Get an inside look into Angie’s birth and postpartum experience so far, just four weeks after giving birth naturally to the Tolpin’s 9th child. You will be encouraged and get practical insights to help you or another pregnant woman around you as Angie comes back on the show for the first time since having Zander. 

In This Episode We Discuss:

• A new baby creates a new normal for the whole family
• Perspectives on being overdue and feeling drained and weak
• How God answered the Tolpin’s prayers for Him to have mercy on Angie
• Explanation of Angie’s experience with prodromal labor
• Why this postpartum has been so hard
• The tongue tie journey
• The challenges Isaac experienced in protecting Angie

Scriptures In This Episode:

Deuteronomy 7:13 “He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you.”

Romans 8:8 “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

Psalm 46:5 “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns.”

Psalm 8:2 “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.”

You are your kids’ most important teacher of Biblical truth. This is an area that can’t be delegated if you want a different and better outcome than most Christian families. Every other leader that teaches the Bible to your kids is helpful, but not if it’s at the expense of your inaction in this area. It’s never too late or too early to do this. Tune in to get practical wisdom and motivation to do this consistently and well.

In This Episode We Discuss:

• Pick scripture
• Read it to yourself
• Think
  • What is the context of the scripture?
  • What is this literally saying?
  • How is this relevant to what my family needs?
  • How is this relevant to what’s happening in the world right now?
• Take notes
• Draw & hold the attention of your family
• Be patient with yourself and your family

Scriptures In This Episode:

Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

1 Corinthians 2:1 “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.”

Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

Luke 11:28 “But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!””

How well someone responds to change, challenges and relationship conflicts matters more than ever. Just think about what the world may be like during the year you launch your kids from your home. Emotional resilience is a critical skill you will want to include in your process of equipping your kids.

In This Episode We Discuss:

• Resilience: The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties
• You will never lead forward, what you haven’t lived out
• You can’t be anxious and be resilient
• Spiritual growth lies at the end of your own strength
• Your challenges might be small compared to what your kids face in the future
• God wants you to have emotional resilience
• Hold your plans loosely
• Exemplify emotional resilience when you have a conflict with your kids or need to correct them.

Scriptures In This Episode:

Philippians 4:4-8 “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Philippians 4:12-14 “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.”

James 1:6 “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.”

Psalm 55:22 “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.”

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

You may not see the repercussions until years later from the passivity in your parenting. That’s why this episode is so important as we all can fall to passivity at times. Isaac takes a raw personal look at six areas we can’t be passive about which are sure to convict even the best parents of areas to improve. He dives into education, purity, peers, family boundaries, spiritual growth, and creating memorable experiences.

In This Episode We Discuss:

• Passivity definition: Acceptance of what happens without active response or resistance.
• If your parenting decisions align with culture, then the culture has likely already won the hearts of your kids.
• Reject passivity in educating your kids
• Reject passivity when it comes to the purity of your kids
• Reject passivity when it comes to your kids peers & future peers
• Reject passivity when it comes to creating boundaries with family
• Reject passivity and lead spiritually
• Reject passivity and follow through in creating memorable experiences with your kids

Scriptures In This Episode:

Genesis 3:1-13 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Deuteronomy 11:18-19 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

Colossians 3:5 “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

FREE COURAGEOUS PARENTING WORKSHOP

Resources:

• Join Angie’s Young Living Team & Get access to her 15 video Essential Oils Course and More
• FREE! Healthy Home Mom Hacks Workshop: Herbs, Oils, Supplements, & Clean Homes

• The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.

• Parenting Mentor Program, A 6-Week, self-paced online program giving you the Biblical Parenting Model

• Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course!

• FREE Courageous Parenting Workshop; Get the Parenting Packet Download!

Support The Ministry

• DONATE, to become a bigger part of shifting the culture of future generations through impacting 1 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 10, everything makes a difference.

Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 1 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Dad’s can make a huge difference in their wives’ pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experiences. So much so that if their support is missing it can limit so many things in their marriage and legacy. Isaac shares candid stories and practical tips for Dads to help their wives during these important seasons. It’s an interesting look inside Isaac and Angie’s life and marriage with intimate details that are happening right now just 6 days into having their ninth baby.

Main Points From The Episode

• Birth experiences
• How our recent home birth went
• The three different kinds of places Angie has given birth
• 6 keys to teamwork
  • Provide practical support
  • How to encourage your wife
  • Pray for your wife
  • Physical touch makes a big difference
  • Be an advocate for your wife
  • Follow through beyond birth into postpartum
• Too many wive’s do too much alone
• Personal stories and practical tips for Dad’s

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Scripture Used In This Episode

James 1:5 “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.”

Ephesians 5:28 “ In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

1 Peter 3:7 “ Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.”

Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,”

Phillipians 3:13-14 “ Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

Every Dad should tune into this and wives too! Isaac reveals his five tips to making the best possible decisions and leading your family through the changes well. It’s more important than ever to be proactive decision makers otherwise your family will likely be forced to react to unfriendly circumstances. Help your family thrive through change from the tips in this episode.

Main Points In This Episode

• What not to do
• Be surrendered to God
• Desire what’s best
• Can God Trust You?
• Communicate well to your wife and kids
• Include your family in the decision-making process
• Do your research in order to make a better decision
• Execute with unwaivering certainty

Scripture in Episode

• 2 Timothy 1:7 “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
• Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,”
• Psalm 118:8 “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.”
• James 1:5-8 ” If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.  But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”
• Ecclesiastes 7:5 “It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.”
• Ecclesiastes 7:8 “Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”

Subscribe to Our Email List!

Resources:

• Join Angie’s Young Living Team & Get access to her 15 video Essential Oils Course and More
• FREE! Healthy Home Mom Hacks Workshop: Herbs, Oils, Supplements, & Clean Homes

• The Homeschooling Blueprint, the online program to boost your effectiveness & help your kids thrive.

• Parenting Mentor Program, A 6-Week, self-paced online program giving you the Biblical Parenting Model

• Postpartum Course, The First-Ever Christian Postpartum Course!

• FREE Courageous Parenting Workshop; Get the Parenting Packet Download!

Support The Ministry

• DONATE, to become a bigger part of shifting the culture of future generations through impacting 1 million families and their legacies. We are in full-time ministry as a family of 10, everything makes a difference.

Thank you for being part of this movement to equip 1 million families and their legacies with Biblical truth to raise confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

It’s not easy to prevent “people-pleasing” from altering our parenting decisions, but it’s vital if you want to launch confident Christian kids into a further uncertain world. If you’re really honest with yourself you’ll likely see areas you cave to pressure by others to make inferior choices. Multiple inferior decisions made for the sake of pleasing others over time will likely accumulate into inferior fruitfulness compared to what’s possible. It’s not easy to be a courageous parent, but it’s required in this increasingly fallen world. Tune into to get practical advice and encouragement to stand strong and make the best decisions for your family even when it goes against what looks normal around you.

Main points: 

• In the moment do you make parenting decisions with pressure to please people or to please God?
• Don’t be a people-pleasing parent
• Don’t be a people-pleasing Citizen
• Lead your family
• The difference between righteous and self-righteous
  • Righteous = Acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin
  • Self-righteous = Convinced of one’s own righteousness especially in contrast with actions and beliefs of others.

Scriptures in this episode:

Galatians 1:10 ^“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,”

Psalm 85:8-10 “Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,for he will speak peace to his people, to his saints; but let them not turn back to folly. Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him, that glory may dwell in our land Steadfast love and faithfulness meet; righteousness and peace kiss each other.”

1 Thessalonians 2:4 “but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.”

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

There’s a lot you can do to cultivate a stronger Biblical community right where you are or even if you move somewhere new! As you may know the Tolpin’s moved to a new state seven months ago despite having strong Biblical community right where they were. They give an update on building new community in Idaho and share six keys that will help you right now!  There’s a lot of change happening around all of us over the past year and it’s more important than ever to run the race with other Biblically minded people you trust during these increasingly uncertain times. Listen to this episode and ask yourself honestly where your opportunities exist to cultivate the kind of community that’s good for your whole family.

Main Points In This Episode:

There are eight major points in this episode:

1. 1. During change lead your children well with ample communication and vision
   2. Have the confidence in the Lord to be fully who you are (Online too)
   3. Don’t let fear stop you
   4. Put relationships first and practice hospitality
   5. Be discerning when meeting people but don’t have a critical spirit
   6. Be out in the community
   7. People are in three different places (or you could be a fourth perhaps)
      – Willing to sacrifice Biblical standards to be a part of their community
      – Make their strong community an idol
      – Cultivate a real Biblical community while not sacrificing God’s plans for their lives.
   8. Here are reasons you may be desiring to build new community
      – You are thinking of or have already moved to a new place
      – Covid restrictions dismantled your community
      – You are desiring to run the race with people sincerely striving to live Biblically

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show with parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous

Mom, and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. And. Hey, welcome, everybody, to the podcast. Good to have you back.

Hey, guys, still here and pregnant.

And back in the studio. Great to be back home from vacation. Lake Havasu was gorgeous.

It was awesome. And I have to just encourage you guys, because there are places that are operating

In full freedom. Oh, no masks. Yeah, no. No masking at all over there in Lake Havasu. We checked that out before. We would have never gone somewhere that required us to, you know, do that kind of thing

Because we would have been dreaming of being back home, which is we did the opposite of

Idaho. Idaho has been amazing. But anyways, that’s not what this episode’s about. What we’re talking about today is how to create a biblical community wherever you are. And there might be many reasons why this is interesting right now because, well, you might be thinking of moving or you have moved or there’s other reasons to like covid could have shut down

Your church

community or relationships or caused you to reevaluate relationships and things like that. A lot of change has been happening. Right.

We’ve actually been getting I mean, I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of messages about this particular topic, about how do you how do you find new people? In a lot of times it is families that have just recently relocated somewhere. They knew No one. Yeah. And they moved in faith. And they’re like, how do I how do I build community? How do I get the community that I see you hanging out with and stuff, things like that? Yeah. And and so we thought that it would just be a really relevant thing for us to cover. It’s going to be edifying for everyone, though, and this is why the reality is, is that at some point in your life, you’re likely to experience either moving changing communities, changing churches, changing schools, work, whatever it is that helped you to build the community that you’re in. And wouldn’t it just be better to be prepared before that happens?

Absolutely. So we really narrowed it down in thinking about this, that there’s really three groups and you can self identify yourself in one of these groups. So maybe there’s a fourth one we didn’t mention. But so that’s always you could be the case for sure. But the first one is willing to sacrifice biblical standards for their current community,

Meaning, you know, this year especially, I think a lot of people didn’t really realize that people that they thought were in their community from church or whatever, they actually had completely different views on things that are actually more of the close handed issues as a Christian, because there’s close to it issues, there’s open handed issues, and you need to really discern those. Of course, we’re not getting into that. Yeah, but a lot of people became aware for the first time, whoa, I’m not as like minded with that person or that family as I thought I was for the last six years or two years. And that’s what we’re talking about, being you. You might be in this turmoil of like I really like them, but I can’t sacrifice this truth.

Remember, we’re raising kids that are watching and you want them you want to ask yourself at all times, do I want my kids to replicate all the things that I am doing? And so this is one of those areas. And the second one of the groups is what,

Making an idol out of community, which is a huge thing. If you guys have heard us for a while, we actually did a podcast on not making an idol out of family. Yeah, we’ve talked about not making it. I had a lot of marriage or work. This is not a podcast all about that. But this is an important issue within this podcast because a lot of times people will make decisions. Yeah. Like where they’re going to live or where they’re going to go to church or where like who they’re going to spend time with because they’ve made an idol out of their community because things are so awesome. Right. And this was something that Isaac and I, we’ve been blessed a lot over the years with many great communities, that little that we absolutely loved. And, you know, I’ll be honest, we even made decisions to stay where our community was when it was easier. Well, because it was we just love them so much instead of moving back to where like our Damascus vineyard, right?

Oh, there was a time. Just quick story. We had a beautiful estate in outside of Portland where we did the vineyard. We were renting it. We had moved to Bend,

Renting it out to people,

Out to people. We moved to bend, we felt led to do that Bend, Oregon, and developed great community there. And it came up to a point where financially almost it looked like it was more responsible and perhaps a better decision to move back to our estate in because it would have

Been better to Paramount. And it was

A beautiful house house near the whole deal and probably could have worked that out in an amazing way. But we felt led to stay in bend mostly because. Community, strong community, which ended up being the right decision, right?

And so the reason why we wanted to share this little story with you is because this is making there you need to evaluate. Right in that situation. We had not made a of community, but we evaluated it actually talked about this concept of like, OK, are we making this decision because of the community the God’s blessed us with? And though that was a huge decision. Yeah, I mean, that was a huge part of our decision. It really had to still wind down to what is God calling us to do. We want to obey him, but then later set aside the things that we loved, like we are a great community to really evaluate what God wanted.

And later that community was even stronger and even more blessed by community. Later and we decided to move states so much.

Right. And so what the point is in this is you have to evaluate if you’ve made an idol out of community and be careful not to do so so that you can actually hear God

Calling you to do something else. Betray your Matthew six thirty three, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all of these things will be added to you. So seek first the Kingdom of God. There should be no idols, even the idol of friendship.

Right. Or like so seeking wise counsel, like in all of the decisions that we made, we always did go to people and say, hey, this is what we’re thinking. What do you think? However, you have to seek first the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God.

You can hear him clearly.

You can hear him clearly. You do get wise counsel, but you have to hear God’s voice. And sometimes you guys have heard this many times. Sometimes what God is calling you to do can seem very countercultural. Yeah. To well, other people might be doing or seen. And that’s OK. You the point is, is that you need to be confident in an alignment in your marriage and making your decision, and it has to be from prayer fasting. So the kingdom

Our hardest decisions we’ve ever had to make always were the more fruitful on the other side, the ones that looked oddist

Right. And you know, and this as we look back, that specific verse that you were just talking about, too, I think the thing that is so encouraging about it is that says seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added to you. I don’t want to I don’t want to ignore and all these things shall be added to you. We’re talking about the desire that people have to build community. Yeah. If you are seeking the kingdom of God first, all these things, the desires of your heart to have biblical community be added will be added to you. So if you’re following God’s will and so it’s a matter of trusting, well,

We’ve got a dime. So the third one is called to be real biblical community and not sacrifice God’s plan for your life and God’s promptings in your life. And so sometimes if we have something that’s an idol, we can miss God’s promptings. So that’s what we’re going to talk about, how to do that. So, like I said, you might be building community for different reasons and you might be just realising I want to join I want to cultivate a community around me with where our biblical standards align. We’re really running the race together, adhering to the Bible. And I hope that’s what you want.

And that’s a good thing. Before we jump in, that’s a really good thing to desire. But you never want to build community ever at the expense of biblical truth. Right? And so this is something that we have definitely learned over the years, like as far as like mindedness and fellowship with other believers and going to even larger churches. Right. Where it’s like all of a sudden something either there’s like a doctrinal misalignment or or some kind of a need for church discipline or something swept under the carpet or anything that you could potentially think of. And then you’re at this crossroads going, do I stand for biblical standard and just stay because of all the community or do I stand up for righteousness?

Ok, so we have six points for you and we’re trying to keep our podcasts episode short. So we’re going to spend about five minutes on each point is going to be a rapid fire episode. But before we dive in here, thank you so much for being part of the one million Legacy’s movement. When you share online, we know you’re part of it. When you give us reviews on iTunes, it is meaningful. We read every one. And you know what? It encourages us. It causes us to press on, what, over one hundred and twenty episodes every single week. Haven’t missed a week since the beginning. Here, Angie is doing four days and we’re plugging away because we love this and we love all of you and but we love hearing from you. Yeah. Because we feel we actually are energized by the movement if you’re energized by the movement to let us know, because that just creates more energy for us to and, you know, keeps us going. And we’re we’re doing something together. We don’t want to do something just and you know, we’ve always been about doing something together with lots of people to further the gospel in the kingdom of God. And that’s what we’re about. That’s where podcast is about. So we just we. Knowledge that when you do things like that, it helps our donate or buy courses or any of that stuff, it helps us at CourageousParenting.com or CourageousMom.com. All the show notes our courageous parenting dotcom, too. So let’s try to dive in. First thing is you need to lead your children with vision. OK, now if you’re little, little more than a little harder because they might understand everything, but you can still do it a certain level. But if you’re thinking about changing community, whether that’s church or friendships outside of church or whatever it is, new location, same location, you need to lead with vision. Don’t just all of a sudden one day make a decision and announce it to your family. That is the worst kind of leadership possible.

Right. So one of the things that we have learned over the years is that guess what? Children are mini adults. There are many you just like our kids, are mini Isaac and

You like to be respected. So your kids like to be respected also.

That’s right. And one of the best ways to develop honoring respectful relationships that are reciprocated, because if you’ve gone through the courageous parent mentor program, you know that we talk about this concept of respect and reverence and obedience and all of these things. It really stands to what what way you’re leading your family relationships. And this is a perfect example that will actually reveal the fruit of if you are a more of a dictator or an authoritarian leader or if you are one that is actually chasing after hearts and working hard at the respect

In authoritarian leadership leads to silent distrust and secretly disobedience.

Secret disobedience on the outward have obedience, but on the inside is their attitude there. And we all know that we need to be caring about the heart more than anything.

Solid lead with vision. And the second point is confident to be fully who you are. That is so important because you are if everywhere you are, even online, if you are not fully yourself, then you’re not going to retain people around you if you project something different when you first meet them or online.

Let’s give an example. Let’s say someone asks you a question about something that you’re actually really passionate about. Right. But you give them a wishy washy answer because you don’t you’re like, well, I don’t want them. I really like this person. I want to be friends. And if I tell them what I really think, they might not want to be friends. So you give them a wishy washy answer or answer later, a year later goes by and maybe you post something online that is actually what you believe, or you share somebody something and they go, hold on a second. I thought you

You know what jail looks like for the christian. It’s to live a double life is to project something that’s not for you or not where your convictions are to enough people to where you can’t be yourself around your people. That’s jail. We want freedom, and if you want to be in freedom, you need to be confident in who you are and be exactly project the biblical convictions, whatever they are with love and grace and, you know, discernment and all those things. But just realize you don’t want to build community on the sand,

On fakeness, right. On what you think people will be more accepting of. Let me just share something with you. When we moved from Damascus to central Oregon, something happened where you and I both became more emboldened to be more forthright and open about our biblical standards and Christian living. Yeah, and in doing so, we realized that a lot of like the surface friendships that we had had when we lived in Damascus, though, we had a couple that were deeper. Yeah, it was really hard to go deep when we were there. And now we have a whole like where there’s a lot of reasons behind that. But I think that part of it is that when you are willing to be fully who you are and be fully known, you are going to attract people who are like minded. So if you are holding back the like minded people that you’re actually attracting are also people who hold back. Does that make sense? You have to be deep with others. For them to reciprocate is the same thing is respect with kids. Right. And so we really want to challenge you guys to be fully who you are when you are trying. This is about how to create biblical community wherever you are. So wherever you are, you need to be fully you so that the people who are around you and are going to invest in a deep friendship, it has to be founded on Christ and it has to be founded on biblical standards and Christian living in these understandings of who you are, who I am. And I love you and I’m walking with you.

I was just it just reminds me it’s even about the the warts and the challenges, meaning the the not so glamorous parts of who you are, your sins, your mistakes. And I just think that’s so important. Just remind me, I was giving a sermon on Sunday and it was I was just sharing that I’m selfish sometimes and we’re going through Philippians and how that’s made me realize even more where I’m selfish sometimes and how awful it is. And I just think you want to run the race with people who are transparent and guess what? They are transparent with you and you’re going to track people that want that deeper than scared by that. And I think that’s important. You want to be confident people. You are on this. And the next point is don’t let fear stop you from really cultivating community wherever you are. Fear of what people will think of you, fear maybe you’ve been hurt by relationships. I know. I know. Everybody has. We’re talking about human beings here. We’re all, you know, unperfect. And you know what? Don’t let the past fears prevent future blessing in relationships. I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. She is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com And subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, at CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement from us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it and you can find out more at CourageousParenting.com.

And I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children. But Angie and Isaac have done and creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just a really great practical applications.

This class has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids biblically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things of heart.

We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing dark days

Ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights

To be leaders for the next generation. It’s interesting when we are preparing this podcast and you’re talking about. Yea, I’m sure transparently when we were about to move, there was a little bit of not fear, but just the questioning, the unknown that was lingering out there for me as a mom with my kids is going to be the best decision for my kids. You know, OK, this can be a lot of work because building community requires the next steps that we’re going to talk about in a minute, which is a lot of work actually is intentionality. It’s opening up your home is all these things. And I the unknown of. OK, well, what? People don’t have kids that are like minded. And, you know, once we get there and know and you think about those things and they can become heavy on your heart. But you know what God says in his word over 80 times he says, fear not me. He commands us not to be anxious. In Philippians four, he commands us in Isaiah to not be fearful. So here’s Isaiah 43 that says, Fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name.

You are mine. Guess what? Regardless of where you are. What church you go to, fear not, I have redeemed you. Is that a truth, whether you go to this church or that church? I mean, as long as their Bible believing churches, right? No, you fear not, because you have been reading by God and he’s called you by name and you are his. And that doesn’t change whether you live in Timbuktu or Mars. Yeah, OK. You are his. And it says to Fearnot, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. So, yeah, eventually at some point, are you going to pass the waters? Yes. It doesn’t say if you pass the waters. It says when you pass through waters, I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned. Does that mean we’re going to walk through fire at times? Yes, not if you walk through fire. When you do, we have to start reading the Bible and recognizing this is a word that is alive for us today. Amen.

So I just remember on this point, I remember this my my problem was I was guarded in my relationships. Maybe some of you guys can relate to that, meaning I was guarded. I would only go so far because it was dangerous territory, because I was around so many people that when I tried to go deep. They just were quiet and then I’m like, what is wrong with me? And I almost felt like something was wrong with me and I’m like, oh, maybe I’m just not good at building friendships. I started believing lies. Now, are there things I needed to work on and maybe you need to work on? Yes. So I was honest about that. What you never when you’re dealing with an issue. Yeah. There might be other people involved in the relationship challenges always look to yourself to always be introspective, to not to a point of debilitating bad beliefs about yourself, but to be honest with. OK, but how can I improve? How can I contribute to this relationship in a better way and and be praying about that? I think that’s super important, you know.

So one of the things that changed for us that helped with building the community was that epiphany with you and letting people into our lives on a more like every business where guys listen, life is too short and there are too many excuses that could prevent you from this next point, which is hospitality. Yeah, OK. There are too many reasons to not let people into your home. All my house is messy. My house is too small. I don’t know what I’m going to feed them. Well, guess what? You can have people over when it’s not meal time. Yeah, there are a million things that you could use as a potential excuse. I’m too busy. My husband works from home. My husband is introverted. I’ve, I have heard it all. I have thought at all.

What are they going to think about my house. Their house is nicer, right.

Weird stuff. I just say none of that matters. They’re all lies from the devil. Yeah. If you need more encouragement on this issue, I’m just going to put a plug in to go find my biblical online friendship course. Good. Because there is a whole thing on the comparison trapped in there.

I keep telling you, we need to raise the price on that thing I think is so cheap and she doesn’t let me raise prices.

Ok, I just want to encourage you guys, though. There are a ton of verses in scripture that actually command us to be hospitable. Yeah. And one of them is in first Peter, Chapter four, if you look at verse eight, nine says above all. Above what, above all, above doing laundry, above having the perfect time, above all, love each other deeply because love covers a multitude of sins and then you’re thinking, OK, love each other deeply. What does that mean to love each other deeply? What God says in verse nine here, here, here is part of his solution for loving each other deeply. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling again. God is drawing attention to the heart attitude when we’re doing it. Yeah. And so we should have open doors. I have to tell you, you guys. Yes, there are times when I go, oh man, we got to get back on track with this or that and we got to get our schedule. So I’m going to have to say no for a time. But the reality is, is that stuff can’t get in the way. I can’t get too busy that we don’t have time to just say, yeah, sure, come on over. When we moved here, I have to tell you how many times I can’t even tell you how many times we’ve had random text messages from the real estate agent behind us going, hey, do you live here? Because I have some believers that are looking at a house. Can we just pop over and then they come in, go to ours?

What a blessing that ended up being a wonderful Christian believers.

But this is the thing. Are you willing to just drop what you’re doing? So, yeah, come on over. My house is God’s house. Yeah. me casa Su Casa, you know,

It’s it’s the point of putting relationships first. And you might think you do that. You might do that and you might think you do that. I know I used to think I did that but didn’t do that. And no, we’re really in a different place. I’m really in a different place of where I, I literally am looking for the relationship versus the thing I need to get done or doing. And I find that when I put relationships first, God blesses the thing I need to get done. He just makes it work and expands time and enables supernatural ability in myself to do something that I thought would take way more prep work. And so I just think that God wants us to be in relationship, because that is how people learn about God. That is how people get strengthened in their walk with God and for his people community.

And he’s talking about I mean, you guys, we’ve been crazy busy since we moved here with renovating. And it would have been easy for us to just say no to everyone and everything because we have two main projects going on. But instead we’re like, hey, you know what? We’re doing this. You want to join us? Yeah. And it has built some very deep. Yeah. Community, you know, doing productive fellowship together. And then it gets to be reciprocated when they have a need. It’s just beautiful. It’s God honoring. There’s another aspect you’ve heard us talk about many times about how God’s word has qualifications for eldership right now. I’m just going to be brief. One of the things we always say is even if you are not in the season of life where God would call you into that ministry, we should all be striving to be qualified and living as if we are striving for that. Right. And one of those qualifications is that you must be given to hospitality, Titus 1:8, when he says rather he he’s talking about older men must be hospitable. It’s not kind of like it. No, he must be hospitable. One, he loves what is good self-control, upright, wholly and disciplined. You just can’t ignore what scripture talks about regarding hospitality. Yeah, doing a deep study on it, you’ll find that it also is actually calling us as Christians to be hospitable to strangers.

So who is on your heart right now? You haven’t had over that. You really need to do you need to obey God. You need to have them over. And who of you may be judged wrongly and you haven’t spent actual time with them? Right. I need to have them over.

Yeah, hospitality, having people in your home, that’s where discipleship happens, that’s where community happens, it’s where deep walks happen. So if you guys want to build a biblical community, it literally is impossible to do if you do not practice hospital.

Ok, in five minutes, we’re going to give you our last two tips, OK? You ready to discern? But don’t be too critical. We need to have biblical discernment, the Holy Spirit, discerning relationships, people that are good for our families to be around, good for our kids to be around and so forth, but not too critical. Maybe you’re in different seasons and there’s different don’t allow understanding.

Families can be beautiful

If we’re believers. Here’s kind of how I look at if maybe we are further down the road in age or experience in something or biblical understanding. It doesn’t mean we don’t have community with people. Not at all.

That are all, you know.

But but but I think the key is these people that want to learn

It’s a heart attitude. And it’s a

Part of it, you know, and we didn’t see ourselves. We put ourselves around people older than us because we want to learn. If we’re all striving to learn and grow in our journey, then that’s beautiful. It really is. But let’s not be too critical because maybe someone’s not the same place you are. And I think

This is a really beautiful point, because the reality is, is that we have to be also willing to let people grow because we need room to grow. And that’s what we should expect. And our relationships to other people would give us room to grow and change as well.

No, I mean, please give me room to grow. Yeah.

So I just think that this is something you need to exercise with your kids, your kids, friends. Can I just say your kids friends? Because the reality is, is sometimes you can make a discerning judgment call on a family based upon how certain kids will be acting when you first meet them and us. And that is there is a wisdom in that you definitely don’t want your kids hanging out with other kids. They’re doing drugs. I’ll just put that there. That’s a good example. However, are you allowing the Holy Spirit to move in that kid’s life and give them second chances, third chances, fourth chances, and still opening up your home on specific terms, looking for the growth, encouraging the growth, being an advocate and even used as a change agent in their life? At times,

Yeah, but not depending on your kids ages, not at the sacrifice of your kids ever. Not letting you know kids off without seeing where they’re at and not fully understanding where those kids are at those other kids. You know, you got to be careful. Listen to other our podcasts on about these things get the final point is be in the community. How can you expect to connect, make new connections if you’re not actually a participant in the community? What? I mean,

You’re saying don’t stay at home all the time. Yeah, which is hard during covid. So we just states that are

We just went to a political event with our older kids and met people and we met people. We go out to eat sometimes and try and meet people.

We we go to events at the coffee shop and support local businesses. The farmer’s markets and just having people over in the community meeting, meeting people.

And it’s amazing. We’ve met so many wonderful people.

You guys, I just have to put in I’m going to share this as so first of all, I don’t share this to like. To make anyone feel bad, so I hope you don’t take this, but we just had a baby shower, which was just amazing. What a really bless my heart. A friend came from Bend. My mom drove from Portland. But, you know, I Isaac and I were looking at the picture that was taken of all the women there. There was a ton of women, well over 20 women that were there. God have only lived here for six months. And there were women who brought gifts to me during the week that were like devastated that they couldn’t be there.

And I heard it was a prayer fest. It was it was amazing.

It was just it was a real blessing. And so I have to just.

You’re in tears several times I heard.

Well, yeah. I mean, when a little seven year old sweetie pie Audrey Kosice starts missing and God told me to share this Bible verse with you and she recites Joshua on one nine, which is one of the verses that our ministries founded on. And she goes in and then she prays during the prayer time for for the baby’s safety and my safety. The seven year old, the sweetest prayer I’ve ever heard from a little kid. I just I of course, I think everybody was crying in that mouth. But the reality is that, yes, you can build community. We’re only six months in. And look I look at that. You can go to my Instagram and see the picture that I’m talking about from the baby shower. God can do that same work in your life, but you have to invest in people. You have to get together with them. We’ve got on date nights with some of these couples we have doing Q&A is for their church communities. All of these women were from different churches.

You know, it’s part to we’re going to leave you with this this extra point, which is pray be praying for God to bring the right people, but then have your eyes open. A lot of times we pray and then we missed opportunities. We don’t realize they look different than how we would project how to meet somebody, you know, so so be praying. I know we’ve been praying as at church together, and it’s amazing. Like, I’m continuously in awe of God, just answering prayers. There’s so many praise reports.

Well, it’s just crazy every week.

Yeah, it’s just remarkable. And it just reminds me, I just wanted to send that back to you is

Are you praying with people

pray and individually and collectively and as a marriage and just pray

Your relationship loves you in your community built on that. That’s a foundation, right? Yeah. Rock of Jesus Christ that you can go to people ask for prayer. You can be honest and giving your heart to people. Right. Like I just did that today. I just texted a couple of the ladies that go to go to church with us. And I just said, hey, this is happening. And I’m just this is where my heart’s at and we be praying for me and just transparent. Yeah, I love that I can do that. And we’ve been blessed to be able to do that for many years. And I just want to encourage you guys, if you don’t have that, you need to cultivate biblical community. If you don’t have people that you can text and say, this is what’s going on, we pray for me. And they’re not either praying for you in the end, the text message back or praying for you right then and there, you may find biblical community

And don’t hold on to your community so tightly. That might mean you’re there’s an idol. You’ve made an idol. instead, let’s not let’s be that third one, which is called to be real biblical community and not sacrifice God’s plan for your life and whatever that is. And remember, there’s many examples in the Bible where God separated strong communities and strong people so that more disciples would be made. And so let’s let’s let’s hold it loosly too.

And, you know, on another note, and I think this is a good thing to end on, is this this thought do you do your actions and does your life actually reflect that you believe that God’s people are everywhere, amen. The God’s people are everywhere, and that you can build biblical community anywhere because actually God that does the building because you’re being you’re being fully who you are, you’re being hospitable, you’re being confident, not letting fear deter you from relationships. You’re being discerning. You’re doing what God called you to do. But he’s the one that brings the increase. He’s the one that brings people into your life. And I just want to encourage you guys, because we have moved multiple times now and we have seen that God’s people are

Everywhere they are. And we’ve traveled to. Yes, all but maybe six states

In the in the

In the United States. And God’s people were in every house, everywhere we went.

They were. And so you can build biblical community anywhere you can. So don’t believe the lie that you can’t and think that what you I got to stay here because it’s the safest or you know, if you feel like a prompting for God in God’s telling you to move, it is a matter of

Trust or even where you are. But you’re shifting. You might want to shift the church to a different church to, you know, live out, run the race with people that have high biblical standards.

You know, and I just yeah, I think that it’s this is one of the things that has. The trigger of why we’ve gotten this question so many times is because so many churches were closed down, because so many are just either starting to, but they’re like, hey, if this happens again, we’re going to close down again. And so you may be valuating going I need people to run with in real life because the people that were at the church were not there in real life when the church closed.

Or maybe you’re in Canada and you need to break the law and start a little home church because churches aren’t allowed in Canada in many places.

Yeah. So in other parts of the world, you guys, we just care about you. We want you to be an active part of a body of Christ, which is not in a building that says people right in the church or his people. And there are things that you do have to take action on. But God, if you pray and you give him the desires of your heart and you’re seeking his kingdom first, all these things will be out of you.

Amen. Thanks for joining us.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to courageous parenting and courageous mom for free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program, Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, Live Webcast and the courageous parenting text message line. Where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program. Secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Main Points In This Episode:

1. Ask this key question at the beginning and just before returning home. (Listen to episode)
2. Have deep conversations that encourage growth.
3. Create a time for reflections and make a list of blessings from the trip
4. Pre-frame that the vacation mindset is over and give a vision for being home

Weekly Tip and Date Night One Sheet SUBSCRIBE HERE

Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show with parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and I’m Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting and. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Hey, guys, we are still on vacation, aren’t we?

That’s right. But we are in a different part of our vacation where we are contemplating and thinking about what we want to talk to our kids about as we get ready to go home.

And this isn’t theory. These are things we’ve done for many, many years and really to help vacations become permanent, fruitful experiences that create good change in our families. And so the title of this is returning from vacation strategies that create good changes.

That’s right. But before we dive into today’s podcast, we just wanted to remind you guys have some free resources that we have. So you guys know that you can always find the show notes. The one the date night one sheet that we have is on CourageousParenting.com. And you can go there if you just hit the menu at the top. Elsia tab for podcast. You’ll see a bunch of other tabs that have resources that are super helpful. But you guys might not realize this. So I’m bringing this up because, you know, I’m pregnant and I get a lot of moms asking for resources on pregnancy and there are tons of free blog posts with all kinds of links. My ultrasound, a worship birth playlist. And for those who have experienced loss, we also have the worship while weeping grief playlist for miscarriage. So that’s all a CourageousMom.com

So many good resources, a courageous mom. And by the way, anytime you share anything, especially those of you who’ve been through our courses, the parent mentor program, homeschool blueprint, postpartum Christian, postpartum course, all these different things, friendship course, of course, it really, really benefits the ministry because we stopped advertising because we don’t like supporting Facebook and Instagram several months back during the election. So because of the cancer culture. So we don’t want to give to that. But so we really appreciate it. We depend on you and God and making the ministry work. So here is what we’re going be talking about today. How do you want to reenter community and life at home? That is a key question we ask a couple of times during our trip that is crucial to follow up on deep conversations that encourage growth in your kids

Reflection and blessings list. This is an important one that we do every time we come home. Sometimes we do it before we come home and then we do it again once we arrive home

And preframing the vacation mindset is over. Don’t forget that one, right?

Oh, my goodness. This is what we mean by this is that a lot of times moms dread the continual needing to remind their kids that they’re not on vacation anymore, if you know what I mean. We will dig into that a little bit more. But it’s actually a big deal because I would say that that re-entering if moms really thought about it, it’s probably one of the things that they that prevents them from wanting to do vacations in the future. Right. Because they get home sometimes they just they’ve picked up habits, relaxing habits. Yeah. Like hanging around the pool. We don’t do that on a daily basis at home, do we? No, no. We don’t even have a pool. So the point is, is that, you know, sometimes you get home and you’re like, hey guys off the couch. Nope. We got to do chores, we’ve got to do school, we’ve got to do these things. And so we’re going to talk about how to preframe re-entering home so that that vacation mindset does not continue on.

Ok, so let’s get started. This key question, by the way, before you ask a question, if you don’t do this part, do the other two parts in the previous two episodes. But if you don’t do this part, you may be jeopardizing the potential fruitfulness from your vacations and trips. And we’ve done this for years and we’ve seen tremendous growth in our kids because we anchor the vacation into new action and we let the spirit guide all of us in doing that. And that’s what this is talking about. So at the beginning of the trip was the question we want to ask,

How do you want to re-enter community or how do you want to reenter life at home? And so the reason why we put both of those kinds of questions, because they’re similar but different. Yeah, right. I mean, entering life at home could be you know, I think of Ethan, who was six years old the year that we went on a three month RV trip, and he had some really special experiences with God through prayer. It was a faith building, praying without doubt, doubting kind of trip for all of us, but for especially for Ethan. He really grew a lot in that. And I remember when we asked this question, he was like, I want to keep praying the same way. That was his six year old response was I want to keep praying the same way, and then we kind of asked some more questions after that and it came up to and I want to experience God in the same way, like I want to see him answering my prayers in the same way. And then we talked about, well, what about when God doesn’t answer your prayers in that way? And it became this, like, big conversation for the whole family where everyone was challenged to grow because the six year old said this one thing. And so you can really be missing out on some deep, deep spiritual conversations, but also some practical and relational insights that sometimes you don’t know until you go away from home, away from relationships, away from community, and then you are gone for a little bit and you reflect upon that and you’re forced to have to think about how you want to go back and go. You know, I actually don’t really want to hang out that one person as much. They’re not really a good influence. We’ve had some teenagers say stuff like that, but

It’s a recalibration. Every trip when we’re away should be a recalibration for us as parents to our own lives and a recalibration for the marriage and having a marriage discussions and a recalibration for your kids in their lives, too. And obviously, if you have just littles, you might be more directive with that question, meaning that you might be presenting ideas for them, because when they’re younger, they need more direction on these things. But you’d be surprised they might come up with some really good things, too.

I would say even you know, and what you were just saying, that it just dawned on me like when we would go to the beach with just Kelsey in Austin and they were really little. You and I would have these conversations in the car ride home where oftentimes they’d be sleeping on the way home from the beach. And it’s something that is good for young couples to practice this communication of these kinds of questions before their kids are older and involved in requiring leadership and deeper thinking on it. And so this is a really good habit for you to get into in your marriage, actually, because isn’t it true that once you step away from life in your parenting together, sometimes I remember in those early years you were working a lot and I was 100 percent at home and then we would go and we’d be parenting more together for a longer period of time, whether we were at the beach for like a week or four days. And what happens, we become aware of like, oh, there’s little friction in our marriage here, or we don’t see eye to eye on this form of parenting or, oh, how come this is more of a vacation for not for mom or. You know, I’m saying because we get into these old habits of like, oh, well. And change the diapers and nurses babies and I carry in the luggage. But she unloads it and going, hey, you know what? It would be better it’d be more relaxing for me if we did this more as a team together. We talked a little bit about that in the previous podcast, but you have to reflect and communicate, right.

So important. And this question is something you ask in the beginning, but you also ask like a day before you get home or a couple of days before you get home and people start thinking. So you start thinking the beginning. They reflect there’s time for the spirit and you should be praying. God, would you reveal to our kids things that they want to change or attitudes they want to change the relationships. They want to grow in and improve back at home or shift gears with and how we want to show up to the different communities, whether it’s, you know, education or church or, you know, friendships or families we’re friends with or whatever it is.

It’s interesting, as you’re saying, that, you know, that that quote that you have oftentimes quoted, even with the kids, which is familiarity breeds contempt. And I have found that when we’re in closer quarters and we’re doing more stuff together, then all of a sudden it’s like you see the tensions between certain relationships and because you’re together and you can’t just like one of the teenagers can’t just get in the car and go to work and not deal with it or spend time with another friend and not deal with that tension between the brother or sister. Right. Because you’re all together and mom and dad are like, no, you guys have to deal with this situation. And then they reconcile and the conflict is resolved and they’re both humbled in different ways, recognizing, oh, I shouldn’t do that. They have to be apologetic. The relationship grows closer. And then you ask this question, how do you want to enter into life? Some of them may go, I don’t want our relationship to go back to the way it was when we were at home. I like how it is now while we’re on vacation. How can we keep our relationship? At the same level of intentionality and respect and dealing with our issues so that we don’t fall back into old habits when we are home because familiarity breeds contempt,

Hey, man. So so keep that question in mind and use it so important. And as you said earlier, it fuels our next point, which is deep conversations that encourage growth. It sets our intentionality as parents in the right frame of mind. Remember, sometimes we’re reminding you to tell your kids things more, even for yourself. It’s actually amazing. Like when you lead something, you’re more intentional about everything, about that thing you’re leading. So if you’re leading that question at the beginning or trip, what are we now intentional about? Right.

Right. Well, and I have deep conversations, you know, and as we as we think about this, I think about growth because we’re talking about these two really do go hand in hand, right. Because you’re asking your kids when you want to change, when you re-enter community or what what what how do you want to reenter life at home? Like, what changes would you want? What things do you want to continue on that were not in existence before this vacation? So that was something that for Ethan was like a big deal, like I want to continue praying and faith the same way I did on vacation. So it’s like a continuation of something that grew on vacation. Yeah. That he wanted to continue on life. But then there’s there was there were different answers. Right. I remember one time one of our teenage daughters was saying, I would like to be respected more as a woman. I would like to go to the women’s Bible studies. I would like to be viewed more as a woman and realizing that, guess what? All kids go through a period of time, somewhere between 12 and 14 ish, depending on the maturity of your kids, where they desire that, they desire other people to view them more respectfully, less like a child, giving them more responsibility, trusting them more, spending time with them in a different kind of way, not as a kid, but as like, hey, you’re my younger sister in Christ.

And and so hearing that from one of our kids, it was like, whoa, I had no idea that that was a desire on your heart for growth in relationships with older women in our community who are maybe to me were older, but to our daughters were older. And then it helped me to go, OK, when I get home, I reach out to this person, this person, and kind of give them a vision for being like a mentor. Big sister. Yeah. And ask them if it’s OK, if she can come to Bible study with us and maybe you need to do that. Maybe, you know, a lot of times guys don’t have like a men’s Bible study or men’s meeting, if you will, that they’re going to on a regular basis. But what if Dad heard the young guy say, I really wish that I had some older guys that I could be learning from, too, that are just a little bit younger than you, Dad? And then what if you were able if you knew that was a desire, you could set something up?

Hey, man, it’s so good. So I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. She is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family. No matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, a CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement for us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it. You can find out more at CourageousParenting.com.

Stephen, I realized that we were getting too comfortable with the world’s vision of how to raise our children, but Angie and Isaac have done in creating this is literally phenomenal.

This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

This concept has just really rocked my world. It has given me a vision for not just the different things that we might focus on as parents who are trying to raise our kids physically, like how our kids are behaving or what we’re doing with discipline, but also the things at the heart. We now have a game plan to how we want to raise our children. We have so many answers to the questions that have been in our mind. It’s not just these hypothetical situations or it’s not just this. Here’s what I think you should do. It’s let me show you where in scripture this is. Do your legacy a favor and yourself a favor and just do it. One of the best things that we’ve done this year, one of the best investments we’ve made this year, and I could not recommend it more. We’re no longer fearing

Dark days ahead, but

We’re so excited to raise lights, to be leaders for the next generation. And then what’s really important when you get home is to reflect, to have a family meeting where there’s no distractions or urgent things needing to. Happen, right, and you’re relaxed and you maybe pray at the beginning and thank God for the trip and safety and all the things and the blessings and reveal to us all the things that happened. And then you go into a time of reflection, just candid reflection, talking in a circle about the trip, the fun things, the things we got to do, how God showed up, most importantly, and then maybe dads or moms, you have a whiteboard next to you or a sheet of paper or something to make a list. I like everybody be on to see the list, go to chalkboard work and you start making a list of what are what are the ways got shut up. And usually, like I can think of top of my head, you know, a dozen things, but I’ve seen it get to like we had 30 plus we’ll.

Do you remember that? I mean, the three month RV trip, we had the dry erase board out and we had so many we had over a second we had to get a second race where because it was it was over a hundred. The blessings, the answers to prayer, the divine appointments, all the things. And you don’t want your kids to forget that and to see like obviously, if you listen to a couple of podcasts ago we were talking one of our recommendations was that you have a mission minded aspect towards your vacation, and that’s one of the expectations that you set with your kids. Well, then obviously, if you’re doing that, then you doing this reflection time when you get home and you’re writing out the blessings and they’re like, hey, remember when we gave that extra meal to the homeless guy on the road? Or do you remember when we had that amazing conversation with that person at the pool and we were able to witness to them or Domar when we visited that church or when God answered this prayer? It’s just it’s a powerful you guys. It’s powerful to anchor those memories in your kids minds, because I’ll tell you something, one of the things that I learned from myself and my memories of my childhood, and I think that everybody struggles with this when you look back, it’s easier to remember the hard things than it is to remember the good things. We’ve also learned that as we’ve had kids grow up is that sometimes they have an inaccurate memory of something right. Of a vacation or something. And then you actually show them other pictures and you remind them, you tell them the story and they’re like, oh, yeah, that did happen that way. And so doing these reflection times where everybody’s sitting around and recounting the stories of how God moved and worked and how they grew, how they were challenged in a character quality or whatever it was, those are the things that anchor family in

Unity, such good stuff. And I love it. And it is so important to do this and you’ll just be blown away. Your kids will come up with things you don’t you didn’t even think of or didn’t remember to. And I love that anchoring. And if we don’t do this too, how can we glorify God? Isn’t that the purpose of our life is to make sure we share God with others and glorify him in everything we do. So it’s a practice of doing that, too. And if they remember, then they’re able to glorify God when they’re sharing with their friends about their trip or people asking about the trip, they’re able to glorify God.

They are. It’s not just this. Oh, yeah. I got to sit by the beach and just do nothing or I got it’s not like their focus becomes it comes off of the more selfish things like, yeah, they might go, oh, we have this fun memory with that fun memory. But you know what? Sometimes the stories that they share is like, well, God parted the clouds and removed the rain. So we can see the Grand Tetons right after we prayed. Yeah. Or he stopped all the haling in the snow so we could go up to Mt. Rushmore or I mean, there was just like, you know, thinking back, it’s like I remember coming home from different trips and kind of in the background. I’m just kind of listening to the kids have conversations with other people at church or in our community. And they’d say, so what was the most what was your favorite part of your trip is like the most common thing that family and friends will ask your kids. Right. What was the most favorite part of your trip? And when you hear your little kid go, Oh, when God answered our prayer, bla bla bla bla versus I got to go to an amusement park.

Not that that’s bad, but like we do those things, we do do those things. But for like why was this six year old answering that way instead of first thing he thinks of the amusement park. Right. It’s because of the time that was spent on reflecting on all of God’s blessings in the ways that God was glorified and how it was actually more like a missions trip, that that we were on a mission to be a light wherever we went. And so I just think that it can be so incredibly powerful and also teaches your kids to have their spiritual eyes open and that what we all pray for our kids in all things, that they would have their spiritual eyes open, that they would be able to see other people’s needs, whether that’s within your family or outside of your family, and that they would take time to actually meet those needs or at least pray for them.

Wow. So important. I hope everybody gets to listen to this because. The other two were really good and helpful, and they really set the stage for this last one of applications, but you got to do the stuff in this episode. It’s so important why we see so many things. And the changes that happen for our family have been huge. We’ve made life altering decisions for our entire family in our own reflections and hearing reflections from our kids.

Sometimes you just have to get away from all the distractions, all the voices, all the noise. To hear God and for there to be true unity and alignment in your family, which can only happen by the power of the Holy Spirit, can I just say that I say that as a mom who’s about to have her ninth child and my oldest is almost twenty one. Can you imagine when Isaac and I were our three month old trip and we really we were visiting churches on the RV trip, we tried every week to find a church to go to. And you guys, like there were times where we deeply missed our community back home. We did it because we love them. But we also, you know, what the Holy Spirit did on that three month trip? He literally took every single one of our hearts and put us all into alignment that God was calling us to plant a church. Yeah. And that I mean, we had teenagers, young adults all the way down to Little Solomon was two at the time. And so I just look at that and go. Only the Holy Spirit can put 10 people in alignment like that when they’ve got friends and all these things. It was a selfless desire that they all agreed upon. And I honestly don’t know if that kind of unity in alignment would have happened if we didn’t get away from the normal. And do you know what I’m saying?

And only we can think of these things as our lives. But I’m just telling you all kinds of positive change that only God could bring about in our lives. And blessing and fruitfulness came, I believe, because we’re obedient in that decision. And the second we might not have been woken up to that because we’re so we have so much collusion in our rhythm of our Life. Or even just can I say comfort? Yeah. Because when I look back on that period of time, like, you know, anybody could have been looking at our life from the outside and gone, well, what you have in that community is super special and it was special. But what’s important to realize is that sometimes we allow our comfort to dictate our decisions in life to the point where we aren’t willing to actually obey God. And we had to come to a point where it was like, OK, this is all well and good, but doesn’t God want to grow us? And that like he like, are we growing? Yeah. You know, and to realize it took us getting away to realize. Actually, there’s an element of lack of growth for some of our kids even. Yeah, there’s a stuntedness that could potentially happen if we were to stay. That was a reality conversation that we had. Even for us. We felt like we have these gifts God’s given to us. Oh, imagine how the kingdom could advance if we were just willing to say yes.

And this last summer, our six week RV trip planted the seeds for what we eventually did. Two weeks later, after getting home of deciding

To move, it took getting away from it for you to see that it’s different in other places and to see how how much it impacted our children’s lives. Actually, you guys, we we do this like yearly annual RV trip, OK? And because of covid last year, it got delayed from May to June, which normally we always start our RV trip to April or in May. And so that we kind of avoid like the rush of school and public schoolers and all the stuff, you know, it’s easier for us to vacation as a family and keep an eye on everybody, all the things. So we ended up having to delay it. But because of covid, hardly anyone was vacationing last year and we went to eight different states in six weeks. And it just opened our eyes. It opened our eyes to see how local government affected and impacted and literally controlled local citizens ways of life on such a huge level. And then being in places that were not as strict as Oregon was, like every place, Oregon was the worst. Out of all of the places we went to, we realized how that impacted our family. We realized how it impacted our kids lives. And we really had to go legacy wise. Like we have older kids that are thinking about getting married some day. We can’t advocate that they raise a family under a government that is like this. And then we came back and it gotten worse.

Yeah. And then we’re like, OK, but

You can’t see that once you remove yourself from it long enough. Yeah. Otherwise you think everywhere’s like it. I call it a positive disruption. You have to break the rhythms of your life or business long enough to see where you need something that’s completely disruptive for a positive reason

And you have to do it with your kids. Again, about alignment. Can I just say that if, like, we have never been the type of parents that have been like, oh, we’re moving? Yeah, we don’t care, we think we’re doing this like that is not how Tolpins do things. And so we kind of take the harder route and we take our kids with us on a trip to figure out where. So we then went on a two week trip because we felt like Idaho would be a more free place to be. There are other states that are also more free, not just Idaho, but ingoing. Our our kids got to see and got to be a part of it. And their conviction grew even more to where at the end of the day, we were all in alignment to move. Yeah, right. And so, like, I can’t imagine again, I think that we would not have taken them then because there was one there were two kids that didn’t come with us and they were they were more hesitant to move.

But yeah. So good. Last point and a very, very important point. Got to do this. One is preframe that the vacation mindset is over.

Oh, my goodness. For moms, this is like a big thing that, yes, you need to do. But can I just say we need the husband’s leadership on this one, so we need help on this. Otherwise it is so easy for us once we get home, husband goes back to work or whatever, and mom is at home to be the one that is the clanging cymbal repeating herself, the broken record over and over and over again. Going guys went on vacation. Any more time to do chores, time to do school, got to get out of bed. It’s not vacation. You don’t get a sleep in anymore. Come on. We got family Bible time, whatever it is. Right. And so I just think that there is it it is hard for moms to stay consistent in getting back to the normal way of doing things if they’re the only ones that are seeing it. And so I know that as we’ve returned home, it’s been a huge help for me to have Isaac be drilling this in just before we even get home. Yeah. So, guys, remember, when we get home, went on vacation and we’re going to need

Like we’re going to help getting laundry done, chores. We’re back on the tour system. You know, here’s the things we’re going to do right when we arrive, you know, or the next morning after we arrive. Depending on the timing, you know, obviously, dad’s going back to work or, you know, their school, whatever, whatever their expectations are talking about everything and that we that we want to be productive and fruitful for the kingdom of God. And I think it might be even a good idea to just go. What do you guys love about being home? We talked about what we loved about the vacation, but what do you love about being home?

So. There’s some good anticipation. Usually they’ll go, oh, my own bed, we’re all squished in the RV, but yeah, that’s definitely something they all look forward to, right. And so it’s it I think that this aspect, though, is one of those things that the entrance can become a dread, but it does not have to be. And that’s why we’re bringing it up. Coming home from vacation can be an easy entrance, but you have to be proactive about communicating with your kids, about the negative potential habits that could continue.

And hey, guys, I would warn you that I think a lot of just from hearing from Hanji, actually a lot of the motivation to do a vacation again or how long or how many vacations to do in the future will be either the mom will be more motivated if this transition happens well and you help lead and less likely to ever want to do something if it all falls on her shoulders. And so how this finishes, it’s not when the vacation finishes is the week following, how that week following goes for mom has a big level of whether she’s motivated to do it again.

You’re totally right. I mean, let’s all just use our situation. You can if you don’t have an RV, think about like your camping tents. There need to be wiped down the coolers that need to be cleaned out, the food that needs get put away, the laundry that needs to be done. Time for you to go shopping, get groceries in the fridge again. Right, right, right, right. So if there is bad attitudes about, you know, older siblings babysitting younger siblings, a mom can go to the grocery store. If there’s bad attitudes from from one of the kids, when you go, hey, can go wash out the cooler with soap. Right? And they’re like, oh, I mean, it’s it’s the attitudes that actually affect me more than anything. Yeah. And so talking about it with your kids ahead of time and going, hey, guys, listen, we got to have a good attitude. We have to because these are our jurisdictions. We have to steward the things we have. Well, we have to take care of them, otherwise we will ruin them and they won’t be useful in the future. Do you guys like vacationing? Yeah, you do. Well, we got to take care of our vacationing equipment, so therefore we got to clean the RV all together, not just mom, you know, which I will actually say I can’t remember the last time I cleaned the RV. I think it’s been years because you have always led the teams on who’s cleaning before we go, get in and out of storage and who’s cleaning when we get back. And then the other people are on my team with the unload, put things back, get groceries, get laundry going, and we kind of do this tag team thing. Yeah, it’s definitely Team Tulpan. Yeah. And so you guys need to figure out what your rhythm is and you need to be a team because if it all falls on mom, though, it’s going to be less likely that she’s going to want to go boating, camping, Arshavin,

Whatever it is. Maybe this means getting back a day before Dad goes back to work, or if he does get back to work right away, you just even though you’re working in the evening, as soon as you get home, you’re helping.

And right now, here’s another one. I’m just going to say that’s like my one of my biggest pet peeves is a messy vehicle. I cannot stand messy cars. And right now it’s very difficult for me to clean them because of how pregnant I am. I’m talking about like garbage left in there or just even if something spills when you’re on a road trip, because a lot of people road trip, they don’t actually have RVs. Right. So coming home, unloading things, but leaving the car a mess is a negative reminder for mom. Yeah, I’m just going to say. And so one thing that can be super helpful is if Dad was to take that car and go get it detailed, like the next day or that next weekend and giving wife vision, hey, I’m going to take care of the car. It’s going to be pristine or do you know what I mean? Or do it with your kids and that alone, because let’s just face it, sometimes mom is taxicab and like being in a dirty place. It’s just this remnants of the mess of vacation makes you not want vacation.

Well, hey, so glad you joined us. And there’s each of these episodes stand alone. But these last three were how to set up your vacation, what to do during a vacation, sop you thrive and then how to re-enter effectively for great, good change. And so we hope you enjoyed it.

Give us a shout out if you guys like today’s podcast. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to CourageousParenting.com and CourageousMom.com For free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six week online parenting mentor program, Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most. Are making, but more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group, Live Webcast and the courageous parenting text message line. Where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone.

If you’re interested in joining our next online parenting mentor program, secure your spot now at CourageousParenting.com

Main Points In This Episode:

1. Manage expectations 
2. Work on sibling relationships 
3. Make sure mom is supported
4. Lead in resilience
5. Put family needs ahead of agendas

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Check out Angie’s Postpartum Course!

Full Transcript:

Welcome to Courageous Parenting Podcast, a weekly show with parents with biblical truth on raising confident Christian kids in an uncertain world.

Hi, I’m Angie from Courageous Mom, and I’m

Isaac from Resolute Man.

We’ve been married for 21 years and have seen the fruit from raising our eight kids biblically. Based on the raw truth found in the

Bible, we can no longer let the culture win the hearts of children. Too many children from Christian families are walking away from their faith by age 18. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way. Join us as we start an important conversation about effective parenting in a fallen world. Hey, everyone, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys. We are on vacation.

That’s right. We are currently in Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Yeah, it’s wonderful. It’s 100 degrees here. So how hot is that for you as been pregnant?

It feels like 110

Due in three weeks ago. So we’re doing a vacation episode here in our previous episode was How to Prepare Ahead of Time for Vacation, Your Family Ahead of Time to Thrive while on vacation. And this one is what to do during it. So they stand alone. But important stuff here.

So this week’s podcast is Tips to Thriving as a Family during your vacation.

Yeah, so good.

So, you know, as we are here on vacation and we’ve been reflecting, we came up with a few main points. So let’s just go over the agenda. Yeah, the first one is managing the expectations. So in the previous podcast, we talked about what kind of expectations are super necessary for every family to actually lay out what their kids before they go on vacation. And then there may be some unique ones to your family as well. There were for us this time because I’m pregnant and due very soon. Yeah, but when you’re on vacation, you have to manage those expectations. Not like you can just teach them. Yeah. Then, you know, they just continue. So we’ll talk about those and then we can talk about sibling relationships

And then we’re gonna talk about mom support and leading in resilience. And finally,

We will wrap it up with putting family needs ahead of agendas.

So a very important practical tips in here. We’re living it out now. We’ve gone, as you guys probably know, our biggest trip was a three month trip as a family, 34 states around America. And we’re working on the trip working full time to from coffeeshops on my laptop and so forth. But so, hey, we are so glad you’re part of this one million legacy movement. We always like to give the hats off to you. If you’ve been sharing on social media, giving us five star review on iTunes or elsewhere and written comments are always we’re super thankful for those. And if you’ve been through the parenting mentor program or the homeschool blueprint or the postpartum christian postpartum course or read redeeming childbirth, and you have shared about that, we thank you so much. You might have known we canceled our Facebook and Instagram ads during the election just just overwhelmed with the blatant censorship happening and didn’t want to contribute money towards those companies. So but that was part of how we made things work. And so you guys are helping us every time you share to keep this ministry vibrant because it’s what provides for our family since we are full-time.

So everybody is needed. And we just appreciate you guys joining with us in the one million Legacy’s movement. So let’s dive in. So as we’ve been talking about expectations, things happen on trips.

Oh, they do? Yeah. I think unexpected breakdowns, reservations canceled. You know, what you thought you were arriving to isn’t what you expected because their website was misleading.

Right. Or sometimes you run into rain or hail or unpredictable weather conditions while you’re driving or then then it changes what time you’re actually arriving to your actual event.

Absolutely. So lots of different things can happen. As you know, guys, we’re sitting in our RV park outside here, so there’s a little bit of noise. Sorry about that. But lots of things can change and you have to be managing those expectations as they happen. Otherwise you’re dealing with bad attitudes.

Right. So here’s here’s a scenario. Maybe you’ve gone through this before. Maybe you’ve been I don’t know if going on. I like a weekend trip to visit grandma and grandpa. And, you know, you have a baby, you have some middle kid, middle aged kids, you know, and the kids are super, super pumped to get to grandma and grandpa’s house. And they’re expecting to arrive at a certain time and that they’re going to make it on time for dinner and that there’s there’s all these different things that are going to be potentially happening in their mind. Right. And then all of a sudden, the baby needs to nurse and then the baby has to diaper changed and then maybe you get a flat tire. Now, that would be an extreme thing. Or maybe it just takes longer. Than you expected, because you’re driving more carefully in snow, right? Yeah, and then all of a sudden you miss dinner. You have to go through a drive through and you start noticing that your middle aged kids are kind of they’re kind of bummed, kind of down. And so those are the kinds of scenarios we’re talking about where you have to manage expectations you can give. It’s good to give kids a structure and a what to expect talk before you go on your trip. But you have to prepare them to understand that sometimes things don’t always work out the way we planned.

So you remember that talk we were talking about as a family before we left? Well, this is one of those moments where, you know, attitude is everything, where we need to be flexible. So you need to instill flexibility almost on a daily basis. And dads, you play a major role in instilling that flexibility. Your weight, your influence is so large. So I would encourage you to do that every chance you get, which is if you notice someone being inflexible, having a bad attitude about a change of plans or things not going their way or being able to do what they want to do when they want to do it, you pull them aside and go, hey, this puts undue pressure on your mom and our family. And remember, it’s stealing the joy from what we are doing and we need to take one. I just gave this talk yesterday. We are in a one step and one foot in front of the other mode right now. Mom is pregnant and everything depends on how she’s doing. You know, right now what we can do and what we’re not going to do and we’re going to be joyous because we have this beautiful brother coming and we want to protect him and mom. And so we have to do that. Right.

So another thing that is important to manage is financial expectations. So obviously, kids would want to do all the fun things. They would want to rent a pontoon boat and a speedboat and wave runners and and go to that amusement park and eat out every meal. And but, you know, it’s not realistic for families to be able to afford all of that. Right. And so, obviously, again, you’re going to give some expectations before you go on the trip. But sometimes there are some financial things that come up while you’re on a trip that were unexpected. Maybe you just completely overlooked even adding in gasoline. I know that that seems like a ridiculous thing to overlook. Most people aren’t going to do that. But I’m just using that as an example. Right? That’s kind of a big chunk. Yeah, big chunk. And then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, we can’t rent that boat or we can’t do that one activity.

And it might not even it could it be about affordability. It could be about simply being a good steward of our money. So a stewardship talk reminding them of storing God’s money well is important. There’s been times where something was so expensive, even though we could afford it, we decided not to and to change our plans delayed simply because it was not worth it. Yeah.

You know, there’s also the element of like teaching your kids to not have an entitlement attitude that comes along with vacation. No, we we’re all for fun. I don’t want this to be like a downer. But the reality is that sometimes in life, things happen. And instead of going into debt, I think a lot of parents struggle with this. Right, because they give their kids expectations or they make promises. You talked about don’t fall into not falling into the promise trap in the previous podcast. You’re not going to go into that. But sometimes parents get so excited that they will fall into that trap and then something happens. Let’s say a car breaks down or an RV slide doesn’t work. That’s happened to us in the past. Not on this trip, praise Lord. Yeah, but in the past, that was like a twelve hundred dollar fix to that cost. And we have to adjust and go, OK, what can we afford? Can we still be gone as long? You know, you you have to be flexible. And instead of protecting your kids from that and going into debt to continue doing the things that you promised, you need to raise your kids to understand how real life works.

Yeah, they need to understand the value of money and what things cost and pray three things with you. So we include them in every challenge and trial. And because remember, we’re on a mission trip wherever we go and we’re you know, we want to steward our money. Well, and you know what they need? We need a model for them, something they can replicate. If you want your kids to be able to vacation with their kids someday. And we need to model something that’s replicable.

And you definitely don’t want your kids to develop the habit of not talking to their kids and teaching their kids financial principles, as well as far as spending and saving and and taking vacations, which, you know, there’s an important aspect to that. One of one of our family models has always been work hard, play hard. And so we tend to do that. We tend to work hard all the time. Actually, we’re pretty productive family. Yeah. And that’s just something that we enjoy. We actually love it and. But we realize that it’s important to take time to rest, to recalibrate the family, to get away from distractions, have undivided time with family, and to teach them to model that intentionality of getting away from it all for a while with family also. And so vacations are great thing. It’s just you don’t want to be unknowingly setting your kids up for failure when their parents are when they’re adults or even setting them up for the failure of going into debt to keep up with the family. Right. So there’s that concept of keeping up with the Joneses. But I think sometimes, especially with younger couples, if they’re used to growing up and traveling a lot and then they feel this pressure to have to keep doing that, they might potentially go into debt trying to keep up with the family. And so it’s really important that you talk to your kids about not going into debt to do these things.

Now, remember, trips don’t have to cost a ton. And we’ve been on vacations where we had a tight budget and barely can afford anything extra. And it was a prayerful journey, let me tell you. And but God provided in lots of ways. And we’ve also been when we had extra and a pastor who I respect, one of the churches we went to a long time ago once gave a sermon about, of course, the importance of giving. It was about money, you know, to God and, you know, tithing and things like that. But it was also talking about how it’s important to have fun with your family. And we should set some money aside, if we can, to do that, make that a priority. And looking back on the experiences that we’ve been able to do with our kids that have to do with vacations. I would rather have spent money on those experiences than on things than even having to do with a bigger house or anything like that. I am so thankful we have those experiences as a family.

Yeah, for sure.

We’ve said this multiple times to you guys because honestly, I hope it inspires some of you to do that. But going out and doing road trips where you’re able to see some history and experience what we call living history. Right. Can be so so it it just impresses upon your children the reality that history is real. And in today’s world, where there is a massive push for this cancel culture, where they’re trying to erase history, they don’t want people to. I mean, it’s just ridiculous to me, actually, because don’t we want to learn from the mistakes made in the past and learn from the good things that they did and build upon those. And so I’m really thankful that we did do we’ve done many RV trips where we’ve been able to see living history, the things that our kids are reading, books coming to life that they actually know the real. Yeah, super. I think there’s an element of education that can go along with these trips to which is my point.

I want to take a moment and give you something for free if you haven’t got it already is the date night one. It is a beautiful document you can download that Will has some key questions on it for your date night. Just get in alignment about what’s most important for your family, no matter what time of year, it’s always important to recalibrate. You can get that by going to CourageousParenting.com and subscribing to our mailing list. Also, you can get all of our show notes and everything, at CourageousParenting.com. And I also just want to share real quick about the Parenting Mentor program. So many families are being transformed by going through this. It’s the six week self-paced program with live engagement for us and even direct interaction. So if you want to join us, here’s a little bit more about it and you can find out more CourageousParenting.com.

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This program provided awesome scripture based teachings and just some really great practical applications.

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Ahead, but we’re so excited to raise the lights to be leaders for the next generation. So managing expectations also unity is important. So you’re going to manage that. But so being a team, being a family. Olders helping young girls and all those things, but at the same time, you have to manage some situations when your older kids want to do something only older kids can do. And younger kids can’t. And so just set those things up well ahead of time and make sure that the older kids know that they need to be proactive when we’re all together. And then sometimes there will be things they can do that are different. Like, for example, yesterday I went we’ve we had we rented a wave runner and the four older kids and I had fun doing that.

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. And then they all rotated who was helping me with the little kids in the pool. So the kids still had fun. I was able to cool off in the pool, but obviously only a few people could be on the wave runner at a time. So they were taking turns and going back and forth, I

Should say, to our two oldest kids aren’t with us. So right now, for all of us that are with us, you get this

Number three, four or five and six. Yeah, yeah. So the next the next thing that I think is super, super important, that oftentimes gets overlooked is the concept of challenging sibling relationships that maybe seem to struggle sometimes. Yeah, we’ve talked about this in regards to like bedrooms and rooming together, but obviously that’s not necessarily going to happen when your kids are older, if they’re different genders, we keep our girls together and our boys are together. And but when you’re on vacations like this, you can team them up to do things together where, you know, they’re going to be encouraged to have to exercise teamwork. Yeah. In those relationships, it’s the same thing with chores. We do this with chores. Right? We’re all put to kids that maybe don’t seem to cooperate as well and they get to be on dish duty together.

So this is the opposite of normal parenting. Normal parenting is to do what’s easier for everybody involved and actually separate them, actually put them on other teams with people,

Send them to separate rooms,

Separate rooms, make sure they room not together. We actually make sure they do room together. We make sure they are

Unless they’re different genders. Yeah.

To a team on vacation and these kinds of things. So often what’s intuitive isn’t the most biblical thing to do or the most wise thing to do. Sometimes it’s the counterintuitive thing

That is the biblical thing to do. Yeah. And I mean, isn’t that true, though, that let’s just define what those two different methods are. One is avoiding. Yeah. And one is engaging. Yeah. And actually confronting the situation. Right. And so there is a need for more parents to actually engage in the relationships and the issues that are in relationships and deal with those things as early on as possible in the sibling relationships. Because you guys, it’s not like those issues are going to go away. You’re going to get bigger and bigger as the kids get older if they’re not dealt with, because a lot of times it’s character quality issues that are being pulled out of different kids. And you want to help them, right?

Yeah, too often on vacation, the selfishness at home you can see and then on vacation, you can see it even better and a lot of times more time to deal. And a lot of times the parents have the wrong mentality about their vacation, where they’re wanting to have less responsibility the more so they don’t handle it. So there is just exasperated selfishness on the vacation you get home, nobody’s rested and you wish it would have gone better. And so I would say have a different perspective. Listen to the podcast before this to get that. But super, super important. Now, next point is it is so important the person that often gets most wounded on a vacation. What I mean is what I mean by wounded is emotionally drained, fatigued, tired is the mom. And it just shouldn’t be that way. So, guys, we’ve got to be more proactive. We got to step up and we’ve got to back our wives and protect our wives from kids, you know, manipulating, draining her. Does she need some alone time to do laundry while on vacation or a long time to do something fun, even a little break and just

Need help

Doing what she helped? That’s what we were just doing together. Yeah. And so it’s just so important to be paying attention to what’s happening in the family and supporting your wife.

You know, it’s interesting you say it because that’s something that I feel like the first few times that we did more extended vacations, that was when it really hit me the hardest. I think everybody has a different capacity for that. And you you’re learning it right? Like moms, aren’t we learning what our capacity is, at what point we get overwhelmed or we need extra help and sometimes we can feel that mom guilt. Yeah. About even asking for help, especially on vacation if we feel like our kids have been helping a lot and we want to like, let them have some fun. I know that that’s something that I’ve personally, in my mind struggled with every time we’ve gone on a. But especially this time, I feel like we’ve been doing so many projects of the house with remodeling and things, and this was really something the kids were looking forward to. Yeah, to the point where me just having to say, hey, honey, I don’t know if I can do this next activity, for example. Yeah. I’m really tired or I need a nap and I maybe I need some help with the kids so that I can rest. And so then plans change and I, I struggle with being that person. So then I don’t at the sacrifice of myself, which I’m like I’m I’m basically just reenacting what every mom has experienced at some point in the life and some time. Sometimes women don’t describe that to their spouses. And so, guys, if you’re listening, ask your wife if she’s not expressed that she’s doing she’s done this. I think you’ll be surprised that every wife has done this at some point where they have sacrificed a physical need, emotional need or spiritual need for the sake of the family. But what it does is over time, sacrifice after sacrifice, after sacrifice, then eventually mom’s attitudes start slipping, too.

And they might not want to do certain things on vacation. They might not want to go on longer vacations. It might limit what your family actually does because she hasn’t put it into words. It doesn’t feel supported in a way that makes it doable in her mind because of unrealistic expectations on her.

So here’s a good example. Meals. Yeah, meals are a big deal, right? Especially the bigger your family. It’s like more work. Right. So there’s and it’s not just preparing the meal and it’s not just preparing the meal, cleaning up the meal. It’s going grocery shopping for all the supplies from the meal, unloading and loading and unloading and loading and then preparing the meal and serving the food and then cleaning it all up. It’s a large task. And when you do it, if you do that three times a day while on vacation, moms don’t always feel like it’s a vacation. Yeah. And and so I just want to encourage you guys, you know, beforehand to talk to your husband about this. And then during your vacation, you need to communicate how you’re feeling, how you’re doing, what you need, what you would like. Can I just say what you would like? OK, because you know what? I came prepared on this vacation with enough stuff to make breakfast almost every morning while we were in the RV, because we’re going to spend some of our time in a hotel. And I haven’t been able to do breakfast, but one day because I just haven’t been sleeping the same. And I’m really tired and I feel like I need to eat right away. And and so we’ve had to have a couple extra breakfasts out. And you know what? That was something that would not have happened if I didn’t communicate with Isaac, if he wasn’t sensitive enough to see the signs and just flat out ask me and make me feel good about saying, yeah, this is what

I need today. Yeah, let’s go out. I mean, there’s no hesitation for me, you know, and we just got to take care of we got to take care of each other. And the next point is lead in resilience. Resilience is such a good word, so important for today, so important in being a Christian. Paul was resilient. He led in resilience in the epistles. Right. Have joy in all circumstances. And so we are to lead and resilience. A vacation, a trip, a mission trip. That’s your vacation should be all about resilience because of our faith in God. God is in control and we are to model that. We want our kids to be resilient. The most important thing, one of the most important things in equipping our kids for uncertain world is that they are resilient. They can adapt to change with a joyful attitude. They can find a way to make something work. They can, you know, think with their minds and pray to ask God to be involved, to solve something with a positive attitude. Those things are so important.

You know what’s interesting about this concept of leading with resilience as you’re talking, I’m realizing some of the worst parenting advice I ever got. You guys ready for this boom, boom. Give me a drumroll, please. I get asked this question all the time, like, what’s the worst parenting mistake you made or worst parenting advice? Here it is. You ready? The worst parenting advice I ever got was do not go camping with your little kids. With kids, with babies and toddlers, yeah, worst parenting advice I ever got that I actually listened to. And so you guys, you guess what? Like we bought we rented are a few different RV’s before we bought ours and we bought ours in 2010. So we’ve had 11 years. And before that we rented for a couple of years. So we’ve been aven for about 13 years. Yeah, OK. And before that, though, you guys do your math. We’ve been married almost 22 years, so almost a decade. Our vacations were pile everybody into one or two vehicles and go to a hotel at the beach or it was and sometimes we had to get to hotel rooms or an Airbnb wasn’t a thing back then, but we would try to rent a house. And it was difficult. It was very difficult. And it wasn’t super, super enjoyable when we had to split up the family into two hotel rooms. And the reason why I’m bringing this up is because we could have gone camping. Yeah. And we actually just tried camping. We call RVN glamping. Just, you know, they are very different.

But a bucket list of Megan’s was to go camping here two years ago. Yeah, something like that. We had two or three years ago, I think two years ago we did our first camping trip

Borrowed stuff from Friends. That was the first time ever camping together.

I know. Isn’t that crazy? After I think we were married 20 years and we decided to take the kids camping. And it was in September right near our anniversary.

And it was super cold.

It was so super fun because we waited too long in the season. But it’s super fun. And we had we had a newborn and we had Solomon and he was only three. So we had a three year old and a newborn. And the reason why I’m bringing this up, you guys, is because we did it and we had a great time.

Yeah, we’re going to keep doing it.

And so I, I just want to encourage you. Resilience is also choosing to do things, leading your family to do things that might seem hard to other people. Don’t listen to other people. Yeah. You got to just try it for yourself and see if it’s too hard for yourself to see what your capacity is. And so be careful who you listen to. Yeah, because honestly, a lot of the advice that we have gotten over the years, we’ve had to vet out. And that was one of the things that we realized, you know what? So many people had been discouraging us to not take our little kids camping. And we always were having little kids, so we never went camping. You always have little kids. And I just want to say that doesn’t have to be that way. So funny that we didn’t go camping, but we did fly internationally with babies and toddlers we’re so funny.so the next point is put family needs ahead of the agenda when that’s needed. So dads, and moms, we need to be paying attention to what’s going on in the family. And this is a time to listen to your kids, too. How are we doing? Family meetings are super important while on vacation, not just while at home. How are we doing? What’s how are you guys feeling about things? What still things that you really desire to do. And our kids know that when we ask that they don’t think that they’re going to do them. We’re just brainstorming together and you can preframe that, make that super clear. So that can be really, really helpful and really important to put things above the agenda. What do you think about that ang?

You know, putting the family needs of a vision that requires communication. Yeah. And so you talked for a second about having family meetings while on the trips and continuing those, which can be really hard to do. Right. It can be really hard to find the time, especially when everybody’s so excited to get up and start the day. But you’re not going to know what the family needs are if you don’t take time to communicate. You’re just all about the agenda, which, you know, sometimes I’ll be honest, kids thrive in structure, especially certain personalities. If you can stick to that structure, OK, the ones that are the checks off the bucket list kind of personalities, they love knowing what to expect and what is expected happens when it’s supposed to happen. They are going to have the most joyous time ever. But and it is good to fulfill that for them as when you can. But you know what else is also good for those types of kids having to be stretched in flexibility and not have their joy dependent upon control over the situation and control over the schedule. And so sometimes you have to have a family meeting to find out what the needs are. And then you go, guys, I think we need to adjust how things are because of this need. This is very important. We do this for anybody else. And it’s it’s it’s going to be challenging for some of them, but it’s going to be so good for their character.

So good. And if you don’t want selfishness to reign during your vacation, then get in the Bible on a daily basis. Now, I will say for me, it’s even harder on. Vacation to get into the Bible with family in the small RV and things like that, but we need to do it. We need the spiritual we need to be bathed in the spiritual world, the God’s word. So it’s so important. So, hey, the next episode will be How to Return Into community, How to Return into Life. There would be an actual title of that and setting expectations as you re-enter, because if you don’t, it can be a real disaster week once you get home, people still having that vacation mindset. So tune into the next episode

And that episode. I just have to say, like that’s one of the reasons why I think a lot of moms have a hard time wanting to continue doing vacations in the future is because of the return home. So we’re going to dig into all of those potential issues that families can struggle with and how you can kind of set your family up for success in returning home.

Thanks for joining us! See you next time.

Hey, thanks for listening to this episode. For more resources, go to CourageousParenting.com And CourageousMom.com For free online workshops, blog posts and best selling courses. Also, we wanted to quickly tell you about our six-week online parenting mentor program, Isaac and I created a powerful biblical curriculum. Here’s how it works. Each week we release a video with a downloadable parenting package to make it easy for you to incorporate those teachings directly into your parenting.

This is an incredible self-paced program where we cover everything from obedience training to overcoming mistakes most Christians are making. But more than that, it’s a supportive community. You’ll have access to our private online group Live Webcast and the courageous parenting text message line where Angie and I can send you weekly encouragement straight to your phone

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