Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Balanced Barefooter, a.k.a. The Blog That Will Offend Literally Everyone.

First things first – allow me to introduce myself. My name is Aeryn – it’s just like Erin, only cleverer – and I’m lots of different things that don’t all make sense to other people, but primarily a Jesus-follower, an intellectual, a wife, soon a mom (yay!), naturally-minded, overly ambitious, and disorganized.

I am a certified therapeutic riding instructor for individuals with disabilities, but due to a recent focus on getting married and starting a family, not currently working. My plan is to get back to it as a volunteer in the next few weeks, and start turning it into a career about a year from now.

What I am doing at this exact point in time, besides experimenting as a blogger, is mainly growing a baby and trying to keep my house and my husband from falling apart. I’m taking pretty good care of the baby and husband, but the house could be doing better if I weren’t – as stated above – disorganized by nature. I’ve recently discovered, however, that I’m actually capable of meal-planning, and this makes life go a whole lot better. I love cooking. I’ll talk about that here at some point.

Let’s talk about the title and subtitle of this blog – shall we?

Balanced, to me, is keeping an open mind – but not so open that one’s brains fall out. It’s knowing where you stand, thinking before you move forward, but not getting stuck. In my case, it’s being a hippie in some ways and supporting our troops at the same time. It’s believing in discipline without punishment, putting humans first while protecting the environment, wanting capitalism with accountability, and loving tradition but knowing that sometimes things need to change.

Barefoot is not wearing shoes. I don’t, unless it’s cold or legitimately dangerous or inappropriate in the given circumstances. I wear boots to the barn because I’m not an idiot (I think), but for things like hiking, grocery shopping, and church, they’re entirely unnecessary.

Now, if you are a crunchy, politically conservative, biblical fundamentalist it may be a while before I hit on something that actually offends you (although I’m sure we’ll still have differences of opinion). For the broader categories of liberal hippies, mainstream conservatives, non-Christians, and…well, most Christians, particularly of a less conservative persuasion…please expect to disagree with, and perhaps dislike, a rather large proportion of what I say.

To be clear, my purpose is not to make anyone angry. In general, I try to avoid that when I can. But what I’ll be sharing in this blog is what I truly believe, and I’m not censoring anything in this particular forum because…it’s mine, and I don’t have to.

There are a lot of things I do want to talk about in this blog, but a recurring theme is going to be how weird I am as a crunchy conservative – both a political conservative and a conservative Christian. The way I approach things like health, stewardship, and parenting is pretty normal these days in some circles, but they tend to be liberal circles. Almost every time I go into a parenting forum where vaccines and spanking aren’t the norm, there is a heavy pro-LGBT/anti-gun agenda. If I’m talking to people who share my views on politics and social issues, they tend to think all environmentalists are crazy and I’m not comfortable sharing how I think we should be treating the earth God gave us. (On the other hand, I do think it’s a pretty ridiculous notion that we could “run out” of water on our planet… Hydrologic cycle, people. Hydrologic cycle.)

So I’ll be talking a lot about my philosophies on various subjects, how I arrived at them, and how it all fits into a biblical worldview. And many of you will disagree with me.

In fact, I imagine that everyone who reads this will find multiple posts that they disagree with, and many people will disapprove of a majority of what I say.

When you disagree with a post, feel free to say so, although please include why. If I have time and you’re not rude, I’ll probably respond – maybe we’ll get some interesting conversations going. I do tend to be pretty open-minded (just not so open-minded that my brains fall out), so I welcome other perspectives as well as additional facts and information I haven’t come across previously.

I hope that regardless of your own views, you’ll enjoy reading some of my posts, and maybe find a new interest or be inspired in some way. I’ll certainly be posting about a wide variety of topics, so it’s likely something, somewhere will pique your curiosity.

“Now until Him who is able to keep you from falling, and present you faultless before the Presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.”