What Is Going Homesteadily?
Going Homesteadily was born out of grief.
After losing three pregnancies, including our first set of twins, I have carried six babies and never experienced a third trimester. When our surviving twins were born at 26 weeks, they spent four months in the NICU. One has minor physical and sensory development challenges. The other faced significant health complexities for his first sixteen months of life. In between those pregnancies, I lost my mom.
It has become painfully clear that there is very little I can control. I cannot control outcomes. I cannot control timing. I cannot control whether life will be easy or devastating.
What I can do is prepare and have faith.
I can make sure my family is fed well. I can learn to cook partially or fully from scratch. I can preserve food for hard days. I can garden. I can build margin into our budget. I can learn skills I hope my children never desperately wish they had been taught, as I have. I can teach them stewardship instead of dependence. I can reduce whatever exposures I reasonably can. I can plan. I can practice. I can build.
Not because I believe I am in ultimate control, but because preparation is an act of hope.
Going Homesteadily is about learning to live intentionally in a world that feels unstable. It is about accepting that we do not control outcomes while faithfully stewarding what the Lord has entrusted to us.
It is about preparing for supply chain disruptions while learning to bake sourdough. About budgeting households and raising babies. About growing food in season and holding on in seasons of grief. About choosing joy when life is still undeniably hard.
This is not about pretending life is simple. It is not about ideal aesthetic homesteading or blissful ignorance.
It is about acknowledging:
• We struggle with impatience for eternity.
• We wrestle with heartbreak in a broken world.
• We feel anger in the waiting.
• We battle despair in exhaustion.
And yet, we choose joy anyway. Not shallow or fleeting happiness, but joy rooted in Christ.
The Lord is our strength when we have none. He provides in lean seasons and in times of abundance. He sustains when we want to give up. He teaches endurance when hope feels thin.
Life never stops being hard, but it becomes worth it when you stop demanding ease and start embracing God given purpose.
Going Homesteadily is my commitment to try. To learn steadily. To grow faithfully. To live intentionally in whatever season God allows. To steward well what I’ve been given. And to choose joy. Home is in the making. y, patiently, and deliberately toward the life God is shaping.
About the Author
Stephanie Brown is a child of God, wife to Jeff since 2015, and mother to twins who reshaped her understanding of strength, priorities, and purpose.
Raised in Northern Illinois and after many years in the South, she recently returned home to be closer to aging parents so her children can grow up knowing their family well. The move was more than geographic. It marked a recalibration of what matters most.
Professionally, Stephanie works in higher education as a writer, biology instructor, and instructional designer. She is drawn to learning, systems, structure, and helping others understand complex ideas clearly. That systems minded lens often carries into her home life.
At home, she is a gardener, baker, photographer, and constant student in her own kitchen, building skills she was never taught, not out of nostalgia but conviction. Motherhood softened and reshaped her rhythms and priorities. With the responsibility of shaping little lives, stewarding their hearts, and raising disciples, creating a loving, steady, and nurturing home became more important than comfort.
After multiple pregnancy losses and the loss of her mother, Stephanie reached a place of deep brokenness. The Lord met her there. What began as survival became surrender. What began as grief became growth.
Going Homesteadily was born from that season and continues to be shaped by it. It reflects a commitment to nourish her family well, build practical skills, steward resources wisely, and rely daily on the Lord through both fragile and flourishing seasons.
Here, faith meets flour, grief meets growth, and ordinary daily work becomes worship.
If you are learning, rebuilding, grieving, growing, or simply trying to live more intentionally, you are welcome here.