Episode 290: Melissa Kruger and Building Healthy Family Discipleship | Word First

[Music] Welcome to Sparking Everyday Disciplehip, where we disciple parents to disciple their children with everyday disciplehip every day, sparking important conversations with the children in our lives. I'm your host, Terry Helard Brown, and we're so glad you've chosen to spend some time with us today. We have a special guest today. Melissa Krueger is with us, and she serves as the vice president of disciplehip programming for the Gospel Coalition. She's the author of so many books including The Envy of Eve, Finding Contentment in a Contentious World, Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood, Growing Together, Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, and one of my favorites is her children's book, Wherever You Go, I Want You to Know. And her newest one, Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in a Secular Age. Her husband Mike is the president of Reformed Theological Seminary and they have three children. So, let's join the conversation. Well, thank you for joining us today. We have a special guest with us. I'm kind of a huge fan. This is Melissa Krueger. Thank you, Melissa, for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me. Well, one of your books is my absolute favorite children's book, and that is Wherever You Go, I want you to know. I think it's just such a blessing to our kids to give a child a book that just encourages them in their walk with God. What prompted you to write that book? First of all, you know what's really kind of sad to admit is that book is in existence because I broke my ankle. I had been going on a run. I came off of a curb wrongly and I stumbled off, broke my ankle and I couldn't go to church that Sunday because, you know, it was just too hard to navigate. And my oldest was 17. She was getting ready to go off to college. And I had that moment. Rarely in motherhood, do you have any moments to think? And because I was home alone, I was just thinking like, have I taught her anything in these 17 years? Does she know how to clean a toilet? Does she know how to do anything? And this little poem just kind of stumbled out. I was journaling and just taking my concerns to the Lord. And the biggest thing that came up was, does she know more than anything that all I care about is that she loves Jesus? Because, you know, our seniors get so many questions. What do you want to be when you grow up? Where are you going to go to college? What are you going to do? It's kind of overwhelming. So, this little thing, it really did just stumble out as I was sitting there journaling. I wasn't intending it for a kids book. It was just like prayer time and thinking time and what I wanted for her most of all. I'm so glad it became a kids book because it's exactly what I wanted to say. Well, yeah, I love it. Then you have another children's book that I think is really special and that's Lucy and the Saturday Surprise. Tell us a little bit about that one, too. Yeah, that one is on the concept of envy and helping kids kind of learn that word. In fact, one of my friends, she said, "My daughter was crying the other day and she said, "You think I've got ivy, don't you? You think I've got ivy." And we realize these are biblical words, things like envy. And a lot of kids don't know what that even means. So helping them understand the emotions that they're feeling when they see something someone else has and they want it. Giving it a name is really helpful for kids. So that is in this series with Crossway that we love. I think there are five or six books in that series now. And it was really fun to get to write in that series. And the candy store imagery was actually my brother and I when we were kids. It was based on a true story, that one of wanting what the other has. So, it was fun to see it come to life. That's cool. I'm a picture book fan and so I talk a lot about picture books. So, I wanted to talk about those first. But your newest book sounds so wonderful. I haven't gotten to read it yet, but Parenting with Hope, there's this quote I'm going to share if that's okay. We parent with hope not because everything is easy or understandable. We parent with hope because God is at work in everything that is happening. Man, if we could just put that on a plaque in front of us all day long as parents, God is at work in everything that is happening. What a wonderful thing to remember. What brought you to writing this book? And this one is mostly geared toward parents of teens, right? That's right. And I would actually say I think the ideal age to read it would be when your child's around 9 or 10 because I think some of the habits that you want to get into and start thinking through. It's for the teen years, but it's almost like the parent I feel like needs to read it in preparation for the teen years a little bit like you know we all read what to expect when you're expecting. We used to get ahead of those things a little bit more and I feel like we kind of go into autopilot when we have kids in upper elementary school and we don't realize this big change is coming. We kind of are skipping along thinking we got this. We know what we're doing now. And then all of a sudden everything kind of shifts and changes and our kids change and we're changing. So that's part of why I wanted to write this book. I realized when I got to this stage, I was a high school math teacher and I realized my experience of working with teens and just understanding teenage development really helped me in this stage just to understand, hey, some of this is developmental. Like I think some things that they're dealing with, teens don't really know how to manage their emotions always that well. They need more sleep. some developmental things I think parents can interpret as laziness or disrespect. And I think if we can view them as this is part of normal development, we can deal with them a little more sympathetically than maybe I've got to make sure this kid's up at 7 a.m. every morning so they're not lazy. Well, actually, it'd be better if you went ahead and let them sleep because they need more sleep than you do. So, I think we do really good on child development, ages 1, 2, three, and then we kind of let go and we forget that these are really significant years developmentally in a teen's life. They look like adults, but they're not quite adults. Yeah, it's true. And they need to eat a lot more, too. Oh my goodness. Go ahead and prepare. Yes. that Costco membership so that you I have four kids and I think they were hungry all the time. I felt like a mom feeding little birds going all the time. Oh goodness. And then they don't have that development of the brain where they know they could die. Oh my goodness. I have one that's a total daredevil. Yes. It's it's usually our boys their frontal lib actually is not connected yet in the correct way and that can take to like their mid20s. So it's just terrifying to keep them alive. Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes. Okay. Well, you mentioned that they're changing and we're changing. So why is it important that we change and how should we change as we're parenting teens? That's a great question because here's what I always like to say. Principles don't change, practices do. So the principle that you're the parent, that it's okay to have rules, that they need you as a parent, that principle is still in effect. I think the practice of those principles starts to change pretty dramatically in these years. The analogy I like to use is driving a stick shift. For anyone who still remembers how to drive a stick shift in our world of all automatic cars, it's a little bit like that. It's that dance where you have to press off the brake, press on the clutch, press on the gas, and you might stall and that's normal. But there's a little bit of giving them more responsibility than they've had before. There's um letting go more than you've had before. That doesn't mean you take all rules away, but it might mean you listen to them when they come and say, "Hey, why can't I have a cell phone?" And rather than just have a rule, you actually discuss the rule with them. Look, when my kid was two and I told him not to run in the street, I wasn't discussing the wise. I was just like, don't run in the street. It's just a rule. But when they get to be teens, they really need to understand why we're making the rules we're making because they are three and four years from making all the rules themselves. So, we want to actually invite them into that process, have a discussion. And I keep saying don't lead with the rule in the teen years. Lead with a conversation and ask good questions to them. Why do you want a cell phone right now? Does everybody else in your grade have a cell phone? Do you see it distracting them? You can still get to the same place where it might mean no cell phones till 16 or whatever age, but the way we go about it, the practice of it probably needs to develop and change at this stage of life. That's good. Well, you mentioned cell phones. So, let's talk about technology for just a minute. This is probably the number one question you get, I guess. But phones and devices and social media, what do you say to parents about that? Yeah, I see really hopeful signs. These things caught up on me when I was parenting my teens. They were all relatively new. When I was parenting young kids, iPhones didn't exist, which I'm really thankful for. But then by the time I had teenagers, they were in full supply everywhere. and everyone was getting devices very young and social media was developing rapidly. There were no studies that had been done. So I was in the what I call the wild west of parenting teens in the midst of social media. Now I think we are seeing great studies come out. All of them basically if I could summarize them say for every hour your child spends on a device they're much less happy. That's the ratio you're looking at. So there's a clear ratio that explains they're more lonely, they're more isolated, they're more depressed, they're more anxious, and the biggest jump has happened since the cell phone became ubiquitous since you like every kid had one and every kid was looking at social media. So that's the reality. I think what we will see in the coming years as an increased societal pressure to limit them to young children, which I'm hopeful for. So, just like my high school was built with an inner courtyard for smoking, which is crazy to think about now. Then they realized, oh, smoking is really bad, particularly for teens. So, maybe we should be encouraging it in the public school system. By the time I was there, they had done away with allowing smoking on campus. And now, you can't buy cigarettes till you're 18. And there are surgeon general warnings on those when you buy them. I think we are moving toward that where we will have surgeon general warnings perhaps on cell phone use. I think big tech companies and social media platforms will be held accountable to make sure 13year-olds aren't able to access it. It just hasn't come yet, but I'm hopeful about that. So, we're still parenting in the middle, but it's not quite the wild west anymore. We have more information. We have more data. And yet we don't yet have societal restrictions that would make our lives a little bit easier as parents. So you're going to have parents who are giving their kids cell phones still at age 10 because it makes that parent feel safer. So what I'm a big fan of is one educating our kids and gradation of use. So I would start with the dumb phone for younger kids meaning old phones. Those are great. They're coming back which is great. So it allows a kid an opportunity if all their friends are on texting. It allows them to text, but it's a lot harder, and that's actually a good thing. Then, as they show that they can be trusted with certain devices in different ages, look, by the time they're 16, I can't drive anywhere without Google Maps at this point. So, that's how people get around. There's going to be a time where they're going to need these devices with access to maps and things like that. So, I think there's going to be an age where they need to start learning that. So, maybe even 15 when they're doing driver. I am a big believer in educating our kids just like we do with cars. It's terrifying getting in a car with a teenager who's 15 and learning to drive for the first time. So, what do we do? We make them take classes. They all have to take driver's ed. And in driver's ed, they learn things about how dangerous cars can be. Well, I think we have to do the same with our kids when we give them a cell phone. Andy Crouch has a good book on the Techwise family. Maybe you read that with your child before they can get a cell phone. You can have hoops for them to jump through before they start using cell phones. I think we should limit. Social media is particularly bad for girls. All the studies show, particularly for girls. Video games can be particularly bad for boys. But we just have to do the research and remember we are the parent. Yeah, we're so worried about them being outside because someone might snatch them. You know, as parents, we have to realize what's happening in their soul when they're on social media too much, when they're on video games too much. That might be more dangerous than playing outside. I think it absolutely is more dangerous than playing outside. And so, we've got to reckon with that as parents and really be the parent in those situations. I was at a conference last week in Dallas and it was a forum talking about the family and one of the commentators said that when your child takes their phone to their bedroom, you don't know who's in that room with them. And that just like sent chills down my spine because you just don't think about it. And I know when my kids were young, we lived overseas and we had a rule that they could talk to their friends and play games with their friends but not strangers. And there was someone who was there that was in the group and he somehow got in past the parental thingies and he was an adult scary looking guy from some like island somewhere and it just freaked me out. And I showed them his picture cuz they thought he was their age and I showed them his picture and they're like what? You know, and it's just we've got to educate them. And that's what I did with mine. I tried very hard to educate them to be careful. Now, there are some companies, especially in the Christian world, that are offering phones and watches and all those things that do not connect to the internet. And I think that's a step in the right direction for these tween and early teens. Well, you talk a lot about prayer and how does prayer especially help our teens as they're navigating this world and all that they're faced with? Yeah, I think one, praying for them. If you haven't figured it out by the teen years, you're not in control as a mom. We probably should have figured it out in pregnancy. You know, I mean, honestly, right, you know, you go to every ultrasound thinking, I hope to see a heartbeat. I hope they're doing okay. You know, I mean, you just start to realize slowly you're not in control. Toddom should blow that out of the water. We are not in control of these little humans whom we love so much. But by the teen years, they're not just out of our bodies now. They're out of our car. They're in someone else's car. They're no longer strapped into a five-point harness. They are roaming the streets and their bikes and whatever. And they should. That's part of growing up. I think prayer is a way we love our kids. It's one of those unseen beautiful scaffolding around them that's building them up and they don't even know it's happening. So for any mom, what I can rest assured and telling them, be a praying mom. Be a praying mom. Call out to Jesus on behalf of your children. He can solve what you cannot. He can do what you cannot. And he can protect them in ways that you cannot. Protection sometimes comes in the form of getting caught. And here's the thing, the more we pray for them, the more we are just entrusting them to the Lord. Again, my daughter is flying tomorrow to Indonesia. My oldest, she's married. They're thinking about moving there to do missions work. I can't keep her safe, but I can pray. I can pray that the Lord would use her, that he would do what he will. My youngest daughter is getting ready to go to college next year. Right now, I'm praying that she finds a good roommate. I can't manufacture that cuz even if I did my best of going on all the chats and looking for just the right roommate for her, I'm limited. I don't really know the best roommate for her, but God does. So, I pray. And it doesn't mean we don't do those other things like try to help but we have to start with prayer and ask the Lord to orchestrate their lives in just the right way and depend on him. I would say when I am a praying mother I am a different mother to my children. So rather than come into conversations with them fearful and anxious and worried and fretful, I come in as a mom of faith who has set them before the Lord realizing I can't control them. My prayer life actually changes my parenting. I am a different parent because I've sat before the Lord and begged him to do what I can. It just reminds us of who we are and what we can control and what we can't control. And then there's praying with our kids. What a great thing in a world where kids are fearful and anxious and worried and feel pressure about every single test and every single, you know, boy or girl that might talk to them and everything to just say, "Hey, let's pray about it." They don't want to be solved. None of us want to be solved. But they might want to be prayed for. And so we can do that even when we can't solve the hurts they're dealing with or the hardships they're going through. We can say, "Hey, I'm here and I'll be praying with and for you." That's cool. Yeah, I agree. Talking about the things that they're faced with and praying for them. How do you counsel with parents or talk to parents? We've raised our kids in a Christian home, but some still walk away, especially in this generation, we see a lot of deconstruction or whatever you want to call it where they're walking away from their faith or from the church. How would you comfort parents, encourage parents going through that? One, I just always want to say it's not a sign of bad parenting. So, first we've got to take that off the table. Anyone is saved by grace alone through faith alone. It is a gift of God. It does not say and children are saved by perfect parenting and doing all the right things at every time. It is by grace alone. So if our kids are walking with the Lord, we rejoice in God's work in their life. And if they're not, we pray with everything that's in us that he will awaken their hearts to the fruitlessness of reckless living and they would be awakened. But I always want to say, you have hidden God's word in their heart. You have taken them to church. You are praying for them. They are blessed beyond measure because you are their parent. Keep doing those things. Don't feel like you can force them to believe you can't. Walk alongside them. Listen to their concerns about Christianity. Don't just try to outargue them. Teens want to argue. But if you say, "Hey, tell me about why you're doubting." Actually listen like you would listen to a coworker. I think because we love our kids so much, we talk too much. We try to convince them when what they really want to feel like as we heard them. So when they're having doubts about Christianity, when they don't like our church, maybe say, "Why don't you like the church we're going to? Is there a way we could make it better for you on Sundays? Tell me about what you're not believing about the faith. Tell me what concerns you have about Christians." And maybe sometimes we acknowledge Christians can not act well. And we need to acknowledge that when they say, "Oh, Christians are a bunch of hypocrites," or something like that. We can be like, "Yeah, that's exactly right. We are all struggling to walk in a way that honors God and that's why we need Jesus." Acknowledge it and keep the conversation going, but don't lose heart. These seniors, it's normal for them to reject you in some way. I mean, I worked with 150 kids every year. I taught at a large public school. They want to push, but they also want to know that you can confidently take their pushing. that reassures them. So, they're going to want to push and challenge you. But when you can just keep calm and carry on, that actually helps them. I taught math, which is no one's favorite subject at all. So, they were challenging you. When am I ever going to need this? Like, you know, no one wanted to love mathematics. And I was just, you need this. We're going to keep plugging away at it, you know? And I'd give them my best arguments. Some persevered, but all still had to be there. And that was okay. And I I think it's just trying to remain cheerfully optimistic even when they're walking. And let me say this, some kids aren't just going through like blips. Some kids are dealing with really difficult mental health issues in the teen years. And some kids are dealing with substance abuse in the teen years. Some kids are dealing with destructive behaviors in the teen years. That's a whole different level than, you know, my kid was really disrespectful to me. So in those I would say to the mom or the dad, get help for yourself, too. Find a support group. Get community. You're not alone. You think you're the only parent dealing with this, but you're not. A lot of parents are dealing with this because that is exhausting. It's the equivalent of having a child with an illness. You're terrified that they might hurt themselves. I mean, that's exhausting as a parent to walk through. I've walked through that with some friends. And you need help, too. We focus so much on getting help for the child. They need help in those situations. So there's normal level teenage things to deal with and trust the Lord with, but there are some things that need outside help. And so don't be afraid to get the help when you need it. Yeah, that's really good. I know that we walked through anorexia with one of our daughters and we thought we were going to lose her and it just was horrible to walk through. And I've known others who've gone through a much worse case with the same type of thing that was just terrifying. And so those kinds of situations, yes, you've got to get help. But I remind parents all the time, I taught literature in high school and AP psychology. So I had different questions, but the same type, why do I need to do this? The best compliment I ever got as a teacher was at the end of the school year. This student who knew he was going into engineering said, "Well, I don't hate literature now. Yay, I've succeeded." But anyway, forgot where I was going with that. It's normal, like you said, for kids to question. And when we're talking about their faith, it needs to become their own. If they don't wrestle with some of those things, they're not growing. They're not maturing. It has to become their own. And that's scary when our kids start questioning all the things we've taught them. But it's normal. That part is normal. That's not necessarily rebellion when they're just questioning. And like you said, listening, them being heard and being able to have those conversations, I think is so healthy. That's really great advice. One thing I was intrigued by in your book, you talk about idols that parents struggle with which limit their faith. Can you share some about that with us? Yeah. I think when we are parenting teens, we fear their behavior. And there's always the, "Yeah, you got to watch out for like sex, drug, and rock and roll." And what I really talk about is our teens actually love what we love because they do love us. They might not act like they love us, but they're watching us. And there's a verse, I think it's in 2 Kings, and it says, "While they were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols, and their children and their grandchildren did likewise." And it was so sobering to me that we can with our outer selves be worshiping the Lord, but really serving our idols. And what I see happening culturally is that's what's being passed down. So we cannot save our children, but we can be doing battle with our own idolatry, which is impacting our parenting. The idols of my heart are going to negatively influence my kids to love the same idols I have. Tim Keller, he was a pastor up in Manhattan. He has done some great work on this topic. And he talks about source idols and then surface idols that we all have different source idols. It could be power, it could be comfort, it could be control, it could be acceptance. There are four of those and then those spring forward in all sorts of ways. So like most people might have an idolatry of money. For one person it could become from power for another person the source idol of acceptance or comfort. So the reason I want money could be different but it's a common idol. When I look around our society in the west today what I would say is there's huge pressure on three areas for parents right now. and that is social acceptance, scholastic achievement, and sports and activities. I feel like these are all good things, but they are pressing out the better things. So, it's not like it's bad to make good grades or it's bad to be in a sport or it's bad to have good friends or be socially acceptable within your kids circles or be popular kid or whatever. Those aren't bad things, but if that's a parent's idol and we're kind of living our high school years through them, like maybe we wish we had been the star athlete or maybe we wish our parents had pushed us to work harder on our grades or helped us dress right so we fit in better. Whatever it might be, we all have those bad high school memories that can come creeping up in our own hearts. When we put those on our kids, they start thinking through, okay, is that what my parent really wants for me? is my dad's most important thing for me that I'm a baseball star or a football star or a soccer star. And slowly our idolatry can be passed on to them. In fact, part of writing wherever you go, I want you to know was just know I don't really care what else you do in this life. I don't care what job you have, all those other things. Who cares? I just care that you love Jesus. And sometimes as parents, I know in most of our hearts that's the most important thing, but we forget to verbalize it. We forget to say it. and their impression of our home is that we care that they make straight A's, are a well-rounded child, and always are dressed appropriately. That's what they leave our home thinking matters to us. And that's one reason I was so glad I've heard from so many parents about wherever you go. One said her little six-year-old looked up at her and said, "Mommy, is that really your most important thing that you want for me?" And I was like, "Oh, praise the Lord. We need to verbalize, hey, I'm trying to teach you this stuff like responsibility or hard work at sports because these are good things, but just know what's more important than that you're the star of the baseball team, is that you're in church on Sunday. So, I think some things that have really been lost culturally, we've lost family dinners to activities. We've lost church to sports and crazy scholarship stuff like where kids, oh, I can't go to church cuz I got to say for that test. These again are not bad things, but they're replacing the better things. And that's the problem of idolatry. They're often good things gone bad that make no room for the better thing. So that's my concern with those as parents today. That's really good. I know you're the vice president of disciplehip programming with the Gospel Coalition and you have a huge number of books. And so before we end today, I wanted to have you share a little bit about that and about your books. I think you've got some wonderful ones. We were talking before we were recording that Parenting with Hope is geared toward parenting teens and you said there's another one geared more towards parenting young children. So could you talk about those things for a minute? Yeah. Earlier I wrote a book called Walking with God in the Season of Motherhood. When I first entered that season of motherhood, I wanted a Bible study that engaged my heart with this new season of life. So really, that's a book on the fruit of the spirit applied to motherhood. It's just asking it through the lens of being a mom. What does it look like to be loving and joyful and peaceful and patient? And we kind of walk through Galatians 5 and thinking through motherhood, which goodness, don't we need all of those things in motherhood? The spirit. and it's meant to kind of be cheering a young mom on in that season towards love and good deeds as she's doing that. I also have a book called Five Things to Pray for Your Kids. It is so short and I used it this morning. All it is is scriptures to pray for your kids. They're all kind of woven together. So, it's like this morning I was praying for good friendships for my kids. And I still pray these things. I've got a son in college. I've got a daughter who's married. I got one left at home and I'm still praying that prayer for them because it still matters at those ages that I was praying for them at four. A lot of these things don't change. What I love about that little guide is it keeps me praying for all those things. You don't think I prayed for that five years ago. Now we're good on that. God, it keeps me actively praying not just for the emergency but for the health. I think we often view prayer as an ER room and rather than like hey we just need to be praying actively for good things too in their lives. And then my husband and I did a five things to pray for your spouse. So that's out there too which obviously the marriage relationship is really important as we're parenting. Then I've got some kids books which has been really fun. I've got a Bible study on Philippians. They're really all over the place. I've got a book on mentoring so older women to younger women. a couple of books I've edited for the Gospel Coalition, one on identity, and one on fruitfulness, and that's a devotional on fruitfulness. So, yeah, they're kind of all over the place. I've got some mothering, some kids books, some Bible studies, and then trade book. A lot of that just came out of my work in the local church. So, for 10 years, I served as a women's ministry director at my church, and I was just trying to write the things I couldn't find. So, that's where a lot of those came from. Again, I was a math major. I had no plans to be a writer. It's been a happy surprise. And I love what I get to do with the Gospel Coalition. We really are trying in the women's space to help equip and encourage women leaders through we have some online cohorts. We have a big big conference every even year in June. And we just try to create resources that really help and serve the church. Yeah, I found some really wonderful articles on that website. I really appreciate the things that are there. You mentioned about marriages and that's one thing I think of with teens as our kids are getting into the teen years. We see a lot of marriages break down especially we were missionaries in Asia and where we were in Taiwan they have the highest divorce rate when the kids have left home because their focus has been the husband has been working to support the family. The wife has been preparing the kids, helping the kids become the students they need to be. so they can get a successful job and do well in college and they're just so focused on all of that they lose their marriage in the process and we may not see it quite to that extent in the US but definitely it's a problem. So could you speak to that as we finish up here today? Yeah, I think we do. I think and this is probably the problem of academics and achievement and all those things and a little bit of we're living our life through our kids rather than living our life. So, we've got to live in our life, which means kids are a welcome addition, but they are not the center of our homes. Hopefully, Jesus is the center. And then we're going to focus on our marriages because that's of the family unit. That's where the family began. The family didn't begin when we had children. The family began when we came together as a husband and wife. And that means taking time for each other. I think my husband and I did a really poor job of this in the early years of our marriage. in some ways because we were very very ministry-minded. So, every date night was actually some ministry event at the church that we were like paying a babysitter to go do all these ministry things. And we really found ourselves just in a place where we forgot how to have fun with each other is what I would say. And I remember looking at him and thinking we need to do some date nights. And we both talked about this and we realized that's actually cheaper than counseling. So, I always say to people, I'm all for counseling if you need marriage counseling along the way or whatever, but we were like, what if we just took the money and went on some nice dinners and paid a sitter and that would be cheaper. And sometimes what you just need is time together remembering why you like each other in the first place. Not even necessarily to work on your marriage, just to have fun together. spend the night in when the kids are in bed like dealing with the complaints, but go to a concert, go to dinner, go do what you both loved before you had kids. Try to create space for that. And I know that can be hard and it can feel too expensive to get a sitter and everything, but I always tell people divorce is really expensive. And so the more we can build in the better. And I think taking the time and again cheap dates can be had. My husband and I's favorite food is pizza. And you know, you can get pizza cheap wherever. There are things we can do to still have fun with each other that can be done at a budget conscious way. But I do think that that is the foundation of your family. And so it's good to just keep remembering. And that relationship is going to just really help your kids not just in the teen years, but in their 20s and in their 30s as they're making decisions about who they marry. We do not have perfect marriages. They're going to see us fight. I don't even think that's bad because I think there's this overestimation of what marriage is going to be. This person's going to solve all your problems and make your life complete and all these things. A marriage is a great gift, but we all know it's just two sinners trying to make it through this pilgrimage together. And they can see the bumps, but let them see, yeah, there are bumps, but we're going to keep at it with each other. And that's a grace to your kids. Yes. Such a blessing. My parents divorced when my younger sister went into college. I was in my second or third year, and they never fought. I mean, maybe once or twice a year, you know, but they didn't communicate. They were in two different worlds and there wasn't a lot of respect in the marriage. I look at the marriages they had after that where they had such respect from their spouses and for their spouses and what a difference that made. And they have successful marriages after the loss of the first one. But if we could have just found that in the first one, what a blessing that would have been. And then with my husband and I when we had the four kids all at home and we're on the mission field and he's like working himself to death. It felt like I realized we hadn't even said I love you in I don't know how long. And I thought I'm going to say that every day to him. And I just started every day looking at him in the eyes and saying I love you or I appreciate you or I like you. And I mean it was such a simple thing but it totally changed everything. And it was like we had a total renewal of our commitment, finding ourselves again as a couple. And I think God just gave me that wisdom to save our marriage because I think it could have gotten bad because we just were, you know, going two different directions. And of course, as a mom, I was feeling really lonely at that point, too, because I was so busy with the kids. I didn't have a lot of friends. I didn't have a lot of time. And Dave was always getting to go places. He even got to go on short-term missions. And I was feeling a little put out because I was missing all the fun. And that can be overwhelming for young moms. Even just having that little bit of time where you look each other in the eye and remember. That's right. So important. We used to go on dates and all we would do is talk about ministry and we're like, "This is sad." Yes. Yes. And it's great to have other interests, but I do think ministry can be a particularly good thing that can make us miss each other. You know, you're on the mission field. Oh, you're doing all this important work. And I think sometimes we miss building a loving home changes the world. It does. is when our homes are stable, that's when we can invite others in with the warmth of the gospel and send kids out who are loved and just not wrestling with some of the things that we might when our homes are broken. And not that that's always the case, but it's tough, I think, whatever age kids to see your parents fight. I don't like seeing my parents squabble now. You know, they've been married for 50ome years and I'm like, h yeah, I think they're sticking it out at this point. I feel pretty good about that. But it does affect us as adult children and it affects our kids at all ages. They they want to see their parents love each other. That's a stleness that they want to see and so it's worth fighting for and it takes time. Yes, it takes time. Well, thank you for sharing with us today. You've given us so many good pointers. I love your books. Tell us your website where people can find you. melissabbecrugger.com or you can find me at the Gospel Coalition and I blog there as well. So, both of those places. Okay, we'll have those links in the show notes so people can go right to them. And again, thank you so much. I know you're busy and I know you've got a lot going on, but I've really appreciated your time today. It's been so fun to chat. Thanks for having me. Thank you for spending time with us today. If we sparked any questions or you want to share a comment, we would love to hear from you. You can leave a message on our blog post on my website, terryhallardbr.com. You'll find the show notes there with all the links and everything you need as well. And you can also reach out to Melissa on her website or through the Gospel Coalition. I want to let you know about disciplehip coaching groups. In these groups, you get to ask your questions and share concerns you're facing with raising, leading, and discipling your children. You can join the once a month group, which meets for an hour each month, and we discuss those questions. You turn them in earlier so we're ready to go and we can add follow-up questions during that time. And then we also have a twice a month group that meets for 90 minutes each time. And you can find out how to sign up for those groups, get personal coaching from me and advice from the scriptures. And you can find that on the information page, which the link is in the show notes. We also have private coaching if you feel like you need that. And that information is there as well. But most of all, we pray you feel empowered, equipped, and encouraged to walk by faith and to embrace everyday disciplehip every day with the children in your life. [Music]