Parent Compass Radio

John Fuller: He's gonna equip me in those moments where I feel like I can't do this. So many times I've prayed that, but the Lord shows up. He gives peace, he gives grace, he gives understanding.

Hey, this is John Fuller with Focus on the Family. I get the privilege of working on the broadcast with Jim Daly every day and helping run the radio team. We are trying to help families thrive and understand that with God's grace, you can make it. You can do more than just make it; you can thrive.

I have a beautiful family. The Lord's given me five kids biologically and one child through adoption. One of those kids, the older one, is married, so we have seven kids now. It's a privilege to have a family like that. Just sitting around the table at holiday times when we get together, I feel rather patriarchal as we sit around.

I can't get a word in edgewise. It's really fun to watch them interact with each other, to have conversations that I know were shaped way back when, and that they want to hang out with each other. That's a real gift.

Focus on the Family was started in 1977 by Dr. James Dobson, and the heart was to help families. He observed families struggling with parenting issues, with crumbling marriages, and with cultural influences. None of that has changed, unfortunately. It's only intensified.

Under Jim Daly, our current president, we've had five key areas of ministry. That's evangelism; that drives who we are. We want people to come to know Jesus. He is ultimately the author of life, the creator of the family, and the one who's going to sustain and make that work the best according to His design.

We're also about marriage, about parenting, about engaging the culture, and speaking out for those who have no voice: the preborn and those who are in foster care. Eventually, we'll probably have a ministry for the elderly as well. A lot of elderly are in places where they don't have voices.

Everything that we do is designed to help come alongside and help those families. I like to tell people that we've kind of gone from what the ideal is, and that's what you shoot for, to understanding that we all miss the ideal, myself included.

We're all trying to live out a pretty messy life in a world full of contradictions and challenges. But there is redemption, there is restoration. God does move in the midst of difficulty.

The focus of what we're trying to say is it's not about performance and law; it's about grace, understanding, and recovery. As a parent, I've messed up plenty of times, and I've got to somehow forget those mess-ups and key in on showing my kids grace. You can do the same. In my marriage, I offend my wife, I do stupid things to hurt her, and she's got to be able to forgive me. I've got to get past that and try to ask God to give me the power of the Spirit to do that better.

The beauty of what we do, as I said at the beginning, is it's about evangelism and discipleship. That's really where we're driving. We have a clear Christian message. We believe the Scripture is the heart of God revealed to us. It's the truth, it's the moral compass, and it's the way that we can walk and really prosper in life if we follow that book.

It's hard to understand sometimes, but let's go ahead and unpack what it means contextually and let's apply that to life every day as an individual or as a family. Let's see that great story of redemption that God has. Let's see that at work in our relationships generally, but specifically in the home where I don't always bring my best game, but the Lord's always active and moving.

We try to do this through a variety of media. We bring that message of redemption in family and grace in God's life through radio programs, through podcasts, through magazines, through curriculum, through events, and through all sorts of different things. It's a pretty rich experience.

Behind the scenes, God has allowed Focus on the Family to have counselors, to have resources, and to have a lot of neat tools that meet people where they're at in a point of need. It's a really neat package where the front end is the media stuff, and the back end is one-on-one, people on the phone, through email, through actual counseling sessions, all designed to bring restoration, redemption, and hope to families that feel like they can't do this.

I think in terms of the past 10, 15, or 20 years for families, we've all experienced challenges. My kids are 31 down to 16. When my oldest was 15, he got a Facebook account. That was one of the first years Facebook was really even out there. When he went off to college, I got a Facebook account to follow him. It's a lot more complex now, isn't it?

That device in the back pocket has changed so much. At the heart of it, we still have the age-old issues that I experienced when I was a teen and that I've experienced as a dad to teens. Those issues are a child wanting to be independent and a child wanting to go out and make their mark on the world.

I think we have kids who are a little afraid to do that. The culture says you've got to make your millions by the time you're 23 or else you've messed up, or they feel like they're entitled to just hang out and they can't handle that pressure quite yet. So, there are a lot of cultural influences that have made parenting and marriage harder. Certainly, I've experienced that in our own family.

Some of the things that remain key, though, are: what's at the center of the family? Are you driving relationships? Are you spending time together? Are you intentionally cultivating conversations that may be uncomfortable but good because you've got to process this stuff? Are you preparing your kids to leave the house?

I like to tell parents that you don't have until they're 18. We had a baby shower for one of our kids, and somebody said, "Well, the next 18 years are going to be different." I just thought, no, the rest of my life is different. Certainly, I don't have until they're 18; I have until they're probably 12 to 15. After that, they're going to be doing their own thing, like it or not.

Those first 10 to 12 years are crucial for you to develop a relationship, to make it authentic, and to let your kids know who you are, how you've messed up, and the lessons you've learned along the way. Then you've got to start releasing them and let them mess up while they're in your home.

The worst thing you can do is control, control, control, or think you're controlling until they're 18. Then they go off to college or they go off to live on their own, and it's a free-for-all. I've seen too many train wrecks with that.

The end goal that you really want to aim for in your family relationships is having good relationships beyond these parenting years for you and the kids, and you and your wife. Do the first 18 years well, especially the first 10 or 12, just by showing up and being intentional, by affirming that I love you, and by giving grace when they mess up and helping them.

Maybe you'll be able to have the richness of Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners together where everybody wants to be together because you haven't made it about how high can you jump and if you have performed well, but you've made it about relationship. Keep the Scriptures central to all of that, and you should do pretty well. There are a lot of great tools and resources. Find something that works for you and then just dial in and do parenting and do marriage the best you can. Remember that you're going to mess up, but God is gracious.

I think there are milestones in children's lives. When they're younger, they just look up to you like you can't do anything wrong. By the time they get to be 10, 12, or 15, they're rolling their eyes like, "What planet are you from, Dad?" We've raised six kids. The youngest is 16. We've had the milestone markers where they're hitting adolescence at 10 or 12 years old. We take them away and we have conversations. I think probably you need to start at eight to 10 these days, not 10 to 12, just because there's so much sexuality in the culture.

That's the "you're hitting adolescence here" talk. You're going to have a hormone bath that's going to alter your thinking, it's going to alter your emotions, and it's going to alter your body, and I'm with you.

One thing I did on those getaways, I took all the kids at some point. My wife took the girls to really concentrate on some mommy-daughter time. But one of the things I did was I set up a chair with an eight-foot-long 2x4 straddling these two chairs. I would blindfold the child and put them on the chair and just say, "Now, you're 10 years old. Let's just assume that you've got to walk across that 2x4 you saw before I blindfolded you, and you've got to walk from that point to that point blindfolded with no help. Do you think you want to do that? Do you want to walk across that 2x4 with no help?" "No, Dad. No, I want you to help me."

Good. That's what I want you to remember. Then I would take their hand and just walk them across, guide them across to the other side. Adolescence is just this. I've been there, I know what it is, and I can see in a way that you can't see. When you're in adolescence, you're blindfolded. So, I'm going to help you get across to the other side, but you've got to trust me.

You've got to know that sometimes it's my experience, my wisdom, and my insights that are going to guide you. You may not like it. You may say, "I can do this," and you're going to fall. If that happens, I'll pick you up, and we'll start over. But I want you to get to the other side well because it's not about me controlling you until you turn out right. It's about you learning to make the decisions, but you're just going to have to trust me that we've got to do this ourselves.

That's an adolescence conversation I think every parent has to have in some form. Also, speak very clearly about sexuality. This is what we believe. This is right and wrong. This is why I believe it.

With regard to sexuality, the culture has so many messages of just following your feelings. You don't need to wait. So many of our kids are having sexual experiences by the time they're 15 or 16. That's regrettable, and some of those kids get pregnant. That's hard.

For us, we relied on a pretty conservative biblical understanding of sexuality. God designed it. I've told my kids that God designed sexuality to be a beautiful gift. It's wonderful. You will enjoy it. But there's a plan that God has for you.

The plan is to hold on to your sexuality, to suppress that appetite, and to wait to fulfill that appetite fully until you're in marriage. That's the beauty of the gift that you can give your spouse, your future spouse. Now, by God's grace, not because of my boasting, my wife and I were both virgins when we got married. So, that's part of our story as we talk to our kids.

The biblical model is clear. God designed sexuality to be fully enjoyed in the marital union. It's not something to be played with before then. It's not something where you just say, "No, we don't need boundaries."

Have conversations with your kids about boundaries, about feelings, about the hormones, and about the temptations they're going to experience that we've all been through as adults. But you learn to bridle that appetite to say, "I'm going to wait." You don't feed the appetite. It's going to take you down a path that ultimately is going to have some heartache and some ramifications.

I think there are other conversations. We came home one time, and my wife discovered that one of my kids was on the computer, the family room computer, with filters. They had figured out how to bypass the filters. Okay, now there are images stuck in that child's head, and we had to have conversations.

We could shame, or we could say, "I'm really sorry," and offer grace and guidance toward some proper perspectives. What are you going to do in those moments? You've got to think it through. Don't be the parent that says, "You messed up, how could you?" Be the parent that says, "I'm sorry. How can I help?"

If you offer grace, understanding, and not judgment when your kids mess up, go back to when you were 15 or 16. I made mistakes. My parents were pretty forgiving. You've got to do that if you want to make sure your kids don't run away from you and your values. There's no guarantee, but those are hard conversations to have when you discover your child's been doing something or hiding something.

One of my kids had an eating disorder. That was disconcerting. It was hard to hear that. I wondered, "What did I do to contribute to that? What's wrong? How can I help?" Fortunately, she's way better now, and there's a recovery story there. But it was a "we're in this with you" moment. It wasn't a "figure that out and let me know how it turns out." It's a time for parents to double down and say, "We all mess up. Let's do this together."

There are so many highs and lows to living together as a family. When you have six kids like we do, there's always something going on. People ask me, "How's the family?" It's like I'm never bored. There's always something going on. The oldest are employed, and most of them are in town, so I get to see them and I love that.

Certainly, the highs have been what everybody wants. You want your kid to graduate from high school, you want your kids to find a good spouse, and you want to have good relationships with your kids. You want them to be employed, you want them to be independent, and to make good choices.

What bliss we had, my wife and I, those first few years. Then we struggled through infertility. It was another night of, "Well, I guess we have to because the temperature says we have to," but we weren't getting kids. We had to struggle through that, and then the kids came.

The joys of those early years with two little blond-haired boys that we'd take camping and we'd do road trips with, those were carefree days. Then a third child came, and a fourth and a fifth. We were overwhelmed, and it was chaos, but it was glorious chaos. Camping trips, trips to see relatives, just the milestones of the reading cake. They can read; we'll have a cake. All the different great things that happened.

We had challenges, too. When one of my kids was eight, there was some acting out. I actually took advantage of the Focus on the Family counseling services. As employees, we get time with the counselors. We got together, and that counselor just spent some time with us and said, "John, you've got four kids now and you're working on a master's degree. You're never around. Your son wants time with you. Since being good's not getting it, he's acting out. He wants time with you."

Wow. That was convicting. It was also an aha moment that kids don't always express what they're feeling inside. Today, that child's doing fine. We have a great relationship. He was able to forgive me for that, and we were able to move on.

There were some real low lows with an eating disorder that was like, is this child going to make it? For the past 15 years, we've been on quite a ride with a special needs adopted child, which has brought all sorts of unpredictability and all sorts of challenges. God's been slowly prying my control-oriented hands off the wheel, so to speak, and showing me that I just need to show up today and find out what He wants for me today.

I need to love that child like He loves that child. He's created that child and knit that baby in his mother's womb. I'll never know that baby's mom, but thank you, Lord, that she allowed him to live. Thank you that that child came into our lives. It's the hardest thing I've ever, ever done.

I thought we had five, so what's one more kid? And the Lord just chuckled. I know He chuckled. He thought, "I'll show you." And He rocked our world. But through the difficulties, there have been moments where we just have to laugh. We have to laugh. There have been moments of tears. But through it all, what do I hold on to?

I hold on to God's sovereignty. He made that child, he connected us as a family, and he's going to equip me in those moments where I feel like I can't do this. So many times I've prayed that, but the Lord shows up. He gives peace, he gives grace, he gives understanding. He gives grace by those around us.

So, we had five kids, which is more than I thought we were going to have, but I wouldn't trade any one of them. My wife comes to me and says, "I think God wants us to do something with orphans." And I said, "Okay." She said, "I've been praying and He really told me I should do something." I said, "Fine, fine."

We had a friend in Romania at that time, and she said, "I think I need to go hold babies in the orphanage." Okay, great. She kept praying and then a few weeks after that she came to me and said, "Actually, I think God wants us to adopt."

I thought, well, there was that moment when the kids came past and I thought, well, we have five, we could do more. I'll pray about that. I did, and it didn't take long for me to think naively, sure, we can handle another one. We started the process, and it was about a six-month process to really get going on international adoption.

We just really felt called to do something internationally, Romania in particular, because of our friend and because of all the orphans, the pictures of the orphans in the 90s that were coming out. This was early 2000s, but you couldn't forget these terrible situations. My wife has a big heart, and I was willing to go along with it, and the door never opened in Romania.

Our agency, after several months, said, "It's not going to happen. Romania is not going to let you have a child. So you're going to have to look elsewhere." Russia was really the only logical place that we could go. We redeployed our energies and went toward Russia and eventually brought home a little nine-month-old boy who had been in the orphanage.

He was born at 26 weeks, 2.1 pounds. They said he was on oxygen for 10 days, which no NICU would do. They'd keep him on oxygen probably for 10 weeks. But he just looked like a survivor, is what he looked like. He was a cute little thing. He didn't weigh but 15 pounds, I think, at nine months.

We brought him home, and it was the beginning of a journey that has twists and turns all along the way. We knew there were attachment issues and we tried to address those. When he was two, though, we had him diagnosed by a neurologist and confirmed our suspicions that he might have autism.

He's had that diagnosis since he was two. My wife is a great mama bear and a champion, so she got onto it. She got all sorts of support and services and therapies. The boy has had so many different helps along the way, and God's done a remarkable work in his life.

He's come so, so far. It hasn't been easy, and we're still trying to figure out how do you do life with special needs. My kids have had their lives interrupted in good ways and some hard ways. We didn't have normal for a long, long time.

With a special needs child, you just naturally spend your time taking care of that child. You have to. It's a rescue effort. It's a 9-1-1 thing, not figuratively, but figuratively. As we direct our attention there, we also try to just make sure there's a normal for the rest of the kids, which has been exhausting. But I think we've gotten there for the most part, the most we can.

The special needs community, I never anticipated being part of it, but I'm so glad I am because you see God's beauty even in brokenness. You see God's strength even for families that are feeling like we can't do this. You learn through the journey of the challenges, of the trials, of the exhaustion, and of the "I can't do this" that God can. That's a beautiful thing actually to find out.

Since we adopted back in 2004, international adoptions have really just slowed down to almost nothing. There are very, very few compared to those years. I am pleased that there's such a drive to adopt domestically, both children who have been saved from abortion and their birth mom just says, "I don't want to raise or I can't raise this child," and there's such a need in the foster care community.

I am jazzed. I'm super pumped by some of our colleagues at Focus on the Family. We've got young families in their 30s who are saying, "We'll take some foster kids, either for foster care or foster-adopt."

When you say yes, first pray. Don't just assume you should do this, okay? I mean, James 1:27 is clear; we have to care for the orphans and the widows. But it doesn't say every person has to adopt. It's not for the faint of heart.

When you adopt, you don't know what you're getting. I mean, this is true for a birth as well, for a biological child. But with adoption, generally, there are some disruptions in that child's life. There's trauma. There are issues that are going to have to come out and get resolved, and it may be really difficult, particularly if you're willing, as some of these colleagues are, to adopt a 10, 12-year-old or a 15-year-old who's been bounced around, who's been rejected time and again, who's very self-protective, who doesn't want to engage, and who doesn't trust.

They need to have a really, really high degree of involvement with you, really specialized sensitive involvement from you. This is not normal parenting. Focus on the Family has lots of resources. There are lots of ministries out there.

Dr. Sharen Ford worked for social services for the state of Colorado for 30 years. She's been on our staff for about 10, I think. Dr. Ford heads up our Wait No More program, which is encouraging families. Tens of thousands of families now have said, "We'll step up, we'll help with foster care."

It might be that we'll offer respite to foster care families. That means you've got to get certified to be able to take foster kids, but foster families need a break. They need a break from the intensity. It's really super intense. So, be a foster parent, or start with respite.

Maybe you can be a foster parent and bring a child in. I just talked to somebody recently who said, "Our church is one of those safe family places where if the D.H.S. needs a placement for a day or two, we're pre-certified. We're a safe family. We can welcome this child in. There's no question of will they be taken care of and loved. They will be. We know we only have them for 24, 48, 36 hours, but we're going to make as much of an impact for Christ as we can in those short hours."

If you go the long haul and you do foster care as a parent, God bless you. It's not a journey to do on your own. We have resources and help. If you're going to adopt those kids, there are resources. You're going to need counseling services, you're going to need a lot of special help from your church family and from friends who are going to understand that that child is acting out because there are unspeakable things in their heart that they can't deal with. Not always, but often.

It's a ministry of redemption, it's a ministry of reclamation, it's a ministry of restoration. It'll break you, it'll help your child, but you can make a difference. Just pray before you go there because, again, it's not for the faint of heart. It doesn't go where you think it might go. You've just got to be really willing to trust God in whatever that is going to look like for that child and take your hands off the outcome and just say, "Today I'm going to show up, I'm going to love this child the best I can, and then, Lord, I'm going to trust that you're going to do the rest of it."

When I came to Focus on the Family in 1991, I'd been listening to Focus. We aired the broadcast on my radio station down in Texas. I think I had a pretty good handle on this parenting thing. We had two kids, one was just born, so the youngest was a newborn. We tried to do the formula thing because that's what you did back in the 90s. You had a formula: this input equals that output.

Oh, my, how God has helped me. He's helped me see that I don't have a formula to apply. That's not what this is about. I have a relationship to develop and a life with Christ to live out in front of my kids. I'm going to do that imperfectly, but ideally, I'm going to do that with intentionality and with consistency.

To the struggling parent, the struggling marriage, keep at it and know that your kids will pick up on it. Know that your spouse will see the difference as you continue to walk toward Christ. It's not a "do this and then this happens." It's a "do this because that's the plan, that's God's best." If you do this, there's no guarantee, but it's just going to go a lot easier. The journey is what he's interested in. Are you walking faithfully, obediently day by day? If you are, I think he'll bless you.

Guest (Female): 44% of new moms think marriage is obsolete.

Guest (Female): 52% of births to new moms are to unmarried mothers.

Guest (Female): I noticed that I'd say "I'm sorry, Jacob." It was terrifying and frightening.

Guest (Male): Your baby's really sick.

Guest (Female): We weren't having those moments to get you through the next hard time.

Guest (Male): Losing a child is extremely hard on your marriage.

Guest (Female): Seeing my mom come through the door covered in mud, that terrified me.

Guest (Male): God is our center and everything revolves around Him.

Guest (Male): As for me and my house, we're going to follow the Lord, and that's what we try to teach our kids.

Guest (Female): Don't give up. Don't let hopelessness defeat all of your hopes and dreams for your family.

Guest (Male): Sometimes parenting is difficult because you don't see the harvest right away. Christ will always be there. He'll always be the answer.

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