Latest / MESSmerized - Funny and faith based encouragement in marriage , family , Christian parenting , and finding purpose / Episode 163: Are We Raising Godly Kids or Just Successful Ones?

Transcript

Episode 163: Are We Raising Godly Kids or Just Successful Ones? · MESSmerized - Funny and faith based encouragement in marriage , family , Christian parenting , and finding purpose

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: This is Cynthia Gannoff and you are listening to the mesmerized podcast.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey friends, welcome to the show.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so glad you're here.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you're enjoying all the fall content that we have and last week was Dr. Gary Chapman.
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's just a legend when it comes to marriage.
0:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And he wrote all the books on Love Languages and then his new one which Love Language Matters the most.
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he's just amazing.
0:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoyed that.
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't listened, jump back over and listen to the last week's show.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you know, we've been talking a lot about how I sent out a survey from mesmerized.
0:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a link to it, by the way.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: and podcast notes if you haven't had a chance to fill it out, please go do that there's still plenty of time.
0:48
[SPEAKER_00]: But as I've been sorting through all the responses, I've learned a lot about you guys and that you're interested in more solo episodes, which today is a solo episode.
0:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But you want to talk marriage and you want to talk parenting.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of you a lot of you are parenting younger kids, and so that kind of led me to today's episode.
1:05
[SPEAKER_00]: um, along with a couple other things.
1:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Remember when I was focused on the family last January, literally January of 2026, I went and I had the privilege of going to focus on the family and being on their broadcasts, well it is coming out next week and so I will be talking about some of the ideas from my first book around parenting and so that's today we're going to talk about too and hopefully if people listen to that interview and they came over to mesmerize then I'm going to expand a little bit more on what we talked about.
1:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll focus on the family.
1:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But then the other thing is I was invited to speak at a mom's house in my neighborhood recently, and it was a bunch of kindergarten moms, and they just wanted to bring in someone to help them understand what it looks like, what does it take to raise families for Christ?
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you live counter-cultural when it comes to your families in today's,
1:55
[SPEAKER_00]: culture and all the dynamics that are around that, and so they invited me to come and speak.
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought at first, like, I'm not even sure they need me.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that they are kindergarten moms and they're already just seeking information and counsel on how to do parenting well.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought, man, you guys are
2:10
[SPEAKER_00]: way ahead of where I was at that point.
2:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But I went anyway, and they were amazing.
2:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And we were finished later.
2:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I got an email and they're saying, man, I wish we would have taped it.
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish we had this all in one place.
2:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, well, let's just do that.
2:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's tape this and talk parenting.
2:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's what I'm going to do today.
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you've listed this podcast for a while,
2:28
[SPEAKER_00]: You may know some of this are if you read my first book, you've heard me talk about this, but this is just some parenting wisdom that I feel like if I had to like succinctly put all of my thoughts on parenting in one place, all the good, bad, and ugly of how Mike and I have done it, this would kind of be what I would want to say.
2:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I hope this is helpful to you.
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love for you to share it with friends, but
2:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let's talk parenting and really it doesn't matter what age your kids are I think there's nuggets all through here Things I wish that I would have known all those years ago 23 years ago when I had my first kid Oh, and so let's just start with scripture because obviously we always don't start with scripture And I'm thinking of Matthew 7 verses 24 to 27.
3:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna read those to you real quick Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock
3:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The rain came down, the stream's rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That everyone who hears these words of mine does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
3:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The rain came down, the stream's rose and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell with a great crash.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've been in church, about you probably know those verses, but think about those for just a minute.
3:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Like Jesus is saying, like,
3:43
[SPEAKER_00]: If you hear my words, if you read the Bible, if in today's terms, if you read the Bible and you hear all the instructions in the council and the ways that we're told to obey and you walk away and don't do them, then you're building your house on sand.
3:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just like to envision like there's two houses.
4:00
[SPEAKER_00]: They look the same, they're right next to each other, maybe in current
4:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They've got their brick painted, spray painted white, and they've got the fabulous all white kitchen, and they've got perfect wallpaper in the guest bathrooms.
4:13
[SPEAKER_00]: They look the same from the outside until storm comes.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And once the storm comes, then, well, you look over in the one that was built on the rock.
4:21
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still there.
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And the one that was built on sand is gone.
4:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't make it.
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what it's like.
4:27
[SPEAKER_00]: If we all have these identical kind of looking houses, you can tell when the storms come, the people that are built on rock.
4:35
[SPEAKER_00]: that are built on the foundations of the Lord that are doing the things we're called to do.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I think of those verses in James 1, 23 to 24, where it says, for if anyone is a hero of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks intently as natural face to the mirror, for he looks himself and goes away and once forgets what he was like.
4:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this idea of you looking to mirror and you just forget.
4:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear God's word, you just move on, don't do it, right?
4:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's being a hero of the word and not a doer, and that's building your house on sand.
5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we want to build our house on rock because the storms will come, right?
5:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We see it all around us and our culture, we see it in Hollywood, everybody seems to have all the things we want.
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks shiny and fabulous and then a storm comes, whether it's a diagnosis or marriage trouble or financial troubles and it all kind of comes crumbling down.
5:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And we will have those things, right?
5:26
[SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't already, then it's probably coming, not to be all doom and gloom about it, but we all have those moments, those times where it gets really hard and our foundation, it matters.
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about some times how Mike and I had our foundation fixed during COVID.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was so thankful to see anyone besides my family.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We were still in lockdown that I was like, I don't care if I have to pay foundation people just bringing somebody out here.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they came out and I had heard, I'd read a little bit and heard that, you know, they'll put in a couple of peers or pillars, they called them.
5:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it turned out we needed like 20 of them.
5:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought we'd need three or four.
5:59
[SPEAKER_00]: We needed a ton of them.
6:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Our house was apparently not on solid ground at all.
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they did that.
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But we started to see cracks in the walls and windows that don't shut.
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: and so they came and they did all that foundation work and it cost like you know several Disney trips worth of money to get that done and and I was joking that nobody since that time not even once has come over for dinner and been like wow your foundation looks nice or nobody's been walking their dog and been like hey looks like you all had a good year last year your foundation looks so good like no nobody's talking about it nobody cares
6:30
[SPEAKER_00]: but you can have like amazing hardwood floors and fabulous custom furniture and beautiful window treatments and all the things that if your house isn't on a solid foundation it just doesn't matter and so we want to build on solid foundations and if you're starting to see some cracks in the wall metaphorically speaking or some windows doors that don't shut
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: foundation issues, right?
6:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the Bible is full of instructions and how to build a solid foundation.
6:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm going to give you a couple that I think are important, especially in the context of parenting and then also give you some just practical parenting advice.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Then here's the first thing I'd say, if you want to be on a solid foundation, as a family, you have to know what your definition of successes.
7:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And you may be thinking, well, I don't know, we don't really have one.
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, we all have a definition of success.
7:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether or not we know it articulate, say it out loud, like we know what success looks like and what we deem to be successful.
7:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want us to be careful around that because we live in a world that calls success the things that are measurable.
7:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about this in terms of my kids when they are getting ready to go to college and have a college resume.
7:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you had to have everything under college resume.
7:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you needed to be like captain.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: of the track team and that lead in the play and you need to speak French and play the French horn and you can't just be like a math and science girl.
7:52
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you have to be good at all things, right?
7:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And all those things are measurable.
7:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about the fact that our culture is saying it only matters if it's measurable.
8:03
[SPEAKER_00]: How big your bank account is, or your retirement plan, or what neighborhood you live in, those kind of things.
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But the most God-honoring things that we do on any given day are not measurable.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The most successful things when it comes to eternity, those are things that are probably not measurable.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: For our kids, that's taking themselves off of a mean text thread or not cheating, even though everyone in the class has found a way to get around.
8:31
[SPEAKER_00]: the right way to do things right like those are the God honoring things in our own lives.
8:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know taking a casserole to someone or maybe not going on the trip and saving money for something for missions like all these things that are probably not measurable but they are God honoring.
8:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want us to think about like what is our definition of success because the culture is going to tell us it's things that are measurable.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I find that the Lord is going to tell us it's things that are not measurable, that are the things that matter that are eternal.
8:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the problem is, as we just live in this culture, and I say this a lot, but it over and over again tells us everything's urgent.
9:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's urgent that we get in the right neighborhood, or we decide if it's private or public school, and that our kids have the right select,
9:12
[SPEAKER_00]: soccer coach and that we have the right college resume and that we are on the right job trajectory all these things and none of those in and of themselves are bad but it's just that what the world calls urgent isn't typically intersecting with what God calls eternal and so we have to be looking at what's our definition of success.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite quote ever is Francis Chan where he says don't be afraid of failure but be afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter.
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as a family, we have to decide, what is success gonna look like?
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Where's our emphasis gonna be?
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: What are we gonna praise in our kids?
9:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would just say, as you're going through scripture and you have the Holy Spirit and I am not the Holy Spirit for you and so I don't wanna tell you what your definition of success is but I will say universally, right?
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the great commission, go and make disciples.
10:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And we need to be making disciples and that starts in our home.
10:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And so are we committed to doing the things that it takes to make disciples?
10:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we active in a Christian community.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, are we in God's Word?
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we teaching our kids to pray?
10:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we doing these disciplines in our lives to make disciples?
10:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only in our house, but even to those around us.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a definite success worth considering as are we making disciples in our house and are we making disciples for Christ around us?
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we discipling people around us?
10:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the other thing is, are we living on mission?
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: For our family, that's something that we decided early on.
10:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Mike and I knew we wanted a really missional family.
10:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's looked a lot of different ways over the years, everything from making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and sack lunches, every summer for the last 20 years, approximately,
10:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get lunch in the summer when they're not in school and then all the way up to foster care that call in our lives and making adjustments and where I worked and what we did and how we spent our money and getting involved in foster care and I would just say like
11:13
[SPEAKER_00]: figure out your thing.
11:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we're all called to be missional, but what do you want your family to look like?
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to look like if you want to be a missional family, you've got to do missional things, and it's easy to say I'll do that later.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: When money's better or my husband travels less or whatever it is, we all have a thousand things that we're waiting on, but we aren't guaranteed tomorrow.
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would say early on as early on as you can.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Decide, what is success going to look like in our family?
11:39
[SPEAKER_00]: What are we going to do to make sure that we're implementing that in every day alive?
11:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing I'd say if you want to make sure that you have a house that's built on rock, I would say you've got to have the right people around you.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I talk about this a lot when I'm asked to speak, especially people talk, ask me to talk about friendship and those things and I think one of the best examples, my friend Sherry's mom taught her this way and I think this is a good metaphor for thinking about it, but just that we have lots of mailbox friends, you shift tons and tons of mailbox friends.
12:09
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have fewer friends that get on the front porch, right?
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: just a smaller crowd, and then there's very, very few people that actually make it onto the couch.
12:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a good metaphor for friendship, like let's be friendly and kind to everyone.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's have fewer people that really get up to the poor tribe and very few on the couch.
12:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if we're going to do the things that the Lord is calling us to do, we're going to have to have people around us that are walking the same roads that they are praying for us loving us well.
12:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I always go back to that story in the Bible.
12:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The four guys who carry the paralytic,
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: on his mat and they take him to Jesus because he's paralyzed.
12:45
[SPEAKER_00]: They know that Jesus can heal him and they get there and they're room is overflowing of people and they can't get to Jesus so they go up to the roof and they cut a hole and they lower him in.
12:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus first heals him spiritually and second physically.
12:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So that tells you all you need to know about what Jesus cares about the most, right?
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: But then Jesus says I'm healing you because of faith in your friends.
13:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And if Jesus is healing people because of the faith of their friends, then we know that
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think about that story and it's easy to say, yeah, man, that paralytic would have been lost without him.
13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And you and I may not be paralyzed, right?
13:20
[SPEAKER_00]: As we list that story and think about that, well, we may not be paralyzed physically.
13:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But you guys, we are paralyzed spiritually.
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are paralyzed spiritually because we care so much more about our comfort and our calling.
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And we care about our status.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: how we are seen and the recognition we received and like that's spiritual paralysis and we need people that are going to carry our mad and take us before Jesus and say, listen, I will do whatever it takes to get you in front of Jesus because he's the only one that brings healing and that's what couch friends do.
13:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we have to be really careful because we tend to value quantity of equality when it comes to friendships.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: We think, oh man, all these people got to go to Cabo together and I wouldn't invite it and man, nobody likes me, all the things.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt that way, but at the end of the day, if you have two or three or four crazy friends like this guy had, you have what you need.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are the people, right, that are going to carry us before the Lord.
14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are the people that we are going to do the same for.
14:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to carry them before the Lord.
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are going to keep deciding over and over again, then we are going to live, initially, that we are going to make disciples that we are going to be doers of God's Word, not just hears.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you think about foundation and you think, man, my walls in my life, metaphorically speaking, have a few cracks where windows are shutting well, go back to the most basic fundamental things in scripture.
14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And for me, that's living missionally.
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's knowing our definition of success.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's finding people that will point us back to the Lord over and over.
14:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a friend and you've probably heard me say this before about a friend, Eric and he goes to Egypt a lot and he talks about how when he got to Egypt the first time he noticed a lot of people have these big calluses on their head, the men, and he's like, oh gosh, that's not good.
15:05
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on with the calluses on their head and turns out like it's a status symbol because it shows that they're very devout and they're religion and they pray so much and when they pray they put their head on the ground that it is rub a callus on their head.
15:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's kind of this religious symbol, but it turns out that there's a lot of other people that want this religious symbol, but they're not willing to spend that much time in prayer.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So they just rub their head on the ground, just kind of willy-nilly, rub it on the ground to form that callous.
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So they look religious.
15:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They look devout.
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about how crazy that is, and I think that's kind of all of us sometimes.
15:40
[SPEAKER_00]: That's me sometimes.
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to actually do the things that are required in order to live the life God's call me to.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I just kind of want to rep my head on the ground a little bit and have that appearance, but not actually do the very things that lead to a life that the Lord can bless.
15:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, know your definition of success.
15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Find your people.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But then when it comes to parenting,
16:06
[SPEAKER_00]: dare I say purposefulness, if that's even a word, that's required.
16:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's a whole lot of parenting advice out there.
16:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a whole lot of parenting podcast.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to say there's not one formula that works for every family.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just want to share with you some of the things that have worked for us, some of the things that I now know, 23 years in the parenting.
16:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And hopefully I'm doing better with JB, our youngest, and I did my first two as I was kind of learning it.
16:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But I always say it's kind of the playground rules for parenting.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything I need to know about parenting, I probably could have figured out by just observing the playground.
16:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of what happened about seven or eight years ago.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I was at the playground with my youngest.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was kind of watching all that was going on on the playground.
16:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I realized like, wow, like this is the whole paradigm of parenting.
16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first thing I noticed, and here's my first parenting advice.
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And the first thing I would say is there's plenty of room for everyone.
16:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about how it works on the playground, there's no like gate or security guardery and that's like, hey man, this playground, we only make room for people that breastfeed versus bottle feed or this is a playground that's only for public school, not private school kids or whatever, right?
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Like no, everybody can go, everybody can interact, everybody can have fun.
17:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is, and this parenting scene that we're in, we tend to funnel in, think about the large side of a funnel, how it comes into a small little mouth of it.
17:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But on the larger side, you start with everybody parent, you start off, I'm going to get pregnant, we're all kind of on the same page, it's the big side of the funnel.
17:33
[SPEAKER_00]: but then it kind of comes in a little bit because when you decide to get pregnant you're like oh well I'm gonna do a du-la no I'm going to the hospital okay I've funneled in a little bit it funnels in a little bit more maybe I'm gonna spanko I'm not a spanker I'm just gonna discipline and put them in the corner or whatever it is and then you funnel in a little bit more when you're deciding on schools a little bit more when you're deciding on maybe friend groups or church you attend and
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not careful, you wake up one day and you've surrounded yourself by people who look just like you and do things the way that you've deemed to be the right way to do it.
18:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And the problem is, is we are called to be salt and light, and it is really hard to be salt and light when we are separated and legalistic about parenting.
18:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes the kind of thing we can do on any given day is just include people.
18:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know you're probably, again, you're like, well, you just said, have a few people, couch people, yeah, those are the people that you're really doing life with, and it'll bring every, but I'm saying, just generally, as you walk around embarrassing.
18:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to be including people.
18:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to be loving people well.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how you make disciples.
18:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how people see Jesus in you.
18:40
[SPEAKER_00]: As you have people around you and you realize at some point that listen, you don't have to change people to walk with them.
18:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not endorsing them by loving them, right?
18:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And you start to get comfortable being uncomfortable and having people in your house that maybe don't look like you or vote like you are not the same financial status at your end, right?
18:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's so much to learn from there
19:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is I think so often we say we just want to have kind kids that aren't inclusive.
19:10
[SPEAKER_00]: They include everyone.
19:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they're not going to do that if we don't act kind and include people and draw other people in around us.
19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes we just have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and bring in all kinds of people.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: right and show them the love of Jesus and learn from them.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I've told this story kind of recently on some interviews I did for my second book but I was talking about and may have told you here I think I probably did but about how I saw
19:39
[SPEAKER_00]: from the field trip that JB was on recently, I guess last spring, and I saw pictures the moms were sending out, and all the kids were crammed on the bus seats and laughing, and being silly, I finally found a picture after going through so many of them of JB, and he was sitting by himself on a bus seat.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: and nothing like crushes you like that, right?
19:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, and all I could think is, again, I wasn't frustrated with the kids, really.
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I was frustrated with this situation, but I wanted to be like, gosh, if these kids only knew where JB came from, and the situation that he was in and how the Lord miraculously brought him to our home and how we prayed over him and just communities of people prayed over the little boy and the Lord ultimately against all odds allowed us to adopt him.
20:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And now,
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: as he's struggling with learning stuff and some social things and all that we're doing and praying over this little boy and just trusting the Lord to continue to do them miraculous.
20:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if everyone understood his story, you wouldn't be able to get on the same bus as J.B. Yann off much less sit on the seat with him.
20:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a word for all of us around us.
20:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has a story.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And the Lord created and loves everybody around you.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're going to get it right.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them are going to get it wrong, some.
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: but we want to make it where nobody's sitting on the bus seat alone.
20:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's my first thing is there's room for everyone.
20:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the second one, don't sweat slide etiquette.
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That day when I was at the park, there's this little boy who kept trying to go up the slide instead of going up the stairs and sliding down.
21:06
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to walk up the slide and come down the stairs.
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And this mom was over there just moving and back to the stairs, back to the stairs.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: He was little and she was like, no, you have to go up the stairs.
21:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't blame her, we want respectful kids.
21:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've literally died on Hill Smaller than that.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But I couldn't help but think, I wonder what it is about him that he is just bent on going up the slide.
21:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we've got to stop sweating the slide etiquette because you have to realize if every one of us and our kids were made uniquely and designed by the Lord with gifts that he wants us to accomplish.
21:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The Plansy Houseforce before we even took one breath.
21:40
[SPEAKER_00]: None of us are identically made.
21:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it wouldn't make sense that we're all going to take the same path the same road to the top.
21:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just think about how there's this expectation for our kids to be able to follow this path, though I'm air quoting the right path, and
21:57
[SPEAKER_00]: to do all the things, and to be good enough, and smart enough, and athletic enough, and have the good enough singing voice, and play instruments, all these things, and I just think, were you all those things growing up?
22:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I wasn't.
22:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't remember one time.
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my parents fell asleep at the wheel, but I don't remember one time, my mom and dad dropping me off a kumon in the afternoon to up with my math skills, or angushing over, how to pay for the certain select coach, so I could be a better athlete.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: All day, we all know they should have paid a little more for me to be athletic, because I got nothing.
22:26
[SPEAKER_00]: but I don't remember any of that and it was such a free way to live.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Like they just trusted that the Lord had created me and had gifted me and that it was show up when it was necessary and I'm so grateful that I grew up that way.
22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm guessing you probably did too.
22:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we have to realize that our kids are not all going to take the same path, and that doesn't mean it was a failure, right, who gets to determine success or failure your anyway, right?
22:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of the things that I thought were failures were long-term successes.
22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: They just look like a failure in the moment.
23:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I told the story of the night, the kindergarten moms and one of them was choked up and she said I've heard you tell the story before and I'm just asking you to keep telling it because it is the most encouraging story to moms and dads who have a kiddo that's doing things differently, that's struggling and so I was encouraged to tell it again today and
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember Brett when he was in kindergarten and the kindergarten teacher called me and said that he was going to be in the reading club and I was like, well, there's a lot of clubs in that school.
23:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The reading club is not one of the ones we wanted to be in and it was for kids that were behind in reading and she just had a normal little conversation that he was behind and they were going to pull him out with a specialist to work with him.
23:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this was a normal conversation to normal people, but not this mom.
23:40
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh no, this is the beginning of the end.
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: He can't read, which means he probably can't make it through the school and probably can't make it through any school and never graduate from high school.
23:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely, definitely not going to college.
23:50
[SPEAKER_00]: He'll never probably be able to hold a job.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I guess, I guess we make him comfortable at this point, right?
23:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, it was
23:57
[SPEAKER_00]: In saying how quickly I spiraled because he wasn't following this traditional path and so I'm going to pick him up from school with tears in my eyes like how do I tell my five year old this is the end of the road for you
24:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I got there, he jumped in the car and he was so excited and he's like, the best day ever, I'm like, really?
24:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
24:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, I found out that I got to be in the reading club of all the kids in the class.
24:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They picked me.
24:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, oh, great.
24:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But he went on to explain how the teacher told him that you get to meet with another teacher that everybody really loves.
24:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You can bring your own books and some of his friends from other classes were in it.
24:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And all I could think was thank goodness that his teacher got to him before I got to him.
24:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But I will say it was the beginning of a realizing that Brett was going to have some learning stuff.
24:40
[SPEAKER_00]: That there was going to be some hard roads ahead for him.
24:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were, he's now in college.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were some hard roads.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember all through elementary school praying, walking my neighborhood, exercising, and begging God to take away the hard from Brett.
24:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The learning stuff, begging God to make his road easier to make his road a traditional path.
24:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I look at this kid now who's in college.
25:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about the end of high school, how many coaches and teachers told me that he was the hardest working kid they had on the team or in the class.
25:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, he had to be.
25:11
[SPEAKER_00]: All he knew was work hard, right?
25:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think about how he got asked to speak it.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The senior banquet, it was a big honor to be able to speak there in the teachers.
25:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And the faculty picked him and how many teachers came in told us that he is most empathetic, kind kid.
25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that came from the struggle.
25:26
[SPEAKER_00]: That is not because we were so great at parenting.
25:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And the very thing that the Lord has made him into now that I'm watching him as a man, turn into, those are the things I tried to pray out of him when he was younger.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And so don't sweat the slight etiquette.
25:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord has a plan for our kids and it may not look like everyone else's.
25:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay.
25:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And if your kid is one of those that's getting all the awards and is on track and maybe doing great socially has it all going for them, well that's great.
25:57
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be though cheering on.
25:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone around you that's walking hard past.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They have the disappointments that have the failures, the things that look like they are not successes with their kids, share them on, support them.
26:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Teach your kids to do that.
26:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so the first thing we talked about, there's room for everyone on the playground.
26:14
[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing is don't sweat the slide etiquette.
26:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's number three, and I'm gonna give you four total.
26:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, it's okay to play alone.
26:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, again, earlier I talked to, how you have to have your people, so you're like, what are you talking about?
26:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But that day on the playground, I noticed there's one little boy, he's off playing by himself, and the mom kept trying to draw him back in to play with the other kids, and he wasn't having it.
26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get it.
26:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we all are just like, you know, a flesh wound away from our junior high insecurities.
26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I get, oh my gosh, like, I don't want to have the recluse, right?
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But that mom could not get this kid out to engage with other kids.
26:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just thought about the fact that we have to allow our kids to play alone.
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I think it's important is because we live in this culture that is so divided, economically, politically, socially, like on every level that we can be divided, we are.
27:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want kids that are going to stand up for the gospel and live out their faith, they're going to have to be able to stand alone.
27:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw a picture on social media years ago of a kiddo who was standing at the pole in September beginning a school.
27:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They have one of those meat at the pole days and you can pray and you bring your Bible and this mom posted it and her son was there by himself at the pole with his Bible praying and you could see behind him just high school kids everywhere walking around.
27:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember seeing that picture and thinking, I want to raise that kid.
27:32
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you raise the kid that's willing to stand at the pole alone?
27:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'll tell you how.
27:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you start letting your kids stand alone now.
27:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you just have to let them.
27:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And there will be times when you want to run up to the school because they didn't get in the right class or they didn't make the team or they didn't get to play in the most important inning of the baseball game or they got pulled out where they're pitching or whatever the things are.
27:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would just say to you, we all have that temptation.
27:56
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to have kids, they can stand alone.
27:58
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to let them.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: manipulate every situation on their behalf, thinking we're helping them.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we want kids to can stand alone and we've got a model that in their places, in my life I look back on where I needed to walk away from some friendships and not go on some girl's trips and not be a part of some things because I needed to stand up for my faith and that was not going to be a place where it would be good for me to be.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And so model that well.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about Brett even in high school one time I was asking about why he won't hang out with a certain group and they're all doing this I know they are I've talked to the moms why don't you go and at some point he said mom you don't want me to go and be a part of some of the things that are going on with that group and it was just that moment of oh that's what I prayed for that's what I wanted a kid and I'm still trying to push him in a different direction.
28:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's okay to play alone.
28:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the last one.
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't throw wood chips.
28:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll be short on this one.
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But that day at the park, all the kids were throwing wood chips.
28:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And some teacher came over a mom that kind of a teacher looking mom.
28:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was like, everyone's stopped throwing wood chips.
29:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I appreciated it.
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I like the bossing mom that's going to handle everybody's kids.
29:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought that's a word for us too as parents.
29:09
[SPEAKER_00]: How often do we throw wood chips?
29:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be easier if we were literally throwing him, but instead it's just the way we look down on people, the way we call our friend after the play date and we're like, can you believe that she doesn't discipline that or we big eyes or roll our eyes across the room when something's going on like listen, you guys people are walking really hard roads and parenting and probably roads you have not walked and so we have an opportunity to
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: versus judging them and throwing wood chips at them.
29:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so those are my parenting thoughts.
29:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Is, yeah, there's room, enough for everyone.
29:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of thing you can do on any given day, probably is to include others to be salt and light.
29:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Second of all, don't sweat, slide etiquette.
30:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Our kids are uniquely created.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They will get to where the Lord wants them to be with their own path.
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And it won't look the same for all of them.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, it's okay to play alone.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to raise kids that can stand for the faith, they're gonna have to stand alone.
30:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when they don't get invited Friday to the party that every other kid got invited to, it will be hard.
30:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It will be necessary the Lord will use it.
30:23
[SPEAKER_00]: and the last thing don't throw wood chips.
30:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I also asked several of my friends, like the best moms I know, like what advice would you give these kindergarten moms and now I'm sharing it with you and they gave me so many little tidbits, but I'm just going to share a few of them.
30:38
[SPEAKER_00]: One of them said, make sure that you're connected to a ministry or church that's not affiliated with your school.
30:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Have different outlets for your kids to have friends and experiences.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Another one said, Pray for Godly Friends, don't worry about the right group, whatever the right group is.
30:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Air quotes that Pray for Godly Friends.
30:54
[SPEAKER_00]: She also said, look at everything from an eternal perspective and you will find that things that seem like a huge deal are not in the moment if you look at it.
31:03
[SPEAKER_00]: with an eternal lens.
31:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Another friend said, think about what you want your kids to be as a senior in high school, going into college, and then start now working towards that.
31:14
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want kind inclusive kids or kids that stay away from gossip, kids that are thick skinned or soft-hearted or joyful, then start working towards that now.
31:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of right before they go to college, another one of my friends said something I thought was so good.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: She said,
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a word for us, right?
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the kid that you're trying to mold them into being not.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: The kid you wish they were going to be or you thought that, love the kid you've got.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord does, we should too.
31:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll end with this story about my friend Kimberly, I wrote about her in my first book.
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: She was a lawyer with me and she was staying home with her kids and one day she just kept feeling the Lord was maybe the Holy Spirit was speaking to her and saying like, teacher kids, how to call 911.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was so hesitant, they were young.
32:02
[SPEAKER_00]: five and three or something and she was like, they are too young.
32:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, no, teach them to call mine one, teach them.
32:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So finally, she was like, all right, so she gets a white board and writes 9-1-1 on the white board, like a dry erase board, and then she gets her phone and shows them how to dial in, you know, the questions that they might ask and how to answer them.
32:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the one time you open the door for a stranger and when she is finished, her kids were kind of looking at her, like, okay, thanks for sharing, right?
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't really understand and they were little and they were like, okay, and she's like, I know that got weird, right?
32:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, later that day, she had the first ever massive seizure that she'd ever had, and her older one ran down the hall, their little one, and they found that dry erase board that had not been erased and got mom's phone and called 911 and answered the questions and unlocked the door.
32:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is, is when Kimberly was explaining that, it didn't make sense to them at all.
32:54
[SPEAKER_00]: These kids didn't understand.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Kimberly didn't know why she was doing it half the time, right?
32:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's how parenting is.
33:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it, we have the Holy Spirit, we have the Lord, we have God's Word.
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's giving us the life-saving and life-giving information that our kids need.
33:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It just may not make sense in the moment.
33:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I encourage you, go back to where we started.
33:14
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to be built on a firm foundation.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: We have not be people that just hear God's word, get a church, whatever, and a move on.
33:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we have to be doers of the word.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't rub our head on the ground to get the callous.
33:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Like we got a settle-in, spend time in God's word, have community around us.
33:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Figure out our definition of success.
33:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And are we raising disciples, right?
33:37
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got a parent with incredible intentionality, even when in the moment it doesn't make sense to them or to us and definitely not to our culture.
33:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And so those are my thoughts on parenting, those are my thoughts on success.
33:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just hope this is helpful to you.
33:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope you're encouraged.
33:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would love for you to take a minute and share this with a friend.
34:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And if nothing else I'm glad we have this now on tape.
34:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's an opportunity just to put it all in one place.
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, you guys, for being here, for supporting this show, and I just want to encourage you again to fill out the survey, for mesmerizing if you have not.
34:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're new here, just follow me, send me a gun off on Instagram, and you'll figure out when we have new shows and all the things.
34:22
[SPEAKER_00]: If you go to my website, send me a gun off.com.
34:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also put your name and email in, and we will get an email a week from me, so lots of ways to catch up.
34:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, you guys, thanks for being a part of the mesmerizing family.
34:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You're the very best.
34:36
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.