Gems of Motherhood

God ordained families from the very beginning. Mothers are used as a metaphor to describe the ways God loves and cares for His children. My guest Laura Booz talks about expecting something beautiful in motherhood, is motherhood good? 

“Look for the gift of Jesus being right by your side. And envision Him holding your child close to His heart even closer than you can.”

Laura shares from her book, Expect Something Beautiful: The Essential Gifts of Motherhood. In her chat, she highlights some essential gifts of motherhood, like prayer, God’s word, and Jesus being by our side. She touches on the biblical principles found in Isaiah 40:11 to encourage mothers to strive for their higher calling. Naturally, moms are self-sacrificial people, yet true satisfaction is simply found when we put all our weight on Jesus or as Laura calls it “a free fall entirely on Jesus.”

“I turn to Him with confession, I mourn what must be mourn, I ask Him for help in areas of weakness and sin, and then I look for blessings that I have overlooked. We must thank Him for that and it changes the lens that we’re walking through.”

Seeing young girls become movers and shakers for God in today’s culture is incredible. As Christian parents, God encourages us to embolden our children’s faith and when you witness it can be earth-quaking. My guest Amy Debrucque chats with us about emboldening our daughters to greater things. 

Amy shares her story about how she grew in her faith. Her fears led her to trust in Jesus. She was diagnosed with cancer and this experience emboldened her faith and walk with God. Her personal battle convinced her that she needed to teach her own daughter about divinity, conviction, spiritual tenacity and perseverance. 

“Raising a gutsy daughter is having them stay convicted in their faith.”

The importance of modeling our walk as Christians to our daughters will be a life-size example to them. Encouraging them in simple things like, joining small groups, getting involved in the community and finding a mentor, are crucial for their spiritual journey. Talking about the latest cultural phenomenon and current events will push our daughters to be well-versed in the happenings in today’s society, and in turn, will let them become change agents for the future. 

“It’s really important to talk to your kids about the issues that are going on. If you don’t, someone else is going to!”

The relentless pressures of motherhood don’t afford much time to nurture your personal identity, and it can become easy to let yourself slip away. In our culture, mothers are told that anything we do for ourselves takes something away from our kids. Today my guest Mara Measor will be talking about rediscovering self. 

Mara shares about her fears and insecurity of being a mother. However, after having her daughter, she realized that the world is very simple which helped stripe away her insecurity. Looking at the World through the eyes of her child, helped Mara rediscover herself she expressed. 

“As I was around my daughter, I was affected by the way she was. She was full of life and vivacious. And it brought me back to a place to rediscover who I am under the layers of fears and insecurities.” 

She also shares how she took full advantage of the little time she had. Due to the limited time she had to her self, she spent her time songwriting while her baby napped. Although her time was limited, she felt a little more free, thus, simplifying the process. 

“One of the things I decided to do was to make music a very controlled outlet. I just gave myself a ton of limitations. All I have is two hours to write music and I can’t get perfectionist about it.”

Our legacy is a continual expression of love, value, faith, and belief. Our investment in the bright future of our kinds inspires hope that whatever we have taught them will live on after we’re gone. Jan Silvious speaks to us today about building legacies based on God’s strength and graciousness that our children can easily follow. 

“I never liked the uniformity of church. My dad insisted I attend church three times a week. We have to work with children with the way they are bent.”

Jan challenges us to be creative and recognize the bent of each kid in order to encourage them to raise a banner of godliness in their generation. Some children are very creative, some are shy and some are outspoken, yet each can be reached in unique ways. Jan suggests ways we can reach our children creatively and how we might adjust our approach to meet their needs graciously.

“When I see graciousness, I see women who are strong, and they offer to people around them what they do not deserve.” 

Jan further shares practical advice on how to be gracious and how to leave a legacy of strength. Graciousness is shown by giving. Our sacrifices models a framework for our children to grow into their own people — with strength, grace and commitment. 

Motherhood is the hard, but it is also very rewarding. It is overwhelming and under appreciated, yet many mothers wouldn’t have it any other way. Add a 9 to 5 job to the mix, and you may find yourself feeling stretched. Our guest is my personal friend, Jenn Gotzon who will be sharing about how she started a business around the same time she gave birth to her son and how she is managing it all as a first time mom. 

Managing a business as well as being a mom involves having good time management. Jenn shared how she has leaned on her mentors to learn ways of dealing with the stresses of motherhood while balancing work and career. She talks about the filming of The Farmer and the Belle, which she stars in, and managing her business franchise. Jenn also experience with anxiety shortly after having her baby, and she shares freely how she sought professional help to overcome what she was going through. This support helped tremendously to see the need for rightful balancing, true connections and community. 

Jenn regiment starts with time with God, going to Him for everything, to find peace, tranquility and sense of purpose. Her daily routine with her baby and what she does with him, inspire her to pursue her dreams without sacrificing time with him. 

Mothers play a huge role in helping their children become leaders. Cultivating values in your children creates individuals with strong beliefs, empowers them to follow their convictions and focuses their eyes on issue-based value systems. My guest Karen Hetzler speaks about shaping children into culture change agents.

“There’s no higher calling if God has gifted you with children. Seek the Lord about timing when you should be home with them. Life is full of seasons.”

Karen shares about her experience of staying home with her children during the early years. God stirred up new dreams in her heart while she prepared for when it would be the appropriate time to allow them to live freely. She envisioned herself transforming the culture by encouraging her children to be difference makers, and to stand firm in their beliefs.

“We have an obligation for civil disobedience. Sometimes it’s not the right time to stand, sometimes we may need to listen and at other times, we have a moral obligation to stand.”

My guest Arlene Pellicane, author of Screen Kids, shares about raising kids in a world of screens. In her house, Arlene and her husband have a “no phone, no gaming, no social media” policy for their kids. They have a practical reason behind this decision and she shares her research with us.   

“Kids who are raised constantly with screen, don’t know how to honor or talk with their parents. They are not spending enough face-to-face time with them.”

Today, the majority of American children spend five to eight hours a day in front of a screen and less than an hour playing outside, reading a book or interacting with family. This means a child’s sleep quality, attention span and stress level is negatively affected by the tight grip of modern technology.

Arlene challenges parents to think more critically about using devices, instead of just accepting the notion that a device is a necessity. She stresses the importance of delaying giving kids a device for as long as possible. 

“When a child is playing a video game, their body is thinking fight or flight. So naturally all the blood goes to protect the major organs except for the prefrontal cortex. And if this happens everyday, that prefrontal cortex will be malnourished.”

Things we talked about

Digital vegetables vs digital candy

Reconsidering phones for younger kids

Building real world skills for our kids instead of just digital ones

Setting digital boundaries. 

How to reset from the digital world

Certain conversations should be non-negotiable in your house. But when should you have them? And how? Tough conversations are just that—tough. Either way, we still need to have it. My guest Bev Berrus will be talking about how to have hard conversations with your children.

“We have to prepare our kids for the world to live in the world and not being of the world. While I want to protect them, I also want to prepare them.”

As mothers we’re constantly being challenged. It’s not easy consistently training up our children in the way they should go. Bev shared about handling the different discomforts in motherhood. 

A homemaker is defined as “one who manages a household, especially a wife and mother. This career is important enough to demand a woman’s diligent preparation, commitment, full energy, and great creativity. Today my guest Beverly Berrus talks about the high calling of a wife and mother. 

“As wives and mothers, we’re in the business of shaping and preparing the next generation.”  

We want our children to be both mighty in the Word and mighty in the Spirit! Beverly shared her own story about how she came to know Jesus and how she wished to raise her own children in Christ. Her examples were Lois and Eunis in the Bible whose sincere faith helped them raise their son and grandson, Timothy in the faith. 

“I’ve learnt over the last decade, there is an inexhaustible grace, mercy and strength that comes from God to do the work of being a mother.” 

While being mother has its challenges, you experience many ups and downs and you face discomfort, these things are simply challenges which point us back to Jesus. We have a choice to see these challenges for what they are, opportunities to allow God to manifest Himself in our circumstances. His will is to makes us more like Him, so that His spirit can be poured out. As God breathes life into every creature, motherhoods mirrors this call of being life giver too. 

Now we all want well behaved children, but kids often misbehave. Having difficult conversations with children is hard. Yet, In today’s podcast, Stacy Bellward talks about The Power of Questions. 

She shares concerning the importance of asking questions. The opposite of asking is telling. And telling does not work. We often get into these patterns in our homes where we just tell… and telling turns into nagging and sometimes even into yelling. And sometimes it’s almost like a tug of war. 

“If we were to boil down our job raising our kids, the two important things that we want them to exercise is wisdom and responsibility.”

Stacy talks about breaking patterns of defensiveness and how the power of curious questions creates productive conversations. She also talks about asking effective questions as well as type of questions to avoid in an effort to get the best results in correcting our children’s behavior. 

What we chat about

The power of questions

Effective questions

Bad questions

Setting our kids up for success

Teaching our children to cooperate

Building our children’s character