Please welcome a new family to Gleaning the Harvest! We have gotten to know Stephanie online, and we can see the fruit in her life as she is seeking Yahuveh and living for him. We hope you will consider giving of your harvest to Stephanie and her family.

Full Name: Stephanie Bateman
Marital Status: Divorced
Children: Samantha (17), Joseph (14), Thomas (12)
Favorite Bible Verse: Proverbs 3:5-6
“ Trust in ADONAI with all your heart; do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him; then he will level your paths.” ~CJB

Personal blog: http://livinglifeonhisterms.blogspot.com

Church Affiliation: No church at the moment. Studying the scriptures at home with the children.

Favorite websites: Jimmie’s Collage: http://jimmiescollage.com, Google Books:http://books.google.com, Down To Earth:http://down—to—earth.blogspot.com), Our Plain and Simple Life:http://plainhomesteading.blogspot.com, and of course the Dixon blogs

My Story

“ Trust in ADONAI with all your heart; do not rely on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him; then he will level your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6 CJB

This is the verse on my blog, and one that I have tried to live by for a year or better now. In June of 2007, my second husband and I separated. It was my decision, and not one that came lightly. He had many issues from his past that made it very hard for our relationship to work. I sought out counseling, advice from my pastor, read books, begged for things to work.

Back then I was what I call a “fair-weather” Christian. I believed and followed Yahweh when it was convenient for me. If it didn’t suit my needs, I didn’t pay attention. I was far from a perfect wife, but I truly believe that despite my lack of attention to HIM, He was working on me all along. I used to be a very short tempered mom. It was easier to yell and be harsh, than to be calm and understanding. But through the changes I went through during the last few years of my marriage, I did just that….I became calm. I no longer yelled. It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but a long, deliberate process.

When I left my husband in June of 2007, I had a job working as a Licensed Nursing Assistant. It is a job I have always loved. I worked in that field when I was in my 20’s, before I married and had children. I adore the people I take care of, and this job was amazing. Rather than working in a nursing home, I was working for a private home health agency. One that provided many of their services for free to the elderly and handicapped, through private donations and state funding. People who desperately wanted to stay home, and not have to be placed somewhere in a facility could now do that. I loved being a part of this, and my patients made me smile every day.

Just a few short months after going out on my own as a single mother again, I was hurt at work. One of my daily patients, a man who had been suffering from MS for 15 years, kicked me in the shoulder. His leg had a muscle spasm, which it did often. Through no fault of his own, or my own, I was hurt. But the full effects of how injured I was, wouldn’t show up until the next day. I finished taking care of him, and did one more patient for the day. I hurt, but kept going. The next morning I woke up, and couldn’t move my arm from waist high. I was in excruciating pain. I went to the doctor that my employer said I needed to see, and they were great. They believed I had a torn bicep, so treated me for that.

A month later I was no better, so off to the orthopedic surgeon, who specialized in shoulders. In January of 2008 (3 months after the original injury), I went in for surgery. It was found out that I had crushed the end of my collar bone when I was kicked. During the surgery they removed nearly 1 inch of the bone on the end, and cleaned up underneath the bone, to free up the tendons, nerves, and ligaments that had been compressed this whole time. I began physical therapy a few short weeks later, but continued to have the horrible pain. Only it was becoming different. It hurt to touch my arm at all. My clothes hurt. I experienced numbness in my fingers. It was all so frustrating, not knowing why the surgery didn’t work, and I was actually getting worse.

A few months later I saw a physiatrist, who has turned out to be my greatest advocate. She did more tests than I care to count, and came to the final diagnosis. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. I won’t give you the big long description, but if you would like to know more, you can visit this site: www.rsds.org.

Fast forward just over two years, and I am permanently disabled. My dominate hand and arm are affected on a daily basis. But the blessing that came from this injury is that I was able to go back to homeschooling my children. My daughter stayed in public school, but both of my boys are home with me. I am still involved in my daughter’s work as if she is still home me, overseeing her assignments, guiding her, etc.

I do also believe that something very amazing happened through these last few years. Yahweh let me try it on my own, getting through losing 3 apartments in 2 years, and having to deal with the workman’s compensation mess, and eventually ending up living with my parents at the age of 43. He was never very far away, just like a parent staying behind a wobbly toddler learning to walk. Yahweh was waiting for me to reach out for the support that He knew only He could give me. And I did reach out, and have never regretted it since. I still struggle with the frustration of my disorder, but with Yahweh and my children beside me, I know I will be just fine. We are now in our own apartment again, and working to become our “own” family again.

Currently, I have my own three children living with me as well as my step-daughter Nicolle, her husband Johnny, my grandson Saske (18 mos), and our new little girl, Sonja Rose.

Please share the word about the Stephanie and Family by wearing the “supporting” icon on your website or blog! Simply highlight the text below and copy/paste onto your site.

<!--   STEPHANIE'S FAMILY ICON   --><a href="http://gleaningtheharvest.com/?p=1320"><img src="http://i709.photobucket.com/albums/ww91/GleaningtheHarvest/Stephanie%20Family/Stephaniesfamilyicon.png" alt="" /></a>

You can get your own ChipIn widget to support Stephanie’s Family, located in the sidebar, by clicking on the COPY button on her widget. If you would like to use the widget displayed, you may copy the code to use on your site. If you would like to design a different size or color of widget, then when it changes, you will click on the “More Options”. This will take you to a page you can customize your widget if you would like to. . You can customize the widget for your website or blog. *please let us know if you experience problems using this ChipIn*

Tags: Announcements, ChipIn, daughters, home schooling, Meet the Family, single mother, Stephanie's Family

Are You Up to the Challenge?

May 5, 2009 by Jacque
Filed under Faith, GTH Partners

Support GTH Through Icons, Widgets and Social Networking

January 6, 2009 by Admin
Filed under Announcements, Contributors, Meet the Families

3 Comments

We were excited as we saw the number of visitors climb on Wednesday when we opened Gleaning the Harvest to the public! It was especially fun, opening on December 31st and saying good-bye to 2008, knowing we are heading into a new year, expecting the LORD to bless His People and GTH greatly in the year 2009! Thank you for spreading the word!!

We have been busy implementing the ideas and requests we have gotten for GTH and have a few things to share with you!

Icon and Widget Codes

We have placed icon codes onto the Families’ pages so that you can grab their beautiful ‘I Support’ icons and put them in your sidebar. In addition to that, we have found that you can also put their ChipIn widgets on your sidebar easily too. By clicking on the word “Copy” on their specific widget, you will find the code for their widget. Both the widget and the icon code are on each Family’s page.

You will find the family directory on Meet The Families.

Generous Givers

We are blessed to have partners who have offered our families books and resources from their stores at no cost to the families. Thank you to Homeschool Books Galore for being one such partner!

If you own your own business and would like to offer discounts, free shipping or free product to families or to the public to purchase for the families, please contact Jacque with your information. If you would like to be more specific in your giving, we can arrange to send the families gift cards. They are easy to ship and the family can get just what they need. Another idea that I like to give is gift certificates for online stores.

We appreciate our supporters! Please be sure to see our list of GTH supporters on the GTH Partners page when you are looking for a gift to give to the families or others! Also be sure to let a store know that might be interested in supporting GTH that you are purchasing from them to give to our families.

Two Ways to Refer a Family

This information has been added to the Referring Families page:

One way to refer a family is to send the information below to the person you would like to refer. If they are interested in support through Gleaning the Harvest, you or they will need to send that information to us at referralfamilies.gth@gmail.com.

A second way to refer a family, if you prefer to refer them anonymously, is to send us some brief information about the family from below and include their names and an email address. We will them let them know that they have been referred to us by a friend who would prefer to remain anonymous and send them to the Referral page on our site to see if they are interested. Once they say they are interested, we will start the process of approving them through you and/or any other contacts we need to make. If they are approved, we will then start setting them up with their own Bio page and ChipIn widget.

We would much prefer that you contact them and refer them to us so it is a personal contact from you, but we will be happy to make that contact for you if you prefer. Please note that, even if you refer them anonymously to them, we will need to know you and will require references to ensure that we are promoting a real person who meets the qualifications of widow or fatherless.

Social Networking

If you are on FaceBook, we invite you to join our FaceBook Group and follow our GTH page. You can also follow us on Twitter. Follow GleaningHarvest on Twitter, and find our Group, Our Blog Network and our Page on FaceBook.

You can also keep up with Gleaning the Harvest blog posts via our Entries RSS, Comments RSS, or by receiving blog notifications into your Inbox. To receive Blog Notifications, please Subscribe via Email Address in the sidebar

Partnering with GTH

If you would like to trade links with us, please shoot us an email entitled, “Link Me”. Please send us the url to the website or specific page you have linked GTH on. After approving your site, we will link it to the GTH Partners page. You can email your link info to gleaningtheharvest@gmail.com.

If you haven’t grabbed a banner for your site, you will find those on the Partners page.

Right now, some of the best “partnering” blessings is all the ideas and questions we are getting for the site! Thank you!

Home School Helps

We have two pages set up so far for home school information and support. The first one, Homeschool Swap, is to give you the opportunity to donate your unused or old home school curricula and books to the GTH families. The second page is a listing of free homeschool sites: Homeschooling for Free

What Else Can I Do?

We cannot thank you enough for all of the support Gleaning the Harvest has received in less than a week. It has truly been wonderful. We have been asked what else can be done to support GTH. Honestly, promoting GTH and the families and donating what you can to the families is our goal. We would love to have advertising space on any sites we can and are looking forward to getting business cards made to send to partners to hand out, but we will wait on the LORD for that. Other than that, the LORD has blessed us with this right now, and we are donating our time to this site and only hope to provide all we can so Believers can join together in “visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction“.

If, on the other hand, you feel led to help in a way we have not thought of, please contact us, and we will surely consider your ideas!

Thank you so much~

Tags: ChipIn, referral families, Social Networking

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Welcome to the Gleaning the Harvest website! We are a ministry-oriented site helping you to minister to the needs of widowed and single home school moms. How do we do that? We present the families to you, and you give directly to them!

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James 1:27
“The religious observance that God the Father considers pure and faultless is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being contaminated by the world.”

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