Setting a Course for Life (#709) — https://www.thegodjourney.com/2019/12/06/mothers-comparing-notes-709/

Outside the box of religious obligation, lies a road less traveled, into the heart of Bavata's affection. Slinging freedom all over the place, this is the God, she and the God, she and the God. This could be fun, or this could be a disaster. I'm not sure how this is going to work out, but I've got two people I've wanted to bring together for a while, and now they're sitting here in front of me. One is my daughter Julie, hi Jay. Hello. I'm back. I'm on the podcast and people, I've got some questions for you from some other folks, but we're not going to do that today. Because I've still got in the house, Arneeta Taylor. Hi Arneeta. Hi, hi Wayne. Arneeta's daughter Bob, we lost Bob. We had a lunch party yesterday and Bob left us and decided to rather spend time with his wife than with Arneeta and me. Go figure. Yeah, go figure. It's their anniversary or something crazy. Anyway, he's moved on, so although we'll catch him up with him this afternoon. But I've been wanting to get my daughter and Arneeta together for quite a while. We probably talk about some parenting stuff and I know all the single guys go, hey, none of you guys can guess me. You never know. Arneeta's got two older sons in their 20s, so that may be some stuff here, may be helpful to you. Stuff you might have missed in your own growing up in your own parenting. And my daughter's got three kids, 15. 15. 12. Yeah, almost nine. Almost nine. Wow. So they're growing up and I swung to, they finally got a chance to meet earlier this weekend. And I thought, you know, it'd be fun to see if we pull a podcast. And the other thing about doing this, if it doesn't work out, you'll never know because we won't run it. But I've said that to so many people, listen, let's just try it. If it's no good, no one will ever see it. Your vote. You don't want it when we do it? Never not run one. Never not. So pressure's on. Get it right. I'm kidding. The reason I thought this would be fun, training we did last weekend in Dallas, Arnita, you mentioned some things about parenting that I just thought was exquisite. And Michael did too. And I, on my four mile walks with Michael, you could say things about the way you raise your kids. And I thought it'd be fun to bring you together because Julie's got, Julie does some amazing things with her kids. Ideas. I think of Thanksgiving. Yeah, your Thanksgiving. I don't know if you're doing it this year. Thanksgiving tree. Yeah, you're doing it this year. I thought it'd be fun to share some ideas. Some of you moms get into it together and share some of the things that you've done that's worked well with your kids. Maybe the worst failure you've had as a parent. That's my best story. How I failed my kids most, but most people already heard that. So, Arnita, why don't you just go back and talk about that little bit that you were sharing at the workshop you remember it was? No. Oh, this is going to be great. Perfect. You probably took notes on it. I've done so much in Dallas at the workshop. Yeah. Well, you did. But there was a thing you were talking about kids and the reason I was attuned to it, I went straight to Dallas out of our memorializing the first year of so many kids being shot at a bar here in Thousand Oaks. And you were talking about how you raise your kids to walk into the cafeteria. Sure. How about that? Sure. Yeah. When we moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area from Atlanta and so that he immediately put my kids as probably the outlier in the cafeteria. And so I would always teach them, hey, when you go into a room, I want you to scan the periphery of the room. And I probably didn't use that language, that's big people language. She used it with us. I used it with the grown-ups last week, but I want you to scan the room and I want you to look for perhaps the awkward kid, which is a word that is very popular now, or the kid who's alone and maybe no other people aren't going toward it. And I want you to position yourself to sit with them and talk with them and just be kind to them. That is a rarity sometimes when people are outliers. And the funny thing about it is often they were the minority kid who people could have seen the same way. So I wanted them to be sensitive to people who were different and sensitive as to how to go toward people that are different rather than join the crowd who may be saying not favorable things about the different kids. And it's funny, years later, I mean literally at a couple of their graduations from high schools, I had parents come up to me in tears. One lady was in tears and she said, your son was the only person who was always nice to my daughter. And she remembered that. They were probably in fourth grade together. So here we are on graduation day in Arlington, Texas. And she came and she said, thank you. He was the only boy who was nice to my daughter. And I know you had something to do with that. I'm sure my eyes got about as big saucers. I'm thinking, oh, thank you. They literally went and did. My kids really did. What I asked them to do. They really practiced what I asked them to do. And I had that with both of them. So I think it's very important what parents encourage children to do. And once you understand they're doing it, praise them for doing it. Praise them for doing it. Yeah. You know, one of the few black kids in the area where you moved into, like you said, they would be that kid. I love the way you flipped it where they could have, you know, sat alone and no one's going to come over there and said, you made them proactive and you got them thinking, man, I'll reach out to that kid. But the other thing I thought when you said it was how every time was a school shooting. It's we got to get guns away or we got to do this. We got to do that. And I'm all for reasonable gun control. I really am. I'm not in problem there. But I wonder how much this would have ended. How many school shootings would it have prevented if that lonely, bullied, isolated kid is proactively loved by other kids and invited into the school community in a way? Because almost all the shooters are marginalized, bullied, isolated. It's that kid. Sure. That acts out. And if they had a friend that was a link into the, I thought it was a brilliant thing to think about, you know, for parents with the kids. We always have that discussion kind of going into the first day of school. Very similar. Especially, you know, two of my kids started a new school this year and the same kind of thing. Okay. So make sure that you're looking out for people around you and, and keeping an eye on, you know, just your friends that are next to you or even somebody that you don't know, like introduce yourself and, you know, look for that kid that maybe does feel out of place. Everybody starts, especially when it's a new school. It's a little easier when they're continuing on in the same school. But with two of them starting, we did talk about that, but I feel like I try to every year. It's kind of like our ritual before we start school is, you know, there's going to be a new kid who, this is their first time in your class and they've never been to this school before. So whatever you can do to make their day easier, even if it's just a smile, like you don't have to go be best friends. But if you're just, like you said, like just kind, if you're just acknowledge them and say, hi. Yeah. And if it's your old school, but there may be a new kid. Absolutely. Or just the awkward, the term awkward is a great term. We all know when people are a little bit awkward for various reasons. It may be a medical issue. It may just be a social conditioning kind of a thing, but we have a tendency. I noticed this even in adults, you go into a room where the awkward person, everybody kind of moves away from and the neat people hang out together. And I think this is a great thing. That's what I say. It's not just about parenting. I think it's a great reminder for us as adults to when you go into a room, don't just, because I think most of us go in it so self-centric that I don't know who I'm going to, I've got to find somebody comfortable I can rush over and talk to and not feel like I'm standing on the wall looking like nobody wants to talk to me. But if you went into a room and just looked for who's not in a conversation. And like you said to us at the center, just go over and stand near them. You don't have to just go, hey, I'm so-and-so, just get near them. Find a way to introduce yourself. Take it in slow steps. Don't become the militant in the room that's going to bomb everybody the moment you walk in. I think that's great stuff for all of us. How much healing that would bring to marginalized people in our world, people who just feel like I don't fit in, I need somebody. And they don't have enough whatever it takes to reach out and grab a conversation. But some of those people are great folks to talk to. You can start one with them. That's what I loved about that. I think that would take care of so much brokenness in our culture if we could take that on. Because you know so many people, even in a big room, some people come to a big room not expecting to be spoken to or to have any type of conversation, which is so different for me who's like an over-the-top extrovert. A little bit. Just a little bit. A little bit, aren't you? I'm a little bit extroverted. So when you go in a room, and I think in the seminar, after you take a side analysis of the room, I want you to go have proximity with a person and ask a question. Now, if you're an adult, don't ask people how old they are. Don't ask them if they just had a baby. Come on, ask another question. Don't leave with a question that's going to be controversial, but just ask a question. What do you do for a living? Please do not always start with what do you do. Because that puts people in various modes. Or if you're a church people, what church do you go to? How large is your church? Any of those kind of things. Start with just something about the story you can kind of get into with the weather. But really just kind of ask somebody, hey, what's your story? And that to me, that's such a better thing than what do you do for a living. I sometimes ask, what's your life like? And they're like, what do you even tell me? I say, I don't know. Tell me about your life. What about your life do you really love? That gets it into it. I always like to remind myself that every deep friendship I have right now began with a stranger. That's amazing. Two years ago, I didn't even know you. That's true. I didn't even know you were on the planet. And he has been missing out on so much goodness. I didn't even know you existed. I was sitting there thinking that yesterday, now we're sitting here doing stuff together. You've been in my home twice. I know. I've been in yours once. I know. My gosh, it's just neat what God does when we open up our lives to whatever He brings our way. That's true. And it's not that you have to, you know, always I think with sometimes Christians and mission and we've got to go to the far side of the world and we just look at what's right in front of you every day. There are people who are different. There are people who are similar to you. They're in. I love that. I love how you open the people. Yeah. So what about your Thanksgiving tree? What's that about? You know, I started this, oh man, my kids were little when I started this. And we came here at your backyard and grabbed a whole bunch of branches and twigs that were on the ground. And the problem is this is going to air right after Thanksgiving, so people take note of this for next year. For next year. Just do it over Christmastime. No. And so I went home and cut out a whole bunch of little pieces of paper and circles and the kids helped. And every day we would write something that we were thankful for. And they were like leaf shapes, weren't they? They were just circles actually. Oh, they were circles. Yeah. Super simple. Like I had one of those things, just punch a whole bunch of these big old circles out and they were really little. So I think my handwriting was on most of them. And we'd hang them all over this tree and by the end of the month we had this tree full of things that we were thankful for. What I loved about it was that after a week they read out of the big things. Like they couldn't say mommy and daddy and grandma and grandpa, and they had to think about other things in their life that brought them joy. And we would talk about how things that you're thankful for are same things that bring you joy. I mean it can be a book you read or it can be anything, any kind of thing that makes you feel thankful and grateful. So now we don't do it every day. It's a little too, it's just, it's a lot, but we do still like around this time think about what we're thankful for and write it down and put it on our tree. And we, the tree stays in our house all year. We leave it with all of our little things on it and they lose leaves, you know, they lose their little things as it gets closer. They fall off and we lose them, but it's just a reminder of the things that we have in life that we're thankful for. So I, I love to do it with them. It's such a little fun thing. And a very visual way to see how much the tree gets filled up. So that's not necessarily Thanksgiving activity. You do it for Christmas activity. You do it for Christmas. Yeah. Absolutely. I can't wait to hear like in 15 years, which ones of your children, if not all go and repeat that. Yeah. What you model for them. Yeah. I have so many friends who are like, I do your tree. I just pulled it out. We got it. You know, and it's, it doesn't cost anything. I mean it was a big old jar that I stuck some, some sticks in and they came over here and helped. And yeah, I mean, it's just, it's such a great visual and to keep it like year round and just have it somewhere. It's just a good reminder for everybody. So that's awesome. Yeah. Well, I have a question for you, Julie. Yeah. What has been your number one challenge as a parent of three young children? God bless you. I stopped it too. One hand, two hands, two kids. I wanted to stop it too. Two hands, two kids. That was my plan. I actually tried to get Sarah to join you because she's got kids in their 40s. And I'd say 40s, 20s and teens. So I would have been fun. But Sarah said I am not doing no podcast. What has been the thing that you've had to deal with that you didn't think you would? Because I know you have amazing parents. Right. You had a real good, you had a good foundation. She's gotten better parents over time. Well, but she has raised us well. She raised us well. A great foundation. You know, there's like such a long list, I feel, I mean it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life is raising kids and I feel like I'm still in the trenches of it. You know, when I was, when they were little, it was physically exhausting. And I just like would collapse when they would go to bed. And now it's a whole different level of emotionally exhausting, raising, raising a 15 year old and a 12 year old. And it's the hardest thing I've ever done. And I don't, I know it's like cliche to say that, I guess, but I mean it is the joys are, you know, far outweigh the bad, but of course, but I mean, I can't even, I don't even know if I could sit here and think of like one specific thing. That's hard. But what I do, what I do enjoy the most is just I love spending time with my kids and like setting aside the phones and the stuff like yesterday, the girls and I just went to the mall and we didn't pull out our phones. We didn't do it. They both have phones and they are always on them, but we just enjoyed each other. Yeah. And that to me is like to put, you know, it's so easy to grab your phone. We're waiting in line, but instead we were joking around and messing around. And it was just such a perfect, just time with them of just enjoying who they are because they're not always easy. The ages they're at. And I don't, I don't feel like I'm always a very good parenting person to talk to because I'm in the trenches of it. Like it is hard, but I, you know, try to give myself grace every day. And what you've said as a young mom, you know, quite a bit older than you. I, we, I think people need to hear that parenting, mothering is hard. Yeah. You know, some people think, oh my, if I don't, if I don't attach to a grade quickly and I'm just not perfect at everything that I'm feeling, you are not feeling. We're all learning. I'm 56 and I'm still learning how to parent my children in adulthood. When I shift from being more of, um, I give guidance, but I'm more of a coach now, you know, I let them bounce things off of me rather than directing some other thought, which is where you are. But mothering is, is hard and it's individual and it's specific. And sometimes I think it's other women. We don't give each other the permission to be individual and specific in how we're raising our children because God gave us exactly the children he wanted us to have. And so I love that you say it's challenging. It was challenging for me to take to motherhood easily. Yeah, sketch out your kids for us. Cause people, we've talked about Jay's kids enough. They know who are they? Where are they in the world? What's going on in their lives? I have two male children. I wanted boys and so God gave me boys. They're about six and a half years apart. Evan is a banker for M and T banks in Baltimore, Maryland. And he's 27 and he's got some political weenies. He would love to be in politics at a later date. And God's made some interesting connections for him. He has. He gets to talk with some pretty influential people in politics and he's a very private young man. So, uh, yeah, that's and brilliant. Yeah, I tell you, he offered us some feedback on the book in early stages that just really has a sensitivity to the language of healing stuff that we were talking about. That is so true. Yeah, some really keen insight. And I mean, he went through and made notes on all kinds of things and we had helped shape the book. He did. And, you know, he always says if he ever runs for public office that his mother, AKA me would get the first PR person, I will need it because I'm a little bit more foolish. Yeah, you're going to need a little help. I'm going to need a little help. I'm going to need a little help navigating language a little bit, just a little bit. I'm going to be better by then than have Nolan who's 21 and he's a basketball player at Cal Poly in San Luis Opispo and he's 21. Oh, he's out here. He's out here. Yes, he's not far away. So, yeah, those are my two boys. And so they're very, I almost had like two sets of kids. Like they were so far apart. So I got to do it a long time. But it's not for the faint of heart. Parenting is not for the faint of heart. Were they not close growing up? They were very close. Oh, they were. Okay. So very close. Evan was a great, great big brother. Our kids are 21 months apart and I'm not sure they even knew they had a sibling in the house. They very little did they do together. They didn't fight. Yeah, they didn't fight or much, but. Well, I think too, we were a boy and a girl. Boy and a girl. So I think different things and yeah, we didn't fight. We didn't hang out. Like we're close now. But it was the best of friends when they got to college. Yeah, it was like when I went away. Yeah. Yeah, that's when I got close to just kid. This kid's always had me wrapped around her little finger. Well, I have one of my youngest and my oldest are six years. So that is a huge gap. We have one in the middle that kind of fuses everything together. But yeah, it's a big, a big difference. And how did you navigate the high school years? Because that's where I feel like that is its own thing. Like there's, you know, elementary, there's middle school. OK, OK, we're like in the high school realm and it's it's its own beast. It is its own beast. I hear a lot of moms nodding on the. Yeah, I feel like every day I'm like, just breathe. Like I have to tell me that I have to tell her that. Like it's any like, you know, the high school years. Yeah, middle school was probably more challenging for my kids because you have in our school district, that's kind of when schools get merged in together from elementary school. So you're meeting a lot of new people and not a lot of people you've done things with up until the first four or five years, four or five years of school. But high school is the time that you really have to impart a lot of identity. Yeah, and a lot of family value. And this is how we treat people and this is how we do things because they're going to be merged with people with all different levels of belief and values. And in a lot of times the values conflict is what comes up in the relationships that your children have with other children. So just implementing how we do things as a family, how we treat people as a family, your your core family values and they're watching you. Your kids are watching you. And so they're going to know how to relate to others as a result of how they see you relate to others. So I think you're going to be fine. It's just an awkward time for all parents. The transition. Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, we have some kids have more leader tendencies. And then you have some of your children that have more follower tendencies and you really want to push them to be the leader. Right. And in their social sets. Right. There was one time I remember Nolan. There was a girl or a guy or someone who had been drinking and I met a ballgame and he comes and brings me the kids car keys. And I go, who's car keys are these? He's just a car. It's my friends. They were drinking and so I took their keys so they couldn't drive home. I thought, well, who's car keys are they? I didn't even know. He says, I'll deal with them later. They just don't need to drive home. Literally, at the end of the night, he drove that person's car home and we went and picked them up. I thought, man. Man, I think I love you. Or your parents couldn't believe it. But he just he just took the keys and brought them to us through a long football game. But that was something we would have wanted him to do. We always said, hey, don't put yourself in a compromising situation or protect other people from those as well. So a lot of what you put there listening, they're listening and it's taking root. You just won't know until you see them executed practice it. You also had to have conversations with your kids that Julie will never have to have about their skin. Yes, you know, it's a real it's a reality. Somewhat sad, but just a reality when you have to talk to particularly all children of color, but African American male children, that some people are just not going to. You won't have favor with them because of the skin color. And God gave you that. And we love that. And we're going to operate with excellence in in our skin tone. But there are people who just have bias against you because you are a black male. And that that's really hard. It almost just becomes a thing. For instance, Nolan, I remember when Nolan was much younger, the some of the kids would go to a local mall and kind of loiter is what I call it. That's how the police call me. That's what I call it. I'm like, why are y'all jumping down escalators at a store? And what is that about? Are you buying something? Why are you there? And there was one day I said, you know, you can't go and do that with your friends. And he just kind of gives me this blank stare. Look, and he says, this is why I said, you just can't go and loiter in that mall with them. You're the only African-American male child person there and big for his age. And you're huge for your age. I mean, it was really big. And I said, no, you just can't do it. And I don't think he got it. Could you talk about the T.P. Incident, much kids are no T.P. And you couldn't go roll the young go because he's the one. Yeah, you can't do that. How did he process that? You know, I don't just say, good mom, no problem. Or, you know, I would love for him to have a podcast with you. I don't know. I just think he trusted me enough to see, yeah, my mom's this is not going to be all your friends are doing something you're told you can't or just can't do that. If you get pulled over by the cops, you've got to act in a different way. You've got to act in a different way. I never worried about kids getting pulled over by a cop ever, sure, even though they did once this one one time. Yeah, he's pointing to Julie right now. Yeah, to walk with it. They put in a new stoplight in town. Remember that? Yeah. And they did. Usually they cycle them like red, red, red and they didn't this one. So it's and it's right next to another existing light. And Julie didn't notice there was a new light there. So yeah, there was a little bit of a ticket situation. But when I went down and told the guy what was actually I went down with the judge and he I forget exactly what he gave her a fine or something. And I just said, you know, it's fair. But let me tell you what, I think the city and I explained the situation. He goes, oh, well, that's true. He said, we'll just write this whole thing off and just take it off a record. And so we do have to have really life sustaining conversations. Yeah, that's just some parents don't have to have. But we do. And that's OK. We just do. And that's what really the back lives matter thing for a lot of my friends. You don't all lives matter. We just kind of jump on that bandwagon instead of realizing, hey, in our culture and particularly it may be different in California. I don't think it always is different in California. But other places it is different when a black male is being stopped by the police. Then if a white male, even for the same offense, yeah. And we're not anti law enforcement, that that's not what we teach our children. You know, my best friends here is a CHP officer. Yeah, you're not anti law enforcement. But, you know, as a parent, I had to tell my child, don't ever run from the police. Don't you ever run from the police? No, I would turn your back and run. Yeah, yeah, I would have told I would have told my kids that. Yeah, good. But you would have said that to that. We would have shared in common. There's some, there's just some, some parenting differences. But being a mom is amazing. Well, on that being a mom that doesn't deal with that issue with my kids. What would you want my kids to hear from me on those kinds of issues? Just to be sensitive to the fact that, you know, they may have friends that have different skin tones and there is a different reality often for those people to just be sensitive to the difference. Don't really do anything different, but that your friend, your children may be the very child to defend an African American child to another group of people. They may always get to serve as a liaison between things. And I don't think young children understand that, that they can be the bridge to bring two different people very much together, which is really a good life skill for the rest of your life. You know, it's just if you don't practice it young, it's hard to get it into the heads of 30, 40 year old people. But if you start practicing that being a bridge and a liaison between people who are different early, that's something that will stick with them, because it's going to be rare. That's good. And it's going to serve them in college and all kind of other contexts when they're not around you as much. Oh, yeah, absolutely. When I was talking with Michael, one of our four mile walks, we got three of men together through an interesting part of a DFW area where they had the bears and lions in the woods and things. They had these statues of wildlife in the woods while we're walking. It was great. We had a great talk. He was talking about something that you did with your kids about helping them establish purpose in their life. Sure. I thought that was brilliant. I wish we'd done that. I can't believe he pushed that off on me. Mr. Mr. Executive. OK, good. Good. What do you mean? He did it and he's blaming you for it? Yeah, he's blaming me for it. No, he just told me he did it. But I thought it was you guys together. It was us together. It sounded a little like you are needed. It does sound like me in my latter life when all I got all this leadership development stuff going on. But our children always had to set goals in August. It would always be in August. They probably had to Labor Day to give us their goals. And so they had to set scholastic goals, social goals, athletic or extracurricular goals. They weren't able to do a lot of different things all at once because we weren't going to be psychologically crazy. Yeah, we're the same. Oh, my. We're like one each. Yeah, yeah. They kind of have one each, but they had to have goals there. They had to have some spiritual goals. And we just made them set those. And it's so sweet to see their little broken hand writing on paper. I mean, it was just amazing. They were very young. They were very young. It was kind of a. They were by second, third grade, really young. And they set goals and we go, OK, you know, we just wanted them to write the goals down. Inevitably, they were they always met those goals. Recently, I was cleaning out my son's closet, which is probably sad since he's 22. And I found a set of his goals from fourth grade. He is now a senior in college. Wow. But I took a picture of him. I sent it to him and said, look, you fulfilled every last one of these goals. He said, wow. Wow. Wow. And so just to let, you know, goals pull people forward and our children have to be parented forward. It's part of their development, really, in being able to self manage and self. Prepare themselves for their future. What I like about it, it's a good, good skill. I like that it wasn't the parent setting the goal with the kid to achieve. It was the kid saying, how would you like to improve scholastically this year? How would you like to improve this way? And that's their own buy in, right? So and you've got a year. So to negotiate whatever improvement or whatever. And I don't mean like a work thing or that kind of thing. I just think a whole this even if we sometimes is that I'll stop and think, what would I like to see me improve over the next year and then make some proactive steps? And you say one of your stunts still does it. Yeah. Mike told me that. Michael told me they still does it every year. And so thinking of what started at second or third grade that they still do because it really is a life skill to set goals and move yourself forward. Nobody's going to do that for you when you're an adult. Right. So I think part of being a good parent is helping them learn that before you launch them right to their freshman year of college where they're going to have a lot of goals to even be academically successful. And sometimes in America, we prepare children to be academically successful, but we don't prepare them in the other pieces of the pie that they need to develop as well. You do anything like that? I don't. I'm learning that. Yeah, I thought it was fascinating. I'm going to have to be in depth goals like or some huge leap forward. Yeah, let's be honest. If one of them said something that was outlandish, like for Nolan, he's my basketball player. So he would say I'm going to start my first business and retire at 15. And you would say, no, that's a little bit. That's a stretch, baby. That's a stretch. But he may say, I want to make sure I shoot 100 free throws three times a week. OK, that's OK. That was good. Now, if he had said 10,000, we would say, no, let's table that back. Let's make this a little more realistic. Yeah, so it wasn't lofty, unrealistic goals. It may have been I want to make sure that I picked up the clothes in my room four out of seven days. Yeah, just whatever you see that as a parent, you don't want them to keep taking on and passing off to other people. You help them make goals around that as well. So sometimes we would add ours, but very, very seldom that we have to add our own twist on what they could do. And then one time I would put like a chalkboard in the kitchen and I would give them things to do. And the last thing on the little chalkboard would be kiss mommy. So I would know when they finished. No, because I come get a kiss. But I knew what it was because that was the last thing on the little chalkboard in the kitchen. And the chalkboard was about 11 by 14 chalkboard, but it worked. It just worked so well. I thought it was pretty cool. Those are good, goals are good. And making them sit down and think about it. You know, teaching them that skill, because that's a skill too to be able to sit down and come up with goals and look at your life and examine it and figure out what do I want to change. And it helps them understand you get to really strategize your life a lot more than you know. Because if you don't teach them that, other people will try and run their lives for them. Oh yeah. Man, that's a hard road. And it gives them, I feel like a sense of control over their life too. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So Arneeta, when your kids went off to college for the first time, had you managed to raise perfect children in every way that they could be measured? Of course. Of course. That's what every mom was afraid of. Of course not, of course not. I cannot think of a role that you need to give yourself more grace in than parenting. Oh yeah. I really, I really. Every day. Every day. Every day. You need that. You need to be able to say, hey, I did the best I could with that. I did tell my children, I said, hey, when you graduate from high school, I know I failed you miserably in a lot of areas. I'll pay for your counseling. I'll pay for three or four sessions. Four sessions. If you need to do it. Three or four. I think that's good all the time. Yeah, three or four. It's all they need to do. But I will pay for three or four because I know I missed a lot of things because we normally parent how we've been parented and I tried to undo some things, but I know I missed some things. But I wasn't guilty about it. I think guilt is such an empty emotion. I just thought, well, okay. I did the best I could. Prayerfully did the best I could and I know I missed some things and I love you forgive me and let's go forward. But don't let anything I do mess you up for the rest of your life. I saw a lot of parents in my older religious days that the teenage years are your last chance to make your kids godly. And they would just double down on all the rules and pressure. And we've gotten some advice when our kids were two and four that from 12 on, you're teaching your children to be good decision makers. So you're pulling off of that parental authority thing. So we were pulling off. I think it worked well for our kids. I think we became better parents alongside them rather than trying to tick off all the boxes. But I think it's a real freedom to launch kids into the world realizing, no, they're not perfect. We hope we give the life skills that they'll continue to grow and change. And a lot of parents whose kids kind of abandoned the whole Jesus thing as they leave the home. And I just tell them not to panic, man. I tell you that what's in their heart is in their heart. And more than that, God's in there. So you had something you shared with me this morning that you were kind of on your heart as you woke up this morning. I hope I have the purpose to live in life. Yeah. Well, I can remember. I hate the book this came from. No, I love the book. So it's my story. I'm gonna tell it. You can tell it. I was going back what to talk about. Purely the opinion of Anita and no one else. Absolutely, all me. I can remember I was going to be a group leader for the purpose to live in life when the book came out. And so the leaders at the church gave me the book and said, hey, we want you to read one day at a time for 40 days. And of course I didn't obey. Of course I'm not. I went and read probably the first seven days at once. And I got to day two. I think it's day two. You guys will have to check. And it was like, you are not here by accident or something was to answer that day. And when I read through that chapter, I just realized, you know what? I had the exact parents I was supposed to have. The way I was supposed to have them. And my kids have the exact parents. They have the exact mom that God ordained for them to have. And I cannot tell you everything about my parenting change. And I thought, God, you love my kids more than I do. They came here to do something for you. All I gotta do is watch and pray and leave them in that thing. It was like a decompression in my heart and my spirit. And I had never parented the same again. So I don't know why that hit me so much, but I just thought, we really come here to do something for God. Okay, well, God, whatever you had up there in the heavenlings for them to do, just don't let me get in the way of it and help me learn how to support it without forcing my will on it. As you talked about the control, really by the time your kids are in high school, you need to be releasing decision-making and help coach them through errors before you go deliver them to the world at eight. So yeah, that was a real transforming time for me, just off of something I was asked to do. The one guy who told us that when our kids are two and four, we made that decision that 12 would start releasing them. So we had some time, but he said, you want your children to make their worst mistakes while they're still at home to be loved. And I said, oh my gosh, that's not the way I learned parenting growing up, it's not the way so many people, parents. You got to build a fence around that child, man. You're responsible for their eternal destiny if you did not get it right. And I'll tell you what, parents who parent out of fear. Oh my goodness. Do the worst parenting. Right, absolutely. This decompression moment you talk about, every parent needs to just lay your kids on the altar and realize, not only does God love my children more than I do, he's working from the inside and I'm only working from the outside. He has every advantage in the world of bringing our kids through a journey and I've been with parents whose kids have told me they were atheists and there's a pastor's daughter. And I just said, don't believe her. He goes, what? I said, don't believe her. What she's doing is, I want to sort out my own spiritual journey without you pressuring me. And so, let her think, and I knew she wasn't, she talked to me about her relationship with God. She was 19 and she'd read the shack and we were talking about her hunger for God and her dad's saying, pray for my daughter, she's an atheist. No, no, she's not. I don't believe that kind of talk. She wants, and then about two months later, she comes to her dad and says, you know, I'm not really an atheist, I do not got it. And they just kids, again, if they haven't had the space to be a decision maker, they will take it from you. And so you just want to give it to them. You want to give it to them while they're young enough to mess it up and you're still there just loving on them. And your conformity to my expectation, this is the biggest failure I had as a parent. I, particularly my younger parenting days, I attached affection to discipline. So if I was upset at my kids for doing something they knew better than, I would withdraw my affection for season because I thought that's what God did with me. I learned later it was shame that did it with me. It wasn't God, it was me. And I've owned it with both my kids because that's the biggest regret I have as a parent, that I attached performance to love. Oh, absolutely. Instead of, no, love's constant. Yeah. I want you to live well. I want you to learn things. I want you to do that. But to hook my affection for you, to your performance. And I think religious, in a religious construct, we almost always do that. We use love as a weapon. Absolutely. Instead of love as a healing. Even when your kids make their worst mistake, they need love. Yeah. They don't need to be distant from the one person they need to know has got their back no matter what. Don't you think it takes us really understanding God's divine love for us to be able to give that away to kids? Absolutely. I thought God loved conditionally all my life. Because I was parented with conditional love. Yeah. And once you realize, oh, God, you love me with an unconditional love, you can give that to your children. And I really have done this with Amy recently. I've really turned it over and just said, she's your God. And what can I do to just be the person that she needs me to be? And I see a lot of parents try to fix everything for their kids. And I tell Amy, I can't fix this for you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to sit down and talk. And we will talk sometimes for a long time. Talk something out. And she'll want to talk about it 50 different ways. And I'll do that. But you have to be the one to go and fix this. And you have to be the one to make it right, or whatever it is. But it's teaching her something. And that's what I want. And I'm just going to love her through all of it no matter what. So yeah. And just be their biggest cheerleader. Oh, yeah. Their biggest cheerleader, the biggest lover, I've got you no matter what. I care about you no matter what. And if parents get that, I think that's the biggest thing in the world. I actually think it's kids that raise parents, actually. We become better people than parents. Thank you. And then they're going to have to have some children to raise them later on. Yeah. I think that's how it works. But you too, you told me a little bit about your past yesterday, Anita, the trends you broken in your family. That's just incredible. First person to go to college. And then you're raising kids that are doing that. And just some of the challenges you had. And I love parents. I know parents, too. I think of some specific ones right now that breaking the bondage of religious obligation and their family with their kids, much to their parents' dismay and unsupport. The parents are always trying to undermine them with their children, because they're not raising them to be little religious legalists. And I appreciate people who make a generational change in raising their kids. And their kids will take it further. And then their kids will take it further. And that's the way I think it was meant to be. I love that. Hey, thank you guys for joining us. We had a great time already, so I told you that'd be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for Anita. Thanks, Shay. Have a great time. Thank you for traveling with us today on The God Journey. You can join this conversation by visiting thegodjourney.com.