Leslie is joined by Jen Schmidt of Balancing Beauty and Bedlam. They talk about hospitable homeschooling, which in a time where gathering in groups is so limited, I think you will be encouraged and challenged as you look at how God wants to use you and your family to bless others and show them God's great love through the ministry of hospitality. 

Transcript

Leslie (00:03):

Hey there and welcome to the Homeschooling Family Podcast by Teach Them Diligently. Here we discuss just about everything that comes into play. When you're a Christian homeschooling family, I'm Leslie Nunnery, and on today's podcast, I'm joined by Jen Schmidt of Balancing Beauty and Bedlam together. We're going to discuss hospitable homeschooling, which in a time when getting together in big groups is so limited, I think you're going to be encouraged and challenged as you look at how God wants to use you and your family to bless others and show them. God's great love for them through the ministry of hospitality. Jen shares specific ways her family has done this as we chat about a subject that you're going to see is pretty near and dear to both of our hearts. This was originally recorded as part of a series we did in teach them diligently 365 about living boldly. I invite you to check out that whole series as a TTD365 member for today, though. Let's dive right in and talk about hospitable homeschooling together.

Leslie (01:24):

We are back this week to talk once again about how living boldly looks in our daily lives and in our families. And I want to tell you about... Actually, I want to kick it off by telling you about a book that I read. It's called "just open the door". It's by Jen Schmidt. And it just so beautifully encapsulated what my heart has been in talking about hospitable homeschooling and hospitable living that I immediately reached out to Jen and begged her to come on and do this video with me, because I think that you can benefit so much by hearing her heart in this and her story. So, Jen, I want to welcome you to Teach Them Diligently. And just, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe a little bit behind the heart of why you wrote this beautiful book on hospitality?

Jen (02:15):

Thank you, Leslie. It's such an honor to be here and oh, that's such a loaded question because when I think of the book "Just Open the Door", it really is a legacy of hospitality and lifestyle that we've lived. And I call myself an accidental author because I've been a homeschool mom for 20 years. I can barely even believe I'm saying that our eldest son is 24 and we homeschooled him all the way through. And so in the middle of the, you know, the day to day life, I started realizing, Lord, how can we best in the midst of raising five children and homeschooling and wanting to live boldly for the gospel? I just prayed and asked him, how can you make my time filled with as much kingdom purpose as possible? And he began revealing over and over and over how opening my door and inviting others to do life together, whether that's in a mentorship role, whether that's in an evangelistic role or whether it's just, you know, encouraging each other on that mission of motherhood.

Jen (03:25):

Um, and so when I was approached about writing this book, initially I had said, no, I just didn't think I had it in me. And then as the Lord just prompted my heart to say, Jen, your parents model this open door living for you. And you have the opportunity to look back on decades from when I was, you know, small young child. And they opened the door to me through adoption, which is the greatest act of hospitality, um, and how their ministry of open door living impacted mine. And so just open the doors a little different than your typical hospitality book. In fact, the, um, tagline is “how one invitation can change a generation”. And when we were talking about the title, I even said, I don't want hospitality in the word at all in the title, because as women,