Liberty Camp

 

We are back from Liberty University. I am hoping I can obtain more photos, but I think they are on some Instagram location that I can't figure out how to get access to. Isaac spent a week at Liberty in a musical theatre program, and he had an AMAZING time. 

We were able to stay at our friends, the Yerrington's house. Unfortunately, they were in Spain, but they let us bunk there anyways. That be some good friends. :)

We arrived on Saturday, stopped at Yerrington's to change clothes, had dinner with our friends, Randy & Whitney Belt, and then went to the show. The Belt's daughter was in the camp as well.  In fact, they are the ones who told us about it. I'm so glad they did. Isaac had an amazing time. 

There were 50 girls and 20 guys, and Isaac said he just became friends with all of them. Everyone was nice and kind. There was no drama (outside of actual theatre drama.) They just had a good time together. He got to play numerous roles, but his "biggest" was Kenny Rogers. He did a great job. 

John and I went with just the Pomegranate. Sidge covered the farm, and Abigail was starting her own high school camp in Florida and spent one night with her friend Reagan so they could get her started at camp while we were gone. 

I LOVE LIBERTY. I really hope Isaac can maybe go there for college. It is just four hours away, and it is so nice to see Jesus AND the arts go together. :) 

We Bought a Farm: MORE Stitches

Her Mom has been her twice. Finally her turn! 

#26 goes to Hosea S. Good old Hosea was hit be an electric boat on their pond driven by six-year-old sister. 

Today we do #23

Honestly, stitches around these parts are pretty much just "par for the course." 

To be fair, this time Gabe actually cut his finger at Anni's house. But here is JB, minutes from heading into the ER, doing the thing he does with a needle and thread on our dining room table.

A look at all of our previous stitches on my kiddos and here at the farm:

Stitches #1 (Isaac)

Stitches #2 (Isaac)

Stitches #3 (Sidge)

Stitches #4 (Sidge)

Stitches #5 (Abigail)

Stitches #6 (JB on Himself)

Stitches #7 (Sidge at the ER by JB)

Stitches #8 (Abigail)

Stitches #9 (Hannah)

Stitches #10 (Ana)

Stitches #11 (Gabe)

Stitches #17 (Anonymous Grandparent)

Stitches #18 (Anni ... again!)

Stitches #19 Neighboring Farm Friend Barry

Stitches #20 Gabe has piece of metal fly into leg while mowing at Shane and Linda's

Stitches #21 (Skin glue) Hannah

#22 Eddie's foot

#23 Eoin's face (hit his chin on a chair during ballet)

#24 Zoey's hand (got in the middle of a dog fight :(

#25 Hannah Bowlin in deli-meat fight at little shop

#26 Hosea cuts his ear in a Janessa-boat mishap

#27 Trim falls in grandparents' driveway: 

Also stitched: 

12. Youth Group farm volunteer [chin] (no picture)

13. Karen's husband [head] (no picture)

14. Mr. Jacob [lip] (no picture)

15. Anni [thumb] (no picture)

16. Molly's husband Luke [thumb] (no picture)

Abigail (our future medical gal) got to help take out Anni's stitches. I love that Anni was okay with this! I would have been scared!

Sitting in it

We have to SIT IN THE DISCOMFORT. 

Seriously?

Really?

I've known for most of my life that I was a chronic people-pleaser. I didn't think that was a bad thing. I didn't understand that it was a trauma response. I thought it was a good thing to be a people-pleaser. 

Hard truth: IT IS NOT. 

Don't get me wrong. It's nice to be nice. It's great to be kind. But people-pleasing is NOT being truthful. It is doing EVERYTHING you can to keep peace. This meant I wasn't speaking complete truth to people. I was telling white lies. I was doing anything and everything to make sure there was peace. I would manipulate in order to keep people happy.

For the last year I have been working to heal from chronic and toxic behaviors. I naively thought that I had done it! I had been unable to sit in some discomfort and so I thought that I had conquered it! Bravo Wendi. Time to go on with your life. 

And then, someone actually told me they weren't happy with me, and I felt everything crumble. My counselor told me very early on that my healing journey would be an upward spiral. This meant that I'd never drop as low but that I would have to be stretched and grow over and over again. I, again, naively, thought that I was through this! Ohhhhh, how wrong I was. 

I'm in a low dip. But it is just a dip. But I hate the dips, and I want them to be OVER and DONE WITH. 

Here's the other thing. In the past, if Wendi thought someone was mad at her, she would feverishly and ferociously try to fix the upsetness. Call. Text. Email. Write a letter. Show up. Do something nice. Fix it! Because only through fixing it could she feel better inside. 

OR

Old Wendi also used medication to numb the feelings of someone being mad at her so she could function. (Please don't get me wrong, sometimes meds are needed. No doubt. But I am now at a point where I know numbing the feelings is no longer serving me.) 

New Wendi now sees that those were just hits of heroin. Get everyone not mad, feel better, move on. The next day, do it again. She sees that the desire to please man was NOT A SIN. She wasn't trying to do it. It was hard-wired into her nervous system. She needed to unwind the wires. And that takes a LOT of work. 

In the course of this journey, I have been blessed by some amazing women who are standing alongside me on my path. One of those women was my mother-in-law. She wrote me something beautiful and combined with a phone conversation I had had, opened up my eyes to what was happening. I haven't even shared the story of my pain, but it didn't matter. She was able to encourage me in that. 

My Aunt Jan shared a selection from Mere Christianity: 

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them that will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide....

Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the       "wrong" notes. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another.

...decent behavior ...does not mean the behavior that pays...but means things like ...doing school work honestly when it's would be easy to cheat, leaving a girl alone when you would like to make love to her... telling the truth even when it makes you look a fool. 

"Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason, namely because we care so incomparably more what God thinks.

Imagine yourself as a living house... God comes in to rebuild this house... but He is knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought.  You thought you were going to he made into a decent little cottage. But He is building a palace!

Emotional Safety and Intimacy

It is time for me to LEVEL UP.  For a year I have been working on my mental health. I've come SO far. But now I've reached a new place. And I want to learn even more. I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. And I'd love to take other people along with me. 

One of my BIGGEST stressors is someone being mad at me. Over the last few weeks, we had a family situation that emptied my gas tank. And then, I find out someone is upset at me. So the result is something that looks like this:  

Empty Tank + Stressor = Not good results

FULL Tank + Stressor = Much better results

FULL TANK + NO Stressor = Perfect results 

In the past, I would have ferociously tried to solve the person being angry at me. That was my defense. However, new Wendi knows that isn't the right thing to do. It's a hit of heroin. I think it is the answer. But it's not. It's like someone with medical anxiety going to the doctor and the doctor saying they are fine. They haven't gotten to the bottom of what is going on.  

Okay, so here I am, having to sit in someone being mad at me. I'm there. My "biggest fear" has happened. To be frank: it has happened before. I've had many instances in my life when someone was indeed mad at me. However, I am now realizing that I have been attempting, at all costs, over the last few years, to prevent this from EVER EVER EVER happening. It's my main goal in life. #1: Don't let anyone think you are not an amazing human. 

I would love for this person to not be mad. But what I am realizing is that I need this person to be mad right now to get my to level-up. Ouch! That is hard to realize. Through my counseling and mental health work, I have been able to handle minor ruptures relatively well. I can know a friend is frustrated or peeved without over-thinking it. But an actual "I don't wan to speak to you," is the next level. 

Here we go Wendi. You got this.  

In my mind this fear makes total sense. People being mad at you is the worst thing ever, right? But when I bring this up to "normal" people, they truly don't get why it would spiral me as it has. 

I have friends dealing with their own anxiety. A few of my friends are dealing with medical anxiety. Anytime they get something abnormal with their body, they believe they are dying. I, personally, think this is crazy. Why would you spend time worrying about something like that? 

I have another friend who has a great fear of bed bugs. I think this is ridiculous (and I've told the friend so). But something in her believes this will kill her. Anytime I start to say that her fear is ridiculous, John will say to me, "You fear is just as ridiculous." 

Seriously? 

It's because I believe someone being mad at me is DEATH. Truly. Isn't that crazy? Yes, it is. But it is what I believe. 

Jesus said: "Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." What is the truth? As I have been healing from bad patterns in my life, I am working to truly see what the truth IS. The truth is that there are patterns that hold me back. I want to break from those patterns and instead anchor myself firmly in the transformative truth of scripture. I have identity in Christ! I have emotional safety in Christ!

We hear the word "trigger" and quite honestly, it has been so overused in our culture that we roll our eyes. However, a "trigger" is something that evokes strong emotional reactions from us. And the truth is, these triggers are often rooted in past experiences and our deeply held emotional beliefs. Therefore, my people-pleasing has to have a root. 

So ... what is that root? 

Proverbs 4:23 says "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." The problem is, when we are young, we don't necessarily know how to do that. Our heart was led to believe things that are just not true (either by watching our parents, being taught by our parents, in our church, our school, or through some sort of traumatic event.) If we can learn what triggers us emotionally, we can respond with wisdom and grace rather than our impulsive feelings. 

Here are ten common relational triggers that can affect our emotional intimacy, trust, and safety. Today, I want to just talk about the first one on the list. But I am sure I will get to others. The ones I am BOLDING are the ones I think I most personally struggle with. 

1. REJECTION -- woah! Did you know that rejection activates the same parts of the brain as physical pain! This is why it hurts so deeply! We can also question our worth and identity in Christ. 

2. Fear of Abandonment 

3. Trust Violations

4. Emotional Unavailability

5. Loneliness

6. Loss of Control

7. Social Media Overuse

8.  Negative Peer Influence

9. Anger

10. Insecurity / Low Self-Esteem 

Tuesday Truth

We Bought a Farm: Lambs in June!

We usually have lambs sometime in December of January. We'd love to have them when it is warmer, but we have a very hands-off approach here on the farm and like to let the sheep go when they go. 

So they went in December and January and then SURPRISE! We have three sets of new twins out there. 

We did some calculations. This means that some of our ladies got pregnant one month after they had just delivered babies. 

No idea if more are coming or not. But for now -- we are enjoying seeing these warm deliveries and twice as much profit for us too!

27th anniversary

On June 20th, John and I celebrated 27 years of marriage. Add our dating years and we have been together for over 30 years! We've lived on three continents and have four children. We've lived in downtown and freezing Minnesota and we've lived on a rural farm in Tennessee. It's been an incredible journey and while we've had difficult things we've encountered together, we have truly always been teammates and best friends. 

We had a special anniversary event planned for Tuesday, but with my mental health tanking just a bit these last few days, we've decided to postpone that for a time that I am feeling better. 

Love you JB! 

Remembering Scrubs

I walked past Scrubs' burial spot today as we were moving sheep and thought Wow, it looks beautiful. But I also thought: How could he have died in April of 2016? Where does time go?

Oh that dog was such a handful. Such a piece of work. So much energy and time. And yet such a part of my life. Such a BIG part of my life. I wished I could have gotten more time with him, but no matter if I did, he wouldn't be here today. 

Today I have three dogs, and I love them all -- especially Arabelle who is my shadow. However, none of them are SCRUBS to me. For my kids, the loss of Ritter will hit everyone hard primarily Sidge. Raven is Abigail's girl. And Arabelle? Everyone will pretend that they don't love her as much as I do, but she is so stinin' smart. 

I also took a picture of the sign our friends the Petersen's gave us -- it occupies the short-cut between our house and the grandparents that we buried Scrubs on. Gramps loved him some Scrubs so he had to be buried in-between our two homes.

This world is HARD. 

The life is HARD. 

But also, so much beauty! 

Zoo!

I took Hannah and Tristan and Theo to the zoo last week. I love Bright’s Zoo. They also have the only spotless giraffe in the world!

Keep on

I believe what this statement above says. I do. I think. Maybe? 

But experiencing this journey just sucks. 

I don't want to sit with my pain. My pain hurts. I want to be through it. God, can I not be through this already? Why so long, Jesus? I'm doing what you are asking. I'll do anything you ask. But why does all of this have to hurt so much? 

I have often said that 2024 was my HARD HARD year. I call it my REFINING year. And it was. 

And 2025 has been much easier overall. Tons easier. And yet, here I am, sitting in hard again. 

What causes this hard? 

Triggers that rub up against past pain. As always, someone being mad at me is SO SO scary to me. It's my worst kind of fear. Isn't that crazy? I don't fear death or illness or anything as much as I fear someone being upset at me. 

The thing is, I thought I was past all this. I really did. I thought that the next time someone got upset at me (or even if I thought they were upset at me) I would be able to just zoooom through it because of the work I've done. And yet here I am, feeling like I'm no stronger than I was when all of this began. 

And that makes me so frustrated. So angry. Why this fear? Why can't I have a different fear? Why does it have to be this one. I don't want it! I want to live in freedom. And the frustrating thing is, I thought I was living in freedom. I really did. And then ... 

BAMmmmm!

Here I am again. Feeling like a child. Feeling like little Wendi being owned by people's frustrations with me. It's maddening. 

I'm still working at this. I know this is just a little hiccup in my journey. I can't prevent people from ever getting mad at me. It will happen. It did happen. But it just stinks so much. 

I want to arrive. Jesus, please let me arrive.  

More Truth

Ballet intensive

My body knows where it is safe. My body knows who it is safe with. I am teaching my children to listen to their bodies as they grapple with this challenging life. It is a hard life. But a beautiful Abigail participated in a week-long ballet intensive at CBT -- our local ballet studio. She had a wonderful week, and I am sharing some pictures below: 

Wood stove for Greene Gables

Gabe continues to work on the old house on the other side of the farm. John drove to Asheville and got a wood stove for the house yesterday. 

We are calling it “Greene Gables.”

Tuesday Truth

Dog sitting

Mr. Finn — one of our former puppies — is spending the week with us. He’s a sweetie!

My body knows ...

 

My body knows where it is safe. My body knows who it is safe with. I am teaching my children to listen to their bodies as they grapple with this challenging life. It is a hard life. But a beautiful life. And I want it to be filled with people who make them feel safe. I hope to be one of those people. I hope that they know they will receive unconditional love and acceptance and that they know my home is a place that their nervous system can breathe.

It is hard with teenagers. There is so much living that we have to "help" them do. But as they get older, more and more, I am attempting to let them rest in my home. To let them not worry that their mistakes and frustrations will be met with judgment. 

GRIEF is welcome here. 

ANGER is welcome here. 

FRUSTRATION is welcome here. 

ALL EMOTION IS WELCOME! 

Here, you can be safe. And breathe. May we provide this for everyone in our lives but especially these amazing children God gifted us with.  

First French braid!

She doesn’t think it’s very good, but I do!!!

First Youth Group for the Pomegranate

On Wednesday evening, my Pomegranate attended her first youth group event. Summer has begun and she is officially a 6th grader so she is officially allowed to attend summer events. It was the first week that ALL FOUR of my children are gone on Wednesday evenings together. It is so crazy to me that I have four kiddos in youth group. What in the world is happening?

 

During the summer, they meet across the county instead of meeting at the church. This last Wednesday, the event was held at Tusculum Park, and Bapa and Tante Jan were there! They snagged her for a photo. 

 

I love our small town. I love having family nearby. I love our community. I love our church. I have a lot of loves.  

Tuesday Truth

365 Days of Rest #84

 

My farm is truly my happy place. This land makes my heart REST. Some people find peace in vacations. That is no longer the case for me. Having my feet in the grass, petting my dogs, listening to the sounds of only NATURE truly allows my heart to sit in peace. I absolutely love all things about The Bauernhof Kitsteiner. 

I had a crisis in my life recently. Our community got hit with something very hard, and it required all-hands-on-deck. But it socked me dry a bit. It took the stuffing out of me.

Sometimes in life, we can't avoid emptying our tank. This time could not be avoided. God asked me to doing something super hard for people I love super much. But now, it is time to get the tank refilled. 

What does refilling the tank look like? It looks like QUIET. It looks like NAPS. It looks like saying, "I'm sorry but I can't." It may mean putting up a boundary. And that can be hard. But it is necessary! 

365 Days of Rest #83

Back from vacation and taking the time to take care of myself. Some people call it selfish. I’ve realized it’s required!