Authentic Motherhood - Juli Slattery

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I think most firms are feeling a sense of overwhelming concern for their kids and feeling like they don't have the resources they need to do well in this stage of his parents and his mother welcome building relationship with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times, Allie "The 5 Love Languages" today. Dr. Julie Slattery get help and hope for moms you feel like never be able to give their children what they just in time for Mother's Day.

So, if you're struggling in some ways, mom. Don't this conversation. Jim and I think it is normal with air quotes normal to feel some of the things that you don't know it's one of the problems you don't know all the things you don't know, but that pain goes deeper when there's brokenness in your own life. Those moms who felt that way. Absolutely Christian over mother grew up in a home where she had a lot of struggles because of her parents many times, then she she doesn't want to put her children through what she went through space struggling, going through this differently. I don't how to do this because I never saw it done wisely. Yeah there a lot of a lot of parents are struggling with that Dr. Julie Slattery is going to help out that she's a psychologist, author, cofounder of authentic intimacy. In the summer of 2020. Julie lost sexual discipleship.com is designed to equip Christian leaders to address sexual issues with gospel centered truth. So in addition to her speaking in her teaching she hosts the podcast Java with Julie where Sheila guest have coffee and conversation about these types of things, relationship sex, intimacy, and why God cares about her sexuality. She's written a bunch of books 10. I think including rethinking sexuality. God's design and why it matters. You can find out more about her link to her website@ 5lovelanguages.com, Dr. Sherry, welcome back to Building Relationships. Thanks for having me back. It's always great to hear but tomorrow is Mother's Day. So, what goes through your mind when you think of this holiday. I kinda wonder what my kids might get for me. I think the first thing I fear gratefulness and gratefulness for my mom, and the impact that she's had in my life, but also gratefulness that I have been a blessing of being a mom to three signs and all the highs and lows of that journey. I let her stay just a day to reflect on what a blessing. Motherhood is as we receive it. And that's the opportunity to agree with that.

I'm looking back on my mother's life.

Of course she's in heaven today, but just a lot of good memories. You know the for those of us that had moms that really loved. We were deeply grateful for that. Well let's let's talk about this last year. The families of been through during the pandemic.

It's been a hard time for many of them and protect their difficult time for mother's right really has so many moms here every semblance of normal just got thrown out the window around March of last year with work schedules and school expectations with the kind of support that were used to getting moms from other minds and just community and so not only did our support systems and since normally, seek out the window, but also leave distant head. Ever since then I think with wave upon wave of things to be worried about some of them related to the pandemic that many men not as related to the pandemic. So I think most moms are feeling a sense of just overwhelming concern for their kids and feeling like they don't have the resources they need to do well in this stage of his parenting and motherhood.

It's almost like mother's were for many of the mothers and fathers to counter force to be homeschoolers right thing.

Most of them have some of them and said said I like this. I and their structure changes in our home. Now that we want to keep an others are saying.

I can't wait to go back to normalcy in schools and schedules and time to get back to the routine, even apart from the pandemic. We know that being a parent's never been easy, but it's it's different today than it was even 20 years ago writers that there's under observation for sure. I think if you just take the elements of the Internet has revolutionized our lives and our children's experience. The things that is brought into our home without us knowing that is coming into our home and reaching our children the distraction of the smart phone in constant media and that's just one element of our society that's changed the last 20 years have really revolutionized how we learn how we interact. The pace of life. How much information retaking every day and so that is changed every relationship and certainly that includes mother was good. My memoirs like they were just released this week and I was looking back over my life and you know when I was a child is no computer. I remember when television started okay. Television news radio is as myself. I wonder how my life, work would've gone if I flower growing up in today's culture, rather than the culture I grew up in those years they it would've been a lot different. Think better or worse, you just bombarded with information today with the Internet and all of it and everything else is just as overwhelming to adults. I think constant information that's reaching out are doing well, but I think parents are the responsibility of that area right moms a responsibility in terms of what they depending on their age while they allow their children to be exposed to really sell to different ways. First of all, you're saying how it impacts visual and so most of us do feel that sense of there's so much good content there so much information that I need to stand top of that were constantly attached your smart phones were listening to the next new thing that's coming out and when we have free time find ourselves scrolling through Instagram, which creates a sense of I'm not good enough. I'll look at what this woman made and what she's doing with her kids and so there's the element of how it impacts us and our insecurities and are distracted and I'll say your mentioning we have this concern and responsibility to be on guard with what our kids are consuming and what makes it really scary. Gary is the fact that we don't understand the technology as well as our kids often do so once they hit does 1112 13-year-old their learning about different apps and different ways to stream things that we don't even know about. And so it's almost like the sphere of what we don't know and how do we monitor what our kids are engaging in, and so that I can feel very overwhelming for the average parent would you think that daily time of just conversation with our children about what to just say today what do learn to put those kind of things is that just would that be a part of the natural flow of healthy home.

I really think it is.

I think we have our needing to shift to having normal discussions about things that maybe 10 or 15 years ago where one time sit down discussions I like about pornography that Internet use. I really really need to switch to more of a this is a normal conversation that is just going to be part of our daily life might happen every day but that were going to have conversations about Netflix and what are we watching in what we need to be watching out for Harley using social media and how addicted our way to our smart phones and so if we don't have those conversations, then technology really can overtake our lives and we don't realize it's a problem until something pops up like like graphic images on your kids phone you find out there engaging with people of the technology in an appropriate way or you just find that your kid is depressed and anxious because of all that all of what they're consuming and the information that they're just not able to handle in their daily life in your ministry so you talk a lot about sexual issues. How is the changing landscape of sexuality and gender impact in today's parents. It's moving very quickly, as I think all of us are realizing and one of the ways that it's really impacting parents is that our kids are growing up with an understanding of sexuality and even our language around sexuality that is totally foreign to us and so what we have to realize is that our children are being raised in a worldview around sex that is all around, personal fulfillment, identity, self-actualization, and so when they talk about discovering who they are wanting to be there authentic self and our vocabulary is Loki treated sex for marriage create male and female. It's almost as if for speaking two different languages, and so parents, particularly of teens and young adults are having a really difficult time reading that how I connect with my kids on the weather.

Thinking about things I seen so often I don't even know how to get handles around it and there are things that for all of our growing up, and for generations before us were just assumed to be fact now are under question. So the most obvious example is gender that your biological gender at birth is part of who you are and you navigate that throughout life one now we have parents who are choosing to not even put it gender in a birth certificate because the prevailing side in modern culture is that the more freedom you have. To explore identity, including gender, the healthier you will be in the long run I and so these kinds of concepts are so foundational he challenging that it's hard to even know where to begin particularly like I said like teenagers and young adults. How do you think we got here when you think about what you just said not putting the gender of a child on a birth certificate you from our perspective� It's it's stupidity. I don't use but we get were were people would even conceive of such a thing. It seems like such a modern contemporary problem, but as we read the Scripture we see that society before us, ancient societies were doing the same kinds of things even if they inhabit technology were having. They if we look for example in the book of Romans. The way the book of Romans starts out by saying that the Roman culture. I was in relational and sexual chaos in Romans one describes what that chaos look like but before Paul got into describing the chaos he answered your question. How did you get there in the way we get there insolently, we neglect our worship of God is our Creator and Paul basically says God revealed himself in creation, but we chose to not acknowledge that instead we chose to worship created things and in our culture, we worship humanity, we are God. We are the center of the universe and we see that even with progressive Christianity.

People want God to revolve around us instead of us looking at who he is and what his designers and worshiping him, letting him alone be the one that defines right and wrong, and so when we lose perspective of who God is and we began worshiping ourselves instead of God. Then he said it's stupidity in the Bible says it's foolishness. All of our wisdom turns to foolishness and unfortunately I think that's what were seeing happening as the prevailing wisdom of our reading through my devotional time second Chronicles is the whole pattern of one king leads you away from God and all the tragedies, then the repair may come back and God restores them and then you know the next King's justice cycle. It sounds like were just doing the same cycle all these years later we are just human heart is rebellious and don't want to acknowledge that God is God and we don't want to bow before him and worship them and so that's going to lead to all kinds of craziness I and we look at the last 20 years.

Our culture first and foremost has changed what we believe about God and as a result, working to see God giving us over all kinds of passions and thoughts and beliefs that are really going to lead to a lot more pain, until eventually just our room and we really need God and without him wearing a heap of trouble.

What are some of the questions you're getting today you didn't do it. 20 years ago about sexuality. Yeah, I know some the questions are the same, but I think they're more honest than they would've been 20 years ago. So for example 20 years ago there was still sexual trauma, there were still childhood sexual abuse, but we were talking about it and selling a positive light. We can see that were bringing up issues that need to be discussed, that have always happened but have been more secrecy, but were also seeing the normalization of all kinds of sexual behaviors and experiences that that are painful and represent brokenness and so questions about 10 or 11 or 12-year-olds being addicted to pornography questions about young children wondering about gender and what we do is apparent what is the most loving response to questions about how do we engage with friends and family members who believe differently than we do about God's design for sex. How do we interact with the culture that that is celebrating. For example, gay marriage, what is the Christian's response to that.

So I think there there's a whole host of questions and a lot of times when I speak out take a whole hour just to do anonymous Q&A's, and I can tell you that every time I do that, you can just feel the pain in the room and that again there there's always been pain around sexuality because I believe the enemy is always trying to just solve God's design on sexuality but the pain today is so great and the pain is normal now it's it's the norm that somebody is going to say. Sexuality rep represents a huge area of confusion for me brokenness. I'm not sure where to turn and so's I think when the big difference is we don't even know what health and unhelpful like today because our culture is not set up so much. So what are you going to do tomorrow just totally overwhelmed with all of this. Now I can say I am often feeling very out by all this and so I'm in a preach to myself that I II think what is really helped me navigate through all of this is a mom and also just as a believer in today's world is to seek God's wisdom and it gives me so much comfort to know that God is not surprised by the things that are happening around us is not surprised though it's happening in my children's lives that his wisdom is able to equip me through the Holy Spirit to navigate the circumstances that men and that we can look at scriptures like in James, where are God's taking call out to me for wisdom on any given to you in abundance only look at Proverbs where it actually says that wisdom is calling out to us and saying good things to give you just seek me because I'm here for you and so I need to return to those promises again and again and again and trust the Lord that he really can give me the wisdom that I need to navigate situations personally and in ministry. You use the phrase suiting the doorway of wisdom yeah well I actually stole that from Proverbs chapter 8 radically told to sit at the doorstep of wisdom and for me what that means.

I love that visual of just waiting I'm waiting on God and for me what that looks like is every morning taking time to sit before the Lord to sit before his word to pray and ask God to give me wisdom and and to wait on him to give me that wisdom and I think it's a great visual sitting is something were not good at today were always moving around were always moving to the next thing and really reminds me that in order to receive wisdom from God, I need to shut other things out of my life so that there's there can be some quiet every day that we sometimes need to shut that good noise out of our lives there so much great content and we need that teaching we need and encouragement but nothing should take the place of sitting at the feet of God. Just asking him to give us specific encouragement, asking him to teach us from his word and to give us wisdom for what we're facing in our own lives sure you want to do this for wisdom. Look to the Scriptures_God show me what I moved here is amazing how the spirit of God leads us to to the pressures that really speak to us in our situation really is yeah and I love in the Psalms, how the psalmist keeps saying I will remember like, I'll remember the times that God came through for me and it's the first remember the times when we were so desperate for God's comfort and praise wisdom and where God met us and he really did guide us through difficult situations and remembering that gives us faith and hope that when I call out to him today. He really is going to counsel me and direct me and show me the way I should go Julie friend who's a mom of some junk foods and one of the things that she said to me recently was with the pandemic and with school at home and move you know, doing things on the Internet.

She said some things have surfaced in the life of my daughter that I wasn't ready for her.

I thought I had a few more years before I had to deal with some of these issues. And here they are, first, second, third grade.

They're coming up now and I think there is the rose in her voice. It was like I wanted more time to prepare for this number one and number two I just don't feel adequate to be able to do what I'm doing. Are you hearing the same type of thing. Yeah, I really am Chris and that can be related to our kids being exposed to pornography can be related to young children, six, seven years old saying why why do some families have to dad soon. Can you connect I marry another guy and so these are conversations that our kids need to have but as this mom told you I'm not ready for that conversation with such a young child. They're not able to understand all the nuance of concepts involved in the biblical truth and how you love people and so yeah I think that's it. That's how a lot of parents are feeling like it's like the innocence of childhood is been shattered and now we have to have very heavy serious difficult conversations with kids that are going to have a hard time absorbing what is truth and what is love and so much every parent of young child of young children, today's feeling that way you perished with him to do that again.

Something still are age-appropriate's right kind of answer, you would be up to a six-year-old or seven-year-old raise a question like that. You don't have to give academic college answer to that but but we do need to give an answer. That's consistent with Scripture. That's probably the biggest issue right so true, and Gary, one of the things that I've learned on this journey of administering the space of sexual issues is that our traditional approach to sexuality in the church has tradition has been one of either silence like we don't talk about those things or expend education which is okay, read a book to tell you the facts that are in the book and what I've been challenged to do is to think more in terms of discipleship, that teaching about sexuality has to be using a discipleship model and said discipleship is this idea that I it's not going to be one book we read our one piece of education I give you, but I'm seek God to teach me and train my heart and help me see his perspective in this character in the sessions and then as I walk with my kids their life in age-appropriate ways.

I want that wisdom to overflow from my life I knew my children's life and absolutely wisdom means that you can have very different conversations with a six-year-old and Juergen have a 16-year-old, and that those conversations are graded with understanding what they can handle just even their own levels of discretion. Not wanting to overwhelm them with facts that they can't make sense of, but also being very wise and aware of the conversations they're going to be hit with in our culture today what they're going to see at school what they're in a learn what might come through a computer and so it's been very much in touch with RA I want I want to quit my children for this, but I also want to be ready to have that conversation that I didn't think we need to have quite so Julie what I hear you say is good for six euros/Q part is going to have to do it is only one will have to give the full gamut of things, but we can say that in the Bible there is a plan. This is God's plan. There's money and there's a woman that have children and that's not God's plan, but people don't always do what God says and so sometimes library to people and sometimes do other things because other cultures. No people do have four wives and so what if we if we simply plant the word that in our family. You know what we do. We look to the Scriptures we look to God's word. We want to do what God has told us to do. Yeah that's beautifully putt so they just need they need you there to give them that answer in that moment, Dr. Chapman, because that was beautifully put were celebrating mom's today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, especially moms who may be struggling.

Dr. Julie Slattery as our guest. He has a blog post at her website, authentic intimacy.com that may be helpful to you.

It's titled parenting through weakness. She's also written the book rethinking sexuality. God's design and why it matters. Find out more at authenticintimacy.com Julie have to ask you specifically if there's a mom with listing or dad, and she has had a son or daughter is, and said mom I think I'm a board instead of a girl or I think I'm a girl in a boat trip to the boys body. How do you your shocked is apparently shocked is a mom how do you get past the shock in order to help the child understand while Chris unfortunately this is happening more and more I get emails and calls on a regular basis from parents who are saying that story is happening in their child's life and I think some of it is in the moment as you said there shock their sphere and maybe feelings of guilt or what'd I do wrong might be anger at the culture there might be panic and the hardest thing to do as a parent and I know with the children that you've had you had so many kids Chris that I'm sure this is happened many times with different situations where you have to push that down in the moment and just say thank you for telling me this. I love you and whatever this is working to get through this and and I work with a parenting ministry who tells parents, you need to practice your I'm not shocked face and I think that this is true for all parents, particularly as maybe young adolescents through teenagers and young adults that when your kid comes to you and confesses something they're struggling less being able to to be apparent in the moment and look at the needs of your child. Instead of just reacting to your your own emotions is the most difficult thing and just being on the pray to God. God would you give me the wisdom in this moment to respond rightly and so there is that initial 24 hours of power. Mom and dad get respondent what I say to my child that would I do with this torrent of emotions and I'm feeling then there's the walking out how what we do and I really think that there's there's so many different roads to how we seek wisdom here, but one of them is we as parents need support and we as parents need a place to process all the things that were feeling the fears we had things that we don't know even within some parents complaining of each other. You can have the stalker you are too tough on him.

And so I really encourage parents in that situation to seek out a Christian counselor to help them process what they're feeling and to get on the same page as a parenting team and then what you need to really do is look at.

Okay, how do we understand the needs of our child and the situation of gender dysphoria that you're describing of a young man or woman or boy or girl saying I don't know what gender I am confused about this.

There's so much nuance to this today that you just that one statement doesn't tell you what you're really dealing with. And traditionally there's been about less than 1% of people that have genuine what we would call gender dysphoria where there is a sense, from very young age that I am in the wrong body that my biological gender doesn't square with my experience and that's a real issue and has been identified by the psychological expertise and psychiatric expertise for decades that people experience this and it can be debilitating. But what's happening in our day and age is that that gender dysphoria that questioning is actually being encouraged so that so that young men and women particularly adolescent girls. It's almost a trend now to say it's a good thing. It's a normal thing for me to be questioning my gender are to be experimenting and said there's a very big difference between a child who has that that significant genuine gender dysphoria versus a child is going through identity struggles going through adolescence being impacted by what's happening culture and there's often anxiety and depression that live alongside that kind of questioning. And so you really want to seek help from somebody could who can help you sort through my child really going through at and what is the root problem and what are the symptoms of those problems. And in today's day and age you really want to make sure that your consulting and counseling with somebody who first and foremost has a biblical perspective on what wholeness is what gender is and what mental health is but also somebody who has some training and expertise in adolescence and some of these questions and so God is raising up people that address these issues very well.

Ministries and counselors and this should be a time read really want to reach out for that kind of help another generation, people were less inclined to reach out to kill choppers but I think that's changing, and afflicted. Today, many parents are realizing that when there are situations like you're describing along with depression and anxiety and all that counselors or people who are trying to work with young people in this area and therefore there are available out there and to reach out to them. Just as in the past we would reach out to a medical doctor.

If the trial had a medical problem when they have an emotional problem, or sometimes mental problems.

Counselors can be really really helpful to parents.

That's really true, they can and not just the things you're talking about but there's so much expertise now for example in trauma recovery that we can have 15 or 20 years ago and so there really is a growing expertise in some of these very specific areas of struggle and brokenness, but we also have to recognize that the brokenness is getting greater and so as I mentioned earlier, these things are now normal rat rather than the exception. And so there's really a need for four, I think not only the counseling but also the information and just our knowledge as as Christian parents we need to know more about these things than we ever need to know before what you say to them just feels like you know I don't want to miss my kids problem so the right thing to do the right thing about sure of doing it right and she's gonna anxious herself respond yeah. First of all I I know what that feels like that when I had my first children me. I was just starting out as a psychologist inside meet with these people every day that basically would be telling me how their moms mess them up.

So in some ways it made me even more aware of it doesn't matter what I do someday my kids. I can be sitting in a counselors office talking about things that I did that hurt them. And so I remember just feeling overwhelmed by that sense of fear and the first thing that the Lord really spoke to me through his word is that he has not given us a spirit of fear that he did not give you children so that you would constantly be worried about what you might do wrong, or the ways that you might mess them up. That's just not of God and the enemy is the one who wants us to live in fear. And then I think that there is an acceptance of we all are broken parents.

None of the students perfectly. In some ways I can say jokingly but we all at some of our can amass our kids up to do our best work and seek wisdom, but if we were perfect parents, our kids when you need God, and it is in the places that I failed to my limitations that I can say in my kids. That's why you need to look to only one is the perfect parent. That's why you need God in your life and on.

And so when I started to realize that that God was the one that I eventually wanted my kids attaching to. He's the perfect parent. He's the healer. He is the wisdom then it took a lot of pressure off of me feeling like if I mess something up. It's can get a forever altered my child's destiny and take some pressure off about the mom in her own childhood.

Your teenage years was either abused or neglected or whatever is really not totally processed all that is still plaguing her and she doesn't want to even talk about it to herself, let alone be honest with her children about some of her posts things will happen in her life. What would you recommend that parent moved that moment forward first of I am so sorry for for the extra burden that mom's in that situation are caring because just parenting as a whole is difficult. But when you add on the past and the burden of the past and once the past. She can feel like now you're running a marathon with 50 pound backpack that you have to carry and my encouragement would be that that God is in intend for you to continue to carry that burden God is healer and he calls himself and Jehovah, Rafael, which means he is the healer, but God is also a gentleman and he invites us to healing. But we have to accept that and I think this is true to some extent in all of our lives that when you've grown up in a home where you were abused emotionally or sexually. There's a sense of their shame. Their secrets that you don't want to speak out loud you just want the past to be in the past, but you really do carry the past with you and it does burden you get down so my encouragement would be as much as it might feel like a scary step to get help you.

You be walking towards freedom. You'll be walking towards letting go of lies that make you feel bound fear that makes you feel tied up in knots in the letting go of the fear that you can repeat the same patterns with your kids and aunt Gary, as you mentioned, there are so many wonderfully trained counselors who are able to help walk that road with you that you can find a good counselor at really and in any any corner of the country today and into my encouragement would be the essay today.

No more not carry this 50 pound backpack I want to be free for my sake and want to be free for my children's sake of examples of the people that failed and failed miserably. God forgive God pick them up and went on and use them so we can overcome things that were done against us or to us as well as our press pleasures to limit share something that I hear too often in my office and that is the mom who has endured his enduring abuse from her husband and she staying in the marriage because he doesn't think that she has an option.

What do you say to well and there really two reasons why women feel like they don't have options in that situation and one of the reasons is because of physical circumstances they think I can't support myself, or if I leave, I'm afraid that the violence will get worse until it's that physical practical thing that keeps them from reaching out for help her from leaving. At the second reason can be a little more subtle and it's it's actually more of a spiritual reason why they feel like to be faithful to God, to be faithful to my marriage balance have to endure this and in either of the situations we need to realize that first of all, there is freedom available. There is there are people that will help with the physical needs, and there are systems in place that can protect you can provide for you through the local church as well as through just different agencies that are designed to help people that are in domestic violence situations, but also that there are spiritual resources available and although marriages sacred covenant between between two people before God. We also have to recognize that we see even in the book of Malachi, God hates divorce, but what he hates even more as a man is covering himself with violence and that abuse was never God's plan for marriage, and that actually when we stay in a situation where we allow someone to be abusive to us or to our children where enabling a sinful pattern that destructive pattern and there is a time to stand up to that kind of sin and say no more on drawing a boundary and a woman in that situation really doesn't feel empowered to draw that boundary. She probably feels confused.

She feels like she has a voice she's afraid and that's why I'm so glad women like you would find themselves in your office Gary or another counselors office because we fear that situation. You really do need an advocate to help you stand and to help you draw boundaries and that really is the role of the church and when that doesn't happen. That's such an unfortunate thing when when they go to the church in a file called a here is no you have to you have to put up with abuse, and that's really so contrary to the purpose of why God created marriage and so and so, my encouragement would be find those resources first in your church and also in agencies that are set up to help you to get the financial help you need to get the spiritual counseling you need and help you set healthy boundaries. In fact, it's not the love for her to stay situation. Nothing far more loving to say I love you too much to sit here and watch you abuse moon watch letter children see this happening, but fully report you're saying that if a wife is at that stage she needs somebody to be walking with her through this journey accounts or tart person who could help her as she makes that hard decision on what we called tough love but it doesn't always lead to divorce many times that person will wake up when we expressed our flow and realize you could help you live and we can do marriage counseling and marriage can be saved but we were not doing the loving thing simply to accept physical abuse right and although it doesn't always lead to divorce. Very often it leads to separation anything we have to talk about the difference between sometimes separation is very necessary for the sake of saving a marriage or giving in marriage, a chance to heal and that's certainly the case when there's addictions involved or or abuse sell sell reach out to that person that can help you through that moms are struggling with some of the struggling with that is they brought their children up in the church tried to push their faith along to them. Another child is an adult and they are walking away from God's will no longer blue to respond to the mom, it's so painful for parents who are going through that one thing that I pray for my children every day that will have an intimate relationship with God. Everything else pales in comparison to that what job they have Mary even their house and so when a child is walking away from the Lord. It is such a significant pain and it is the pain that God feels for us and we walk away from him and said first violet I would say that's a very legitimate grief that you're experiencing and God hears that grief he he carries those tears limit, foreign, and we intercede for our children and that's what we want to do all at times be interceding for them asking the Lord to soften the hearts and we often have to understand that this is not in our control.

We have influence with our kids that their their own person have to make their own decisions with God. But we can be a faithful source of love. We can walk faithfully in our own testimony and be patient and be patient and prayer patient in love and hang on to the fact that God listens to our prayers and sometimes as a mom I like almost 1 like God you see me I'm praying for my kids to value the prayers of the salon.

Then I really do believe God does value those prayers.

One of my kids are struggling with something a few years ago I went to go see a counselor because I was really struggling just as a mom with what I need to do what I do with the guilt I'm feeling, and the fear I have in this counselor said something to me that that really encourage me. He said Julie you have given your children a light you have told them about God you've given them the seeds of Christianity and of truth and you just need to trust the Lord that what you planted is still there and that in due time, and will grow and will bear fruit and I and I think about that often just that my job is to be faithful in planning that seed and praying for my kids, and loving them well walking faithfully and I just have to trust that God is the Redeemer and he's the one that's gonna bear fruit in their lives. The point you made earlier there in terms of freedom child as an adult I have the freedom to choose to follow God or not. Sometimes Ramon parents, God's first two children went wrong but had a perfect father, God had a minute to turn away from God. So there turning away from God doesn't mean that you have been a bad parent because they have a choice. God gave us that freedom, but you much in prayer and I think that's that's that's a powerful tool that we have what you pray for for yourself what would you encourage moms or listen to pray for them in the whole process of raising children this generation. Well, I think. Just praying that God would soften the hearts for children.

We know that God is the one that brings us to repentance. He's the one that opens our eyes to truth and so we want to pray for that and we want to pray knowing that there is a spiritual battle in Scripture talks about the fact that the battle around us is in a culture war. It's not just disagreements. It's not political differences that there literally is a spiritual battle being waged. His enemies are trying to destroy the spiritual kingdom of God and that plays out in our marriages that plays out in our parenting it plays out in everything and so we want to pray in such a way that were aware that spiritual battle and were asking God for victory. We also wonder. Pray for this revival and repentance in our own hearts, because the Scripture says that the prayer of a righteous person accomplishes much and so I want to be something you quickly repentance before the Lord, so that my heart is pure before him so that he hears my prayers so that his Holy Spirit is active in me as I interacted my kids in the world and so those are some things that I pray I pray that I will be faithful to God.

My kids will be faithful to God that willing to work through whatever comes our way and cling to him and that's all I know is to abide in Christ and cling to him and trust him with the rest that if we do that we can trust God to do his part again go doesn't make her children be right but God does interrupt their laws, sometimes through a person sometimes through a book sometimes recounts her but God does interrupt their lives seeking to bring them to himself and all the questions I asked myself through the years is one of my children turned out to be like me and that's been a very sober question that has led me to realize along the journey. There are some things I need to change when we realize that are open about God can change soup we we reach out and use it apologized to God for our failures but ask them to change our hearts and change our minds. Julie, let me thank you for being with us today is been a very very conversation but very important.

Thank you for the book good to have written those or listen to their father, help flexibly with thank you.

It's always a joy Julie Slattery's been with us and you find out more about her@authenticintimacy.com parenting.

This is a free blog post thereby fill. She's also written the book rethinking sexuality. God's design and why it matters if I don't want about that as intimacy.com next week you heard that you shouldn't settle for less. The best part of marriage find out in one week. As we welcome Anthony dilling to go.

Let me think our production team with Todd building relationship. Dr. Gary Chapman's radio and association with publisher a ministry. Thanks