This is where you will get to interact with Ralph and Courtney as well as others within the community.

Ralph writing Courtney writing (only at end) In the wilderness. I have no better words to describe how I have been feeling for the last few months. I believe we’re on the path that God wants us to be, but we’re not sure of where it’s going. Everything seems to be unclear. It makes me feel uncomfortable. My life doesn’t look anything like what I thought it would look like. At least not up until this point. I left my pension, health insurance, good income for something completely unknown and all over the place. The Lord is teaching me a whole heck of a lot. “A grateful heart is a happy heart. An entitled heart is never happy,” is what my friend Ben said to me recently while visiting with he and his family in Tennessee. I’m being groomed into being more grateful. I entertain the idea of getting a job frequently. I can go out and get one in ten different places, but it’s not where I believe I’m being led. There are different confirmations for this, but here’s one: During my oldest son’s birthday party, one of our friend’s sons came up to me and asked, “are you always home?” When I told him yes, he responded with, “I wish my dad made enough money to be home all the time, too.” I’m guessing more kids like this boy would appreciate their parents being home, too. I’m not really making “enough money to be home all the time,” but it’s working so far. I’m grateful for the time I have at home.  I have inner turmoil. When things don’t go my way, I get annoyed. God is teaching me about contentment. How to let go of the control that I want most of the time. The one thing I really can’t control is the stock market. I will probably fail at the stock market if I don’t learn to let go of controlling everything. I can only be ok with the probability of things working out. Stock trading will not work out for me if I don’t let go of control. At the end of January, I took Liam for an overnight trip to go through the Passport2Purity program. I had purchased a survival knife for him as a gift to remember the time we had spent together. This was a tangible gift that twenty years down the road or when I am dead and gone, he can remember that time by. (We slept in the Xterra and Liam tried airsoft for his first time at Raptor Airsoft Field in Deland) One day in February, I was helping Liam fashion paracord so that he could wear his new knife. I was measuring the paracord while it was around his neck in order to tie it at a proper length. Liam pulled the knife out of the sheath in an odd way that caused him to cut his thumb open. While Courtney and I were trying to tend to Liam’s thumb, an alert I had set for a live trade I had running started to go off. I checked my phone while still holding Liam’s thumb closed. It was nearing the point where I should be closing the trade in order to minimize my loss. At that point in time I felt too stressed to deal with his thumb and the trade so I closed it for a loss of $200. This way I could focus on Liam. About an hour later, the stock had turned back up. By the end of that trading day, I would’ve been up $600. It was a bad day. I was mad for not sticking to my trading plan that I had been taught by Tradeway to do. At the same time, I was extremely frustrated with myself for having given Liam the knife. I felt like I was failing my family. 1 Timothy 5:8 says, “but if someone does not provide for his own relatives, and especially the members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” I hear that verse and it makes me think that I’m not doing right by my family.  Something happened that night Liam cut open his thumb and I lost my family money that hadn’t ever happened before. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back asleep. God pressed it upon me to pray for Courtney and our boys health. I then prayed for direction for our family. After I prayed, I was able to fall back asleep. I had already planned to be up at 6:00AM to attend men’s breakfast at my church. Before I fell back asleep, I was no longer feeling up to going. However, the option not to go wasn’t there anymore when I woke up before my alarm went off. When we moved to Florida and after I quit working at my other job, Courtney suggested that it would be good for me to go to the men’s breakfast at our church. My friend, Jeremy, who is also the campus pastor placed me at a table that he thought I would like. Sometimes when I go to men’s breakfast, I get little pieces that seem relevant to where I’m at, but a good amount of the time I don’t see the relevance. I don’t know if that's the point or not. You don’t always get something every single time you read the Bible either. If I’m being honest, I struggle with going. There is not a lot of time for men to connect. You get a thirty minute blurb from a speaker and then you’re lucky if you get fifteen minutes at the end of it to talk through anything that’s going on. I can’t help but go back to an evening bible study that I went to with my friend Ben while we were looking to move to Tennessee. This group met in the evening so people weren’t pressed for time. It seemed like there was a better connection with the men in the group. My table leader is a man named Scotty who has also had a career change that he believes the Lord has set before him. Like me, that career change isn’t seeming to work out the way he had hoped so now he’s seeking the Lord in what he is supposed to be doing. It’s been reassuring that I’m not the only person that’s not sure where they are going ultimately. As I already mentioned, mens breakfast was the day after Liam cut open his finger, I failed to earn my family $600, and I was up in the night praying. I woke up before my alarm went off. I knew I needed to go even though I didn’t want to. The man speaking that morning was talking about business principles. It wasn’t new information for me. I have read them in multiple entrepreneurs books, but his was with more of a Christian twist. He was tying those principles back to scripture and giving a biblical view of it versus a world view. While this business man was speaking, my friend, Jeremy, pulled me from the table. He told me that he felt like the Lord was telling him to arrange a talk with the speaker. Prior to that, I had no intentions of going up to talk to him nor was I feeling like I was really getting anything out of his talk. When everyone was leaving, Jeremy brought him over to me. He talked with me about more business principles and more information about a seminar he was going to be doing that he thought I could use. I knew immediately that I would not go because we had already spent money on business things that we were still working through. There was just one thing that the speaker said to me that stood out. He said, “I don’t trust any man that doesn’t walk with a limp. He was referring to Genesis 32:22-32 when Jacob wrestled with God and walked with a limp afterwards. Verses 24-31 says “And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day has broken.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ And he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then he said, ‘Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.’ Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.” Up until that man had said, "I don't trust a any man that doesn't walk with a limp" to me, I was not really understanding that people still will have to wrestle with God. They wrestle with him about things that they don’t understand. I think that’s what I was supposed to take away from that interaction. It was a reminder that people still have to wrestle with these thoughts and ideas. That stood out to me because of the fact that I wasn’t knowing where I was going. I like to plan and have direction. I’m wrestling with the different ideas. Things aren’t always easy. A lot of times things aren’t easy. It’s going to take turmoil to get through stuff. It’s thought provoking for me sometimes to think about the path we are on right now. Is it to teach the kids to be grateful for what they have and not be spoiled rotten Americans? I’m finding myself saying things like, “We can’t buy what you want" or "I’m sorry you don’t like bone-in chicken, but this is what God has provided.” I’m also seeing the error in my thinking for many years. I didn’t always realize it, but I would think, 'If I could buy this thing or had a little bit more money then I will be happy.' It’s proving to not be the case. I’ve only been driving myself more nuts. That’s why we are selling stuff on Ebay. It’s the releasing of the stuff we’ve accumulated. I now look through the lens of 'what value does this have to my life? Is it useful?' If it doesn’t meet those, then it goes out of the house. Right now I don’t know how this will pan out and it’s frustrating for me. I get easily annoyed when things don’t go my way. I know to a certain degree, but I don’t know where that end is.  The Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years. What should’ve only taken months, took forty years. There was a lot of complaining of the Israelites while they were in the wilderness. They weren’t learning the lessons that they were being taught.  It takes a lot of time to get words like this out of my man. He recently told me, “There’s not much more in my brain than you think.” Unlike myself, he doesn’t write to process, though I continue to encourage him to do so. It’s much more of a challenge for him to pause and reflect these days. Having three young boys constantly around can be mentally straining at times. God has been doing a mighty work in my man. It broke my heart the day he came home from that men’s breakfast and shared with me through tear filled eyes about his sleepless night and what God had revealed to him through the speaker. Unlike Ralph, I couldn’t keep my tears from spilling over as I quietly listened. It was hard seeing Ralph like that, but I knew it was a good thing. He was being refined in the fire. Once again his faith was being tested and stretched in ways he never imagined possible. Recently we were on a trip in Tennessee visiting our friends. We were in town on Sunday so we went to their church. This was the one we had fallen in love with before we had moved out of Buffalo and during the time we were hoping to make Tennessee our home state. Not so coincidentally, the person speaking that day was starting a new series about refinement. Six weeks prior to this, I had actually been the one who had written about what Ralph had been going through. Though I wanted him to write about it, he was not ready. While we were driving to Tennessee, I seized the moment and asked him to share his perspective. I asked him thought provoking questions, documented his responses, and was able to put together this writing. More than once, he said, “in the wilderness” so I knew that would make a great title for this writing.  I had most of this written before we went to the church service in Tennessee about refinement. In God’s sovereignty, Ralph and I were encouraged about our current season of life. The speaker quoted Deuteronomy 8:2. “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.” I am in awe every time God gives us a timely verse. I can’t get over how he can take words, like what Moses spoke to the Israelites thousands of years ago in regards to their literal time spent in the wilderness, and make it relevant to what Ralph is going through now. Reading God’s word will never grow old. As Deuteronomy 8:2 states, the Israelites were in the wilderness for forty years before they reached the land that God had promised them. This was not because it was so far away that it took that many years to get there. Like Ralph said, it should’ve only taken a handful of months. God kept them in the wilderness for good reason. The Israelites were major complainers who had very little gratitude for what they had been given. God dealt very severely with them over this (read Exodus). Though we currently live in the age of grace, we should not forget that God hasn’t changed. He cannot use an ungrateful person who is in a constant state of grumbling. When you ask God to use you in any way He sees fit and when you pray for Him to lead, refinement will come. There will be seasons where you will feel as though you are wandering through the wilderness just barely scraping by. If you can recognize it, embrace it, rely on Him through it, He WILL bring you out of it. Only God knows how long you need to be in the wilderness for and Ralph doesn’t feel like he’s out of his yet. I am proud of this man for his honesty and willingness to share this. It takes a lot of courage. May God use it in ways that only He can.

I am giggling a little over here for deciding to share this period of time, but I have had very little mental capacity to do so up until now. (Insert emoji crazy face). Last April was full of so many great memories that I just had to still share. We had Easter, Devin's birthday, an overnight trip, and an exhausting, but memorable date. In addition to all of that, my sister, Danielle and niece, Sami came down to surprise the boys and ended up staying with us for three weeks! It had only been a few months since we had moved into our new house so there was still a ton of boxes and totes everywhere. It had also only been a handful of weeks since Ralph came home to pursue different business ventures. It was just a TAD bit hectic! Our visit with my sister and niece was packed full of hikes, baking, cooking, morning runs, mini projects for the new house, school work, the beach, Bible Study, card games, movie watching, and more. In the middle of all of that fun, we celebrated Easter together. The year before they came down for Easter, too and loved it so they wanted to make it a yearly tradition. Ralph, Danielle, and I had fun hiding their baskets and the ones from Grammemaw who sent them down with Danielle. Devin’s seventh birthday also occurred while my sister and niece were visiting. We hosted a birthday party with some of our friends and extended the celebration with one of his buddies, Israel, who had just turned nine. These friends have become like family. We are so grateful that they want to be a part of these special days with us. Liam and I slipped away on an overnight trip with some of the Hancock's for a few of our kids to do a triathlon in Boca Raton, FL. It was a lovely bonding time for us all and a nice little getaway. We all love road trips! I am full of pride and even find myself tearing up when I watch Liam do these. Also, on one of our Wild and Free hikes, Connor walked through poison ivy. Though he wasn’t affected by it, he managed to pass it onto me as I was carrying him. It just may be one of the greatest forms of torture that's ever existed. It persisted for close to a month. I finally resorted to a steroid cream grateful to be living in modern times where pharmaceuticals exist. This wasn't my first rodeo with this stuff, so I was prepared. Now people in our Wild and Free group ask me to point out poison ivy on our hikes so they don’t ever have to look like Ms. Courtney did. My niece, Sami was able to go into Magic Kingdom for the first time thanks to her friend, Reagan whom she met through our Wild and Free group. It was a “magical” day for both her and Danielle that I am so happy they were able to share. Ralph and I also did the Mammoth March ( https://www.mammothmarch.com/) and hiked 21.5 miles. Before we signed up, Ralph had said, "looks like the perfect date." We really enjoyed the time alone together and the opportunity to talk for hours straight with no interruption. We did NOT train for this unless you want to count a couple of mile hikes with our kids. About halfway through, we were starting to feel it. By about 15 miles, we were basically just looking at the ground putting one foot in front of the other. If we stopped, it hurt more so we just kept moving except for a couple quick bathroom and food breaks. In the last two miles there was a severe thunderstorm, so we started to run. We wanted to finish this thing and not get picked up. We went through the finish line with barely a soul around through the pouring rain, thunder, and lightning. We managed to get a fellow hiker to take a photo of us holding our medals. Somehow she had switched it to video and there's grid lines, but we still got that photo dag nab it. It took us just under eight and a half hours to complete it which was apparently average. I wasn’t sure by the end what was worse. Hiking 21.5 miles with no training or child labor without drugs. Ralph said, "I will never do one again!" I would. I've had two drug free births so I'm used to intense pain. ;) Ralph's one foot hurt for a good couple of months. I had giant blisters on my heels that I didn't even know were there until my sister saw them while laying on the floor underneath me as I was resting on the couch. To top it off when we got home, Ralph said, "Court, we're only a couple hundred away from hitting 50,000 steps!" So we both walked around the house until we reached 50,000 steps because it's likely that amount will never happen again. We made a trip to Cocoa Beach where I took photos of Sami and gave her some modeling tips. Sami is a beautiful ray of sunshine. I hope that I was able to depict that well in her photos. (I wouldn't recommend leopard print clothing for modeling on the beach, but I am glad Sami captured this one while I was showing her posing ideas.) It was hard to say goodbye, especially for our sweet Devin. Florida has become like a second home for my sister and niece. Sami even volunteers at our church in the kid’s area. I am grateful that they enjoy traveling down here to see us and take advantage of the overwhelming amount of things you can do in Central Florida. It is visits like these that reinforce WHY we homeschool. The freedom all of us had, the things we ALL learned, and the bonds that were strengthened in those three weeks made an impact on all of us. It will have a ripple effect for years to come. This blog post can also be listened to on our podcast here .

I had an interesting conversation recently one Sunday morning with someone I was leading worship with. I told him something I say to people all the time. I shared that motherhood is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. His response was, “yes, but it’s the most fulfilling.” My response surprised him. I said, “No. Not yet anyway.” I didn’t have kids in order to bring fulfillment into my life. I already had that. I had children because I wanted Ralph and I to stop living for ourselves. I wanted to participate with God in bringing life into this world in order to teach them about Jesus, raise them up to follow Him, and make an impact. I wanted to have a better understanding of who God is and knew that having children would do that. Singing for Jesus brings forth my greatest feelings of satisfaction. That and acting is what I have loved doing since I was a little girl. It’s what I did before I had children every chance I could. As soon as I turned 18, I joined the choir at church. Two years later I joined the women’s praise team. Not too long after that, I was on the Sunday morning praise team. I was in a kids musical program in elementary school and participated in skits in my twenties. I was serving in this way three to four times a week and I loved just about every minute of it . (First four images are at The Chapel at Crosspoint in Getzville, NY. The last two photos are from the team I am so grateful to be on now at Discovery Church in Orlando, FL) When I was younger, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would’ve told you a singer and actress, but not a mother. When I was going into my senior year of high school, even though I still loved to sing and act, it didn’t seem realistic to me. I prayerfully reflected on what else I loved doing, which was photographing. That was what started me on my photography path. Ralph and I were engaged when I went into photography school at nineteen years old. Though we had talked about having children someday, we were not interested in having any for the foreseeable future. I wanted to be a national wedding photographer and didn’t want children to get in the way of that. Ralph just didn’t want to have kids around because of the work involved. After I graduated, in addition to all of the singing that I was doing at church, I was photographing. Multiple times a week I was doing portrait sessions and weddings. I absolutely loved meeting new people, traveling to different locations, designing wedding albums, and creating lifelong heirlooms for people ( www.courtneycampbell.net ). Whether singing, acting, photographing, or designing, I knew that I loved to produce. Producing with purpose is what brought satisfaction to me, but I knew that God wanted to do more with me. Two years into our marriage, I began to feel the tug from God to start a family with Ralph, but he was far from feeling that tug (That is a whole different story.). Five years into our marriage, at 26 years old, God answered my prayer in giving us our first son. While we were pregnant, Ralph and I agreed that we wanted to homeschool. When our first son was born, the life I knew was over, but I hadn’t accepted that yet. I thought I could still do most everything else that I loved. Over time, as two more boys were added, I had to step down from just about all of it. Raising even one child requires a lot of time, commitment, and energy on every level. Homeschooling three is a whole 'nother level of commitment. The definition of “fulfilling” in the Oxford Dictionary online says that it’s “making someone satisfied or happy because of fully developing their character or abilities.” Key phrase “FULLY developing their character.” My motherhood “character” is still being developed. Having children refines and molds me to look more like my maker. It forces me to learn how to love, give grace, and forgive over and over and over and over . It challenges me to have a higher level of maturity in Christ because I have three souls under the age of 10 watching me practically non-stop. Motherhood, paired with having them home and not in a school building, is very challenging for me many days. I am being stretched to my limit almost on a daily basis. I live in a constant tension between the convictions that come from being a mom and breaking free of it to produce something. If I don’t get to spend this desired time producing, I find myself becoming resentful and that’s not what my family needs either. Whether I like it or not sometimes, my life is not my own anymore. I have chosen to die to many of my own desires, even ones that bring glory to God because what my children need NOW is more important than what I THINK I need. And if I can learn to die to myself, I look more like the one that died for me. More than any other journey I’ve been on, the journey of motherhood is what has challenged me the most to model Jesus. This constant refining process has caused me at times to want to flee from the constant demands of motherhood and put them in a school building. It would be a relief, but it’s not what God has called me to do. (Photo Credit: Liam Campbell at Santa's Farm, Eustis, FL) So though it may not sound lovely or sweet to say that motherhood is not fulfilling for me, it’s just me over here being honest. My identity is not in motherhood, photography, leading worship, running an online business, writing, being a wife, or anything else that I do in my lifetime. My identity is in Christ and I was placed on this earth to point PEOPLE to him THROUGH the things I do and have been gifted in. My main people right now are my children. Period. The Oxford dictionary won’t say this, but living for your maker is what ultimately brings forth fulfillment. It just might not be through always doing everything that you love to do or feel like doing. Being a mother and choosing to homeschool, despite the constant tension I have to produce, is living for my maker . Therefore, fulfillment will come.