FamilyLife Today®

Adam Griffin: If we could say that to every parent, just remember your path is different than your spouse's. Your path is different than your kid's and your path is certainly different than the family next door. You just worry about following Jesus. You mourn with those who mourn, you rejoice with those who rejoice, and you find freedom in that.

Ann Wilson: Welcome to FamilyLife Today®, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave Wilson: And I’m Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is FamilyLife Today®. I feel like I’m looking over at a younger version of us.

Ann Wilson: You do? He’s got no hair, but he’s definitely many years younger. This is a great couple. Our listeners, you’re going to love listening today and getting some insight and wisdom from Chelsea and from Adam Griffin because they’re going to teach us some stuff that you’re going to want.

Maybe you as a listener, you’ve experienced this. Dave and I were married six years before we had kids and we were in a groove living out the gospel in our marriage. We were struggling a little here and there, doing fairly well at times.

Dave Wilson: We were struggling.

Ann Wilson: But I’m saying by six years we felt like we’ve got it. Then we had children and suddenly, there’s no fruit displayed. Instead of love, joy, peace, patience, I think it was all the opposite. I thought to myself, "Who have I become? I don’t even know this person."

I’m guessing some of our listeners have felt that too. There’s parts of you that come out in parenting you don’t even recognize who you are anymore. So you’re the experts. You wrote a book on parenting, you have a podcast on parenting.

Chelsea Griffin: He has a book about the gospel and a podcast about discipleship.

Dave Wilson: The gospel applied to parenting and discipleship. Have you experienced some of that? You’ve got three boys, we have three boys. We don’t even know what raising girls is like. We have granddaughters but it’s a different world. Did you experience some of that?

Chelsea Griffin: Our story’s different. We didn’t have time to think about whether or not we would have children. We just had children right when we got married, a few months after we got married.

Dave Wilson: Was that a planned deal?

Adam Griffin: It was my hope, my plan with the Lord, if that’s what you mean.

Chelsea Griffin: After I told Adam that I was pregnant, he said that he had been praying for that. And I said, "If you were praying for someone to get pregnant, you should tell them that because the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." So that would have been neat just to have a heads up.

I had no idea. I was very surprised. I thought I had mono for two months because from people around me, it took a long time to get pregnant. I had heard that. So I thought there’s no way. I’m so tired, surely I probably have mono. I was coaching high school at the time so I was around kids all the time and I’m just sick. Our story was building all of it at the same time.

Adam Griffin: We’re still learning each other at the same time we’re figuring out how to parent.

Dave Wilson: That’s not easy.

Adam Griffin: It was fun, but at least I did it without hair. I didn’t have to grieve over the fact that my hair was gone. It was already gone. That was a decision made, so that was nice.

Ann Wilson: The book is called *Good News for Parents: How God Can Restore Our Joy and Relieve Our Burdens*. Parents hear that and like, "Yes, I want that." Why this topic? Is it basically your heart for discipleship as you just talked about?

Adam Griffin: Last time I got to have a conversation with you, it was related to a book we were putting out called *Family Discipleship* with Chandler, which is a very practical book. It’s about spiritually leading your family, similar to maybe a book you’d pick up on premarital counseling. How are we going to do this? How are we going to think about spiritually leading our home?

Some of the response we got from that book, while overwhelmingly positive about equipping people in the practical nature, we heard what you might imagine. Parents saying, "I can’t read a book like that. I am overwhelmed. So you give me practical advice, I feel worse. I feel like the bar got higher. You’re just revealing again how awful I am as a parent."

We want Christian parents to walk in going, "Hey, I can actually be humble enough to receive any wisdom or advice you guys have to offer because I trust the Lord. My burdens, I’ve cast them onto Him. My despair, no, I’ve turned to hope and to joy." So we wanted to be able to write something that would address this spiritual aspect and emotional aspect of parenting that would make it clear this freedom to be able to receive the kind of wisdom you might have in any other parenting book.

When you guys wrote on the fact that there’s no perfect parent, I’m sure that similar vein was in your mind. If we write a book that says, "Here’s how to parent perfectly," there’s going to be a lot of parents who go, "I couldn’t even start that. And if I finished that book, I’d feel worse."

This book is really a gospel-y book that is reminding parents the freedom you have in Christ to make mistakes, the freedom you have in Christ to be imperfect, and yet turn to a perfect Father in the midst of it and say, "What does that mean? That not only my sins are covered, but I’m not parenting alone, that the God of the universe is parenting with me." So trying to encourage parents in a way that sets them free to read anything or follow anything as they try to parent and lead their families. But that was the heart behind the book.

Ann Wilson: It’s exactly Vertical Marriage. You can’t apply this without Jesus for more than a week. "Okay, here’s your game plan. Just do this." They’ll do it for about five days and when their spouse doesn’t return what they’ve been given, they’re like, "I’m out." You’re saying the same thing. When we’re connected to Jesus and the gospel, we automatically in our surrender are displaying fruit.

Adam Griffin: There’s a freedom that we would intellectually as Christians say, "That’s true of me," but then we’d parent like it’s not true of us. We parent like everything’s on the line. We parent like I’m not more than a conqueror. We parent like I’m still under condemnation, not that there’s no condemnation in Christ.

Part of that is not just a mindset change, it’s a realizing what’s true and it’s fighting back some lies and it’s seeing how the fruit of the Spirit that God promises come from walking with Him really would be relief to our soul for all of the things that we struggle with the most, things like exhaustion, anxiety, despair, bitterness.

The Lord has called us out of those things, not into those things. It’s so great that the fruit of the Spirit for the parent is not bitterness. It’s not, "If you walk with the Lord, you will be bitter," or "If you walk with the Lord, you will be exhausted," or "If you walk with the Lord, you will be anxious." No, the fruit of the Spirit is so much better than that.

That’s what we wanted to write from. We have some friends that were more in my mind as I wrote that are parents that really struggle or are feeling very weary and thinking what would this mom, what would this dad need to hear right now from the Word of God.

Dave Wilson: Has there been a struggle for you guys? How old is your oldest?

Adam Griffin: Our oldest is 13.

Dave Wilson: I know you’re not perfect parents, but how do you live out what you just said, the gospel in terms of three boys, imperfection every day? What’s the messiness look like?

Chelsea Griffin: We’re watching our kids develop and I’m sure you guys remember from when your kids were young, there’s a temptation to try to force your kids into the vision that you have for them. It’s hard to see your kids struggle. I wish that I could relieve my children of the struggles that I already see in them. I’m sure you guys relate to that.

But when I see my children care deeply about what other people think of them, I wish they could know the unconditional love that is for them from their parents and from the Father, that they could be set free from that. And I cannot physically or any other way, I cannot make that happen. I cannot set them free.

Those are the things that are really hard for me that I really have to surrender to the Lord and trust Him with it. And also, I recognize in that, that’s how the Lord sees me. He sees me caring what other people think. He sees me afraid sometimes. He sees me in that and He would love to set me free completely or love to see me walk with reckless abandon to those things and trust Him completely.

And yet He’s so patient with me. Watching our boys grow up, I just have to constantly turn these things over about what they will be like, what they’re like today, how they’re interacting with other people, and I just can’t control it. That has to be a source of relief, not a source of anxiety.

Adam Griffin: There’s so many aspects of what you’re talking about, Chelsea, that are realities too. And while we wrote about it, we also speak about it. It’s very clear to us that we are in desperate need of the same wisdom that in the scripture we’re trying to offer to other parents all the time.

We don’t share from a place of perfect strength and perfect parenting and so let us tell you how this is done. Even many of the things we wrote in the book, I thought, "How can I be more vulnerable here to say this is where I struggle?" There’s a chapter on inadequacy in there that is so my heart as a pastor, as a dad.

I feel inadequate as a person who speaks on parenting, who’s right now doing an interview on parenting that has left his kids at home to come do it. And how that gets in my head about how my kids might one day grow up and go, "Really? You were going to go talk to somebody else about parenting while you left us at home without you?"

That overwhelming sense, Spurgeon calls it an intense awareness of my own inadequacy. I feel that all the time. And I need the gospel to remind me what’s true of me in the midst of that. That I am not a filthy, worthless rag in the kingdom of God, but I’m an adopted son that was valued enough that God would send His own Son to die for me. In the midst of that, the voice of God would be the volume turned up in my life where I really need it.

So often I hear the lies that turn Jesus from my advocate, which is what the scripture calls Him, into the accuser, which is what the enemy is called. And when I think because I found something true about me, that then Jesus must be my accuser, instead of the fact that Satan might use something true about me to accuse me and that God might see that truth in me and say, "Yeah, but I have plucked that man out of that," which is what we see in scripture.

I need that comfort both from friends, from the Word of God, from my wife as well. But if your question is, "Where do we struggle?" the question is, "Wherever you see us." And when do we struggle? Whenever you’ve seen us, we’ve been struggling. There’s not a perfect day for us, a perfect hour for us, but we follow a perfect God who loves us better than we deserve.

Dave Wilson: One of the best things we’ve ever done for our marriage is not sit in a studio and record a podcast or even stand on a stage and talk about marriage. It’s having couples in our home and we pour into their marriages.

Ann Wilson: For sure. And I think too, even sitting in church, that is so essential. We all need to do that. But there’s something intimate about being in a small group that changes your life. Jesus changes your life.

Dave Wilson: But we’ve had couples in our home and FamilyLife Today® has all these tools, it’s plug and play small group studies and workbooks. We’ve used them all. Art of Marriage, Vertical Marriage, you name it, we’ve used them and they are great and they’re easy to use. And here’s the deal: right now it’s 25% off.

Ann Wilson: That’s incredible.

Dave Wilson: All the small group kits and workbooks are 25% off now through the end of the month. So you can go to familylifetoday.com and get yours and go change some marriages.

Ann Wilson: Don’t forget, through the end of the month, all FamilyLife Today® small group kits and workbooks are 25% off. Start the year with purpose and go to familylifetoday.com.

Dave Wilson: How do you—and you didn’t use the word, but you brought up the idea because in your book—shame. As parents we carry sometimes, or maybe a lot of times, shame.

Ann Wilson: I’ve never experienced shame as a parent as much of the condemnation, as you’re saying, the accuser. I’d put my head on the pillow and think, "I failed today."

Dave Wilson: There were times we’d walk back in their boys' bedroom at night and go, "Hey, we’ve got to apologize."

Adam Griffin: I’m sorry I’m saying sorry again.

Ann Wilson: I used to write letters to them. I’d come in and apologize and then I’d write this big letter. It’s good to apologize, to repent for them to see us. That’s really important. But then when does it shift over into the shame and what do we do?

Adam Griffin: Chelsea has blessed me a ton in this area. When you think about parenting guilt, one of the things that I love when Chelsea speaks to a lot of moms, she’ll talk about how you know you’re walking in shame is when you see other moms do something good and you don’t celebrate them, you feel worse about yourself. Chelsea, would you speak a little about that parenting guilt?

Chelsea Griffin: When we can really—not that we can ever fully do this—but we can wrap our minds around being a beloved child, which I think as a mother, it helps to have a child. You go, "Okay, I know that this is a real thing because I really do love my child. I would fight for them. If they were far from me, I would do anything to get them back."

And you love your children as babies when they haven’t done something that gives them merit. They haven’t done anything productive. So you know that this word about the Lord is true. He can love His children, He can set His love upon His children and it is not dependent on their work.

When we understand that, we can see another mom do something great for her children, plan an excellent birthday party because that’s her gifting is creative and hospitality and all of those things, and to see it and say, "That’s so awesome, I love that."

But when we’re walking in condemnation and accusation, then we can find it anywhere. What a sad thing for the family of God, for people’s natural giftings that the Lord’s given them to actually feel like an accusation against us. I was talking to a mom about this recently and I said, "For some moms, they might see me teaching my kid to throw a spiral football and they might feel ashamed."

Dave Wilson: The most important parenting skill you’ve got to teach them. That’s number one.

Chelsea Griffin: A duck is a shame. I can teach my child to hit a golf ball and I can teach my children to throw a football and it’s not a problem. It’s morally neutral. But there are some moms who might see that and feel accused like, "I can’t do that."

I said to her, "Those moms who make a scrapbook for every month of their kid’s life, that makes some moms feel bad." She goes, "I do that." I said, "You make a scrapbook for every month of your kid's life?" And she’s like, "Yeah, I love it." And I was like, "That’s awesome." And it’s not your heart for anyone else to feel bad that they don’t. You do it because it’s fun. You want to document your children’s growth and their milestones every month.

She’s taking pictures and she’s putting something together and she’s smiling ear to ear. "I love it. I love making these little scrapbooks." I’ve never made a scrapbook and I don’t want to. And that’s okay. We have to be able to celebrate all of these things that are going on in the lives of families around us. And when we can’t, that should be a signal to us that we’ve got to be running back to the Father for that love and affirmation that we need from Him or else we’re going to tear down people in our midst.

Ann Wilson: Social media is a killer when it comes to comparison.

Chelsea Griffin: It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. If we have a window into someone else’s house and we see good things, we really ought to bless the Lord. I know that is hard. Every societal blight, a lot of them stem from the broken down family where we see families that are fatherless or motherless or impoverished. Where there’s all these kinds of suffering, a lot of that is caused by the brokenness of their family.

So when we see anyone pouring into their family, we ought to be able to just quickly say, "Thank You, God. Thank You, God. Someone is pouring into their children." And it looks different than the way I do it. But if the accusation we hear right away is "I’m not doing enough," that’s not the voice of the Father. We don’t talk to our own children like that.

Ann Wilson: That’s a really good test, too. When we have that little glitch of comparison or feeling the condemnation, it can be a tester of thinking, "Okay, yeah, I must not be free in who Jesus says that I am." Because part of what you guys are talking about is being free.

Adam Griffin: It’s actually really appropriate that we’re talking about this in Orlando because I think about when we came to theme parks as a family and how much judgment there was in my heart where I would look around and go, "How come that family’s having so much more fun than us right now?" or "Look at that family. They are so angry at each other about waiting for characters to sign an autograph book."

I realized in my heart how much judgment I had for everyone and I bring that judgment to social media, bring that judgment to conversations, but I also bring that judgment against myself. Really what I realized is that I’m sitting on a seat of judgment that is not mine to sit on and that’s where shame comes from is where I have supplanted God Himself and said, "I’ll decide whether or not I’m good enough" and supplant God Himself and say, "I’ll decide whether or not this family that around me is good or bad."

Where I have ignored God’s Word where He said, "You should be rejoicing with those who rejoice," and I see if somebody’s rejoicing, that causes me to mourn. That’s not what God’s called me to do. Or somebody else is mourning and there’s anything in me that rejoices and says, "I’m glad I’m not them."

That’s not godly in me. What does it mean? It means I’ve had a real issue with who should be judging right now. And when I take God’s place, it does not go well. So part of what would solve some of my shame issue is realizing I have a better judge who’s much more gracious than I am. And if I could see Him more the way that I look at my own family and see that I don’t try to shame my kids when they make mistakes. So why would I think God operates that way towards me who’s such a better Father than I am?

Dave Wilson: So how do you get there when you’re not there? Like if you’re sensing in one or the other or you just feel it yourself like "I am sort of judging" or "I’m feeling shame," you’re not in a good place. How do you get out of that? Because parents live there.

Ann Wilson: 80% of our listeners are like, "That is me. Judging. Like how could they allow their child to do that?" And then when you see a good one, it’s like, "Oh, we’re terrible at this." We all live there. So take us there.

Adam Griffin: Some of that’s inside our marriage, too. Really all of that judgment, whether it’s towards ourselves or towards others, that accusation that I’m always looking to find out where am I justified, where’s my justification come from? That’s extra work. It’s a lot of mental work that we could be free of that the Lord could say, "Lay that down today."

But I think when we find ourselves walking in a very powerful thing to do is to confess that and then within the body of Christ, we need to be ready to respond to those confessions rightly. I don’t think the best response is, "Oh yeah, me too. We all do it."

Ann Wilson: Which is what we do.

Adam Griffin: It is. And while some people may really need to get off social media, we have to recognize social media is external. It’s not the problem. It’s revealing the problem that’s in our heart. It is such a powerful thing to confess and name what’s going on. And I find that when I feel jealous, when I feel judgmental, when I confess those things, I don’t know why, I think that’s just what the Lord does, but it feels lifted.

Ann Wilson: Take us to the prayer. What’s it sound like?

Chelsea Griffin: "Lord, what am I doing? I’m here judging this parent. I don’t even know her." For me I have to say over and over to the Lord, "Lord, I trust You with them. I trust You with them. I trust You with them." I can take a snippet of information and think that I know the whole story.

Then think about if someone’s close to you that you know a lot about them and someone else has a comment about them. And I’m like, "You don’t even know. You don’t know what they’re going on, you don’t know what it must feel like." And I just have to ask the Lord to remind me that I don’t know, but He knows.

Again, it’s extra work for me to be mentally in everybody else’s space. My counselor told me that was emotional voyeurism. You wouldn’t go up to your neighbor’s house and peek in the windows, but when you’re trying to imagine what’s inside somebody else’s head or in their heart, as if somebody else around you is trying to make you feel bad. You don’t know that. My friend who makes a scrapbook every month isn’t trying to make anybody feel bad. She’s trying to compile adorable pictures of her babies because she likes them.

Adam Griffin: Innocently. But she’s making me feel bad. Not her fault, my fault. I love what you said about the right response to that confession because the truth is I have such a godly way of responding in those moments. You’re right, if we said, "God, let me trust You with this family. This is not intended to shame me."

But also that the church’s response would be more aligned with Christ’s response would be great. Because I do think if you confess those things, there are so many people who say, "It’s not a big deal." And I don’t think the Lord ever looks at what we would call sin and says, "It’s not a big deal."

If it’s not a big deal, why does it cost Christ’s blood and body? If it’s not a big deal, why would He call us out of it? Why would He even say to somebody, "Neither do I condemn you, but now go and sin no more," if it’s, "You know what? It’s not a big deal." No, I think the Lord would say, "This is a big deal."

And I think the Lord’s response to sin is calling us from that. Scripturally we would see it like Peter when he quotes Psalm 55 saying, "Cast all those burdens onto the Lord because He cares for you." He doesn’t say, "That’s not a big one, you keep carrying that one." He says every ounce of that, you cast that on the Lord.

Part of casting that is confessing. And part of the freedom we would experience is if Christians had better responses to each other’s confessions, we’d probably confess more and we’d honestly feel more set free if somebody said, "Wow, yeah, not just maybe empathetically, I’ve been there too," and just leave it at that although that can be a blessing of saying, "Yeah, I know what you’re experiencing."

But saying to Dave’s point, "Well then how can we be set free? How can we look at that? What would it feel like to truly rejoice?" If it was your own child doing something awesome, it would make you feel proud, wouldn’t it? But if it’s somebody else’s kid doing something awesome, why does that make you feel shame? You would say there’s something clinging to you that is not true. And the writer of Hebrews would call us to cast off sin that so easily entangles. It seems like you’ve been easily entangled in something that’s not true.

So how do we cast that off? We ask the Lord to do it and then we help each other run the race that’s marked out for us. I love that part of the end of John 21 when Jesus tells Peter, "Here’s what your life is going to be like," and then he turns around and looks at John. He says, "But what about him?"

And He says, "What is it to you if he lives forever? You follow me." And if we could say that to every parent, just remember your path is different than your spouse's. Your path is different than your kid's and your path is certainly different than the family next door. You just worry about following Jesus. And you mourn with those who mourn, you rejoice with those who rejoice, and you find freedom in that.

Ann Wilson: I wish I would have heard an interview like this when our kids were little.

Dave Wilson: I’m glad we’re helping other people out because nobody helped us out. That was our fault, we didn’t listen to stuff. I’m telling you, you want this book. You can get it familylifetoday.com and our show notes. *Good News for Parents*. You need good news, go get the book. And we’re going to have them back tomorrow.

Let me just say, we meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife Today® helped them when they needed it the most. And that’s what being a FamilyLife Today® partner is all about, helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann Wilson: And we’d love for you to join us. So click the donate button at familylifetoday.com and become a partner today.

Dave Wilson: FamilyLife Today® is a donor supported ministry of FamilyLife®, a Cru ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.