Transcript
Speaker: The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production. Christianity has become known for judgy people, strange words, ancient stories, confusing rules, and a members -only mindset. This is why I stayed away from the church for so long, but it's not supposed to be that way. I'm Jill Devine, a former radio personality with three tattoos, a love for a good tequila, and who's never read the entire Bible.
Speaker: Yet here I am hosting a podcast about faith. The Normal Goes Along Way podcast is your home for real conversations with real people using real language about how faith and real life intersect. Welcome to the conversation.
Speaker: Welcome to a new episode of normal goes a long way. I'm Jill Devine and in episode 32 I kind of rambled on and I was talking about all these different things that I had been thinking about as a parent and how you parent through
Speaker: a faith lens. What does that look like? Because you're not always going to say, I don't know, this is what I'm feeling though. You're not always going to say, everything is going to be okay because God's here. And so I decided that I'm not alone in this and that there are a lot of parents that are trying to
Speaker: teach their kid everyday things and how to talk to them, but then also bring in their faith life. How do you do that? And now that I am growing on my journey with my faith, it's affecting my parenting for sure. And then also sending my kids beyond going to church on Sundays or what's typically known as Sunday school, now they're going to a Christian
Speaker: elementary school. So that has come into play as well. So I thought, well, I might as well bring on who I believe to be the expert. And her name is Hannah Lang. You probably remember her from previous episodes when we started the whole next generation conversation. You are Hannah. First of all, welcome back. Thank you. Glad to be here. You are the Director of Children's Ministry at a church called Messiah St. Charles.
Speaker: And I thought it might be best to bring you on for this episode. We're getting ready to do a parenting series and it's going to be faith -filled parenting, how to talk to your kid about insert topic here. But before we do that, we've got to talk about what's to come, what parents should expect, what things to consider once we start tackling these topics, because I don't know,
Speaker: I know you listened to the last episode. We can't just continue to say, it's okay. God's got us, right? Right. Because at some point that's not going to be a satisfactory answer anymore. You mentioned that that doesn't feel very satisfactory to you. It doesn't to me either. And our kids are way smarter than we give them credit for. And so at some point they're going to be like, yeah, mom doesn't really know what she's talking about. Already at three and five.
Speaker: If we keep giving those simplistic answers, our kids are going to realize we're not the person they should be going to with their faith questions. Do you feel, though, that you're best equipped to handle conversations from birth to elementary?
Speaker: I would say so. Now I'm definitely not an expert. I have a degree in education and in theology, and I've been working in children's ministry for almost 10 years. So thankfully I've got some good experience. I definitely have a passion for children and for parents, because children's ministry really is a whole lot of parent ministry too. But actually, we were just saying before we started recording, a lot of my job is finding good resources that I can
Speaker: pass along to parents. So I love having fun with kids one -on -one and teaching them about God, but a big part of my job really is partnering with parents and giving them resources. So I really like to be a resource to pass along what the experts are saying because I'm not the expert in everything.
Speaker: Well, and I am one that I will buy all in. Like you give me the resource and I get it and sometimes I may not read it or may not watch that digital course, but I try, like I said, and I like that you have brought this up too, that you recognize that I'm trying to take as many tools and put them in my toolbox. I asked about the elementary because the other
Speaker: woman involved in this podcast, Laura Fleetwood, who is my spiritual mentor, she is teenage girls. And so we did talk and we said, you know what, instead of you, Hannah, trying to give advice or encouragement or a resource for teenagers,
Speaker: let's have Laura come on on that. And so when we do tackle these certain subjects, these certain topics, I will get her perspective as a Christian mom with teenage daughters. So I did want to say that right now, but then I'm going to also get your perspective from not only as a mom, but from your position
Speaker: at the church. Right. Because I do primarily work with birth through fifth grade. OK. So that's what I'm in every day. That's that's what I love. And so all of my research and interaction is with those infants preschool and then elementary years. OK. So when it comes to parenting.
Speaker: And again, this is a general overview. This isn't any kind of specific topic. We're going to go there. We're going to go there. But do you feel that sometimes
Speaker: I don't know, quote unquote, the Christian version can come off subpar or cheesy. Oh, totally cheesy. Okay. An example. Give me an example because I keep going back to, oh, if my kids have a question about whatever, why should we eat that healthy food? I'm not going to continually say because Jesus wants you to. Right.
Speaker: We were joking earlier that oftentimes in culture the Christian thing seems like the store brand, you know, like the yes cool version of it I was joking with you because everyone knows and loves High School Musical maybe knows and loves but I loved High School Musical. I appreciate
Speaker: OK, there you go. Well, if you didn't know, there is kind of like a Christian version that I can't remember the name of it. You can probably find it on Netflix. Yep. I don't even want to link it for you in the show notes because it's not worth watching. But it's hilarious because it's like, oh, Christian version of high school musical that happens at a Christian summer camp. And it's awful.
Speaker: But you can't, some things you can't, you just can't replicate. Exactly, exactly. And so one of the beautiful things about parenting in 2022, now I'm a parent, I have a toddler, is there is a million resources at my fingertips. Honestly, if I need to know what should my one -year -old be eating right now? How much should he be sleeping? What are the milestones he's hitting? If I've got questions about how to parent my one -year -old, honestly, I typically go to Instagram.
Speaker: and I search hashtags, or I find another mom who's a season above me who can give me some ideas, but there's a million resources online. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming, totally. And some of those resources are really fantastic.
Speaker: and I absolutely appreciate them that I have access to them. But there are certain things when it comes to parenting that I want to look at with a faith lens. And so having a Christian, you know, eating guide might not make much sense because we don't need to say, actually, Jesus said, eat your carrots, right?
Speaker: But if we want to take a step back, we could say, well, God made your body and God wants us to take good care of our body. One way we can take care of our bodies is by feeding it good foods. And so I try to bring together some biblical truth and some good advice and some good just guidelines when it comes to spiritually parenting and then also recognize that there's a lot of other good resources out there by professionals who are experts in their field that are also, you know, good places to go for answers.
Speaker: Right. And they have nothing to do with Christianity or faith because that yes, you don't need that. Well, something I was just thinking about that you mentioned with the food and the carrots and couldn't you and I'm kind of maybe it's not stretching, but couldn't that also be if you're in a situation like me who's growing my faith where you introduce
Speaker: prayer at dinner. Wouldn't you consider that like another parenting kind of way? Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of Christian parenting is just showing your kids God throughout the day. As parents, we get the privilege to introduce our children to God, but also introduce
Speaker: them to his wonderful creation and to what mercy and grace and love are and what forgiveness is. And all of those things really can be woven throughout your day. So when you're thinking about adding prayer into meal times, that's a really great way to connect what you're already going to do in the rhythm of your day with adding a spiritual element to it. Okay. And then thinking of the rhythm of the day,
Speaker: There's other ways that I know that you and I have talked about as a parent that I am going along this faith journey and I want to get back to that in a minute, but natural rhythms. How did you explain that to me again?
Speaker: ways. Right. Yeah. Well, I was thinking initially about the pressure that I feel as a Christian parent. Now, I don't know if any grand people out there might know what I mean when I say I'm a three. So I'm an achiever, which means I like to do things well. So I think I've got a lot of internal pressure to do everything correctly and do it the right way. And so I already know that it's my responsibility to teach my child faith.
Speaker: But then I feel like, oh no, what if I mess up? What if I don't do it the right way? What if I'm not doing enough? And I just kind of keep that on myself. But one thing that I was taught that I really appreciated was to just lean into the rhythms of your day of what you're already doing as a parent. So instead of looking at teaching your kids faith or going on a faith journey with your kids as like another giant checklist of things we have to teach them,
Speaker: Think of the great opportunity you have just when you eat breakfast together, or when you're in the car together, or if you've got a preschooler during some cuddle time, or during bath time. If you've got an elementary student, maybe you are in the car lock, you're going to and from practices and baseball and boy scouts, and you're going to have a lot of car time together.
Speaker: Do you do prayers at nighttime? You've got things that are already happening. You're already going to feed your kids. You're already going to be in the car with them. Leaning into the rhythms of your day as opportunities to either have a faith conversation or point them to God, I think makes it feel a whole lot more manageable. And not forced either. Oh, totally. Right. I am so thankful that you said that you feel all this pressure.
Speaker: Okay and I just had this conversation with Laura Fleetwood and a pastor and I said it isn't right for me to assume that people like Laura and people like a pastor and even you have
Speaker: How do I word this? I feel like since I'm growing in my faith and I'm trying to establish that relationship with God, that I look at it that you all have it together.
Speaker: I do and that you know how to direct your kids and you have that relationship and it isn't right for me to think and assume that your relationship is this great thing, but that's how I feel.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm wording it right, but I do. So for you to say that you feel all this pressure, you don't know if you're doing it right. I'm like, oh my gosh, you come on over. I think you're doing it right. Well, because we're just real people. And I think sometimes people look at ministry leaders and think they're professional Christians. Yeah. Right? Right. Which is this whole thing of this whole podcast. Like I feel sometimes the imposter syndrome. Like why am I here? How can I?
Speaker: Parent my kids through a faith lens. Yeah when I'm growing right right an encouragement that someone gave to me that I really appreciated Was that it's not you doing the doing anyways? It's the Holy Spirit working through you and
Speaker: So, like something that took pressure off of me, now I still feel a sense of responsibility to teach my son about who God is and make sure he knows God's love, but the pressure of doing it well and doing it right and doing enough and making sure I say the right words, that's lifted when you remember that you yourself are a child of God who is deeply loved and God placed you in that family with those children because he knew you were the right match for each other.
Speaker: And He wants to be available to you. He wants to work through you. He sends His Holy Spirit to give you the words when you don't know what to say. And He covers everything in grace. And so it's not really you or I doing the doing. We obey Him and we do our best to, you know, do what we can to share our faith and live authentically and that kind of thing. But really it's God doing it because
Speaker: our children are his children and so we're really just ambassadors of them. We get to take care of them because God gave them to us but they're really God's children and he wants them to know him too. I just feel like sometimes I don't want to be fake when I'm having the conversations and again I know the girls are little but I think about and I know that this is one of the reasons why we want to do
Speaker: this series, you know, I think about some of the conversations or the topics they bring up. And I will say in general, in everything, faith or not, it's okay to admit that you don't know the answers. It's okay to say, I don't know. But I also want to make sure that what I'm feeling or what I'm going through
Speaker: Like right now, especially Lou, our kindergartner, I mean, I hear the songs that she sings about God and it makes me smile and it makes me go, okay. I don't know that she knows what that feeling is, but if that love that she has and that what she's learning, I'm like, yes, it fills me up.
Speaker: So what I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't want my questions right now.
Speaker: to direct her faith journey. Does that make sense? I do. I see what you're saying. Yeah. But I think it's good that we don't stray away from faith questions or wrestling through things because that's part of growing your faith, right? Your children will certainly come to you with questions. And one of the great things you could say to them now is, I have those same questions. Or mommy struggles with that too. Or, you know, mommy's really trying to figure that out. Or what do you think
Speaker: who could we ask about this? So it's kind of almost like you can invite them into your faith journey and you're growing together, because that's the authentic part about it, right? Yeah, I didn't think about it that way. I guess I feel like as a parent, I'm supposed to know all the answers and know all the things. Well, I think about going through, now this is kind of a buzzword right now, but going through some faith deconstruction
Speaker: Um, a lot of people my age who grew up in the church, like I did have gone through this experience where you're journeying through what faith looks like for you as an adult. And maybe you start to reconsider some of the things you thought you knew and ask some questions that can be really hard or really scary. And so I personally have talked with, um, I'm a, I'm a millennial, so I'm in my thirties. I've talked to some other people my age who are now parenting and want to share their children.
Speaker: They want to share faith with their children, of course, but they're starting to think, do I really believe that? Is that really true or I was told this? And they're kind of struggling with how do I share my faith when I'm still figuring it out, right?
Speaker: The beauty of that is that God is big enough to handle our questions, right? We can't scare God away with our questions. And that's really sharing with your children that it's okay to have questions and it's part of the growth process. And just because you're not totally sure whether or not Genesis 1 is a literal creation story, whether it's poetry, that doesn't change that God loves you and that God made you and God wants a relationship with you.
Speaker: And if we put this tight box around things and say, I have all the answers and this is for sure what it's, you know, this is this is the truth and nothing else, then when something happens in their life and something shatters or you start to pull a thread with some doubts and things change, then I just don't want my child to think that
Speaker: If it's not in a tight little box, then it's wrong or that it's scary or yes You know or that God doesn't love them anymore, right? If you're asking questions about whether or not the flood was a real thing That doesn't change how much God loves you and he can handle your questions Okay, yeah, and I'm still processing that too to be honest with you But I just know from my work with kids and from my research and from the resources I've seen that it's worse to give
Speaker: an answer that is just shutting them down. And it's so much better to invite the kids in a conversation and say things like, that's a good question. We should ask so and so about that. Or can we read the Bible and figure more about that? Or I don't know the answer to that. I wonder how we could figure that together. Just the honesty invites conversation and then your kids know they can trust you with big things like that. Well, something that you often bring up and
Speaker: What I see a lot of and even in the resources that I'm looking at is the word encouragement that
Speaker: You don't want to ever scold a parent. Because then that goes into that box. And then they think, I mean, again, we already have enough pressure on ourselves. And then we think, oh, we're doing this wrong and this is the kingdom. And then if I screw this up, we're screwed. So it's encouragement and it's being there. And I know that that's a word that you love to use.
Speaker: for yourself too. You're an encourager. And I think that that's something that we have to keep in mind too. And I don't know if besides encouragement, setting up for these next episodes that we're getting ready to release to everyone.
Speaker: What are some principles for parents to keep in mind while they listen to each one? Because everybody's gonna, it's gonna be different for everyone, but I think we just need to set some ground rules. Sure, sure. We'd roll out there. Yes, well.
Speaker: Yes, I totally want to talk about the encouragement for a second because parents put a lot of pressure on themselves. At least in my role at my church, I really feel like I'm meant to be an encourager to parents. I want to just remind everyone listening that I know you're doing the best that you can and you're doing a good job.
Speaker: God is working through you no matter if you see the fruit of that yet or not. Every little effort that you do makes a difference. It really makes a difference. And so I really like the idea of partnership and walking alongside parents to just remind them that
Speaker: They are God's children too. God loves them. God made them. God wants to work through them. God is in the process of continually growing them and redeeming them. And you can do this. God gave you those children because He chose those children for you, right? He gave them to you because
Speaker: he knew that you would be the perfect mom or the perfect dad for them. So I just really want to encourage parents as you listen to these specific topics, you might have a moment where you're like, ooh, I did that wrong or ooh, I said the wrong thing or ooh, I don't know if that's the way that
Speaker: I handled it before, but there's grace over all things because God's grace covers everything, and also kids are very forgiving as well. They're very forgiving. Oh, yes. At least I hope so. I always think that. Yes, they are.
Speaker: Going on to that second question, what should... I know you mentioned it a little bit, but is there anything else before we wrap up that you want parents to know when they're listening to these specific episodes coming up? Try to stay away from a feeling of shame. I think the way that I grew up, shame unfortunately was a part of how we learned things in my household.
Speaker: Things really became morality issues that maybe shouldn't have been morality issues in my household. Got it. Okay. And so don't let yourself get into a shame spiral when it comes to how to handle these things with your children, because we all are just doing the best we can. And like I said, God's grace and forgiveness covers everything.
Speaker: And then I also wanted to say that truly, I mentioned this earlier, we're ambassadors of our children. So our children belong to God. God wants to have a relationship with them. He wants to have a relationship with you. He wants to live with us all forever. And so God is more powerful than any stupid conversation we could have. God is bigger and his love is bigger than like that terrible fight that
Speaker: you had with your tween last week. God is bigger than any sort of mistakes we could make, real or perceived mistakes. God is bigger than any guilt or shame we could put on our hearts. His love encompasses everything and we have the privilege of taking care of these children while we're here in this earth, but God is really doing the doing.
Speaker: So here's what's going to happen. We are wrapping up this episode and in our next episodes, we are going to tackle specific topics. And as I mentioned earlier, it will be Hannah and Laura.
Speaker: Hannah Lang, Laura Fleetwood, my encouragers. Not my experts, but my encouragers. Here you go, I like that. We are going to talk about a specific topic for the elementary side, and then also for, I would say, the secondary age, and just provide some tips.
Speaker: And I'm already sweating. Because the first topic we're going to tackle is death. It's heavy. We're jumping right in. We're going to go. Yeah, let's jump right in and then end on the lightest thing possible. But we have to give encouragement. Like you just said, these are going to be very helpful, doable tips. And guess what? I've got resources for you for every single topic. Oh, so we can just go and go to the show? And look at the resource. Yes, look at the show notes.
Speaker: All right, so thank you for listening and get ready. We are starting the series, the Faith -Filled Parenting Series, and the first thing we will talk about, death.
Speaker: in our next episode. Thank you so much for listening today. We hope you enjoyed the conversation and that there are plenty of opportunities for you to apply it to your life. You can follow us for more information and encouragement on Facebook and Instagram at normal goes a long way. Here's a sneak peek of what's coming up next.
Speaker: So that question of why do people die is so hard, especially if it's specific to a person. Why did grandma die? Why did her mom die? Why did my dog die? Because we don't have a good specific answer that feels satisfying.
Speaker: sometimes, especially because we're wrestling with the same thing, but the truth of the matter is death is in the world because sin is in the world, but that's not where the story ends. We always want to point kids to Jesus because Jesus is the rescuer, which means Jesus gives us life. You don't want them to hear about all that as they're experiencing that initial grief.
Speaker: Like there would be so much going on that to process all of that on top of it. I think teenagers are able to understand like, okay, whether mom dies when I'm 17 or 50, you know, this is what she wants. This is what dad wants. So I suggest just having those conversations.
