Revive Our Hearts

Dannah Gresh: All month long here on the weekend program, we've been highlighting seasons of a woman's life. We've talked about girlhood.

Guest (Female): The shepherd is the one who fights off the wolves. So the safest thing a sheep can do isn't to try to learn everything about wolves; the safest thing a sheep could do is stay close to the shepherd and learn everything we can about Jesus.

Dannah Gresh: We've explored singleness.

Guest (Male): Whether you have the gift of singleness or the gift of marriage, open that baby up. See what it is. It's a tool for us to use for however long the Lord has us having it to bring Him glory.

Dannah Gresh: We've encouraged those mothering littles.

Guest (Female): One day I said to my kids, "Who made you?" And my youngest daughter, who doesn't hardly speak very much, she just goes, "God!" and just yelled it out. And I just lost it. Oh, baby, I'm so glad you know this.

Dannah Gresh: And we've cheered on the moms raising teens.

Guest (Female): I just want to encourage you if you know a prodigal—little guy, big guy, mid-aged guy, boy, man—do not cease in your praying. Keep praying and storming the gates of heaven.

Dannah Gresh: You can go back and catch all those episodes at reviveourhearts.com/weekend. But we want to walk well in every season, and there are a few we haven't covered yet. If you've been feeling left out, today just might be your day. We're going to hear encouragement for the empty nester, the grandmother, and the widow.

I hope that whatever your season, you'll be richly encouraged. Even if you don't fit into any of these categories, I hope you'll stick around because odds are good that you know someone who is in one of those seasons, and maybe she needs this encouragement from you. You could be the one to share this episode with her. I'm your host, Dannah Gresh. You're listening to *Revive Our Hearts Weekend*.

First up, the empty nest years. Been there, done that. I still remember the moment I burst into tears at the grocery store because I reached for the family-size ketchup and then realized I didn't need it anymore. Oh, a lot of tears that day. There are emotions, and there's such a learning curve as we shift from actively parenting kids to mentoring adult children. But fifteen years in, I can tell you there can be such joy in this transition when you navigate it with the Lord. How do we walk well here? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sat down with a group of dear friends to talk about just that. I'll let her introduce them to you.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: On my left is Kim Wagner, and she's written a book, a terrific book for women called *Fierce Women: The Power of a Soft Warrior*. Every married woman needs to read that book. Most women need to read that book; it has really very practical handles. Kim and I go back to even before the beginning of Revive Our Hearts radio. These are women who've been friends and prayer partners, and I'm going to stop saying nice things about them because there are a lot of things I could say.

But on my right is Holly, who I've known longer than any of these women. We go back to 1985. You still have three children at home, and grandchildren, going on seven grandchildren now. So you've got lots of different seasons going on there. We're going to talk about seasons; that's a good thing to be thinking about. Seasons is good, I like that.

And then some of the different seasons that we're in as women right now. And then Rebecca Lutzer. Rebecca and Erwin have been dear friends, and actually Rebecca is part of a group of women who meet in the Chicago area regularly to pray for me and for Revive Our Hearts. We call them the Chicago Praying Ladies, and they have been really dear, sweet friends. Your husband pastors, actually all your husbands are pastors. Erwin Lutzer, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, on the radio program *Running to Win* and the pastor at Moody Church for many years. Your children are all grown, all married, and I have eight grandchildren.

And Kim, your children are grown and expecting a third grandchild shortly. I'm very excited. So having my empty nest and near-empty nest friends here, we want to just talk about some of the issues related to this season of life. How to think about those? Let me start with the blessings. As your children are getting older, you're getting into grandmother season of life. What are some of the things you're really enjoying about this season?

Guest (Female): I am just loving hanging out with my adult children and now their children. I love it. It is so fun to watch my daughter. It's like I am seeing me in her. She'll say, "Mom, I do these parenting things that just seem to come natural, and then all of a sudden I hear you in my head saying these things that I'm saying." That is just a blessing to me to watch that and to see. Now I get to invest in these little ones, and it's just fun. I love it.

Guest (Female): I love going to my daughters' homes. I just have daughters, I don't have any sons. You watch your children, and I've had to learn how to keep my mouth shut and let them be autonomous and do things the way they like and their husbands like. That was a little bit of a hard lesson for me to learn.

Guest (Female): Definitely that is hard because you're used to when they were younger, you were able to tell them everything. You were able to sit them in that chair and say, "Don't move" when they were little bitty. Now they are making life choices for your grandchildren, and those may be different than what you would have made.

But what has been good for me is to be able to affirm my daughter in the things that I'm seeing that she's doing even better than I did a lot of times. So when I'm affirming that, sometimes she'll say, "Well, Mom, I don't know how to handle this." I'm thankful for that. Not always, because there are choices that they're going to make and they'll learn just like we learned from our mistakes. That's hard. But again, we're trusting God's grace and that He's bigger than we are to be able to take care of that.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So how do you know when to speak up about something and when to be quiet?

Guest (Female): My degree is in speech pathology. We taught our kids—some people teach their toddlers sign language; we taught our kids to talk, which now in hindsight we regret just a tad. We were real fans of teaching our kids to talk things out. We never let our kids go in their room and shut their door and pout; we would follow them.

When you have that many people who all believe in talking things out, you have a lot of conversations. Now, there are moments when the Lord just has to give discernment about when to speak and when not to speak.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So do you wait for them to ask for counsel?

Guest (Female): I don't always wait for them to ask. I know all the books say don't talk, but because of the culture of our family where we have always talked about things, there's a little more freedom. It's not that I necessarily give my opinion about what they ought to do, but I do believe there should always be the freedom to share biblical truth in a winsome way or a loving way, a kind way, not preaching, but just sharing your heart a little bit. And too, the Lord is wise enough to tell us when to be quiet.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And I'm thinking, Rebecca, you've got daughters and daughters-in-law. They need to be shaping their own families with their husbands and letting him provide leadership without feeling that Mama's still controlling the strings.

Rebecca Lutzer: Absolutely. There were times I would just say what I was thinking to help the situation or to help the daughters with the grandchildren. I've noticed just in this last year that I just have a sort of a weight in my heart and my mind. It's the Holy Spirit that holds me back.

I actually think about what I would like to say and then just say, "No, I don't need to say that." I let the Lord let them ask for counsel or advice. I think it works better that way. Sometimes you cannot say anything and you shouldn't. You just tell that child, "I love you and I am praying for you." That's sometimes the best thing for them to hear.

Dannah Gresh: Well, that was a wealth of wisdom. Empty nesters, you are in good company. So many women are navigating this season right now. Let me go ahead and pass on one of my favorite pieces of advice for the empty nest years. It's this: someone wise once told me, go on a vacation with your husband. Your rhythms will no longer revolve around rising early to get kids out the door or having a family dinner, and you're going to need to re-establish new rhythms as a couple. So go on a trip. Push reset. Talk about what your life will look like. Dream, plan, and be excited.

So Bob and I, we did that. We drove up to Maine during the fall leaf change. We cried together about missing our kids, but then we dreamed. We decided to dive in hard to ministry in the years between children and grandchildren. We wanted to spend ourselves on the mission field of life. And we surely did, and it was a very purposeful and exciting season of our lives. We also talked about mentoring our adult children and preparing to welcome grandchildren with intention, and all of that was just so sweet. Here's to hoping and praying that this is a sweet season for you, too.

Well, next up we've got a word for all our grandmas, the grannies, the grammies, the nanas, the mee-maws, the GGs, the mimis. Whatever your favorite title, I'm Nana Dana if you were wondering. And I love being a grandma, and I don't take it lightly. I want to leave a beautiful legacy of faith to my grandchildren. And so does my good friend, Jani Ortlund. She and her husband have co-written a book called *To the Tenth Generation: God's Heart for Your Family Far into the Future*. She's pretty passionate about walking well as a grandmother, and she's going to share practical wisdom on what it looks like to weave a life of faith into the life of your family. She begins with why this conversation is so important.

Jani Ortlund: It matters so deeply to me because we're all leaving a legacy of one sort or another. Whether it's a spiritual legacy or not, we are leaving a legacy. But we who know Jesus Christ have the privilege of leaving His legacy to those all around us. So I'm so excited about this topic.

Dannah Gresh: I think from the very beginning the Bible tells us be fruitful and multiply. And then in Deuteronomy, it says when your kids are walking, standing, sitting, everything they're doing, plant the word of truth in their hearts. That is our responsibility as moms, as dads, as grandmas. Let's talk about the children first. Those that are our offspring, whether it is biologically or by adoption. What do parents need to do? What do they need to plant in their kids' lives today to be bearing spiritual fruit in the future?

Jani Ortlund: Well, that is a really good question and it goes very deep. I want to speak first of all to those who are listening and thinking, "Oh, that's just too huge for me to even begin thinking about." I want to say that really the Bible doesn't give us guarantees that if we behave A, B, C, live out this before our children, then the absolute promised result is what we want. There are no guarantees.

So where does that leave us? I think of it as a grandmother, a mother, an aunt, a Sunday school teacher, a friend—where does that leave me? It leaves me thinking about not guarantees but investments. I can invest. And as in any investment, all we can do is seek out God's wisdom, invest, and leave the results with Him.

The best investment I believe, and my husband Ray believes, the best investment we can leave is our own personal love of Jesus Christ. When those around us—whether they be six months old, sixteen, or some of our kids who are forty-six—the best investment we can give them is to show that no matter what this life offers us, no matter what we are facing, we can get through it with joy and peace through Jesus. He's the answer. We want to make Him beautiful and enticing.

We can do that in a lot of ways. We do need to teach the word, but we can live it. We want our homes to be a foretaste of heaven where our kids, if they love our homes, they'll be more likely to want to lean toward heaven and go that direction. We want our marriages, those of us who are married, to be an example of Jesus in love with His church, and His bride the church passionately in love with Him and longing to serve Him beautifully, so that those around us can see our marriages and our homes.

Dannah Gresh: So much of what we need to teach in God's word is better caught than taught. Don't you think?

Jani Ortlund: Oh, I really believe that. And that can be tricky because I can talk better than I can control my actions. It's always easy to say, "Hey, you do this," but it's a little harder to say, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." But I want that for my children and grandchildren. I want them to have a visual as well as an audible memory of me serving the Lord and loving the Lord in ways that are enticing to them.

Dannah Gresh: Children are great observers but not always the best interpreters. So on our bad days, they might misinterpret things. How important is it to slow down if we want to build a spiritual legacy and ask for forgiveness or say, "I'm sorry, I didn't get that right," when we blow the example or we're not following Jesus in a certain situation? How important is it in our legacy leaving to stop and say I didn't get it right?

Jani Ortlund: Oh, I think that's so important because then through that, children can begin to understand their relationship to the Lord. When I can see myself as I really am and I feel that little, "Oh, why did I say that? I lost my temper again," or "Why didn't I do it this way?" and we look that child or grandchild straight in the eye and say, "I am so sorry. This is what I did that was wrong."

And I know the scripture says—Ephesians 5, I think it's verse 10—"Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord." I wasn't discerning what was pleasing to Jesus. I don't see His smile on what I just did, how I treated you. Will you please forgive me? I want the Lord to forgive me and I want you to forgive me. That sets a pattern before a child of vulnerability, openness, no shame in admitting who we really are. We're all sinners saved by grace. I'm not any better than you are. We're all in need of His forgiveness.

Dannah Gresh: If we do that, that's also modeling something that's really important, which is repentance. If we don't model that, how are they ever going to really be able to have an authentic relationship with Jesus? I've had the privilege through the years of mentoring a lot of teenage girls, and one of the things that gets in the way most of their relationship with Mom is this very thing—that she doesn't come to her and say, "Hey, I messed that up. I yelled at you. I shouldn't have. This is how I should have handled that." And then when that girl messes up, whether it's lying to her mom and dad or doing something she shouldn't have done with a boyfriend or cheating on a test, she doesn't know, "Oh, I'm supposed to tell someone." Then she doesn't have the wisdom and the accountability that she needs to walk through that well.

How much of a factor is time in grandchildren? My husband Bob has a special passion for this, and right before we became grandparents just three years ago, he said, "Dannah, we need ten hours a week in our schedule somehow. That's what I want to set aside to invest in the hearts and lives of our grandchildren." So coach me up. How much of a factor is time in grandchildren? Remind us again how many you have.

Jani Ortlund: Fifteen grandchildren. Time and investment is so important. All of our children live far away from us. We're in Nashville, some are in London, California, the Chicago area—eight of our grandchildren live up near Chicago. So we've had to make a commitment to invest in them at least once a year. We go and visit each of our families. It's different if they live near you.

Dannah Gresh: In our busy "get it done" culture, we want to skip past that sometimes. We want to leave the legacy but we don't necessarily want to invest the time, as fun as those grandkids are. And what you're saying is that I imagine getting to all those different places around the country is quite a commitment.

Jani Ortlund: A wonderful privilege. It really is a privilege. God gave us those children and grandchildren. I'm the only maternal grandmother that they will have. And so I really want to invest in them for Jesus' sake. Not for our sake, but for their sake and the sake of the kingdom on out into the future.

Dannah Gresh: Amen. That was Jani Ortlund. What a privilege it is to learn from this godly friend of mine. I hope you're feeling inspired to leave a faithful legacy for your children to the tenth generation and beyond.

Now as we think about grandparenting, I want to point you to our featured resource this week, the *30 Days of Praying for Your Grandchildren* booklet. It's a guide to provide intentional prayer prompts you can use to pray over your grandkids. And when you make a donation of any amount, we'd love to send you a copy. Go to reviveourhearts.com to give and request yours.

Well, last but not least, we're talking about the season of widowhood. I've been walking my mother-in-law through it this year and, of course, my dear friend Nancy. This isn't an easy one to walk out, but the good news is that God enters this season with you. That's the truth Holly Bruton will encourage you with today. Her husband, Dr. Greg Bruton, was a beloved professor of church music. He served at Boyce College and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville for almost twenty years. In September of 2021, Greg contracted COVID, and you'll hear just a bit more about that in a moment. Within two weeks, he was with the Lord. Not too long after that, Nancy sat down with Holly to hear how God was upholding her in those days of deep sorrow. I hope Holly's honest words might help to uphold you, too, if that's the season you're in.

Holly Bruton: I believe the beginning months were very foggy, very dense, and very dark. I feel very much even still that there are many days that I feel like I'm walking through the valley of the shadow of death. There's much about life that is dead to me: marriage and life, hearing a car drive up the driveway. Just simple things.

Initially, my description was I was hemorrhaging, but nobody could see a drop. It was just basically a hemorrhage situation. I feel like I've had some very dark seasons of the soul, desperation to the point twice I thought I was dying. I just literally felt like I was dying in just grieving and pleading with the Lord to take me.

But I also know that when the tsunami waves of grief or destruction seem to be coming your way mentally, emotionally, physically—whatever it is—it's very important to bring light to the situation. I didn't know if I was going to scare my family or not, but I said, "Last night I felt like I was dying." It wasn't to worry them or concern them, but how do you know where somebody's at in a trusted situation if you don't share?

Also, it tells us, like in Ephesians 5:11, that the darkness of sin you need to bring light to to create healing. I've thought about that many times when there's hidden sin. But this isn't a matter of sin. This is a matter of deep darkness. This is Psalm 139:11, which says, "If I say, 'Surely the darkness shall cover me and the light be night over the darkness is not dark to you. The night is as bright as the day and for darkness as light to you.'"

And I have Psalm 139—many of the Psalms obviously—because of the lament involved in them has really come to life at a depth that I've never known before. Each day I basically just have to be reminded that God is God and I am not, and that really God does only have His best for me ahead.

Also, Greg's days were complete. He didn't live an incomplete life. He didn't die early. He didn't die young. He lived a completed life. If you're in the Lord, your first breath and your last breath is under His care. When Greg took his last breath, it was what he was supposed to have.

So I feel like I've had to come to the realization: Greg is dead. He's not disappeared. He's not often some spot I don't know where he is; he's with the Lord. And I'm alive. So what does that really mean for me? As I have been prepared—it's a hard thing to say—but I feel the Lord definitely has been preparing me, mainly through the end of '20 and then into '21, I felt very convicted just about accepting the hand of what God gives.

When I think back to when I first started being a part of Revive Our Hearts ministries in 2010, I was crushed in spirit, I was crushed emotionally, I was crushed in my spirit, in my spiritual walk, in how far I had decided I was on a standard that I felt the Lord really needed to weave His word more in me. Just imbibing in His word just at a tremendous level because I was anemic, I feel like, when I went in 2010.

The Lord just has worked in me through these years. He's worked through the podcast, He's worked through *Grounded*, the resources are tremendous. If somebody is seeking and looking, I think this ministry gets to the heart of what it is, being a Christ follower. The resources, every dollar spent, every prayer sent, every hands that give and support continue for the things that help in such a crushing or even a good event of life frame it within the gospel of Christ.

One of the verses that the Lord really just drove home through '20 was 1 Thessalonians 5:18: "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus in you." Don't really take up that verse if you're not ready for it because life happens and then the Lord says, "That verse that I'm weaving in your heart and your emotions and your will and your obedience, what are you going to do with it?"

In March of '21, Greg had the opportunity to go to Israel for the first time. I just wanted to say, "Can't I go, too? I really want to go." But it wasn't for me to go. The Lord really enabled me to be supportive of him totally. I was totally in. I was more supportive of... he was like, "Well, we probably won't go in COVID and all that."

In the preparing me, when he left for that trip on July 11th, we said goodbye and he was having a really hard time separating. He hugged me and kissed me and hugged me and kissed me. We were trying to say goodbye and I finally looked at him and I said, "Greg, you have to go. I have to stay, and I'll be okay." I told him that, I said, "I will be okay."

On that trip, he had the opportunity to go through the aqueduct—I can't tell you where in Israel it is—but you can actually go down in it, walk through the water. It can be as high as waist-high. You use your phone to go through it. He told me that was a very narrow channel because apparently at times it was like a dead man's squeeze; you really just had very little room to get through.

It takes about twenty minutes, and then when you get to the other end, it breaks out in sudden brightness and you're out in light again. So when Greg was so ill and laying in that bed, the Lord really brought that to mind. I reminded Greg, I said, "We don't know why you have such squeezing right now."

Greg asked me at one point what was his prognosis and I said, "We don't know. But either way, you're going to be good. You're going to be alright. We just don't know which way this is going to be." I did not get to tell Greg goodbye, but I feel like He used that and I know that in telling him I was going to be okay, I know I'll be a Christ follower and I know I'll say yes and I'm going to leave the working it out to Him and that Christ is our only hope in life and death.

Dannah Gresh: That was Holly Bruton talking about how Nancy encouraged her in the days following the loss of her husband, Dr. Greg Bruton. We're able to share this hope with women in every season because of generous listeners who give. They've experienced the blessing of Revive Our Hearts resources, and they want to help those reach further.

If you feel the same, I wonder if you'd consider making a donation, too. Again, when you give this month, we've got the *30 Days of Praying for Your Grandchildren* booklet to send your way. To give and request your copy, visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Well, next weekend is Labor Day. Where did the summer go? In light of this, we're going to talk about labor. More specifically, we're going to talk about what it looks like to labor for the Lord in faithfulness, to bring Him glory through the work of our hands. Thanks for listening today. I'm Dannah Gresh. We'll see you next time for *Revive Our Hearts Weekend*.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.