The ‘Imagine More’ concept and approach can help parents work with their children to guide them in finding God’s path for their lives, as well as help parents find the same path while keeping their parenting as their first priority. My ‘Imagine More’ path began when my children were 3- and 5-years old. This all happened while keeping my role as a stay-at-home mother as my first priority.
My hope is to encourage people to “imagine more” for themselves by discovering how they can use what they love to do to help others. When we land on that idea, we have landed on God’s exciting plan for our life. However, pursuing a new exciting project does not need to replace or compromise the life we feel God called us to in the first place. We do not need to sacrifice our role as mothers to pursue God’s calling to help others in a new way.
I quit my full-time corporate job to be a stay-at-home mother when our second son was born. Although our income was cut in half, being able to focus on my role as a mother was my priority. After a few years, I landed on my new couponing for charity project, which taught people how to use grocery coupons to buy food for food pantries at no cost. It was exciting to help others by doing something that I truly enjoyed. Teaching people how to save money for their families and how to donate food to charity was fun and rewarding.
It was challenging to balance this new project with my busy schedule with two active children. Although they were in school full-time, homework and after school activities were the main focus from 2:30 pm to bedtime. In order to find time to pursue my new project effectively, I took a good look at how I was spending my time when they were at school. I decided to end a few of my personal activities and hobbies I did when they were at school and chose to treat those hours as my “work day” instead. I also incorporated my new project into some of their activities. For example, I didn’t want to give up parental involvement in their school or clubs, so I became the Community Service person for the school PTA and taught children how to buy food for charity with coupons. I organized the food drives for the Cub Scout pack and taught scouts how to buy food for charity with coupons. I started an after-school community service club, which our sons attended and taught students how to buy food for charity with coupons. As a result, most of the mothers in the school also learned how to buy food for charity with coupons since they were the ones who needed to drive the children to the store and pay the small amount of money needed (after coupons, of course). Rather than teaching couponing workshops in the evenings or weekends to interested adults (taking me away from family), I could accomplish the same goal by working alongside our children. Best of all, our children grew up understanding the importance of giving and sharing with people in need, and we did it together.
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About the Author: Stephanie Nelson is the founder of the Coupon Mom website, which launched the coupon movement that took America by storm in 2008. As a savings expert, Stephanie has appeared on many national and local television news shows, including Good Morning America, the TODAY show, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her entrepreneurial Coupon Mom concept started a national cottage industry of other “coupon moms” as she inspired women to start profitable websites in their communities. Her book The Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half was a New York Times bestseller. Stephanie currently hosts her podcast, Pivotal People.
