{Vintage} Heather

Welcome to {Vintage} Heather! A central place for me to share all the things I love most (plus links to all my favorite online finds, including Amazon). I believe that the essence of true wellness begins at home in our every day practices. If this sounds like something you enjoy too, let’s embrace vintage (adj. made in the past, lost art) mindsets together. Please remember, everything I share is an exercise. I am not proficient, I am practicing!

Home: Our homes are not just physical spaces, they are sanctuaries for our well-being. I enjoy creating a nurturing space where our priorities are before us and my family knows they are the most important part of our home. Home is not a place of perfection but a reflection of the things that matter most to us. Home should reflect values. I share advice and practical tips, decor, organizing, and healthy home habits.

Hospitality: Oh, to have a heart for the art of hospitality! The heart of hospitality serves many purposes for others and ourselves! An opportunity to share the most simple, such as offering a glass of water, to hosting extravagant parties, showing hospitality blesses the host as much as the guest. With the size and scale of our home and yard in this period of our lives we are well suited to host company. However, hospitality was on my heart when my husband and I lived in a minuscule apartment with a patio the size of a bathmat. Flinging my door open wide to welcome family and friends was a joy with what little means we had…ugly linoleum floor and all! Hospitality is a Biblical mandate, not based on perfection, but on WELCOMING others. Hospitality is an art I am always seeking to improve.

Health: Do you struggle with this one? Me too. Information overload is real, and it can be overwhelming to sift the truth from the garbage and half-truths. I started digging into every health related book I could get my hands on when I was twelve years old (most of those books perished in a fire, read more about that on the blog), mostly for vain reasons, I wanted to look good. My discovery was that feeling good was much more beneficial and fostered clear thinking and emotional balance. The determination I developed to be healthy was also an act of defiance. Most of my relatives lived off soda, chips, and fast food. I chose a different way.

Homeschooling: Having been abundantly blessed in my own education at home (my three siblings and I were all “homeschooled”), I always knew that I was going to home educate my own children. A {Vintage} education is timeless, unmoved by trends and societal whims, or government control or influence. Now more than ever, home based education is not only achievable, it is fun. Our home education journey has been an act of (mostly) joyful obedience to the calling of shepherding our own.

Home-birth: Confession…this is a second generation thing, I was quite literally born into this faith. I was born at home, as were most of my siblings, some cousins, and most of my nieces and nephews. Possessing this foundation, and having attended (but not graduated from) midwifery school, I was determined to birth at home. It was not until after the long and difficult birth of our first son that I realized it was not the midwifery knowledge brought about a safe and successful delivery at home, it was sheer intuition and a love for my baby. After that baby was born I knew I needed to be alone for my subsequent labors. I had my next two babies at home with only my husband. It was perfection.

Hope: I put my hope in Him, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the One who put every star on course and knit me in my mother’s womb. The God of the Bible is my God, there is no other. This truth is unmovable. Inescapably, suffering is part of life and does not distract from the goodness of God, but immeasurably magnifies it. The bitter cup of loss has passed my lips. My parents will not see my children grow up. There will be no grandparents at graduations and weddings, nor will there be any great-grandparents. However, this pain aids in setting my compass to the truest North. To love Him more. God has taught us more through loss than through abundance and comfort. His sanctifying hand has held us though much loss…the death of many loved ones, losing babies, financial loss and injury, two homes being severely damaged due to floods and one home loss in the horrific devastation of a fire, and the worst loss…realizing loved ones you thought to be in the faith are self-deceivers. Lost. There is suffering in this world. There is also a sovereign God who sees all and offers HOPE like this world cannot offer. I am no theologian. I cannot wax eloquent to the deepest knowledge of Divine matters, but I will share my love and awe for the person of God, as He says He is. My Hope.

My chief end being to

GLORIFY GOD and ENJOY HIM FOREVER.

Romans 8:18
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

2 Cor 4:16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

James 1:2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

John 16:33
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Psalm 23:4
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

1 Peter 1:6-7
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

James 1:12
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.