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E263: Why Birth Control Blocks God’s Blessings w/Abbie Halberstadt | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  There is more of a fear I see today about motherhood than I
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  have ever noticed in my life. What's the question that
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  everybody asks? How do you know when you're
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  done? That is a question that has been
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  asked for about 100 years in the whole history of humankind's
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  existence. I can remember when I first
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  started on the Internet being borderline terrified to tell the
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  truth about birth control because of the backlash.
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  And now we can just say it. And people are like, oh, yeah,
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  even secular sources. I think if we truly, truly
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  believe what the Bible tells us about how much God cares about
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  the details of our lives, that we would recognize that
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  surrendering to Him is less scary than being in control
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  ourselves. Recently, a study came out
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  showing that Gen. Z women who voted for Kamala
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  Harris ranked having children as the second least important thing
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  in their personal definition of success.
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  How did we get to this place in society where motherhood is seen
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  as so unattainable or unattractive?
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  And what do we do about it? Welcome back to the Isla Rose
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  Show, everybody. Today I'm sitting down with Abby
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  Halberstadt, a totally delightful mom of 10 and the
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  author of multiple books, including her latest release,
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  You Bet Your Stretch Marks. We discuss fertility,
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  contraception, large families, parentification, and more.
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  This topic is near and dear to my heart, as you know, because I
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  believe how women view the role of motherhood in a society can
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  make or break a culture. The goal of this show is to cut
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  through the cultural noise in our society today so that we can
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  flourish together in this this life and the next.
• 1:31
  A huge thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the
• 1:33
  show. We're continuing to grow.
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  Thanks to all of you. I couldn't love creating this
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  content more than I do, and I appreciate everybody who
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  subscribes to the show. Keep on hitting that subscribe
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  go to patreon.com/lila ro Show. There you're going to find
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  behind the scenes access as well as the opportunity to ask
• 2:07
  questions of future guests and other free content, including
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  those ad free episodes. I hope you enjoy this episode.
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  Abby Halverstadt, welcome to the podcast.
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  Thanks for having me on Lila. I'm so glad you're here, I've
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  been looking forward. To this glad.
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  To be here and whenever I see Mom of 10 online, which is very
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  rare, I think that's a hero right there.
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  Oh, gosh. And every time someone tells me
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  that, you know, I just feel this urge to push back and be like,
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  like, no, I'm just a regular human.
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  And I mean, I understand where that's coming from.
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  And I have my heroes and some of them have a lot of kids too, but
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  I'm just person that loves the Lord.
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  What I love about your content, your book, you have this book
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  out bet you bet your stretch marks is the intentionality of
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  everything you and your husband have built with your family.
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  From how you educate the kids to how you discipline, to how you
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  put faith at the center of your household, to your public
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  ministry, to how that incorporates with your other
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  responsibilities, primary responsibilities in the
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  household. All of it is intentionality.
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  And I just am very excited for the conversation and all the
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  ways that you're helping me and other moms.
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  Oh, thank you so much, I say. And I think it's, you bet your
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  stretch marks sometimes when you write close together, the words
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  start to run together. But intentionality always
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  Trump's passivity. And we have an epidemic of
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  passivity in our culture, which basically says that kind of, I'm
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  going to go with the flow and see what happens.
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  And that's not what Scripture calls us to.
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  And Scripture is my guide for everything Scripture and God's
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  Holy Spirit in me. Without that, anything I say is
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  pretty much useless. Yeah.
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  And the problem with the go with the flow is that the flow is
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  someone's flow. There's no just sort of like,
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  oh, we're just in our, you know, most basic state of nature and
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  not touched by any influence. The flow is someone's flow.
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  It's is it God's and the Holy Spirit and the tradition of our
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  faith, or is it the flow of the culture that is sometimes
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  opposed to the truth? 100% there's no such thing as a
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  neutral education. It just doesn't exist.
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  OK, so I want to go a quick get to know you for people who are
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  meeting you for the first time here.
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  Tell us a little bit about your background, your why you are
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  open to having 10 kids in a culture that says stop at two or
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  three typically. And then what got you started
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  with your books, your ministry, your social media and sharing
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  about your family life and how you're living your family family
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  life? Yeah, OK.
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  So that's a lot. So rewind way back, even before
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  I was born. So my parents came from really
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  ungodly abusive backgrounds in a lot of ways.
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  Not completely. My maternal grandmother was a
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  Christian and she was a kind mom.
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  But my parents growing up in that got saved out of that,
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  praise God, in their late teens, early 20s, and they wanted
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  something different for their family and they understood that
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  they didn't have that in themselves.
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  They were going to find that in God's Word, and they were going
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  to find that in pursuing Christ. And so I was raised very
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  counterculturally by parents who wanted to be the hinge on which
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  the door of change turned for the next generation.
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  And they weren't just thinking about their own children, and
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  they were thinking about children to come after that.
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  And that continues to be a theme.
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  My mom is really helpful in our home.
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  She's part of the reason that I can do what I do now and a huge
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  part of the reason, I would say. And so I grew up being read the
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  Bible most days. I think I have the impression I
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  was read the Bible every day, but that's probably not true
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  with knowing how life is as a parent now.
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  How many siblings, by the way, I.
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  Just have one brother. So people assume that I come
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  from a large family because I think we're more likely to
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  gravitate towards something if we're familiar with it, right?
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  But my parents would have happily had more.
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  They did not have an objection to having more children.
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  They were not able to have more. And so they never did any form
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  of birth control and never did any form of preventing.
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  And my mom experienced miscarriage after miscarriage.
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  And the Lord gave her two children four years apart, a boy
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  and a girl. And so of course, she got
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  comments from people like, well, look at you, the perfect
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  American family, you know, and that is.
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  Got your boy, you got your boy. You must be done.
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  And she's like, I got more. If I could right and so and
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  that's hurtful and that that's hurtful from making assumptions
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  about people's fertility on any end can be really hurtful.
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  It's hurtful to the mom that has one and people assume that she
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  didn't want more like my mom. It's hurtful to people that
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  think you're a freak because you have 10 and so.
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  You got your hands full. I only tell him I say only.
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  And the amount of comments are are you done?
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  Yeah, Yeah. And it's interesting.
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  It's usually from older folks, I've noticed like, like a a
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  different, an older, not to say older folks are somehow uniquely
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  against having more kids. Not at all.
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  But I think there's their look back maybe and think about their
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  years of fertility. But are you done?
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  You know, you have your boy, you have your girl.
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  And we have two boys and a girl. So would you want to you know,
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  you. You must be you're so you're so
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  busy. I'm like, actually, my mom had
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  eight and I, this is a piece of cake compared to what she, you
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  know, did. Yeah.
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  So I think traditionally we would have had larger families.
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  I don't think that that's historically true.
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  It doesn't mean that because something is historically true
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  that it's easy, of course, But my mom did a really great job of
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  modeling for me the focus on the sovereignty of God.
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  Like when we memorize Proverbs 3 five and six.
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  Trust the Lord with all your heart.
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  Lean not on your own understanding and all your ways.
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  Acknowledge Him and he will make your.
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  Paths straight, straight. We grew up memorizing that too.
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  Not. Easy.
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  Not. Successful and prosperous, but
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  straight. And we are told as Christians to
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  stick to the straight and narrow, the hard path.
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  The one that there's probably a steep valley on either side of,
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  not the wide and easy path that leads to destruction.
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  And it's not that someone that has 10 kids is automatically on
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  the straight path by any stretch.
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  I'm not, I'm not conflating the two, but the trusting God,
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  that's where the straightness comes in.
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  And so the other thing that she did that set me up for having 10
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  kids, even though I could have never imagined this.
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  I was a tomboy. I loved sports.
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  I didn't plan out my future with husband and children.
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  I was not yearning for double handfuls of children.
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  I didn't really think about it either way.
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  I didn't have a lot of names picked out.
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  I mean, I, I thought about being a mom.
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  I assumed I would be, but it wasn't some sort of.
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  I think the other thing people assumed other than you must have
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  a lot of siblings, is you must have like been gunning for this.
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  This is a life goal. You tried really hard.
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  You're trying. Really hard for these 10, which
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  the thing about the sovereignty of God, as I've already said, is
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  it can go either direction. Some people assume they're going
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  to have a lot of children because they don't do anything
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  to prevent and they don't. And we have to trust in the
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  sovereignty of God for that too. Like when we clinch our hands
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  and say it has to be my way. So often the Lord says no, I've
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  got a path for you. And they grow up dreaming of it,
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  and they don't meet their right or later.
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  And I hear from them not able to.
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  Have the the family they had once dreamed of.
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  Yes, DMS all the time from from women that are in that position
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  that are like, I really wanted more than two or three and my
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  body's just not cooperating because I got married late.
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  So there is no one straight and narrow for every person except
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  for following the Lord. And my mom just did such a good
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  job of showing that in her surrenders the Lord's will for
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  her life and that and every other area.
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  And she also told me about birth control and she told me it's not
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  good for your body. You don't want to tinker with
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  your hormones. You don't want to tinker with a
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  natural process. That's a detoxifying process
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  that the Lord has made to prepare your body for fertility.
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  Like this is good for you. This is good design.
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  It's not just something to, you know, periods are the worst, you
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  know, and then also she taught me about the fact that hormonal
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  birth control has an abortifacion aspect to it, that
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  it actually, and people say, oh, you just made that up.
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  No, you can look at the insert on hormonal birth control and it
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  will tell you that one of the components of how it acts is to
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  make the lining of the uterus thinner and less friendly to
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  implantation of a fertilized embryo, which we know as
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  Christians that life begins at conception.
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  And so you have a conceived human being who is being
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  discarded by a hostile womb. And my mom told me that when I
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  was probably 13 years old. And so my brain said what?
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  Did she learn that, by the way? I would have to ask her, but she
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  was a very she's a seriously intelligent woman.
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  I'm so. Impressed because I think today
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  we have that knowledge about the birth control pill, but I feel
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  like our mother's generation, that was very much shielded from
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  them unless somehow they were doing the research very
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  intentionally themselves. It wasn't as they were
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  advocating advocacy groups educating on it in mass.
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  Right. And I can remember when I first
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  started on the Internet 15 years ago being borderline terrified
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  to tell the truth about birth control because of the backlash
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  being so strong. And now we can just say it.
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  And people are like, oh, yeah. I mean, even secular sources are
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  like, don't do this. I think I saw some account rumor
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  Willis, like Demi Moore's daughter was like, do not take
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  hormonal birth control because it will wreck you.
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  And I was like, well, I'm, I mean, I'm glad that we have this
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  just out in the open. Going to have Doctor Sarah Hill
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  on the show, I think next week or the week after.
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  And she wrote, you know, she's coming at it as, from a secular
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  perspective, the science behind the harm of birth control.
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  Right, So my my mom was a pioneer in many ways.
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  She was homeschooling my brother before it was technically legal
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  in the state of Texas and lobbying for it to be legal.
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  And she was a crunchy granola Mama.
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  Like our homeschool Co-op back in the day was for us to run
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  around at the park while the moms waited for like the health
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  food truck to pull up. So and she read extensively.
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  So I had a very countercultural background and but it seemed
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  normal to me because that's what I grew up with.
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  So you asked how I ended up, you know, here and where this all
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  came from. I think that foundation in God's
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  word and that foundation in the, the basis being the sovereignty
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  of God. And then you go from there to
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  look at the mechanisms and say, is this good right and true?
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  When you see that it's not, you say, well then I'm I'm not going
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  to do that. That's not good for my body, and
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  it's not good for my soul, and it's not good for other people's
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  bodies and souls. And so I was actually engaged to
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  a guy when I was 19, and I remember having a premarital
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  counseling conversation with him and our pastor, and neither of
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  them had any trouble at all with birth control.
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  And here I'm trying to explain this.
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  And because most people didn't know, they looked at me like I
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  had three heads. They were really nice Christian
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  guys. They were great guys.
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  But this was not something they were educated on.
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  They didn't have my mom growing up.
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  And they were just kind of looking at me and like, what are
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  you talking about? You sound hysterical.
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  Well, and just a quick interjection, what I've observed
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  is it's a common, I think maybe this is more a decade ago than
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  it is or two decades ago than it is today because of all the
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  education that's happened around this.
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  But I think there's been a common thing in certain even
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  Christian circles and very, you know, concerned Christian
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  circles trying to follow God to say, well, when you're newlywed
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  and you get married, of course you're on the birth control pill
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  for at least a few years, establish the marriage and then
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  you have the children and birth control is the obvious thing to
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  start you out. For sure.
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  So I didn't end up marrying that guy and on the second date with
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  my husband that I did marry, who's the only other guy I
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  dated, I literally landed the bomb like, Hey, I know we're
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  just getting to know each other. I already really like you.
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  I don't like this is a non negotiable for me.
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  I'm not going to put this in my body.
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  And you know, that means we I could have a lot of kids.
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  I have no idea. I remember saying something like
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  I could have six kids. Like, isn't that a crazy
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  thought? And he just looked at me totally
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  unfazed and was like, cool, is that what you wanted to tell me?
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  You know, like was not at all bothered by it, He said later.
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  He was like, I was thinking, 8 so.
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  That's so sweet. Which we have had eight births,
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  but we have two sets of twins. Perfect.
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  So Yep, he, he apparently called that one.
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  So I think just openness to life, having a view of God's
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  word, being the authority for our lives, having parents who
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  were by no means perfect, but were invested in intentional and
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  how they taught us, how they discipled us, how they schooled
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  us even though they were made fun of my culture, even though
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  we didn't have any money, our our income didn't make any sense
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  for my mom to stay home and homeschool us.
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  Everything was second hand, one car, little bitty, how it like
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  nothing was the American dream. And yet I remember being loved
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  and being invested in and that made me want to pass that along
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  to my own children. Now again, could I have ever
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  imagined that that would mean that God would give me 10 kids
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  in 14 years? And also I will say this,
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  sometimes the Lord likes to pick at those things that we think
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  we're surrendered in and we really aren't.
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  Because the one prayer I prayed about my fertility was, Lord,
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  give me the kids you have for me, but one at a time, Literally
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  no multiples please. Those sound terrible.
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  They sounded hard. It sounded overwhelming.
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  This is before I even had kids and I didn't even understand the
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  realities of, you know, around the clock nursing and not
• 14:38
  getting any sleep. But I thought, OK, maybe you
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  could do that with one kid, but two, that sounds impossible.
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  That sounds miserable. And the Lord was like, OK, here
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  we go. Well, how surrendered are you?
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  Because here we go. Exactly.
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  Not only that, but He took it one step further.
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  So we have a set of identical twin girls which is a gift from
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  the Lord. So cute.
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  Because identical is not hereditary, so it makes.
• 14:59
  Me cry just talking about imagining these children, that's
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  so beautiful. And they're my favorite people.
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  Like, like they're just, I always say they're my favorite
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  humans, my favorite. Is identical girls she just had
• 15:08
  them so I'm thinking of this too but.
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  They're going to have such a cool bond.
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  So identical twin girls. First they are 13 years old and
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  so identical is 100% a gift from the Lord.
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  Like such a special blessing and a unique thing.
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  Because it's not genetic. One person isn't supposed to be
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  more predisposed. It is rarer than fraternal. 8
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  years later on the exact same day we had a set of identical
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  twin boys. So September 24th is the third
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  birthday in our house. 4 kids, both identical boy, 2 boys, 2
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  girls. That's really special.
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  It is very cool. So it was like the Lord was
• 15:44
  like, it's the whole my ways are not your ways and your wisdom is
• 15:49
  foolishness to God. I'm not remember the exact
• 15:52
  reference, but there's this. I think it's Colossians, but who
• 15:55
  has known the mind of the Lord and who has been his counselor?
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  Who has ever given to God that God should repay him for from
• 16:00
  him and to him and through him are all things to him be the
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  glory forever and ever. Amen.
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  That is just a life verse of mine that it's like when you
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  think things are not going how you planned and you would have
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  done so much better, the Lord just pushes back and says no
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  sorry I'm doing the right thing. That's so beautiful.
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  And your husband around this whole journey, he's just been, I
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  mean, he had eight in mind, so he's just go for it.
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  Yeah, and he has two brothers, so he doesn't come from a big
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  family either. Neither one of us had a lot of
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  experience with young children. I had changed some diapers in
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  the nursery. That was it.
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  Babysat a little bit, but not even babies, like babysat like 8
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  year olds and didn't have a ton of friends that had younger
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  siblings. So that's the other assumption
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  that I get all the time. You must be naturally super
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  patient. I'm not.
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  The Lord has grown my patients. Thank goodness He is so faithful
• 16:46
  not to leave us. Type.
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  Abby, no, I'm not. You're just I'm.
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  Productive, OK. I'm productive and and give me a
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  deadline and I'll meet it, sure, but I'm not like a set a goal
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  and run after a type of thing. I don't know what type I am.
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  Type B plus maybe? Type B plus, there you go.
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  You have to be plus if you're going to step up and try to be
• 17:08
  intentional, so. Yeah.
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  So a lot of Christian families, I think today in the culture I,
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  I want to get to so much of what you talk about in your work,
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  which is the impact of the culture on Christians view of
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  family, motherhood and fertility.
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  And this is something I'm really passionate about because I think
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  the Christian Christians being influenced by the culture on
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  fertility is directly connected to abortion, is connected to the
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  breakdown of marriage. It's all part of the same
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  problem. And sometimes we as Christians
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  think that, well, if we just do it within sort of these
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  confines, because we are going to, you know, we want to be
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  sincere and follow God, but we're going to still do this
• 17:48
  other thing because it everyone else is doing it without really
• 17:51
  examining it. We wouldn't make excuses for the
• 17:53
  thing. Then we're actually just, we are
• 17:56
  not fulfilling our role as Christians in the culture.
• 17:58
  We are not being set apart and sanctified.
• 18:00
  We're not being set apart and sanctified.
• 18:01
  And the sovereignty of God, which you mentioned multiple
• 18:03
  times, is obviously core to how we should operate as Christians,
• 18:07
  That is. And he's sovereign over our
• 18:09
  marriage, our fertility, our families.
• 18:11
  I'm thinking about vasectomies right now because there's birth
• 18:15
  control and a lot of Christians are like, yeah, it does.
• 18:17
  It can be an abortifacient and you know, it's not healthy for
• 18:20
  the woman. So yeah, we'll skip the birth
• 18:21
  control. But barrier method and
• 18:23
  vasectomies are the way to go. And if I'm generous and I have
• 18:27
  maybe 345 kids and again, some people can't have any kids,
• 18:30
  right? So this idea of I'm just having
• 18:34
  more kids than I can handle and I'll just get to a certain
• 18:35
  number and then cut it off, right, is also a very kind of
• 18:38
  privileged idea because children are children are such a
• 18:41
  blessing. And some people would literally
• 18:42
  give every like an arm and a leg to be the to have the privilege
• 18:45
  of parent of parenthood. But anyway, so I see in in our
• 18:49
  Christian culture today, and this is in the Catholic Church
• 18:51
  too. And it's very clear against the
• 18:52
  Catholic teachings. This is among evangelicals who
• 18:54
  are very, you know, more traditional and more
• 18:56
  conservative. It's really everywhere, which is
• 18:58
  OK. I, I'm open to life.
• 19:00
  I have 4:00 to 5:00 kids. And that's generous in today's
• 19:02
  culture. Now we're going to get the snip
• 19:05
  because there's nobody getting hurt here.
• 19:07
  I said my husband has some unpleasantries.
• 19:09
  You know, it's like, not great, you know, not super fun to go
• 19:11
  get the snip. But now we can still love each
• 19:13
  other and we're not dealing with any issues.
• 19:16
  And there's no birth control pills involved.
• 19:18
  Right. So I think the the easiest place
• 19:22
  to start there is that there needs to be some looking into
• 19:26
  whether your husband actually is hurt or not when you actually
• 19:29
  cauterize the tubes down which the sperm are coming.
• 19:33
  And if someone's listening to this or like she's not even
• 19:35
  saying this right, my apologies. I'm doing the best I can with
• 19:38
  the knowledge that I have about it.
• 19:40
  You do cut them, Yes, you. Do.
• 19:43
  No more sperm is the goal, right?
• 19:45
  No more fertility. Right.
• 19:46
  Exactly. And it it does have to go
• 19:49
  somewhere. You've literally like stopped up
• 19:51
  a faucet essentially. And there are some pretty widely
• 19:55
  reported side effects to that process for men with extreme
• 19:59
  pain, with adverse reactions. So it's very few things that we
• 20:05
  do to permanently alter the function of our bodies do not
• 20:09
  have some sort of consequence or side effect.
• 20:13
  And I have found that with birth control and other things, many
• 20:18
  of those consequences are swept under the rug because they are
• 20:20
  not monetarily beneficial to the medical community.
• 20:25
  I mean, a vasectomy is a relatively cheap surgery, but
• 20:30
  it's lots of people are having it.
• 20:32
  It's elective. You can make a lot of money
• 20:34
  doing this. So telling someone this is a
• 20:36
  simple in and out procedure, you're not going to have any
• 20:39
  side effects. I don't think that's completely
• 20:41
  honest. And I think people should be
• 20:42
  careful to do some research on whether that's entirely true.
• 20:46
  So that's just starting with the physical aspect of it.
• 20:49
  And then I think we have to rewind.
• 20:51
  And I always find it helpful when we're swept up in what the
• 20:55
  culture is doing right now to zoom out and look at what the
• 20:59
  trend, not the trend. That's not the right word.
• 21:02
  What the truth has been for all of human history and this idea
• 21:07
  that we are the determiners of our fate when it comes to
• 21:10
  fertility, that what's the question that everybody asks?
• 21:13
  How do you know when you're done?
• 21:14
  That's the question, right? That is such a modern question.
• 21:18
  That is a question that has been asked for about 100 years, Max,
• 21:22
  in the whole history of humankind's existence.
• 21:25
  So we have to ask ourselves, why is this only now becoming a
• 21:29
  question that we're kind of almost obsessed with?
• 21:31
  And one, control, control. Now, humans have always wanted
• 21:34
  control. I mean, what did Satan want to
• 21:37
  be? He wanted to be like God.
• 21:38
  And he, you know, what did he tell Adam and Eve?
• 21:40
  You eat this fruit and you will be like God.
• 21:42
  You will be the one in control. And that is an aspect of what we
• 21:47
  are struggling with when we are wanting to say, I know some
• 21:50
  children are a blessing, but are all the children God has for me
• 21:54
  a blessing or holding our hands like this and saying Lord, you
• 21:58
  can have my marriage, you can have my education, you can have
• 22:01
  where I live, you can have my friendships.
• 22:04
  But this thing, this thing where I have to raise humans for the
• 22:07
  rest of their lives or be involved like because it is,
• 22:10
  it's stewarding souls, there's a huge amount of responsibility
• 22:13
  and privilege involved in it. That's too scary.
• 22:16
  I'm going to keep that one. And now we have mechanisms with
• 22:19
  which to do it easily. And so we can say, since this
• 22:23
  exists, it must be good. So we have to zoom out and say,
• 22:27
  is this how God intended our bodies to work?
• 22:29
  Is this for the good of humanity?
• 22:31
  Is this producing selflessness? Is this producing
• 22:35
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• 22:39
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  There is AI think a narrative too that says well Christians
• 25:37
  should use technology towards good ends.
• 25:40
  So like you were saying it, just because we can't doesn't mean we
• 25:43
  should. Yes, but we are called to have
• 25:45
  dominion. Again, I'm playing the devil's
• 25:47
  advocate here that I hear. And by the way, the the the
• 25:50
  verse about dominion and Genesis is not you should have dominion
• 25:53
  over each other and your kids. It's over dominion, over
• 25:56
  creation, the created. Order and.
• 25:58
  Together, your job is to be fruitful and multiply and it
• 26:01
  doesn't say be fruitful and multiply children, but then
• 26:04
  calculated a certain way at what you deem is most convenient or
• 26:07
  best for your family size. That's not in Genesis.
• 26:10
  It's be fruitful, multiply and throughout Scripture there's the
• 26:14
  talk of you're blessed if you're given the gift of children.
• 26:18
  That's they're always talked about as a blessing always.
• 26:22
  It's not like, oh, you have four or five, you know, sorry, the
• 26:25
  mother that has four or five, how much she struggles and it's
• 26:28
  like no children. You want, you want your quiver
• 26:30
  to be full. You want your home to be full.
• 26:31
  This is a blessing from the Lord, but I hear from some
• 26:35
  Christian circles and certainly the culture that well, we're
• 26:38
  being responsible because if we do have the three or the four
• 26:42
  children and, and I'm talking about the vasectomy here,
• 26:45
  because I do think yes, as as a Christian couple, you can say,
• 26:49
  OK, we're going to maybe space children or maybe there's a
• 26:52
  serious reason because of some severe health issue.
• 26:54
  We're dealing with emotional, mental or or physical to delay
• 26:57
  children. So I'm not talking about just
• 26:59
  have as many children as you possibly can as quickly as
• 27:01
  possible, but I'm talking about intentional acts to separate the
• 27:07
  procritiv and the unitive and the unitive, which would be a
• 27:10
  vasectomy because you're constantly spilling the seed
• 27:12
  basically, but still having sex. So you're unifying the marriage
• 27:15
  in that way, but being not open to life or a barrier method or
• 27:19
  birth control as a hormonal, you know, birth control that's
• 27:21
  constantly, you know, making the mother's womb hostile
• 27:24
  ultimately. And again, the rationalization
• 27:26
  here is, well, I'm being responsible.
• 27:30
  That's, that is what many Christians believe they're
• 27:32
  actually thinking. And then they say, I've also
• 27:34
  heard when they get the vasectomy as an example, Well,
• 27:36
  if God really wanted us to have another baby, it is, you know,
• 27:39
  there's a tiny possibility that the sperm can, you know, can
• 27:43
  make it through and this baby will still somehow by God's, you
• 27:46
  know, pure miracle if the baby will have it.
• 27:48
  Yeah, I've heard all of these arguments as well for sure.
• 27:51
  And I think it's because it is a very personal topic or it
• 27:55
  becomes a very personal topic. Ultimately, we can't out
• 28:02
  kindness, God, we can't out steward our lives.
• 28:07
  We got a smoothie delivery, so we also had another
• 28:10
  interruption, which I'm not going to tell you guys about,
• 28:12
  but Abby was mid sentence saying something brilliant.
• 28:14
  We're back on it. I think that we put ourselves in
• 28:17
  a position, a feeling as if we can kind of plan better than God
• 28:23
  can plan. And what the Bible actually says
• 28:26
  is, shall the pot say to the Potter?
• 28:30
  Shall the clay say to the Potter, why did you make me this
• 28:32
  way? Which is essentially what we're
• 28:35
  asking when we say, you know, why?
• 28:38
  Why am I having all of these children?
• 28:40
  Why do I have to be responsible? Why do I have to keep going with
• 28:44
  this? And I will speak from a very
• 28:47
  personal note here. I understand this mindset
• 28:50
  because 10 kids in 14 years is a lot.
• 28:52
  It's a lot on your body, it's a lot on your emotions.
• 28:55
  Two sets of twins. Two sets of twins, 2 twin
• 28:58
  pregnancies and deliveries. It's a lot.
• 29:01
  It's a lot on your marriage. It's a lot of joy, it's a lot of
• 29:04
  purpose, it's a lot of growth, but it's a lot of hard.
• 29:08
  I wrote a book called Hard is Not the Same Thing as Bad
• 29:10
  because they're not the same thing.
• 29:11
  But challenges do stretch you a lot.
• 29:16
  And so I definitely had it in my mind that I was going to be the
• 29:19
  45 year old mom of 15 kids that we were, we have a, we have a
• 29:23
  pattern with our children. So there are three singletons
• 29:26
  and then a set of twins, 3 singletons and then a set of
• 29:28
  twins. And my kids have joked, so we
• 29:29
  need 15 kids. We need three more singletons
• 29:31
  and a set of twins. And I'm like, I don't think at
• 29:33
  43 I'm probably capable of that. But what I have found
• 29:38
  interestingly enough, again in being surrendered is here I am
• 29:41
  thinking, OK, Lord, wow. It's going to be a lot of kids
• 29:44
  when I'm in, in my mid 40s. I have not had a child since age
• 29:48
  37, and that's not because we have done something permanent.
• 29:52
  It's not because we have prevented a bunch or anything.
• 29:56
  It's because we've had three miscarriages since having our
• 29:59
  second set of twins. And that too is the sovereignty
• 30:02
  of God. So I think so many people assume
• 30:05
  they know how their story is going to go based on how it's
• 30:07
  going currently. And something that they're so
• 30:10
  tempted to do is to make decisions based on the current
• 30:13
  duress that they have for the future, based on what they're
• 30:16
  currently dealing with. I'm always encouraging people to
• 30:20
  pray and persevere through what they're going through now with
• 30:24
  the hope that just like it talks about in Psalm 2713, I will
• 30:28
  still see the goodness of of the Lord in the land of the living.
• 30:30
  I'm still alive, I'm still breathing.
• 30:32
  The Lord has goodness for me. It might be more children, it
• 30:35
  might not be, but ultimately we're not God.
• 30:39
  That's what it comes down to. That's such a freeing truth.
• 30:44
  It really is. But you, but you have to trust.
• 30:46
  The thing is, it all comes back to the trust in the Lord,
• 30:50
  because if you don't trust and you don't surrender like you're
• 30:53
  talking about to the sovereignty of God, you don't surrender your
• 30:56
  entire life and every part of it to Jesus, then you're not going
• 30:59
  to be able to deal with the teachings of God, right?
• 31:04
  You can't. You, you just trust is an
• 31:06
  essential component. We cannot do it on our own
• 31:07
  strength. Yeah.
• 31:08
  And it's a, it's a daily choice and a daily surrender.
• 31:12
  I think people look at me and say, well, you must just have
• 31:16
  more faith than I do. Very unlikely.
• 31:18
  The Lord is the one that provides it day by day.
• 31:21
  We are to take every thought captive to the lordship of Jesus
• 31:24
  Christ. We are to ask for Our Daily
• 31:26
  Bread. We're not supposed to be storing
• 31:28
  up, you know, talk about the Israelites storing up the manna
• 31:31
  that the Lord gave them. And it just rots.
• 31:33
  We're so worried about tomorrow. And Jesus tells us, don't worry
• 31:36
  about tomorrow. Tomorrow has enough troubles of
• 31:38
  its own. And then he says, look, I care
• 31:41
  about the flowers of the field. I care about the sparrows, how
• 31:44
  much more do I care for you? I think if we truly, truly
• 31:48
  believed what the Bible tells us about how much God cares about
• 31:52
  the details of our lives, that we would recognize that
• 31:56
  surrendering to Him is less scary than being in control
• 31:59
  ourselves. It's so beautiful.
• 32:02
  I think about my mom and she said they had eight kids, my
• 32:06
  parents, and this was very unusual.
• 32:08
  They also homeschooled. I don't know, I was telling you
• 32:10
  about this earlier. Also unusual at the time.
• 32:13
  So I'm very blessed by that upbringing and their sacrifices
• 32:15
  and their trust in the Lord. But I remember her saying that
• 32:18
  she wished she had had two more. And it's not that they did
• 32:22
  anything artificial to stop. I think it was more they were
• 32:25
  just really busy and so they weren't trying and in that
• 32:28
  sense, so there was still a surrender fertility, but they
• 32:31
  were just, it wasn't like, let's try to have more, right?
• 32:35
  It was more just we'll see what happens.
• 32:37
  And she says that and and I look at my siblings and I say, I
• 32:41
  can't imagine life without one of them, right?
• 32:43
  I'm sure you can't imagine life without one of which.
• 32:46
  One of my children would I give up so that I could, you know,
• 32:49
  have the social accepted number not.
• 32:52
  Play more sports as a family or whatever The thing is right?
• 32:55
  Because there's always something.
• 32:56
  There is a trade off for sure. I will not deny that for a
• 32:59
  moment that you're going to have to recognize that this does
• 33:02
  determine your life path to some extent.
• 33:05
  I don't think it determines it in a negative direction.
• 33:08
  I think you just have to be willing, just like you did with
• 33:11
  your fertility to be open handed and say, Lord, where, where does
• 33:14
  this lead us? So personal example, we have
• 33:17
  built 2 houses together and by we I mean mostly my husband and
• 33:21
  his dad but I source the things. Physical houses.
• 33:24
  Physical houses where my husband and his father built everything
• 33:27
  in them. The bathrooms too.
• 33:29
  Yes. Electrical, plumbing.
• 33:31
  That's incredible. Flooring, roof, framing, trim.
• 33:34
  With our first house we did everything but the HVAC and the
• 33:38
  cabinets and pouring the concrete.
• 33:40
  Foundation. 2800 square feet. Wow.
• 33:43
  And so. So impressive.
• 33:44
  Yeah, and they built it in nine months, which I feel like is.
• 33:47
  And your kids help or who? So at that point we had two
• 33:49
  children and they were a little bitty, so three years old in 18
• 33:53
  months when we moved. In they weren't helping, no.
• 33:55
  No, they weren't. No, no.
• 33:57
  And I was taking them with me to Lowe's like four days a week,
• 34:00
  sourcing all the things, finding deals on things, driving around
• 34:03
  to like scrap, you know, lumber yards and resell places.
• 34:07
  And like, that was my job to to raise the babies and find the
• 34:10
  deals for the lights and the flooring and the paint colors
• 34:14
  and the everything. So we worked together as a team
• 34:16
  to do that twice and we live in the second build, which we built
• 34:21
  both of those for $50 a square foot.
• 34:24
  Like that's how. Much crazy?
• 34:26
  Is your husband looking for work?
• 34:28
  I know, I know. Is he hireable?
• 34:30
  So he's actually amazing software developer by trade,
• 34:33
  but. What a great guy.
• 34:34
  That's crazy. He's a renaissance guy.
• 34:35
  He does all the things. And so last summer, our project
• 34:40
  was to build a sport court, which we also did for pennies on
• 34:43
  the dollar because my husband and my older boys who are big
• 34:47
  brawny, 6 foot one, like 210 muscular dudes now, which is
• 34:52
  crazy because those are the little boys that we built that
• 34:54
  first house with. There were 3 and 18 months.
• 34:56
  And I always tell people this is always so encouraging to mom.
• 34:59
  So I try to include this in podcast interviews anytime I
• 35:01
  can. People are like, I can't believe
• 35:03
  you can do everything you can do with 10.
• 35:05
  And of course they're picturing me with 10 toddlers.
• 35:07
  They're not picturing me with 10 that are spread out, some that
• 35:09
  are legal adults, very responsible, very helpful.
• 35:12
  And then my youngest at this point are 5.
• 35:15
  So when we built that first house, that was the hardest,
• 35:18
  this parenting period that we ever experienced because they
• 35:20
  couldn't do anything. They couldn't help with the
• 35:22
  house. They couldn't buckle their car
• 35:23
  seats, they couldn't wipe their own bums, they couldn't pour
• 35:24
  their own cereal. They couldn't do any of the
• 35:26
  things that most of my kids can all do at this point.
• 35:29
  And you just kind of question like, is it always going to be
• 35:32
  like this? Because it feels never endingly
• 35:34
  difficult. And then you start to get some
• 35:36
  perspective and you repeat that process and it's not as
• 35:38
  intimidating because you've done this before and you flexed your
• 35:41
  muscles a little bit and groan a little bit and have more
• 35:44
  knowledge and more tools. So this time, Fast forward
• 35:47
  however many years, you know, 15 years, and we have the teenagers
• 35:52
  helping build a sport court. And so one of the ways that
• 35:55
  we're able to do sports with our family is we have two pickleball
• 35:58
  courts and almost a full length basketball court.
• 36:00
  Foursquare, we have the youth group over.
• 36:03
  We go out there and play. Because you get a bunch of land
• 36:05
  initially. So we have 10 acres that we live
• 36:07
  on. And so, yeah, it is we live in
• 36:10
  Texas. It's it's, you know, the land
• 36:12
  was reasonably and there's more of it than here in California
• 36:16
  that's available to grab. And so that's just something
• 36:21
  that worked for our family that wouldn't work for a lot of
• 36:23
  families. But I share it as an example of
• 36:26
  finding what works for your family to thrive and to do
• 36:30
  things that your whole family enjoys because yes, it will look
• 36:33
  very different for different families.
• 36:35
  I hear people that get upset because they're like, well, good
• 36:37
  for you. You have a husband that can
• 36:38
  build or you live in a place where you can find land.
• 36:41
  And instead of saying it must be nice, what if we turned it
• 36:43
  around and said, Lord, what do you have for me?
• 36:45
  What are you calling me to do? To build a family culture where
• 36:51
  our number of children, whether large or small, is not what's
• 36:55
  it? It contributes to our lifestyle,
• 36:56
  certainly, but it's not limiting us.
• 36:58
  It's a source of joy. There's another common, I think
• 37:03
  criticism or concern that I've heard about big families that
• 37:07
  are being open to big families that you know, when, when you
• 37:10
  say or other moms say, well, you don't have a bunch of toddlers
• 37:13
  all at once unless you get, you have double s or triples or
• 37:15
  something. But that's more unusual.
• 37:17
  You have older kids. They help with the younger kids.
• 37:20
  I mean, I think about our five year old, he's so helpful and he
• 37:22
  enjoys helping, and he's looking out for his younger siblings.
• 37:25
  But the concern of the criticism is, well, you are making them
• 37:28
  many parents and you're damaging the childhood of your older
• 37:32
  children by relying on them so much.
• 37:34
  And I will say as an oldest girl in my family, one of eight, you
• 37:38
  know, I remember, you know, being like another little mom to
• 37:41
  my younger siblings. Looking back on it, I'm so
• 37:44
  grateful for that. It was an incredible privilege
• 37:47
  and blessing. I learned so much I still had
• 37:49
  with all the issues my family had growing up, so much
• 37:51
  beautiful experiences and blessings of my childhood.
• 37:55
  But there are real responsibilities that I had
• 37:58
  growing up. Yeah.
• 38:00
  So there is a term that has been coined in recent years that
• 38:03
  you're referring to. That's called parentification.
• 38:06
  And it's so interesting when I have this conversation with my
• 38:08
  online community because I will have people come in and say
• 38:11
  like, Oh my goodness. So I shared a story the other
• 38:13
  day about my one of my 13 year old twin girls who she's not
• 38:18
  Taipei, but she just loves to work.
• 38:20
  She loves to be moving, she loves to bake, she loves to
• 38:23
  serve. She just really gets into
• 38:24
  helping people, makes her happy. And so she had gotten up early,
• 38:29
  packed the little boys backpacks for our Co-op day, had made me
• 38:33
  breakfast, had done a lot of things to streamline.
• 38:35
  I didn't ask her to do that. And someone was like oh holy
• 38:38
  parentification, you clearly are like requiring this of her.
• 38:41
  Now there are things that I do require of my children because
• 38:43
  quite honestly, I do not want to send unprepared adults with zero
• 38:47
  life skills out into the world to be a drain on society rather
• 38:51
  than a blessing. So I.
• 38:52
  Finally, think that life is all about them.
• 38:54
  To think that the the world revolves around them and they
• 38:56
  should be served all the time. So we have a family motto that
• 38:59
  informs everything that we do, which is be a blessing.
• 39:01
  And we start with love. God love your neighbor.
• 39:05
  Your closest neighbor is the people that you live under the
• 39:07
  same roof with. If you are skipping over your
• 39:10
  closest neighbor to go be a blessing to the neighbor across
• 39:12
  the street, that's admirable for the blessing to them, but maybe
• 39:16
  not entirely authentic because you don't have to live with
• 39:19
  them. They may not be rubbing you the
• 39:21
  wrong way and stealing your shoes and, you know, putting
• 39:24
  your shirt in the wash and turning it pink.
• 39:26
  It's when we're actually stretched to love the people
• 39:29
  that sometimes frustrate us the most that true character grows.
• 39:33
  And to serve them and to see them as worthy people to be a
• 39:36
  blessing too. And so that is what we are
• 39:38
  teaching our children to do. And that's what Nola was doing,
• 39:41
  not only because she wanted to be a blessing, but because she
• 39:43
  enjoyed it, because it is possible to really enjoy serving
• 39:47
  others. That joy bubbles out of you.
• 39:50
  And some people will have more of a predisposition to that.
• 39:52
  Some people are more like task oriented for themselves.
• 39:55
  The Lord gave us all kinds of different gifts.
• 39:57
  And Nola definitely has the gift of of servant heartedness.
• 40:00
  But to the people in my DMS who hear me talking about the way my
• 40:04
  kids serve, they're like, listen.
• 40:06
  I actually was parentified, as in my parents left me at home
• 40:11
  with my two younger siblings without any other help, no food
• 40:15
  in the fridge. I was supposed to come up with
• 40:17
  everything. That is true parentification.
• 40:20
  And it is abuse to give your children opportunities that are
• 40:24
  structured and limited in scope. Because how many times have I
• 40:28
  heard from people who grew up in large families who thought they
• 40:32
  were parentified because they helped quite a bit and then they
• 40:34
  become parents and they're like, oh, this is not the same thing
• 40:38
  at all. I was a help to my family, but I
• 40:41
  was in no way the one responsible or the one where the
• 40:44
  buck stopped. And so I think it's a good
• 40:47
  conversation to have when we see actual abuse having.
• 40:49
  But to lay this layer of all big families must be, you know,
• 40:55
  turning their older siblings into, I'll give you an example
• 40:58
  of my 19 year old. So he lives at home with us.
• 41:02
  He's apprenticing under his dad to be a software developer
• 41:04
  because he's got the same skill set as his dad.
• 41:06
  And he would rather spend his money on car payments and down
• 41:10
  payments on houses in the future than on university when his dad
• 41:13
  can teach him all the skills that he needs to be a software
• 41:15
  developer. And he is a helpful dude.
• 41:18
  He edits and produces my podcast.
• 41:21
  I mean, I pay him to do that. That's not for free and he has
• 41:24
  jobs around the house still because he lives there and we
• 41:27
  don't require him to pay rent or anything.
• 41:29
  And just this past weekend, my husband and I were in Cabo and
• 41:34
  it was just he and I. And on Sunday, Ezra, our oldest,
• 41:38
  took all of our children to church while we were gone.
• 41:42
  And then he took them out to eat where we always go out to eat.
• 41:44
  And I had a reader message me that's from where we're from and
• 41:47
  said, I just wanted to give you because we we moms like these
• 41:50
  Atta girls, right? It's so nice when we hear that
• 41:52
  the good things are happening. She said, I, I just wanted to
• 41:55
  tell you that your oldest son got everybody in there, got them
• 41:57
  all seated, went and placed the order.
• 41:58
  I'm sure he's seen you do it a million times, got everybody
• 42:01
  situated and everybody did great and that is a gift to him and a
• 42:07
  gift. To He's going to be a great dad.
• 42:09
  Yeah, he has. So many the ladies listener like
• 42:12
  oh, Abby has a 19 year old son. I mean it's a little young, I
• 42:15
  guess for maybe a lot of the women who listen to her twenty
• 42:17
  20s and 30s, but they have a younger sister.
• 42:19
  Sister is like wanting to get married in their early 20s So
• 42:22
  and he's. Happy to do it.
• 42:24
  Honestly, I know some people just won't believe that.
• 42:27
  But like he comes and he says because we are making sure we're
• 42:31
  pouring into him, yes. Like we're taking him out to eat
• 42:34
  and we are paying for experiences to go to pickleball
• 42:37
  tournaments with his dad, you know, and, and we're paying his,
• 42:40
  his tournament fees. We pay for his gas we put in
• 42:43
  like his, he helps take siblings to practices and things like
• 42:45
  that. We are happy to keep investing
• 42:47
  in him and to show him how much we appreciate him until he
• 42:51
  leaves the house. Because we work as a family
• 42:54
  unit, we work together, we support each other, we're a
• 42:57
  blessing to each other. And then that overflows as a
• 42:59
  blessing to the rest of the world.
• 43:00
  And because everything I just said sounds so ideal, like I
• 43:03
  want to point out, of course, that we do not always do this
• 43:05
  perfectly. Of course my kids fight.
• 43:07
  Of course there are times they are grumbling about having to
• 43:09
  help each other. Of course they're not always a
• 43:11
  blessing to their neighbor across the street.
• 43:13
  That's just an example of how. Good it can be.
• 43:18
  God man, you you I planted some seeds slur.
• 43:21
  But you grew that harvest. I haven't shared this yet on the
• 43:24
  podcast, but I feel compelled to because of the parentification
• 43:27
  narrative that I do think is somehow gets a little stuck
• 43:31
  because we worry and it's back to the control thing and and
• 43:33
  it's also intentionality because people want to do the right
• 43:35
  thing in raising their families and being good parents or future
• 43:38
  parents. I'm like I said, the one of
• 43:40
  eight oldest girl and I wrote in my book Fighting for life about
• 43:44
  my own, you know, issues growing up I had there was some mental
• 43:48
  health issues in my family and, you know, some stress in the
• 43:51
  household and problems the way that impacted me.
• 43:54
  ANYWAYS, all this to say, I remember being in therapy in my
• 43:57
  20s, unpacking and unraveling my childhood, trying to be
• 44:00
  healthier, you know, preparing for hopefully one day I could be
• 44:03
  a wife and a mother. All of this, right?
• 44:05
  And trying to be very intentional about it.
• 44:06
  And the suggestion at one point and the therapist was really
• 44:09
  sound Christian therapist, but she wanted, wanted to explore
• 44:12
  what are what are some of the deep breeded issues behind some
• 44:14
  of these things that you're growing out of, right?
• 44:17
  And one of them was the fact that I'm the oldest girl in the
• 44:19
  birth order, You know, some of the stress in the household, the
• 44:22
  extra responsibilities I had. Was I parentified really, was it
• 44:25
  right? And no, the, the, the answer is
• 44:28
  no. There were issues, you know, and
• 44:30
  my parents are the first. They're so humble and amazing of
• 44:32
  such admiration for them. There were some things that they
• 44:34
  struggled with that we struggle with as a family and as a child.
• 44:37
  But I was asked to do very appropriate things as the oldest
• 44:42
  daughter. And if I had not been asked to
• 44:44
  do those things, if I, it makes me want to cry, think about it.
• 44:47
  Thank you, mom and dad. If I hadn't been given the
• 44:49
  opportunity to serve my younger siblings, I don't know that I
• 44:52
  would have had the sense of the bigness of heart to want to
• 44:57
  start live action, to want to do all of spend my 20s traveling
• 45:01
  the world to share the pro-life message, the pro family message,
• 45:04
  to have the family culture my husband and I have now, which is
• 45:06
  oriented towards how can we maximally serve our family and
• 45:09
  other people. And it's because of the example
• 45:11
  my parents set and what they asked of me growing up.
• 45:14
  Because if they had said, oh, little Lila, she gets to do what
• 45:16
  she wants. Everyone gets to do what they
• 45:18
  want. And we're only going to have a
• 45:19
  few kids. So everybody can do kind of just
• 45:20
  have this ideal childhood where they don't have responsibilities
• 45:23
  or burdens or anything. I don't think we would have set
• 45:27
  me up for any kind of success in my character, right?
• 45:31
  And my skills, quite frankly, because you build, you said
• 45:34
  skills, you're creating adults. You're you want to launch people
• 45:37
  into adulthood and and one of our cultural issues is people
• 45:40
  are in perpetual childhood because they haven't learned
• 45:43
  certain things growing up A. 100%, yeah.
• 45:45
  Scripture talks about, I think it's in Romans, how suffering
• 45:48
  produces character, and character produces hope, and
• 45:51
  there's perseverance in there as well.
• 45:53
  And then we're memorizing Philippians 2 as a family, and
• 45:56
  Philippians 2-3 and four says, look, not only to your own
• 45:59
  needs, but to the needs of others.
• 46:00
  And humility. Consider others as more
• 46:02
  important than yourselves. Have this mind that is of
• 46:06
  Christ, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality
• 46:09
  with God something to be grasped, but made himself humble
• 46:12
  to the point of death on a cross.
• 46:14
  Like it's so countercultural. It is so the opposite of navel
• 46:17
  gazing and self orbiting and self actualization and self self
• 46:21
  self and the Bible says that's how you get to the point of true
• 46:26
  Christ like character and so that's.
• 46:28
  The path to heaven? Yeah, go to heaven.
• 46:30
  That's the path you got to be on.
• 46:31
  Yeah, that well, and and because since Christ has saved us.
• 46:36
  Yes, of course. We we love him and we obey his
• 46:41
  commandments, and that is to love others.
• 46:44
  One of the big things I wanted to ask you about and and about
• 46:48
  your book too, with this finding the beauty and worth and the
• 46:51
  ways motherhood marks our bodies and souls.
• 46:53
  There is this fear, a primal fear today that I've never I
• 46:58
  don't remember seeing this even a decade ago.
• 47:00
  I think it's just I, I don't know if it's social media.
• 47:03
  I don't. I'm curious your take on it, But
• 47:04
  there is more of a fear I see today about motherhood than I
• 47:08
  have ever noticed in my life anyways.
• 47:10
  Maybe because I'm noticing more historically.
• 47:12
  I think it's a greater fear than I've ever seen where people just
• 47:16
  think I'm not I, I can't mother. I was doing a debate recently
• 47:19
  for my friend Allen Fisher for her show against this woman who
• 47:22
  has this DINK podcast, Dual income, no kids, childless by
• 47:25
  choice, Child free by choice. I think the statistics today for
• 47:28
  women, there's like the highest ever number of women cohort of
• 47:32
  women of reproductive age don't want to have kids.
• 47:35
  And it was women, I think, who voted Democrat that were in
• 47:39
  terms of what is most important to you.
• 47:41
  How lot of 13? Having kids, 12 out of 13 did
• 47:44
  it. It was like 5 or 6% wanted said
• 47:47
  that children. Is that the 12 out of 13?
• 47:49
  No, sorry, I was. Interrupting you.
• 47:50
  But there was a, there was almost the identical thing that
• 47:52
  I saw recently where it was prioritizing things in terms of
• 47:55
  order and they were prioritizing having children as #12.
• 47:59
  I think it's the same as my. I remember seeing it percentages
• 48:01
  wise. But yeah, children for women in
• 48:03
  this cohort more left-leaning. Again, not to like hate on the
• 48:06
  left or anything like this, but children were just seen as not a
• 48:09
  priority. Right.
• 48:11
  And I remember sitting across this table from this like very
• 48:14
  sweet lady who's just saying, oh, you know, I'm not, I don't
• 48:18
  think I'm equipped. I wouldn't want to.
• 48:19
  I, I don't think I could have be a good mother if I tried.
• 48:23
  But also I, I like my life the way it is.
• 48:24
  Like there are all these reasons rationalizations.
• 48:26
  Yeah, I do think social media has a huge role to play here
• 48:32
  because one, we we replicate what sells.
• 48:37
  And right now one of the things that selling is the narrative
• 48:41
  that motherhood diminishes you and destroys you.
• 48:44
  I literally have an entire chapter in your battery stretch
• 48:47
  marks called It's not destruction.
• 48:49
  That's development. And it's essentially saying as a
• 48:53
  push back to all the TikTok videos and the Instagram videos
• 48:56
  that are like, you want to know why we we don't want kids?
• 48:59
  Because they run your mental health, because they, they
• 49:04
  disproportionately damage a woman's career options.
• 49:07
  You know, because it's kind of this feminist narrative of like,
• 49:10
  it's because it's not viewing the ability to bear life as an
• 49:14
  incredible unique gift that only women have.
• 49:16
  It's viewing it as a curse. A disadvantage A.
• 49:18
  Disadvantage in the work field, Yes, exactly.
• 49:22
  And also it runs your body and so I talk in there about.
• 49:26
  Brunch. Yeah, right.
• 49:27
  I do have. I have gone to brunch
• 49:29
  successfully with my kids. OK, exactly.
• 49:31
  It's there is a narrative that you everything in your life
• 49:34
  shuts down except for the caring for the children.
• 49:37
  And there are periods where that is somewhat true, but it also
• 49:41
  kind of depends on how you approach it.
• 49:43
  It kind of depends on how willing you are.
• 49:46
  And this is an entirely on topic, but like, I love
• 49:48
  thrifting and I would take five small children 8 and under with
• 49:52
  me thrifting all the time because I didn't want to give up
• 49:56
  something that I loved, but I also didn't want to not have
• 49:59
  children. And so we just went together and
• 50:01
  made in an outing and they got to play with the toys at the
• 50:03
  thrift store and I got to browse and man, I prepared.
• 50:07
  I brought snacks and you know, organic suckers and things they
• 50:11
  didn't normally ever get. Like we made it a fun experience
• 50:14
  because I was motivated to do something that I enjoyed, but
• 50:17
  also bring my family along for the ride.
• 50:18
  So this narrative that what you enjoy is going to die because
• 50:21
  you have children, that is a huge influence.
• 50:24
  People all are terrified of giving up their comfort.
• 50:27
  They're they're terrified of giving up their entertainment.
• 50:30
  They're viewing it as the highest form of good to be
• 50:33
  constantly in a state of happiness, which is.
• 50:36
  The feelings of happiness. The feeling, yeah, exactly to a
• 50:39
  state of of an emotional high is what people are chasing
• 50:43
  constantly, which by the way, is an impossible goal and produces
• 50:48
  so much anxiety and so much stress.
• 50:51
  When we experience joy organically because we're able
• 50:54
  to be content in all circumstances, is how the Bible
• 50:57
  puts it, we are able to recognize the good and the hard,
• 51:01
  the good and the mundane, the good and the daily faithfulness.
• 51:06
  But when we think that life is supposed to be a highlight reel
• 51:08
  or one of those montage things where the girls run through the,
• 51:11
  you know, clothing stores changing clothes and laughing
• 51:14
  maniacally, like, oh, that's the definition of female success and
• 51:18
  joy. Someone like that is not my
• 51:19
  definition, Abby, Whatever. But it's how romantic comedies
• 51:22
  paint things like you should be in a state of euphoria and no
• 51:27
  one can maintain that. It would be exhausting to do so.
• 51:29
  And in fact, struggle, as I've said before, is where we so
• 51:33
  often find the catalyst for change and growth and relying on
• 51:38
  the Lord's strength instead of our own strength.
• 51:40
  The Bible says his power is made perfect in our weakness.
• 51:43
  And when we are weak, He is strong.
• 51:45
  He's always strong, but we recognize how strong he is when
• 51:49
  we recognize how weak we are. Motherhood can make us feel
• 51:52
  pretty weak sometimes, and that can feel like a disadvantage.
• 51:55
  It can feel like a bad thing, but when it makes us recognize
• 51:58
  our need for Christ, it is in fact a very good thing.
• 52:01
  Now I will tell you this much of social media that's banging the
• 52:05
  strum, they don't have Christ and we can't expect them to have
• 52:08
  a Christ like perspective. It's when Christian moms start
• 52:11
  falling and sliding into this hole of self focus and feeling
• 52:16
  like my children are taking things from them rather than
• 52:19
  giving them opportunities for growth or adding joy to their
• 52:22
  lives or adding service to their lives, which are all good things
• 52:26
  that you have to say. Are you reading your Bible?
• 52:29
  Are you actually looking to someone other than a social
• 52:32
  media influencer who isn't even a Christian?
• 52:34
  Are you totally surrendered? During the will of Yeah.
• 52:37
  And are you making good choices to discern between good and
• 52:40
  almost good? You know, because some things
• 52:43
  can look pretty good and then you scratch the surface.
• 52:45
  Bible says that sin is sweet for a season, but at the end it
• 52:47
  leads to death. So just because it feels good
• 52:50
  doesn't mean that it is good, and just because it feels bad
• 52:53
  doesn't mean that it is bad. I think that's such an important
• 52:56
  point you're making about social media happy, because I think
• 53:00
  social media that is I think maybe the thing in the last
• 53:03
  decade plus. I'm I'm thinking about this
• 53:05
  viral reel I just saw recently of this couple child is by
• 53:09
  choice. Or maybe we will in the future,
• 53:11
  but like we're not going to do, you know, we're not going to
• 53:13
  have kids anytime soon. And they're creating a map.
• 53:16
  It's like this. I, I think there was like, it
• 53:18
  was like very well edited, of course, when we went viral.
• 53:21
  But it's like all the places they've travelled to together
• 53:24
  and there's like a little jet like thing and you can watch it
• 53:26
  all over the globe. And then and they basically said
• 53:28
  we couldn't do this if we had kids, right.
• 53:31
  I remember looking at that reel and thinking, imagine if they've
• 53:34
  been open to life and had the blessing of a child.
• 53:36
  And then they could have, you know, if they wanted to share
• 53:38
  the child film the child's incredible human development and
• 53:41
  the smiles at different ages. What is more meaningful?
• 53:45
  What is more oriented towards love of other?
• 53:47
  What is more human zipping around the world on an like a
• 53:51
  piece of plastic and metal on the air and like having exotic
• 53:55
  experiences and, and rejecting the opportunity for new love and
• 53:59
  life or saying yes to life and getting to nurture and nourish a
• 54:03
  new human life and all of the, you know, the development and
• 54:06
  the growth that they'll have. Yeah, and there's.
• 54:09
  And not to be so harsh in a judgement of that, but I just
• 54:12
  say what are you missing? Right, right.
• 54:14
  What have we been like trained to appreciate as a culture, and
• 54:17
  what have we been trained to devalue?
• 54:20
  That is 100% what it is. We are trained.
• 54:23
  We are allowing ourselves to be trained by the algorithm, to be
• 54:26
  trained by the viral videos, to view success, to view joy from a
• 54:32
  very secular perspective. And I would just share from from
• 54:38
  personal experience, because this will not be everybody's
• 54:41
  story, but one thing that our family has valued and several
• 54:45
  other big families that we know have valued is travel.
• 54:48
  And you have to be creative and you have to save and you have to
• 54:51
  clip coupons and you have to find ways to do it that work.
• 54:54
  But we actually ended up saving up over multiple, multiple years
• 54:59
  to take all ten of our children to Europe once we were there
• 55:02
  because getting there is expensive.
• 55:04
  Although we managed to score incredible tickets, we stayed
• 55:08
  for 45 days and traveled to six different countries.
• 55:11
  And I know this will not be everybody's story.
• 55:12
  And quite honestly, there's, I don't know, too many people that
• 55:15
  want to take 10 kids to Europe. You know, like, I think a lot of
• 55:18
  people would be like, no thanks. That doesn't sound like fun.
• 55:21
  It was challenging, but it was also so cool to see all of those
• 55:26
  places through my kids eyes. Sounds so.
• 55:29
  Fun and to see them experience food and different cultures.
• 55:32
  Old was the youngest. It was our two year old twins,
• 55:35
  so we took our two year old twins so.
• 55:37
  Did you have to pay their tickets?
• 55:39
  Yes, we did. Yeah, we did.
• 55:41
  They had hit the 2 for sure. And I, I will never forget that
• 55:45
  trip. My husband and I have traveled
• 55:47
  to cool places and many of them are memorable.
• 55:49
  That is the trip that is emblazoned upon my memory as
• 55:52
  kind of the, you know, the cornerstone of one of the
• 55:57
  coolest adventures our family has ever been on and maybe will
• 56:01
  ever be on. And if someone had told me I
• 56:04
  would do it with 10 kids one day, I'd probably be terrified
• 56:06
  and be like, why would I? Or that sounds like too much.
• 56:10
  But also someone had told me there's no way you'll be ever
• 56:13
  to. There's no way you'll ever be
• 56:15
  able to do this if you have 10 children.
• 56:17
  I I might have been scared that I would be completely missing
• 56:19
  out and made decisions based on that when ultimately you know,
• 56:24
  it, it worked out, it it better than worked out.
• 56:27
  Never say never to, right? I think that's the other thing.
• 56:30
  And I think the Lord, if there's a desire in your heart, make it
• 56:33
  known to the Lord their desire is OK, I'm going to.
• 56:36
  I'm going to be. Your sovereignty is going to
• 56:38
  rule my life. I'm open to life.
• 56:40
  I'm going to, you know, love others and love you.
• 56:43
  And I'm going to try to live this walk, right?
• 56:45
  I have this desire to go to Europe.
• 56:47
  You know, I have this desire to write a book, do a podcast,
• 56:51
  build a business, right? I mean, I'm right now with live
• 56:54
  action, I've got this ministry, I've got a business with the
• 56:56
  podcast and we're doing working on this new exciting resource
• 56:59
  for moms and all these other things.
• 57:01
  These have been the source of desires.
• 57:04
  Yes, a lot of discernment. Work it through with your
• 57:06
  husband, prayer, you know, test it.
• 57:08
  All of this. But the Lords, a Lord of
• 57:11
  abundance, and he can do anything we will do.
• 57:14
  Anything, anything, everything. Beyond anything.
• 57:16
  We could ask her things. And I will say, we planned this
• 57:19
  trip for years, and it was killed by COVID.
• 57:22
  We were supposed to leave in April and everything shut down
• 57:24
  in March. And I was pregnant with the twin
• 57:27
  boys. And it was like, well, there's
• 57:28
  no way this is ever going to happen.
• 57:29
  And then almost three years later is when we actually got to
• 57:32
  do it. And it was a better trip than it
• 57:35
  would have been almost three years before it was.
• 57:38
  It was about three years. And so seeing like that, the
• 57:41
  Lord brought that to fruition in his timing.
• 57:44
  I would say the same with you asked me at the very beginning,
• 57:46
  like, how did you come to write books?
• 57:48
  I wanted to write books since I was a child, but I didn't have
• 57:51
  like a theme. I didn't have this vision.
• 57:54
  I didn't have a voice yet. And so I wrote and grew A
• 57:59
  readership because my husband was like, hey, this is what the
• 58:01
  Internet says to do, you know, be on the Internet and grow a
• 58:05
  readership and get to know people.
• 58:07
  And maybe if you actually find time, because a blog post is not
• 58:10
  a book, you know, you can fit those into nap time writing a
• 58:13
  book. Oh my goodness, when was I ever
• 58:14
  going to do that? Well, the word made it clear
• 58:16
  when it was to happen. And it wasn't till I was 39
• 58:18
  years old that I published my first book after having a desire
• 58:21
  in my heart to do it that I prayed about and strove towards
• 58:25
  sometimes and sometimes just released to the Lord.
• 58:28
  Ultimately, honestly, the publishers e-mail that showed up
• 58:31
  in my inbox showed up at a time when I had become perfectly
• 58:34
  content with where I was sharing online.
• 58:36
  I wasn't striving for anything. I was just sharing with the Lord
• 58:38
  gave me on a daily basis. And then my publisher reached
• 58:41
  out to me said I've followed you for years.
• 58:43
  I've had kids at the same time as you are really like what
• 58:45
  you're saying? Do you want to write a book?
• 58:46
  And she knew I did. She knew that that was a desire
• 58:49
  of my heart and he really truly brought it to fruition in the
• 58:52
  right time for it to be a good fit for our family, for my
• 58:55
  husband, husband to be completely on board.
• 58:58
  And now we're able to do things like my daughter's come with us
• 59:01
  to events. And so are such a blessing to
• 59:04
  people like they, they help them at our table and they love it.
• 59:08
  And they get to travel with us and my sons will help if it's a
• 59:11
  local event. So it's very much of A family
• 59:13
  affair. And all of those questions I had
• 59:16
  about like, how would this ever work without being a stress on
• 59:18
  our family? There's still factors in there.
• 59:21
  There's still things you have to figure out and work together
• 59:23
  toward. But it's a very unified
• 59:24
  approach. And seeing how enthusiastic my
• 59:27
  husband is for it and supportive and all the things he does to
• 59:30
  make it happen because he's really the foundation of our
• 59:31
  family as well as the leader. It's just, it's such a gift.
• 59:35
  It's really cool. That's so beautiful.
• 59:37
  What's beautiful about what you just shared that I just want to
• 59:40
  emphasize is you had the desire, you were real about the desire.
• 59:44
  You weren't like scared of your desires to write books or to,
• 59:48
  you know, write and and have this community and will your
• 59:50
  husband even encourage the community part And but you
• 59:53
  surrendered it to God and you took meaningful steps towards it
• 59:56
  when it made sense within your family life.
• 59:58
  And then God provided the opportunity, right.
• 1:00:00
  I think that's a very good lesson because I sometimes I
• 1:00:04
  think when. When I hear moms talk about
• 1:00:05
  their unhappiness or their stress or, you know, the things
• 1:00:09
  that they're struggling with it, and that's what I want to ask
• 1:00:10
  you about next, is that mother who's just not happy.
• 1:00:14
  She's not feeling happy in her motherhood.
• 1:00:16
  I think 1 foundational thing, not the only, there's a lot of
• 1:00:18
  things that may be going on there, but one foundational
• 1:00:21
  thing is are there desires that you have that are not
• 1:00:25
  identified, expressed, ultimately surrendered?
• 1:00:28
  Yes. And then within the realm of
• 1:00:30
  your everyday life, and you know, with your husband, I, you
• 1:00:33
  know, under his leadership, can you take little steps towards
• 1:00:38
  those things? Because our desires are not bad
• 1:00:41
  if they are ordered towards their good and true beautiful,
• 1:00:44
  right? And, and God allows us to have
• 1:00:46
  desires and God can bring beautiful things out of those
• 1:00:49
  desires. And we shouldn't start to stifle
• 1:00:52
  them, ignore them, fight them. And I'm talking about like moral
• 1:00:55
  desires, like something that could be like, OK, I want to
• 1:00:58
  write a book, start a business, get super healthy, you know, do
• 1:01:01
  this new project, whatever it is, right?
• 1:01:03
  Have this dream home that I'm dreaming of, whatever it is.
• 1:01:08
  But the I think the identification of the thing, the
• 1:01:10
  expression of the thing, the conversation, conversation
• 1:01:13
  around the thing with husband, with advisors, and then the
• 1:01:16
  surrender to God of the thing and taking whatever concrete
• 1:01:19
  steps we can within the realm of what is our life at the time.
• 1:01:23
  That's all part of, I think, what we should be open to as
• 1:01:26
  moms and women. And open handed.
• 1:01:28
  From it, yeah. Like if the Lord wills, we will
• 1:01:31
  write a book or have more kids or move into a different house
• 1:01:34
  or, you know, so many things that we're trying to
• 1:01:37
  micromanage. The Lord has like we doubt his
• 1:01:41
  goodness and his sovereignty so much when things don't look like
• 1:01:44
  our five year plan. And I really encourage people to
• 1:01:47
  throw the five year plan out the window to say, because that is
• 1:01:51
  encouraged by scripture. It's not, you know, we're going
• 1:01:53
  to go tomorrow. We're going to build this and
• 1:01:55
  we're going to make this city great.
• 1:01:56
  And we're going to have this and we're going to that.
• 1:01:57
  James literally pushes back and says if the Lord wills, those
• 1:02:02
  things will happen. But you can still try, right?
• 1:02:04
  I mean, I think that's the the beauty of the dance of the
• 1:02:07
  Christian walk, right? Your husband physically had a
• 1:02:09
  plan for that house that he built.
• 1:02:10
  Yeah. You had a vision in your eye for
• 1:02:12
  this book, right. A vision in your mind for this
• 1:02:14
  book. So we could.
• 1:02:15
  And then we take one step at a time, order to order to God.
• 1:02:18
  It's not passivity, it's not floating along like a BLOB.
• 1:02:22
  We are called to love God and to follow Him, to be intentional.
• 1:02:28
  How we how we teach our children just like it talks about in
• 1:02:31
  Deuteronomy 6/6 through 8 to teach his ways to our children
• 1:02:35
  as we lie, sit, walk and stand. Have a whole chapter on that and
• 1:02:38
  you got your stretch Marks and to look not only to our current
• 1:02:43
  circumstances, but to how what we're doing to invest in our
• 1:02:47
  families leave a legacy for the future.
• 1:02:49
  That's not the same thing as worrying about tomorrow.
• 1:02:51
  That's not the same thing as trying to force something to
• 1:02:53
  happen. That is saying that we will
• 1:02:56
  preach God's goodness now and then.
• 1:02:58
  May that be passed along to the generations because we were
• 1:03:01
  faithful in the steps that he gave us each day that we took.
• 1:03:04
  Because you're right. It's not wrong to take those
• 1:03:06
  practical steps. We see the Proverbs 31 woman is
• 1:03:09
  a very industrious woman and of course, she has a prototype.
• 1:03:12
  She's not like probably describing an actual woman that
• 1:03:15
  does all the things that she does.
• 1:03:16
  She goes to bed late at night. She gets up early in the
• 1:03:18
  morning. She's always spinning.
• 1:03:20
  She's always buying houses and land and all the stuff that's,
• 1:03:22
  you know, kind of more of like women or capable of these
• 1:03:26
  managing skills. That's another lie that social
• 1:03:29
  media is telling women is that they are just not capable of
• 1:03:32
  very much that they are not capable of running a home and
• 1:03:36
  having multiple children and home schooling or having a
• 1:03:39
  business or having a business that doesn't completely sabotage
• 1:03:44
  your ability to do the primary. Thing has to be ordered.
• 1:03:46
  Because people are always like, I mean, how do you write books
• 1:03:49
  when you have 10 children at home?
• 1:03:50
  And I talk about that in the book.
• 1:03:51
  Sometimes I'm writing a chapter while five of my boys are, like,
• 1:03:55
  whacking each other with pillows 5 feet away from me and my, my
• 1:03:59
  computer might get a throw pillow literally thrown at it.
• 1:04:02
  You know, sometimes we, I told you that my, my mom is really
• 1:04:06
  invested in our family because she truly believes in that
• 1:04:10
  legacy mindset of passing along God's goodness to the
• 1:04:12
  generations. So we actually hire her to come
• 1:04:15
  two days a week. That's why we were able to.
• 1:04:17
  Yeah. So you pay your mom we.
• 1:04:18
  Pay my mom I'm. A big ad.
• 1:04:20
  I was reading an article about this recently.
• 1:04:21
  This idea of paying the grandparents to help with the
• 1:04:23
  kids. Yes. 100% and she they do need
• 1:04:27
  the money. You were talking about like,
• 1:04:29
  struggles growing up. My dad actually bipolar.
• 1:04:31
  We've had struggles. There's not a single family that
• 1:04:33
  doesn't struggle, that doesn't have something that's hard or a
• 1:04:36
  generational curse that's passed down that you're fighting
• 1:04:39
  against. The Lord is sovereign over that
• 1:04:41
  too. It says that He works all things
• 1:04:43
  for good for those who love Him and are called according to His
• 1:04:45
  purpose. And so having my mom where we
• 1:04:48
  can provide income for her so she doesn't have to work for
• 1:04:50
  someone else in her older age, she is as like dynamite and spry
• 1:04:53
  as you could possibly be at 74. Like she holds the Fort.
• 1:04:56
  But she's the reason I can do a lot of the things that I do.
• 1:04:59
  So when someone else says, well, you know, how are you managing
• 1:05:02
  that? I'm very, very transparent.
• 1:05:04
  I have her help. I have a husband who's
• 1:05:06
  completely on board at this point.
• 1:05:08
  There were other periods like 10 years ago when I was like, how
• 1:05:10
  do I make this work? And he's like, I don't think the
• 1:05:12
  timing is right. We don't have the right age of
• 1:05:14
  kids. We're doing house building this.
• 1:05:17
  This is where the resources are lining up.
• 1:05:19
  And I was like, you're right, you're right, you're right.
• 1:05:21
  The answer is not yet. And I didn't know if it would be
• 1:05:24
  ever. And so sometimes my mom is
• 1:05:27
  holding the Fort while I run up the road to Starbucks and ride
• 1:05:30
  as fast as I can for two hours. Sometimes it's after the kids
• 1:05:32
  are in bed. Sometimes it's at the dining
• 1:05:34
  room table while they're making dinner because I have kids that
• 1:05:37
  are old enough to make dinner. Now.
• 1:05:39
  There's not just any one answer to how you make it work, but you
• 1:05:43
  do have to kind of keep your finger on the pulse of your
• 1:05:45
  heart, so to speak. Like where is my heart in this?
• 1:05:49
  Is my heart in it to make my name great and to build
• 1:05:51
  something away from my family? Or is my heart in it to serve
• 1:05:54
  other moms? Because that's my primary
• 1:05:56
  community, my primary audience and direct them to the Lord and
• 1:06:00
  give them some practical helps along the way while keeping my
• 1:06:05
  main gig, my main gig, which is being at home with my family.
• 1:06:09
  So yeah, sometimes I travel to podcasts and my husband's good
• 1:06:11
  with that. He's home being a dad.
• 1:06:13
  He's not watching the kids. He is parenting the children
• 1:06:16
  because they're, he's their parent.
• 1:06:18
  And he is the one that told me to come.
• 1:06:20
  He's like, yeah, that's a great opportunity.
• 1:06:22
  Go do that. And then there are other times
• 1:06:24
  that we say this would cause stress and chaos in our home.
• 1:06:28
  It's not the right season, it's too much.
• 1:06:29
  So I'm going to say no, even if it is a great opportunity, so.
• 1:06:33
  And that's it goes back to the trust in God, the open
• 1:06:35
  handedness. And what you were talking about
• 1:06:37
  moms that are that are constantly in a tizzy about what
• 1:06:41
  they lack and not knowing what their destiny is and feeling so
• 1:06:46
  limited. And you ask them, OK, have you
• 1:06:49
  prayed about this specifically? And they look like at you and
• 1:06:52
  just pause and they're like, I mean, some say yes, of course.
• 1:06:55
  And some are like, you know, I'm worried about it a whole lot.
• 1:06:59
  I've talked to my girlfriends about it a whole lot.
• 1:07:01
  But like, I don't know that God cares about this.
• 1:07:03
  He does. It says that the hairs of your
• 1:07:05
  head are numbered by him, that your that your names are graven
• 1:07:10
  on his palms, that our tears are kept in a bottle.
• 1:07:13
  Like the Lord cares about the details of our lives.
• 1:07:16
  He cares about our hopes and dreams that are geared toward
• 1:07:19
  godliness and truth. And so they may not turn out
• 1:07:23
  like we want them to, but the Bible also says you do not
• 1:07:26
  receive because you do not ask. And that's not like some sort of
• 1:07:30
  like stick 1/4 in a gumball machine and get the gumball you
• 1:07:33
  want out. It's just a reminder that so
• 1:07:36
  often we get in our own heads and we forget that we have the
• 1:07:40
  God of the universe who will listen to every care, every
• 1:07:44
  worry, no matter how big or small.
• 1:07:47
  That's such a beautiful place. I know we've got to end soon.
• 1:07:49
  You've got to fight out. But that was one of my favorite
• 1:07:52
  things that I've seen that you've written is your reminder
• 1:07:56
  to mothers to, yes, surrender everything, but to pray very
• 1:08:00
  specifically about the tasks of motherhood.
• 1:08:03
  Because I do think there can be so much stress and just quandary
• 1:08:07
  like, what do we do? You know, the the potty
• 1:08:10
  training, the breastfeeding, the weaning, the, you know, the
• 1:08:13
  discipline, the, you know, how to teach the faith and pass on
• 1:08:16
  the faith. You know, things with your
• 1:08:17
  marriage you're trying to figure out and like your lifestyle and
• 1:08:20
  work and. But praying very specifically
• 1:08:23
  about every detail of your life and asking, yes, wise counsel
• 1:08:27
  your husband, you know, consulting Holy Scripture, but
• 1:08:30
  asking the Holy Spirit in your prayer.
• 1:08:32
  Yeah. Yeah, James says that when we
• 1:08:35
  ask for wisdom, God gives it freely and without reproach.
• 1:08:38
  If anybody doesn't know what the what the word reproach means, it
• 1:08:41
  means the kind of things we do for our kids.
• 1:08:42
  Like, why did, why did you do that?
• 1:08:44
  Like, why, why when I've asked you not to pick up the jar of
• 1:08:47
  milk that is too heavy for you, why did you do that?
• 1:08:49
  Because now it's all over the ground.
• 1:08:50
  Like, what were you thinking? You know, we'd say that those
• 1:08:52
  kinds of things as parents, that's not what God says to us
• 1:08:55
  when we ask for wisdom. It's not what we should say to
• 1:08:57
  our kids either when they ask for wisdom.
• 1:08:58
  But sometimes we find ourselves reproaching them because they
• 1:09:02
  didn't think something through when we say, Lord, I don't know
• 1:09:05
  what to do, please help. The Bible says he gives it
• 1:09:07
  freely and without reproach, which means he does not put his
• 1:09:10
  hands on his hips and say, stupid, you haven't figured this
• 1:09:12
  out yet. He says, my child, I love you,
• 1:09:15
  let me direct you in the right way.
• 1:09:17
  And that should give us so much confidence and so much hope for
• 1:09:20
  our futures instead of putting our head to bat and spinning and
• 1:09:24
  just coming up dizzier than we started.
• 1:09:26
  Do you have an example or a story of when you feel like in
• 1:09:31
  your motherhood, when you trying to figure out how to do it
• 1:09:33
  without intentionality, with that faith, you feel like the
• 1:09:36
  Holy Spirit gave you a special insight?
• 1:09:38
  100% So I've told the story many times before in my books, but I
• 1:09:43
  was struggling with postpartum rage after my eighth child and I
• 1:09:47
  didn't know it had a name. I didn't know it was a thing.
• 1:09:49
  I'm not really a big label person and so I just knew I was
• 1:09:54
  irritable all the time after my 8th baby, he was about 8 weeks
• 1:09:58
  old and I just felt stressed. And I say all the time, it
• 1:10:01
  wasn't all the time, but often and things felt very global,
• 1:10:04
  like a child doing child things like not being able to find
• 1:10:08
  their shoe felt personal. And that's something that I
• 1:10:10
  found is that when it's a hormonal thing, when it's like a
• 1:10:15
  kind of outside of yourself kind of thing, it feels like they're
• 1:10:18
  doing it on purpose and they're out to get you, which is not a,
• 1:10:21
  that's not a true narrative. Most of the time, especially the
• 1:10:23
  small children, they're just being small children, right?
• 1:10:26
  And so I was really struggling one afternoon as we had small
• 1:10:31
  group coming over. I'd ask my children to do some
• 1:10:33
  things to clean up. I was still nursing, not
• 1:10:35
  sleeping much at night. And so I went to lie down for a
• 1:10:38
  nap and I had my list of things to do.
• 1:10:40
  This was not y'all clean because I'm not going to.
• 1:10:42
  It was like, I'm going to sleep for 30 minutes and then I'm
• 1:10:44
  going to tackle this list before our small group comes over.
• 1:10:46
  And I came downstairs and they hadn't done a very good job.
• 1:10:49
  And I was just lecturing and I wasn't very kind.
• 1:10:52
  And my tone was harsh. And I knew that this was a
• 1:10:55
  pattern that I've been in for several weeks.
• 1:10:57
  And my husband, after the kids kind of slunk off to do their
• 1:11:01
  jobs again because they really hadn't done a great job after
• 1:11:03
  that happened. My husband was like, hey, I know
• 1:11:06
  you're struggling. I know you're not getting much
• 1:11:07
  sleep. I know hormones are a beast
• 1:11:09
  after a baby. But like, something needs to
• 1:11:12
  change and I had already been feeling this.
• 1:11:15
  And so I said, you're right and I apologize to my children.
• 1:11:19
  And I asked the Lord to give me wisdom and he gave me this idea
• 1:11:22
  for something called the gentleness challenge. 30 days of
• 1:11:25
  kind speech or keeping your mouth shut if you have nothing
• 1:11:27
  kind to say. And so I started an online
• 1:11:31
  community. Thousands of women showed up
• 1:11:33
  immediately were like, me too, me too, me too.
• 1:11:36
  I knew I wasn't. Alive, so never a harsh word.
• 1:11:38
  That's the goal. And if you, and if you're harsh,
• 1:11:41
  then you say, I'm so sorry. I, I didn't do that right,
• 1:11:43
  Please forgive me. And you give your children an
• 1:11:45
  opportunity to see repentance modeled, which is a really good
• 1:11:48
  thing. And so because quite honestly,
• 1:11:51
  if for some reason we were to somehow manage to be perfect
• 1:11:54
  parents in some ways, that would not be a gift to our children
• 1:11:57
  because they would go through life thinking they're the only
• 1:11:58
  ones that fail and they're the only ones that struggle.
• 1:12:01
  So when we are transparent with our struggles to our children
• 1:12:03
  and we say, I didn't actually approach that right.
• 1:12:06
  I was too harsh. I made assumptions about you
• 1:12:08
  that were wrong or you did wrong and I disciplined you.
• 1:12:11
  But I did an anger. I wasn't very kind about it or I
• 1:12:14
  didn't think this through. You know, I'm a human.
• 1:12:18
  I'm sorry. I do that, right?
• 1:12:19
  Exactly. When you do that, it's a gift
• 1:12:22
  for your children to say I have permission to, not permission to
• 1:12:28
  sin. Like shall we go on sinning so
• 1:12:29
  the grace may increase? Romans 6 says by no means we
• 1:12:32
  don't do that. We don't test the grace of God
• 1:12:34
  by intentionally sinning. But when we inevitably do the
• 1:12:37
  very thing that we didn't really want to do or don't do the thing
• 1:12:40
  we want to do or sin, nature just rears its ugly head.
• 1:12:44
  We're able to say Christ has covered that and I can continue
• 1:12:49
  in repentance. So that's what I did.
• 1:12:51
  Ellie's moms joined in and I just did it for myself.
• 1:12:54
  And then I posted for them and they were joining along with me
• 1:12:56
  and praying for each other. And then I got asked for a
• 1:12:59
  specific resource. So I actually wrote an e-book
• 1:13:02
  because people were like, please walk us through every day of the
• 1:13:04
  30 days. So each day has it's very short.
• 1:13:07
  It's very doable for moms has an action step.
• 1:13:10
  It has a. Scripture in here.
• 1:13:11
  No, it's it's it's on my website, msrama.net.
• 1:13:14
  Guys, I have a little chapter and Ms. for Mom on my birthday,
• 1:13:17
  my first book describing this process.
• 1:13:18
  But the actual resource is just on my website and it walks you
• 1:13:23
  through all 30 days with a special focus.
• 1:13:24
  Like one day is literally speaking less because the Bible
• 1:13:29
  says where there is an abundance of words, there is sin present.
• 1:13:32
  But he who keeps his counsel is wise.
• 1:13:35
  So, so many times, like when we're just bored vomiting on our
• 1:13:38
  kids or our spouses, we do better to just shut our mouths.
• 1:13:42
  So each day as a specific focus, it's very practical.
• 1:13:45
  It's very scriptural. That was a huge moment of asking
• 1:13:48
  for wisdom and being given a very, very clear answer from the
• 1:13:51
  Lord. Thank you, Abby.
• 1:13:53
  Abby, this is awesome. We could I could talk to you for
• 1:13:56
  hours. How can people find your work?
• 1:13:57
  You can find me on Emmas for mama.net, which is where I've
• 1:14:00
  blogged for 15 years. I've got all kinds of resources
• 1:14:03
  there. All three of my books are
• 1:14:04
  available anywhere books are sold and I mainly hang out on
• 1:14:07
  Instagram at m.is.four.mama. What's your favorite of your
• 1:14:10
  books that you say you have to buy this?
• 1:14:11
  One, you bet your stretch marks Yeah, you.
• 1:14:13
  Go, guys. Thank you, Abby.
• 1:14:16
  You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
• 1:14:17
  Thanks so much for listening to this episode of The Lila Rose
• 1:14:20
  Show with Abby Halberstadt. I hope you all enjoyed it.
• 1:14:23
  I know I learned something, especially that last challenge
• 1:14:26
  that she gave us for 30 days of gentle correction and treatment
• 1:14:30
  of your children. I'm going to try to do that over
• 1:14:32
  the next 30 days. Make sure you're subscribed to
• 1:14:34
  this channel if you're not already subscribed and please
• 1:14:37
  check out our Patreon. We're growing a community over
• 1:14:38
  there that's patreon.com/lila Rose Show.
• 1:14:41
  A huge thank you to our partner EWTN, the largest religious
• 1:14:45
  broadcaster in the entire world. EWTN is reaching millions of
• 1:14:48
  people every single day with the beautiful truth of the gospel.
• 1:14:51
  You can watch new episodes of the Lila Rose Show 24 hours
• 1:14:55
  before they hit podcast app over at ewtn.com slash on demand.