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Practical Tools To Connect With Your Kids' Hearts (And Your Own!) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Imagine as a child how safe you would feel in a family when everyone is safe.
• 0:10
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. All right, guys. Well, we have been diving deep into this whole conversation around kids' hearts. And we want to start the year, the month of January, in our accelerator, just talking about the entire world of how do you connect with your kids? How do you make sure you're dialing down into their hearts? And I'm excited that we have Philip and Natasha Dosa here today. Thank you guys for jumping on here. Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having us.
• 0:38
  It's awesome to have you guys. So Phillip and Natasha have a ministry around this topic. They help families dial into their kids' hearts, particularly dads. It's at stayandgo.org. And so we'll be sharing a little bit more about that. But I've been interacting with Phillip over this last year. They are in the Dallas area. I'd love for you guys to introduce yourselves. And as we do that, you guys, part of what we do is...
• 1:03
  Phillip and Natasha are our community coaches for the entire month of January. So in the accelerator, they're going to jump onto a zoom call and they'll interact with you guys and answer questions. And so if you're hearing things that they say that you're like, Oh my gosh, I want to talk to them about this. Just take note of that. And in January in the accelerator, you guys can jump in there and interact directly with them about whatever topic, but they wrote this amazing playbook that we're going to be publishing in January. And we want to dive into some of their
• 1:33
  Yeah, Phillip and Natasha, I'd love for you guys to introduce yourselves. Tell us about your team and, yeah, a little bit more about you guys. Yeah, we're Team DOSA. We're here in Dallas, as you said. We've got five kids. Our oldest is 13, girl. Then we've got an 11-year-old boy. This is the big question, right? Our 8-year-old turns 9 next week, so I've got to keep this.
• 1:56
  Well, 11-year-old turns 12. We have a bunch of birthdays. All the birthdays in December and January. But yeah, we have an 11-year-old boy, eight-year-old boy, five-year-old boy, and a two-year-old girl. So we have tons of fun, tons of chaos. And we have been working full-time as missionaries since 2017. And we were in Norway, and then we were in Kansas City, and then God called us to Dallas to start this ministry
• 2:25
  um a year ago and we're we're figuring it out tasha at homeschools yeah full time i have a lot of fun awesome cool well yeah thank you guys so much for jumping on here and you know this this topic i know for so many people this is really where the rubber meets the road like what else matters if we lose connection to our kids and oftentimes this topic can get lost and
• 2:51
  in the midst of all of that chaos that is inevitable. So you guys are taking it on with five kids homeschooling like this is, this is, you guys are in the thick of it. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your story. Like, like how did you kind of get into thinking about the topic of how to connect with kids hearts?
• 3:08
  Yeah, so we've been in our own story with this for many years. It's been messy, painful, and we've done it wrong a lot. And we've wanted to get it right and wrestled to figure out how to do it right. And I would say we're still wrestling, though we've gotten a lot of clarity on the right tools and the right approach. But yeah, a little bit of our story
• 3:36
  2016, we have two kids, a third on the way. And I've had a heart for years to go and do mission work overseas. And we felt the Lord releasing us to do that. And so spring of 2017, we have a newborn, start fundraising. We're going on this crazy adventure to move to Norway. And our lives in, we were in Abilene, Texas at the time. Our lives were pretty peaceful. And yeah.
• 4:07
  Yeah, I think I was at a conference. I remember around that time, someone saying, you know how life just keeps coming at you and is just always challenging, always difficult and can never get a breath. And I remember thinking, I don't feel that way about life. I feel like things are fine. Like that or those early years when you have young kids and you're just, you're doing okay. And when we moved to Norway, that changed everything.
• 4:29
  Really fast. Yeah. Natasha, how did you experience that transition? Yeah. It was a pretty hard jump into a different culture. I didn't even have honeymoon stage. They talk about when you move to a new culture. It was just straight like, what did we do? At that point, we had, like he said, three kids. Our youngest was eight months old. And
• 4:59
  Yeah, it was, I think it was just a lot of shock at first of like, okay, not only are we doing missions, but we're in full-blown parenting. I mean, with three kids that were all under the age of five and we were putting them into like foreign school right away or kindergarten and preschool and daycare and stuff. And it was just like everything, there was nothing that was like secure or familiar with
• 5:25
  Yeah, and it really put us under the gun. And I think the other thing, you know, when you get into those, our oldest was five at that time. And we were starting to experience some conflict between the two of us on how we're going to approach parenting. You know, are we going to be supportive parents or are we going to have high standards for our kids, kind of the authoritarian mindset?
• 5:47
  strong parenting or the supportive parenting, we were wrestling with that and we have different attitudes and approaches to that. And you put us in another country and all of a sudden it's like, man, this is, this is really, really hard and really challenging. And my dream to go to missions, I kind of in a lot of ways went for it and fully put my, my heart and my time and my energy into the work we are doing.
• 6:14
  And about a year and a half in, we, we had a four year commitment to Norway and about a year and a half in, I was like completely burnt out. How would you say you were doing at that point? I was, I think hanging on, to a certain degree, like trying to make
• 6:33
  make life doable between missions and mother motherhood. I was there. The kids were in school for the most part there. So I wasn't homeschooling at the time and I was working a lot. I was a part of, he was leading a team and I was like under his team and working a lot, but still I was the main one, you know, doing kids stuff still. And so I think there was a lot of like trying to balance those two worlds and figure out.
• 7:00
  Honestly, I was confused most of the time. I was feeling a lot of things, but not sure how to communicate them to him in a way that was healthy or clear. Yeah. That was just kind of an emotional mess. I felt, from my perspective, there were just a lot of feelings being expressed and anxiety, stress. And I was just like, you need to trust God and not worry. Yeah.
• 7:24
  Yeah, that's easy to say, right? And it totally cured her anxiety. It's all about her all of a sudden. I thought that something was wrong with me. I think for a long time, I was like, why can't I just be positive? Like we live in Norway and we're in Europe and we're doing like missions. This is what we've talked about for years. And why can't I feel differently?
• 7:47
  Yeah. So, to walk me through, so you guys are in this, then the pressure cooker that you have, you know, and this, it's not like any of us like really have, know what this is going to be like to have these little kids, all this responsibility. And then in your guys's case, being overseas and just trying to figure out how to make it work in a culture that's not, you know, native to you. So yeah, talk to me about, so, um, in the midst of that chaos, you guys started to really drill into this area of the importance of the heart. So how did that come about?
• 8:17
  Yeah, so we came home two years in, and we were meeting with some friends that did our premarital counseling. They'd been doing counseling for us, and we basically kind of said, hey, we have this big fight, and we need you to help us solve it. And I was like, we need to do missions, and she's trying to distract us from this part of missions with all of these worries and concerns. And her perspective, I don't know if you want to voice it, was like,
• 8:44
  I'm not doing great, and I don't care about missions. I care about my kids. I don't know if I would have said that at the time, but that's probably what, if I was honest, that was what I was feeling. And the couple that met with us, she got in my face, and she's like, your wife is struggling. Do you care? Your wife is struggling. Do you care? And I kept talking about missions, and she's like, your wife is struggling. Do you care? And finally it got through, and I realized, oh,
• 9:12
  she's having a hard time and I'm over here worried about whether or not we're going to have some impact on the nations. My family is not in a good place. And we came back to Norway and realized, okay, we got to, we got to change. Something's got to change. I had new ears to hear what was going on instead of saying, Hey, you just need to
• 9:35
  trust Jesus and be quiet and be thankful and don't be anxious. All of a sudden it was like, let me hear you. Let me understand what's going on inside of you. Um, and w w what we realized is like, we weren't hearing each other. And we had a couple, a different couple in Norway.
• 9:53
  Set us down and say, okay, we're going to take 30 minutes. Tasha's going to talk. Phil, you're going to repeat what she said in your own words and ask follow-up questions. The sentence by sentence. Basically. And the starting point was like a recent fight or something. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm seeing someone. I'm seeing what's going on underneath the surface in your heart. I'm seeing what's happening behind the stress and the anxiety. And I'm...
• 10:20
  I'm activating a different part of me than the let's argue about this. And let me prove that you're wrong. Instead it's like, oh shoot, you're struggling. And, but actually it kind of makes sense when I really hear it. So that was a starting point. Um, from there, what happened in 2019?
• 10:41
  Oh, yeah. So I got pregnant with our fourth during this time. And also during this time, the Lord started talking to us about moving back to the U.S., which was very unexpected. Though the pregnancy and moving were both very unexpected. And because we had thought, oh, we're going to be in Europe and then we're probably going to move on to the Middle East.
• 11:03
  And so hearing the Lord begin to lead us back to the U.S. was especially hard for Phil. For me, there was definitely, I think, a little bit of relief of like, oh, we're going back to something familiar. But it was like, yeah, both those things at once happened in 2019. And then going into 2020, you can change.
• 11:28
  Yeah, so we were pregnant with our fourth, who ended up being a son, and we felt like the Lord told us to call him Elijah. And one of the verses that came up as we were praying about it is Malachi 1.
• 11:42
  4 verse 6 that talks about the prophet coming in the spirit of Elijah, restoring the hearts of the fathers to the children and of the children to their fathers. And I remember, you know, kind of being like, I don't know what that means, but...
• 11:58
  I think we might need that. Like, I think I need my heart restored to my kids. Like, I don't feel like I was acting like a single missionary. I wasn't paying attention to my family and I didn't know how to. And so Elijah was born. Well, and just to tie in what we said a minute ago in the story, why we talked, shared about the conflict between us, because that was carrying into how we related to the kids too. What he was experiencing with me was also what we were experiencing with the kids where we were just like,
• 12:27
  not paying attention to their emotions either it just trickled down right it just trickles down through the whole family totally yeah so we uh january 2020 um elijah was born and he was born with a condition that required multiple surgeries and um in norway still we were in norway um yeah we went to spend a week in a hospital away from our kids and
• 12:53
  which is kind of crazy to think about. And he had his first surgery when he was a day old. And we knew he was going to have to have two more surgeries in his first six months of life. And the doctor said, it's really better if you move back. If you're going to be moving to the U.S., get those other surgeries there because you want follow-up care and that kind of thing. And so we started to look. And where the Lord had told us to move is Kansas City.
• 13:17
  And, um, we already were looking at places to live and we realized that where we were going to live was 15 minutes away from one of the best hospitals in the world for his condition. And, um, so we were in crisis, but instead of saying, okay, we've got to,
• 13:37
  you know, disengage from the mission and just take care of our family. It felt like the Lord was actually saying, I already told you where I want you to go. I've already got mission and purpose for you there. And I'm providing a way for your provision for your son and for his care. So we landed back in the U S in February, 2020, uh, before COVID was a thing. Um,
• 13:58
  And we were in crisis and we were in probably the most difficult season of our lives. But yet in the middle of that, we knew God was leading us and that God wanted us to
• 14:09
  in Kansas city and that he had a purpose in all of this. And he actually told me in the spring of 2019 to start the ministry, stay and go. And I didn't even know what it was. And he told me it was about stewardship and fathering. I was like, that's a joke. I don't know anything about that. I, that's, that's my weakness. And so we came to Kansas city with kind of a vision, but honestly, 2020 was maybe one of the hardest years of our lives. Yeah. No, we were, we were surviving.
• 14:38
  And COVID didn't even, was even a minor thing compared to all the other stuff that we were going with that year. Yeah. But we were better prepared because instead of me saying, hey, you just need to have a good attitude, I was saying, let me understand where you're at. And in 2020, you were experiencing severe anxiety, panic attacks, anxiety.
• 15:01
  I mean, you felt like you were dying. Yeah, I had a lot of... I think... I don't even know if it was postpartum stuff more as maybe even trauma related to... Like, my birth was Elijah was fine, but the shock of his diagnosis and being in the hospital, having just had a baby, I think I internalized a lot and it didn't really manifest in my body and in my emotions till we got to the US. Almost like I was holding on from Norway till we got there. And then it was like...
• 15:32
  I was just like, yeah, it was scary for a little while because I remember that and we couldn't go to doctors because all the doctors wouldn't see anyone because it was COVID and we were brand new and I'm like, I don't know who to go to. So we were doing a lot of him listening and then praying because we had nothing else to like answer it.
• 15:54
  Yeah, I think, you know, we went from me saying, hey, ignore your heart to let's talk about your heart. Oh my gosh, it's rupturing now. And one of the biggest reasons why I didn't want to hear what was in her heart is I didn't know what to do with it. Like, how do I fix this? How do I help this? I have no idea. I'm helpless. Yeah.
• 16:13
  But we just learned, okay, we need to ask God what he wants to say. And we would take times, I mean, she literally is like having a panic attack and she's like, do I need to go to the hospital? I'm like, let's ask the Lord, let's just pray. And so we would ask the Lord, does she have a tumor? Is she dying? And the Lord would say, no. And then we'd say, okay, Lord, what do we do? And he's like,
• 16:39
  He would say different things. It would be rounds of prayer. It wasn't super simple, but- It was very practical though. At one point I started running. He's like, go run, physically go run. And it helped so much. So just practical things. And we would pray every day and I would get what I needed for that day. And then slowly over time, I was doing that over and over again that year, I came out of it.
• 17:06
  And I think even some of the things that I was saying to her back in Norway, now the Lord was saying to her, but she was able to hear it from the Lord. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, go ahead.
• 17:18
  So the transition there of saying, okay, we need to seek the Lord together. And this allows you guys to be bonded instead of like being on different sides of the table, you know, trying to like, oh, you need to fix this or, you know, you need to get over this. Like, okay, let's enter into this together and bring it before the Lord. And the Lord started giving you guys almost prescriptions to help you kind of pull out.
• 17:44
  And there was one moment she went to the doctor and the doctor's like, I don't know what's wrong with you. Like she had a lump in her throat she was worried about. And the doctor's like, there's no problem there. I don't know what to tell you. And she's like, this is awful. I don't know what to do. And then we asked the Holy Spirit and he's like, take iron. So she started taking iron pills and her throat started feeling better. I don't know if the Holy Spirit's always going to tell you what to take, but it was just, it was unique how...
• 18:05
  He was speaking what needed to be spoken. And many things were really obvious. Like running is a good physical activity that helps with anxiety. And I could have read that in a book or pulled it up on a podcast. But I don't know. Maybe I just wouldn't have heard it that way. But the Lord saying it and then doing it and then feeling the difference was like. And how did, as you guys are going through this and starting to really experience like some more victory in these areas, how did that impact your kids or the way that you were parenting your kids? Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:35
  Yeah, so I remember in like the first year we were in Kansas City, you know, I would go on an errand and I would invite a kid to come along. And our oldest was like, I don't want to go one-on-one with you, dad. It was kind of interesting because he's like apparently scared enough of, you know, I had a difficulty with anger and I had difficulty with being too intense with the kids. Never physical. But just, you know,
• 19:04
  And had a struggle with anger. And she's like, I don't want to go anywhere with you, dad, one-on-one. And so it just kind of shows like the relationship was broken. And I was really seeking in that time to continue to make that mission's impact. And I had a friend tell me, I think your assignment right now is to receive God's love. And I was like, that sounds cool, but that's not what I want to do. I want to make an impact. Yeah.
• 19:28
  And after he would tell me this word every six months and after a couple of years, I finally realized that was what God was wanting me to do. And it came to this place where I had to go into what was in my heart and realize that I had a bunch of jammed up emotions and feelings that I was not paying attention to. And the reason I wanted to go, it's a long story, but to make it short, the reason I wanted to make an impact is because I felt that if I made an impact, I would be worthy of God's love.
• 19:55
  And I came to a realization that I had to accept that I would never be worthy of God's love and I just had to choose to receive it. So what shifted in me, I started to understand what was going on behind the anger and what was going on behind, I had addiction to social media. And as I started to see my own heart, I started to understand how God wanted to bring transformation and truth and freedom to me.
• 20:23
  Had a big breakthrough in that, realizing how to live out of truth, how to choose to believe truth on a daily basis. And overnight, my whole world changed and started to become a different person.
• 20:36
  And from that place, what I went through, the Lord started saying, I want you to take other people through this. And the first people I want you to take through this is your family. And so developed a process where we look at your life as a story. This was originally just for me, but to see the tension in your story, there's external and internal tension. And when I started to see my external tension was, I want to have an impact. I want to do this thing in missions. And the internal tension is I don't feel loved.
• 21:05
  And when I began to understand the tension in my story, I was able to find the healing and then be available to go and ask those same questions in my kids' hearts. So it's the last two years or so has started to really shift towards engaging the kids. And we're now at a place where, you know, I've actually processed with my kids, the external and internal tension they're facing. My two oldest that are old enough to do this.
• 21:33
  And they come to me with everything and they're sharing what's going on inside of them, what they're wrestling with externally, you know, with a sibling or with a friend or a youth group or whatever. And that same daughter who didn't want to ride in a car with me, she's now sharing all of the challenges she's facing and wrestling through them together with me. And, you know, the same process you see this in the guide is to first hear her and name it, help her.
• 21:57
  bring clarity to what that feeling is and then grant space to feel it grand space to recognize like it's what you're facing right now with your teenage friends is challenging and is painful and that's okay can't you can experience that pain but then to go with her and ask the holy spirit what do you want to say about that that tension that's become the tool that we uh that we use whether it's big massive things in your heart or kind of a small issue you know or throughout the day
• 22:27
  Hmm. Very good. That's such an interesting framework. I think to, to say, look, there's always two things you're wrestling with and one of them you're going to exhibit. Like you're just going to think about it, talk about it. You're going to think this is the, this is all of it. And so how do you, when, when your kids is wrestling with something like that, how do you get from that external tension into the internal tension?
• 22:51
  Yeah, so it really is helping them embrace the language of story. So we would introduce this with our kids through movies, and we talk about the character. What's the external tension the character is facing? What's the internal tension they're facing? And it's there, especially in kids' movies, very clearly, and kids understand it, and they get it. And so they say, oh, well, the character wants to accomplish this thing because they
• 23:18
  Feel it will mean this for them. And so it's a simple questions. Talk to me about the external tension you're facing. What are the biggest things you're facing in your world? If you're a character or story, what's the big tension right now? Is it to be accepted by your friends? And then...
• 23:36
  What do you think you'll feel if that works? If that happens, what do you think you'll feel? And now we're getting into the feeling, we're getting into the heart. And it's like, well, I'd feel accepted. It's like, what do you feel right now instead? I don't feel accepted or I'm not sure if I'm accepted. And so you're using the story language to start on the surface and then just to peel back the layer and just say like, what are you feeling right now? And what do you want to feel? And usually what you come up with there is words of like, I feel anxious or I feel,
• 24:07
  alone or I feel guilty. These are some of the things that my kids have expressed. I lack purpose. One of our sons, I don't feel like I have any purpose. Oh, really? I'm like, that's a big thought for a little kid. Yes. Yeah. Once you create this language, I think kids actually naturally do this. It's really just a question of, do you know how to ask the question? And it's that same problem. If your kid says I'm rejected by my friends, cause I'm not old enough or I don't have the right clothes. Um,
• 24:37
  Do you immediately jump in to fix it? Do you immediately say you don't need to feel that way? Or do you say, you know what? Actually, that's a hard part of being an adult. That's a hard part of being a human. And that's sad. What your friend said was sad. And it makes sense that you feel hurt. Yeah. And the ability to sit in that place.
• 24:55
  Um, for me, it came out of the fact that I had it in my own journey that I, that I could sit in my own heart with that place because often the way that we treat our kids emotions is the way we treat our own emotions. So if my default response is to say, be logical, that doesn't matter. That's not real. Have a good attitude. Be thankful. If that's what I tell myself all the time when I have problems, I'm not going to be able to tell my kids anything else.
• 25:19
  Yeah. Well, I love the practicing on the movie character. That seems really, really both practical, and I could see how the penny would suddenly drop about their own heart. So I think you guys are starting by saying, look...
• 25:37
  The reality is our kids don't know that they even have these multiple layers that are going on in their heart. And so they're living on the surface. We're living on the surface. And I read a book once about basically script writing. And the thing I remembered most was that the author was saying the most important thing about any movie script is...
• 25:59
  is always making sure that that internal tension is the real heart of the movie. Like, you know, you've got, you know, whatever, Luke Skywalker wants to, like, somehow defeat the Empire. But what's really deep inside of him is he doesn't know who his father is, and he feels like an orphan. Yeah.
• 26:16
  And so there's all of these basic things that are coming out of him. And any good movie has those two layers. And if you start to feel yourself moved watching a movie, it's because what's being exposed is that internal tension. And so that's something that kids can see, and that's a language they can relate to very, very early. But they're not going to be able to necessarily...
• 26:42
  articulate that if you just start with you know asking them a ton of questions they're not aware of these other layers or they don't know how to articulate it but once they start articulating it about fictional characters it seems like a pretty simple step from that to whoa i think i've got one of those issues yeah
• 27:01
  So that's a super practical insight. That's really good. I'm curious, Natasha, how does this play out for you as a mom in the family, having a tool like this and just getting to work out this kind of day-to-day with your kiddos? Yeah, I think for me, it's something that I'm still growing a lot in. I think Phil has really taken the lead and shaped that culture in our family. And it's something that I...
• 27:28
  I still struggle to do well. We'll just be honest. It's not an area that's really easy for me. We were talking about this before the podcast, but I think I've realized, and as you heard the story earlier, I feel like I came to this point where I realized I have a lot of deep feelings, but I haven't always known how to express them. So it's almost something that I'm learning with my kids literally right now is that
• 27:52
  I feel all these things, but I almost need those movie characters or those book characters to help me begin to see it in myself. So I would say in many ways, I'm kind of on the journey with my kids. Yeah. And we're kind of, it's messy. Yeah. And Phil is really leading the charge right now in doing it. He's done a really great job with our older two. They've really grown and changed in the last year. Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:19
  Yeah, I'm figuring it out too. The honest reality is if you go into this space, you're getting into more mess because you're now talking about things that you can't fix, you can't control, you shouldn't fix or control. And you're getting into places where you feel exposed with your kids. And you're like, I don't know how to fix this for you and I don't know how to tell you the right answer. And one of the things that we've done
• 28:45
  as a whole family is have times where every week we talk at the table about, um, what we're feeling. Uh, and we, we come at it from different angles. It could be, I feel angry when you, that kind of I statement, um, or we talk about, we take an emotions wheel. What emotion are you feeling this week? Or we've talked about external internal tension as well.
• 29:05
  And so doing that as a family and creating the, the vocabulary around it, it shifted our communication and it shifted the way that we interact with each other. Which I think is the most key because as we change and as we model it and, and it becomes a habit for us, then it becomes a habit with us, with the kids and the kids with each other. Totally. And, but it's still in the end.
• 29:31
  as a father, if I don't know how to address my own heart, I have no chance of addressing my wife or my kids' hearts. Like outside of maybe forcing it on one occasion or trying really hard to do that in the flow of life. When you start to let your kids express their emotions, it gets messier and it's challenging. And so I would say like, I'm still learning how to, like I still get angry at times. And that's why the last play here is repair. It's like, we still make mistakes and our houses is still messy and our relationships, our kids are not perfect.
• 30:01
  we repair and we recognize I'm doing it wrong. And there's also a recognition of like, I've got to do this myself before I can bring it to the, the center of, of family life in a fully embodied way. I mean, it's a skill.
• 30:15
  Yeah. How does that work kind of like day to day for you, Philip? Like what's, if you're, if you want to dial into that internal tension in your own heart, you want to understand, like, I think, you know, obviously you had sort of the big epiphany about, I want to make an impact, but I'm also not, it's like, I'm not experiencing the father's love. Yeah. How do you kind of downshift into that space personally?
• 30:40
  Yeah, and this taps into what we do with the dad's cohort. It's really the skill of learning how to understand what's going on in your own heart and how to move it. And the first step is the ability to see what's going on in your own heart. And if you've turned off your emotions, if you've
• 30:56
  cut them out completely, they're still driving you. They're still underneath your addiction or underneath your drive to be successful in business or make money. We're like, that's still your heart moving there. So it's not like your heart's dead, but if you shut it down, you won't be able to express it easily. So that's the first step is just...
• 31:14
  creating space and allowing yourself to feel something, which can take a minute to do that. And that's why I work with dads individually to help them see what, what that is in their heart. But from there, once you can see it, then it's waking up and taking an inventory of your heart and say, okay, what am I feeling right now? Like I'm feeling stressed about this client meeting I have later today. And I'm feeling like we don't have enough money for, you know, to get the car fixed the way it needs to get fixed. And I'm feeling like,
• 31:42
  I don't know if our connection, Tosh and I's connection is as strong as it could be this week. And I don't know if she seems distracted. And I process those feelings. I name it. I name what I'm feeling. And what I just listed was some external tensions.
• 31:58
  but there's also internal tension. So the actual tension would be like the client work. The internal tension could be, well, I feel rejected or alone from Tasha, which is actually something I have felt, but it's less to do with her and more to do with rejecting myself. And it's a state of belief that that's what's underneath internal tension is a lie.
• 32:15
  And so you naming the external attention and naming the internal attention is the first skill. And just doing that is incredibly helpful. From there, it's just asking the Holy Spirit, okay, what's your perspective on this client meeting? What's your perspective on this marriage? And what he'll tell me is I've got you on the client meeting and it makes sense that you feel alone on the marriage in Glasgow journal. Like, so I will...
• 32:40
  practically go on walks and process my internal, external attention, uh, mentally and in prayer. And I just talked to the Lord in my head and he talks to me in my head back and, um, to try it. It may, may, may be a new thing for you to hear God speak, but like, especially if you're talking about the heart, it's so easy to hear him. Um,
• 32:59
  And then I'll write it out in a journal. And then what I found works way better than processing this with her is actually processing it with other men. And so, you know, there's some skills there that I have to, I use those regularly. I use those. I did it today. I get processing what's in my heart and I do it throughout the day. If I find myself opening social media or getting angry, I'm like, okay, it's a signal. I've got some.
• 33:24
  I need to slow down. I need to figure out what's going on inside of me and set myself up for success. Cause I'm not there currently. Yeah, that's good. I think one of the areas where I realized this after like 25 years of plus of marriage, you know, there's the, the sort of trope or joke that we always make about how oftentimes a wife will come to her husband with a problem and he'll like try to solve it. And then she, she,
• 33:52
  doesn't like that he's trying to solve it and he gets confused. And I think one of the things that I realized was that she doesn't want him to solve a problem, but it's the internal one. And the internal one is oftentimes I feel alone in facing this problem. And if you solve the problem or you articulate a solution, oftentimes what you're simply doing is saying here, here's a tool, go fix it yourself. And her, her actual internal problem is I don't want to do this myself.
• 34:19
  I want to do this with you. I want us to experience something as a team together and go into this problem and solve it together. If you simply articulate a solution and then walk away from me, I'm left with, yeah, you might have solved my external tension, but my internal tension just got worse. So, yeah, we have to take the time to dial into those things. Part of what you guys are doing, and so in this...
• 34:43
  So this progression, just to kind of like, you know, give you, give you everyone else a kind of insight into, I think this, this really great framework that Philip and Tasha are walking through. So this first one is, is to understand the story, right? And so, and if you guys want to get the entire one pager, they wrote just for this particular element, and that's going to be at family teams.com slash hearts. And you guys can download that. And then you guys have heard them talk about how,
• 35:09
  okay, once you start to really see this external and internal tension, you need to take that before the Lord, right? And this is the seek truth about both. Like, what does the Lord say? What is the Holy Spirit saying to us about these things? And then the final step you guys talk about is repairing the hurt together. I would love to just go, you know, kind of one last, you know, before I let you guys go, I want to hear a little bit more about this one because I think repair is, I think,
• 35:35
  one of the greatest superpowers in any family that's going to really stay together. I think it was something Stephen Covey said something like, hey, families get things wrong like 90% of the time. But if you're really good at repair, you can stay on track indefinitely. But if you're bad at repair, one problem can be really threatening to the family. So we have to figure out how to do this step. So yeah, what are some insights or what's kind of a way that you guys
• 36:05
  yeah repair is is so crucial and i think what's what's interesting has shifted in me is you know if i'm a i have been in the past a perfectionist so i am really hard on myself and then i end up being hard on my wife and hard on my kids and the reality is relationships are messy and we're going to hurt each other actually if you're in close healthy relationship there's going to be hurt there's going to be conflict there's going to be missed you know you're
• 36:34
  needs and points. And there's going to be moments where you're like, man, that sucked. And that's not actually something that we're trying to get away from. Like we're not trying to come up with a relationship system that enables us to not have that mess. That is what happens when you let your heart come out. We put our hearts away because we're afraid of them getting hurt.
• 36:57
  When in reality, when you're unwilling to get hurt, you're unwilling to engage in relationship. So you have to be willing to be hurt. You have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to engage with other people that are wrong to have actual connection. And so I think just shifting it from I need to be the perfect parent or I need to do all this stuff right to I need to.
• 37:20
  confess when I'm wrong and repair when I'm wrong is a huge mindset shift that makes it easier on everybody. Like it's okay to burn the chicken. It's okay to yell at your kids. Like it's, it's not the end of the world. It's wrong to not then go repair when you yell at your kids. So I think that's the big shift. Um, honestly, it's, it's recognizing that you
• 37:46
  You have to humble yourself in front of your kids and you have to humble yourself in front of your wife and, and acknowledge you're wrong. And that's good leadership. That's strength. And for many of us, we were taught never to apologize or never show weakness. And that's what leadership is, is a lack of weakness. And.
• 38:06
  I think that's a big shift that has to happen. You got to get to the place where you own what you did wrong and you don't make excuses for it and you apologize. And then even I think a part of apologizing to your kids is asking them to hold you accountable and...
• 38:21
  You know, one of the challenges I was like, okay, I'm yelling at my kid over and over and over again for five years. I apologized every single time, but at certain points, like, do I really care? Do I, am I really engaged in this? And so I do think a part of repair is taking seriously transformation and change, which is, you know, going into that hard work yourself and figuring out why do I keep finding myself here? That's, that's your character in the story. Yeah.
• 38:49
  facing the big battle. And it's important you do that work because if you don't do that work, all the apologies in the world, I mean, what they teach you is that, you know, we're just going to live in constant brokenness and I'm going to constantly lash out of my emotional unhealthiness and expect you to forgive me over and over again. Right.
• 39:10
  Yeah, I think one thing that I, as you were talking, I don't know if I've said this to you, but thinking about how we do it practically as a family, I feel like we've been doing a lot more public work.
• 39:23
  Apollot or like repentance, like not just one on one, but like at the table, like he was mentioning earlier, we've been having a lot more around the table talking about how you feel, which sometimes is happy feelings, but sometimes is negative feelings and using that I language of I felt this way when this person did this.
• 39:42
  brings up topics that need to be addressed. And when it's done publicly, it's such an interesting snowball effect because if one kid starts asking forgiveness, then someone's like, oh yeah, I need to too. Before you know it, all five kids have asked forgiveness. And mom and dad, if we all ask forgiveness, that's happened multiple times where it's just one person. And then suddenly everyone's like, okay, yeah. And then the whole shift in the atmosphere of the home when that happens. Yeah.
• 40:11
  And it's crucial that both the father and the mother are apologizing because, you know, there's been times when one of us is just not going there and the kids now have a mission. He's really good at it. Being fine, but it's normally I struggle with it. It's hard. Yeah.
• 40:31
  Well, what you guys are describing is imagine as a child how safe you would feel in a family when everyone is admitting where they're wrong and we're all speaking the truth. It's just like, oh, man.
• 40:46
  Like I can be real and I can be known and I can be wrong and it will get better. Like one of the most difficult things to overcome in a family system is when when something bad happens and somebody actually tries to do repair, things get worse. And there are family systems in which that happens.
• 41:08
  And that is incredibly tragic because it teaches your kids to basically build up these iron walls in their heart and say, well, I'll never admit to being wrong because then it's just weaponized against me or something like that. Whereas in a household where it's just like...
• 41:24
  That is amazing. Like that, that humility, that's what, that's what brings the kingdom. You know, that's what unleashes, you know, all of this, like the love and joy and redemption of the Lord. Yes. It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the center of the gospel. So man, yeah, I love, love that. And kids.
• 41:42
  Kids are very honest with their hearts. I mean, we talked about earlier when you watch a movie, there's times when in a movie you start to cry and your brain's like, why are we crying? Like, I don't even understand what's happening right now. Because our hearts and our brains get disconnected because we separate the two. And...
• 41:58
  kids it's all connected and so they can smell fake from a mile away and really what's happening in your home is they're developing a view of the world a view of god and a view of themselves and the primary way they're doing that is through their parents and through what their parents say about the world say about them and say about god and what they show them and what the parent does is what god what they think of god as and i have a friend uh joel mcgill who says that when you apologize you're correcting your kids theology
• 42:27
  And so like you're demonstrating to your kids that God is an angry person who comes down when you do things wrong.
• 42:36
  And if you don't apologize, that just gets solidified. It's like, that's okay, or that's right, but that's the kid's fault. But when you come in and say that was wrong, you're actually saying, hey, I'm not following the rules. I didn't do this right, this was a mistake. It now allows the kid to say, oh, yeah. And if we don't do this, I think this is where our kids start to sniff out, like you don't actually believe this stuff, or you don't actually have a heart that's free, or you don't actually trust God yourself. And so we're trying to convince our kids to go,
• 43:05
  play the act that we've played when in reality, it's like we have to tend to our hearts. And in the first verse in the guide is that the heart is the spring of life to guard the heart because it's the spring of life, uh, Proverbs four. And I think for many of us, we're taught to shut our hearts down or ignore our hearts. And, you know, looking back on my story on Tasha's story, um,
• 43:28
  these hearts rupturing and this brokenness coming out through circumstances, our hearts were that way all along. And God uses those circumstances to bring those things out. And the mess comes out. It's an opportunity to say, I'm going to go into that place and address my heart. If your parents didn't teach you how to address your heart, then, or they did teach you, they taught you how to ignore it.
• 43:48
  You've got to go back and relearn that skill and re-engage it. Or you are accidentally teaching your kids to do the same thing with their heart. And so I think that's a huge thing for me. I was always worried about, like, are my kids going to walk away from the Lord? Am I failing them as a parent? And the realization was like, oh, I don't know if I've been parented. I don't know my own heart. I don't know what's going on in me.
• 44:10
  And so I felt, I think it was right for me to feel like I wasn't doing what my kids needed because I was like, there's something off here. And so now getting to this place, like I'm making mistakes. I still struggle, but I at least know my own heart and I know how to guide my kids on the journey with their hearts. That's what's really important is that they're not being led by the culture, led by their feelings unchecked or by straight logic and truth that shuts the heart down. I mean, that's what you're really aiming for in the long term.
• 44:40
  Right on. So good, guys. Thank you guys so much for sharing that. I know that there's more and I'm excited for you guys to dive into this with Philip and Natasha. Yeah, what you just said, Philip, I think the number one reason that kids walk away from the faith is they grew up in a house where they sensed hypocrisy.
• 44:58
  And that is really, really hard on kids as they're getting older. And it causes them to say, I don't think this is really real. I got to go out and find something that's more real. And so we've got to keep it real in our homes and this is how to do it. So what we did with the accelerator this year, you guys, is we sat down and family teams and just sort of said, what are the 12 like sequential steps that if we had like a perfect world, we could take a family through?
• 45:21
  And that's what we're doing from January all the way to December. And we said the number one, the first thing, the foundational thing we need to start with is the heart. And so that's why we want to Philip and Natasha to come and start the whole year off with you guys with this topic. Like, let's start here. Let's make sure that our houses are built on the right foundation. We're listening to the Holy Spirit. We're sharing our hearts. Before we get into all the things that are really fun and practical or, you know, let's do meals together. Let's create rhythms. Yeah, but what does it matter if the hearts are disconnected in the home?
• 45:49
  And if we're not connecting to the Lord, so we want to start here. We want to spend some time and just take the whole month of January and just like, how do we do this? So some of you guys know how our accelerator works. Week one, you get the playbook that Philip and Natasha wrote, has these three plays in it that we've been talking a little bit about today. Week two, there's going to be a Zoom call with Philip and Natasha. They're going to talk to you guys about whatever questions you have, and they'll share a little bit more about this framework.
• 46:12
  Week three, we're going to give you guys a little tutorial for how this works in the prior home. And then week four, we do our town hall where April and I and our kiddos will talk to you guys about anything you want to talk about on the family team's journey, including this topic. So we'd love to, you can ask our kids, you know.
• 46:28
  How did it work with your hearts? And how did your parents mess you up and make mistakes? Because we did a lot of, you had a lot of challenge in this area as well. And, but we did kind of come to the same conclusion, you know, that, that Philip and Natasha came to here as well. And that is like, this is all that matters. We got to get this right first. What do we have to say to the world? We want to be a family on mission. We want to go out there and make a huge impact. It's got to start here. It's got to be real and it's got to come from the heart. And these, this is what the gospel allows us to do. And these kinds of tools allow us to make sure that this sort of culture saturates our family.
• 46:58
  Thank you guys so much for jumping on here. And again, if you guys want to grab that download, it's at familyteams.com slash hearts. And that's the whole part of the playbook where we figure out how to dial into people's stories, fictional characters, and how to have those conversations with our kids. So you can grab that download and get that awesome tool from the DOSA. So thank you guys so much for jumping on here today. Appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having us. Thank you.
• 47:19
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.