’t do his schoolwork.”

“Oh, why?” I asked.

“Well, we helped Mrs. _______ this morning, and didn’t get to do our school, and I don’t like doing school after lunch.”

This came out of his mouth.

“Can’t” is not the same as “don’t want to.”

Being a mom informs me that making excuses is natural to humans and needs to be conquered.

Which got me thinking that really this excuse-making pervades our society. It hasn’t been conquered. Our excuses are just cloaked in mature-sounding rhetoric.

“I can’t stay home with my newborn because we can’t afford it.” (i.e. I don’t like driving an old car, or living in a more humble house, or skipping vacations, or…)

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard how “irresponsible” it is to have children if you “can’t give them what they need.” (Even as in, two children might deprive one.) Which might be the most disparate opinion ever there was. So excuse-making for ourselves reaches over into guilting other people so I don’t feel as badly about my excuses. Maybe.

We make excuses to avoid hardship. We cannot abide hardship and most certainly never see its benefit.

But history shows it:

Consider one of the greatest men that ever lived, especially in terms of his contribution to the world. Benjamin Franklin was the 15th child of 17 (his father had 7 before he married Ben’s mother), born to a poor family.

“Benjamin only had two years of formal education, which finished when he was ten years old, because his family could not afford the fees….He had to work in his father’s business.”

Let me flesh this out for you: he was forced to quit school to go to work at ten years old. Most people consider that child abuse. Most people would rebuke his parents harshly for having (far) more children than they could “provide for.”

But you see, things aren’t always what they seem. We’ve built this cushy idea of life in a tiny box, and we can’t see outside of it. I submit to you that Benjamin Franklin may have been so successful precisely because life was so hard.

We insist that the rat race of sports is what will make our children great, or enough extracurricular, or entertainment, or better clothes, more vacations, a new car, paid college tuition–we spend our lives for these, often sacrificing what is better.

Here’s what Franklin said of his father:

“At his table he liked to have, as often as he could, some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children. By this means he turned our attention to what was good, just, and prudent in the conduct of life.” Franklin’s Autobiography

Conversation around the table. Being together. A father imparting the wisdom of life. Working side by side, living honestly. Seems too simple. Franklin didn’t lament tattered clothing. Or even his having to quit school. He didn’t whine about the “cruelty” or “abuse” of growing up hard. And he didn’t blame. He did remember, with affection, the important things his parents did. He didn’t make excuses and he charged ahead with what he had.

There are many more stories in history like this one.

I know I don’t have the pluck of Benjamin Franklin. I sure wish I had even a fraction of it. But studying men like that reminds me to be a different parent. To help my children learn to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and not be tempted to coddle them so much.

I want them to do hard things and not make excuses. Because I love them.

May 29, 2015 12 comments

public school

Why You Should Be Outraged That Your Parental Rights are Stripped When You Send Your Child to Public School

by Kelly Crawford May 28, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Julie Giles was arrested because her son missed too many days at school. Matt Walsh speaks about it:

“Schools are just schools. They are places that teach students how to say the ABCs, how to add two plus two, and how to use lube and get abortions. You know, the basic stuff. They are not foster parents. They are not kings. They are not gods.

Our children are not owed to them. They exercise no ownership over them. In a free country (so, not this one) a school would be a tool for parents to use. A place to which parents delegate some temporary and conditional authority. Authority that can be revoked at any time, for any reason. Period….

“While we whine and cry about so many other government intrusions, none of them — not a single one — has been as effective at fundamentally changing our values and our views on life as compulsory government schooling.”

In the mean time, though, while we await the general reawakening of the American people, the best course of action, individually, is to search for alternatives outside of government education. Homeschool is a great choice. If you can’t do that, look into private schools or charter schools. If all else fails, I always suggest releasing your child into the wilderness to be raised by coyotes before sending them to government educational factories. They’ll probably end up more mentally and emotionally adjusted than they would in our current public school system.

In lieu of all of those options, public school might be your only remaining choice. If you go that route, just realize what it means. You are forfeiting your parental rights. The schools have made this terrible and unconstitutional fact clear, and the courts have backed them up. Make sure you understand that going in.

And, as a side note, make sure your kid is taking his vitamin C. After all, if he gets a cold you might end up in prison.”

(And I would add that if public school is your only option, you (and every parent) should understand how serious this breach of authority is, explain it to your friends, and bang on every door, send letters, phone calls and petitions to every official, demanding that authority of parents be returned.)

Read the rest of Your Parental Rights Don’t Exist When You Send Your Kid To Public School, by Matt Walsh

May 28, 2015 21 comments

large families motherhood/family/parenting pregnancy/birth control

Children Are a Handful So Let a Mom Be Tired

by Kelly Crawford May 26, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Last week we visited with an older lady whom we don’t see very often (not even every year). Not long after we greeted each other, she looked at me and said, “You’re too busy.” I smiled, and jokingly said, “how do you know?” And she pointed to my children and said, “Oh, I know.”

Later in the visit she mentioned “what a handful that many children were,” and again, I just smiled. Then I heard her bring it up to my husband…”all that work.” And later, she questioned how I found time to homeschool, etc.

Finally, I realized that she just couldn’t comprehend the large family concept so I decided to answer.

I leaned in toward her a bit and with the warmest smile I could muster I said, “Ya know, they are a lot of work. But I can’t think of anything else I’d rather invest my time and energy in than raising children for the glory of God.”

Not earth-shattering, not rude, but a simple declaration of truth.

Somehow the woman who holds a full time job and tries to manage a home and leads the Girl Scout troop and heads up the church nursery never gets the barrage of “but it’s so much work!” The more she does, as long as it’s out there, the more she is encouraged and admired.

Or the student working on his PHD while waiting tables at night—it’s a noble thing he does, so we pat him on the back and say “good job.” (And we should.) Good things require hard work.

And don’t get me wrong, we should not be looking for men’s applause. But the comments and questions moms with more than two children receive are a sad gauge of how distorted our worldview is.

“It’s so much work.” Isn’t life work? Isn’t anything worthy of doing “work?” Am I really supposed to try to make it look like a breeze? Please tell me I’m allowed to be tired, or stressed out, or weary, just like the full-time working woman, or the over-studied student.

I’m a mother and it is hard work. And in this season of life I want to be broken and spilled out into the lives of my children. He has given us “a handful” for only a short time. If they aren’t worth the work, what is?

May 26, 2015 20 comments

christian living

A Former Lesbian Professor Tells What Happened When She Met Jesus

by Kelly Crawford May 25, 2015

written by Kelly Crawford

Do you know what the world needs? To come face to face with the God who created them, see His agony over their sin, His death as a man on the cross to cover it, and the freedom from condemnation given to every new creature in Christ. That is Christianity. And that is why I share amazing stories like this:

“I considered myself an atheist, having rejected my Catholic childhood and what I perceived to be the superstitions and illogic of the historic Christian faith. I found Christians to be difficult, sour, fearful, and intellectually unengaged people. In addition, since the age of twenty-eight, I had lived in monogamous lesbian relationships and politically supported LGBT causes.

I coauthored Syracuse University’s first successful domestic partnership policy while working there as a professor of English and women’s studies. I was terrified to aliate on any level with a worldview that called me, my life, my community, my scholarly interest, and my relationship sin. Add to this that I was working on a book “exposing” the religious right from a lesbian feminist point of view. I approached the Bible with an agenda to tear it down because I firmly believed that it was threatening, dangerous, and irrational.

But when I came to Christ…” Read the rest

May 25, 2015 11 comments

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Kelly Crawford

Want to learn more about a relaxed method of homeschooling? Less stressful to parent and child? Check out Think Outside the Classroom.

1. Proverbs 31: A Must-Study for Christian Women

2. The Virtuous Woman: A Lifetime of Traits

3. Trustworthy and Good: The Heart of a Virtuous Wife

4. The Resourceful Diva: A Woman’s Business Ventures

5. Prioritizing for Success: The Virtuous Woman’s Strategy

6. Strength and Dignity: The Clothes of a Virtuous Woman

7. Productive and Industrious: The Busyness of the Virtuous Woman

8. Chiseling into Rare Worth: Reaching for the Standard

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