Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 152 | Motherhood

Episode Date: August 19, 2019

Discussing parenthood and the spiritual lessons I've learned since having a child.

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I am here. I am back from maternity leave and I am so excited to be here. In case you didn't know, I had a baby on July 5th. And so for the past eight weeks, you guys have gotten episodes that I recorded back in May that were more evergreen. Got a lot of great feedback on that. A lot of you took time to send me email, sending me your thoughts and even constructive criticism or different sides of the argument. I've really enjoyed that. If I haven't emailed you back, I'm sorry. I haven't had quite the time to do that and I want to give the thought to my responses that you guys gave in your emails but I so appreciate that I am going to talk to you today about the things that I've learned during these first six weeks of motherhood. So I took two weeks off before she was born, six weeks off after she was born. First two weeks were spent with my husband just kind of

enjoying the last few days of it being just us two and our animals. So we basically just ate whatever we wanted whenever we wanted, watch Netflix all the time, slept. It was great. And then for the past six weeks, we've just enjoyed being parent. And when I say enjoy, I really mean we've enjoyed it. When I say that, I get a lot of reactions like, okay, you say that you're enjoying it bar. You really enjoying it. That newborn stage, it's hard. And yes, it is hard. Like we are tired. We were especially tired in the beginning. And we had a huge adjustment. But I, I am loving being a mom. Like, I love it so much.

I love her more than I can even tell you guys, seriously. But I'm going to try during this episode. We're going to talk about parenting a little bit, but we're really going to talk about kind of the spiritual lessons that I learned during this time. This is Theology Monday, which means that this is going to be a message that is relevant to you no matter who you are. So whether you are a man or a woman,

whether you are a new mom like me, maybe you're pregnant, maybe you have been a mom for a long time, maybe you're a grandmother, maybe you're a high school student and you're not thinking about this at all. This is still something that is going to be relevant to you because we're going to tie it back into the Word of God. We're going to tie it back into the gospel, which of course is something that is significant to all Christians, no matter what life stage that we're in. Now, you know that I've been wanting to talk about this whole deconversion trend that's been happening, the Hill Song, the Hill song, worship leader, and then also Joshua Harris. And we're going to talk about that. There's so much that I want to say with that, though, and it's a little bit complex that I'm

going to save that for next week. This one, I just kind of wanted to catch up while also still making this worth your while. It's not just going to be this superficial recap of everything that's happened to me over the past six weeks. Although I do feel like I've been away from a group of really good friends for a long time and we have kind of caught up a little bit like via text or something that's what it feels like but that we still have so much to talk about so that is part of what this episode is so like i said i gave birth on july 5th to a perfect little beautiful seven pound 10 ounce baby girl and what i have learned since then in really before that is something that we've always known and something that, like I said,

is relevant to all of us. And that is that God is good, that his creation is amazing. And his designated order for human beings and for birth and for families is purposeful. It's perfect. And it also teaches us something about the gospel that maybe we didn't know before. I've never experienced that or really understood that more clearly than through the process of having a child. And I'm not saying at all that it's the only way to understand these things. But for me, God's hand in creation and the loving care that he took in forming life was made abundantly obvious through becoming a mom. The first thing that I learned in all of this is surrender. Now, this is a word I don't like.

This is something that I'm not good at. the word surrender and the word submit were the two words that when I became a Christian, I really wrestle with the most, and I'll be honest, I still wrestle with them a lot. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I'm someone who actually has an anxiety disorder, but I am generally an anxious person. I just like things to be under my control. Even if I'm unsure that my control of a certain situation would actually produce a better outcome, I still feel safer if I am the one driving the ship.

yet all of you who have been pregnant know how very little control you actually have, not just when you're pregnant, but through labor and delivery and even parenthood in all of that. I remember when I first found out that I was pregnant. First of all, I was shocked. Now, when you hear someone say that they were shocked that they were pregnant, I know what you're thinking. You're like, but were you really that shocked?

I mean, you know how babies are made. and you probably assumed that that was going on. So were you really that surprise? But those of you who have seen that positive read on the pregnancy test know what I'm talking about. So my husband and I, we had been trying for a few months, maybe like three months. And at this point, we had decided, you know what, whatever happens happens, I'm not going to worry with all of these apps, these tracking apps and all of this. We're not going to be as stressed and concerned about it as we were before.

We're just kind of going to happen. We're just going to kind of let this happen. And we entered this stage. some of you are probably familiar into the not not trying stage now before we were in this stage I would hear people say that and I would just roll my eyes what is not not trying mean I mean again you know how babies are made you're doing that so how can you not not be trying either you're trying or you're not trying but I don't know how to explain it except if you have been there you know exactly what I'm talking about so we were not not not trying and as soon as we kind of let go of

it all as soon as we kind of said okay we're not going to over stress about this we're not going to be over anxious about it, overthink it, whatever, that is when I became pregnant. And so read the positive read on the pregnancy test. You take like six pregnancy tests because you just want to make sure. And I was like, oh my gosh. Of course, I was so excited. I was so happy. Like I said, I just couldn't believe it. But you also get this feeling. If you've ever been on a roller coaster, you know what I'm talking about. You sit down and the whole time you were standing in line, you were like, okay, I'm sure that I want to do this. This is going to be so fun.

This is going to be awesome. All my friends have done it. You sit down. And then they put the little fastener. Like, you know, the fastener comes down over your head. And it starts going. And that's when you're like, oh my gosh, I can't get off this right. This is the point of no return.

I don't really know what's ahead. I don't know how scary this is going to be. What if I die? I have no idea if I can handle this. And I cannot get off. You also have a bit of that feeling when you get pregnant. Not that you're not happy because I was so happy. It's not that you're not excited.

I was so excited. But you're just scared. You don't know what's to come and you realize that your life has just changed forever. Like not just the next 10 months. Like you're not just going to be pregnant. You're going to be giving birth to a human being. And your life doesn't just change when they're an infant or when they're a baby or a toddler or a kid.

Your life doesn't even just change for the next 18 years. Your life is changed forever. Never will it be. just about you or just about you and your husband and you just ask all of these questions. Like, can I handle it? I mean, you start thinking about more imminent possibilities first. Like, you think about, okay, well, what if I have a miscarriage? And oh my gosh, I took a really hot bath last week. What if I melted the baby and she's going to have some kind of birth effect? What if I'm sick for the next nine months? And I can't do my job. What about birth? What if something happens to one of us? Can I give birth?

Am I capable of that? And oh my gosh, I hate hospitals. What if I have a mean nurse? What if they don't know what they're doing. So you start asking what sounds like now, kind of silly questions, but at that time, they keep you up at night. But in that moment, and in the many, many moments after that, all I could do, all you can do, literally all you can do is take a deep breath and understand that God has preordained every single second of this pregnancy, every second of labor, every second of delivery, and absolutely nothing is going to happen that is outside of his will. Psalm 139 says that every single day of our lives was written before any of them came to be. So I had to trust that that included the next nine to ten months of our lives.

And I knew in that moment when I kind of just had to take a deep breath and surrender that thing that I don't like to do, I knew that that didn't mean that nothing bad was going to happen. I knew that there very well could be complications, but I had to remind myself that even potential difficulties would be used for His glory and my good, and I would have to be content with that. Because Romans 828 promises that that all things work together for the good of those who love it. Good doesn't mean easy. We know that as Christians. Good doesn't mean neat or organized or expected.

Good doesn't mean our version of good, but God's version of good. And we can trust that because he is faithful and because he loves us, that when whatever his version of good is, is truly good. I'm also a bit of a hypochondriac. So it took effort for me through my pregnancy not to freak out at every little thing. So that meant surrender. A surrender of something I had to do in big things and in small things. And God did graciously choose to give me a healthy pregnancy. I'm so thankful for that. I didn't want to do anything throughout my pregnancy. I didn't work out and I sat on my couch and ate Chick-fil-A. But other than that, It was a healthy pregnancy.

It was uneventful, which is exactly what you want in a pregnancy. And by the end of the pregnancy, I thought, okay, I've kind of learned this lesson. I've learned this lesson in surrender because every week for me was a lesson in surrender. But I'm like, okay, I'm at the end of this. I'm almost done being pregnant. I don't have to be anxious anymore. I can see her. I can hold her.

I can know for sure that she's okay. I mean, once they start moving, you kind of start being paranoid about how much they're moving towards the end of the pregnancy and you're like, oh my gosh, she hasn't moved in an hour. Is she okay? You drink the orange juice. You lay on your side. You're like, okay, okay, I just felt her kick. She's fine.

So you constantly are having these kind of paranoid thoughts. I mean, not constantly. I don't want to just sound like I was miserable because I really wasn't. But you are thinking a lot about if she's okay because you just can't see her. And so you feel like, okay, when she's born, I won't worry as much because I can actually know for sure that she's okay or she's. not. Again, this was me hoping for and confiding in my own control. I felt like, okay, I won't have to surrender as much once she's here. And we can all get a big laugh out of that. Any of you who have

had newborns know how absolutely crazy that was to think. But I didn't know that yet. But I did know then that there was a big hurdle that I had to get over first. And that was birth. And I was very scared about birth. I was really, really nervous. Like I said, don't really love hospitals. I guess not very many people do. I was just positive that something bad was going to happen to one of us. I had heard horror story. So I just prayed and prayed every day that she would be okay, that I would be okay, that everything would go well. Because even though I knew that God was in control, even though I knew he was teaching me this lesson in surrender, I also knew that I was still commanded to pray. And even trusting him, I was still commanded to pray and to lay my anxieties beforehand.

That's what Philippians 4-6 says, that we shouldn't be anxious about anything, but that with Thanksgiving we're supposed to present our request to God. And we are promised that when we do that, the peace of God that transcends all understanding. I love that phrase will guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. I love the phrase transcends all understanding or surpasses all comprehension, because if you're anything like me, I even tried to comprehend the peace that God gives. I try to rationalize it and break it down and even control it in some way. But it can't be.

It can't be comprehended. It's something that fills you up that you cannot try to rationalize or make sense of even if you want to. So that's what I did. I lay the same request before God every day, the same unsophisticated request that, okay, I just said, God, I'm anxious about birth. I don't know what to expect. Just be with us. Just give us peace.

Protect her. I pray everything would go, okay, help me to trust you. I felt totally helpless and totally vulnerable in those days leading up, and I just don't like that feeling. But I had no other choice to surrender. And I started also comforting myself with things that maybe I shouldn't have comforted myself with. I just said, you know what? I know this is going to go according to plan. I have a doula. I have a birth plan. I took the birth class. I've had a healthy pregnancy. I know what's going to happen. I need to just stop freaking out. Everything is going to go totally fine. I even plan to have a natural birth, which a lot of people do. So some of you

can laugh at that. But a lot of people have natural birth. I was like, okay, I think I can do it. I've got a supportive husband. You know, I've got the doula and all of that. I thought that I was going to be able to accomplish that. I was also really patient about when she was actually going to get here because I knew that since it was my first baby, there was a good possibility. that she was going to be past her due date, and I was totally fine with that. I was like, you know what, she's just going to get here when she's going to get here. But that is not exactly how things went down. I don't really want to tell my whole birth story, and the reason is because while the

majority of you are totally understanding and gracious and awesome, there's also a lot of judgment and sanctimony surrounding birth in the female community sometimes. and I just know that if I go through the whole thing, I'm going to get at least one email from someone being like, you should have said this or the doctor should have done this or it should have gone this way or, you know, all of that. And I just, I don't really need that. Trust me, I have thought about this day over and over again July 5th when my baby was born. I've thought about it over and over again. I've done the reading. I've done the research. I've talked to a lot very experienced people about everything that happened. And I don't want to make it sound like it was

this terrible traumatic emergency situation because it wasn't. But I did end up with a C-section at 40 weeks, five days, which is an outcome that I never entertained. Like, I had pictured a thousand emergency situations in which I was actually giving birth and something happened, but I never thought that I would have a C-section. Why would I? Had a healthy pregnancy. I would never need a C-section is what I thought. And like I said, I really wanted an all-natural birth. I prayed for an all-natural birth that I would go into labor naturally. It just didn't happen. And looking back, as I was saying a few minutes ago, there are probably things I could have done differently. I don't know. There's really not a point to me rehashing that over and over again.

But it was both the hardest and the best day of my life. By the time I went back to have the C-section, I was exhausted. I was shaking uncontrollably. I was sobbing. Everyone in my family, all the family that was in the room was crying. This was literally the exact opposite of what I'd prayed and hoped for. I shouldn't say literally the exact opposite because we were both healthy and it was fine and everything ended up fine. So I'm so grateful for that. But it was very different than what we were hoping for.

And I mean, talk about being out of control. They stick that epidural in you. You can't feel anything from the waist down, which is actually what I thought would send me over the edge. Like I really thought that I would lose my mind. I hated not being able to move. They make you put your arms out to the side. You hear them cutting you open and you can kind of like feel the pressure,

but you can't see anything. They put this kind of curtain in front of you and you are just completely helpless. There's nothing you can do but surrender to God and surrender basically to the doctors that are in front of you. And thank the Lord for my husband. I mean, having him there with me holding my hand, it helped me, it helped keep me sane when I thought that I would lose it. but I will never forget the moment. So even though all of this was totally not what I wanted,

totally not according to plan, not what I had hoped or prayed for, I will never forget the moment that I heard my doctor say the word, hi. And then there was this short pause and then this loud scream and the nurse lowered the curtain that was in front of me. So yes, you like see your stomach open, you see your insides, but you're not even focused on that because the doctor is holding up this tiny little swollen human that is just screaming bloody murder. I mean, she's got a full head of hair. Her hair was sticking everywhere. Her face was all swollen. I mean, the cutest, craziest thing that you've ever seen. And you're like, oh my gosh, I just, that was a human. I mean, you know what's a human inside of you. You've seen the sonogram. You know how pregnancy works.

But you're like, oh my gosh, that's a human being. And they're here. And then they had to, unfortunately, they had to kind of take her away for a little bit. She had some oxygen. issues, but thankfully, they thought she would have to go to NICU, she didn't have to go to NICU, and that was just an answer to prayer because I was just laying on the operating table while they were sewing me up, praying that she wouldn't have to go to NICU, and they did put her on my chest. And it is in that moment when all of a sudden, the world around you, all the things that you once thought were important, they just kind of fade into the background. Everything that you once thought was a huge deal. Now is totally insignificant.

And you know in that moment when they put that child on your chest that you would do anything. I'm talking anything for this child. You would give up everything that you had, everything that you ever wanted, every dream you ever had for yourself, you would totally lay it down. You would lay down your life for them again and again for no other reason than for the fact that God made you this way, that he designed you so that you are almost desperately inclined as a mother or as a parent to care for your offspring. It's a love that I really don't think, at least I have not known outside of parenthood. And that is not to say that there aren't other

kinds of amazing love that people in all stages of life can experience. Of course there are. But this is unique. This love and parenthood is unique. It's like this giant tidal wave that hits you all at once and you realize, oh, okay, so. So, this is God's love for me. Well, actually, this is only a pale reflection of God's love for me, but now I'm starting to understand the kind of love that compels someone to send their only son to die on a cross for them. And speaking of that, how painful it must have been for God to send a son that he loved more than I loved my daughter to die gruesome death that he didn't deserve. How deep the father's love for us has a whole new meaning when you become a parent.

So that's the second thing that I learned and am learning in addition to surrender. is love, a profound, unconditional, heartbreaking love that you have never known. And I'm not saying that it's always going to feel like rainbows and butterflies. I know that. I know it's not. I mean, part of this that you feel after they're first born, this just fierce protection. Of course, it lasts, you know, the entire parenting journey. But, you know, the emotion of it, part of it is hormonal. Part of it is just the overwhelming nature of this moment. But, But I know from what I've heard from other moms that are far more experienced than I am, this kind of unconditional overwhelming love persists through the trials and the tribulations and the difficulties.

It emphasized something that I already knew and that we have talked about on this podcast, and this is a little bit of a tangent. But I remember I was laying in bed and sitting up in bed one night, still recovering from the C-section. And so if you've ever had a C-section, you know how terrible that is, how badly that hurt. And I'm feeding her. I'm tired.

You're overwhelmed. All of this stuff. But I just remember thinking, wow, that self-love message that the world is propagating is garbage. It is garbage. And not something I've said a million times on this podcast before, but it's something that became extremely tangible for me when I became a mom. And I'm not talking about, I'm not advocating for self-loathing or self-deprecation.

You guys know that. But the fixation that our society has on loving ourselves and doing what we want at all times is trendy narcissism. That's all it is. And when it's contrasted to the love that you feel for your child, it's completely flumsy. You see and you feel that immediately. You see just how empty and unfulfilling that is. I do very little of what I want right now. Very little. I mean, and some of you moms out there, you've got six kids. Maybe you have kids with special needs. So I'm certainly not saying that I have, you know, that I'm sacrificing the most ever. Not at all. I'm just speaking as a newborn mom. I do very little of what I want. I very little quote me time. Every time I need to do anything. So like eat or take a shower or answer an email or read my Bible.

there is something and someone that is demanding my attention. And guess what? As a selfish person, just like as a naturally selfish person in my flesh, I would not trade that for the world. That's not because I am virtuous. That's not because I'm an extremely generous person or an extremely, you know, any more compassionate person than anyone else. I am just as naturally self-centered and self-focused and self-obsessed and self-loyal.

and self-loving and selfish as anyone else, and I would not trade this self-sacrifice that is demanded of me because of my daughter for the world. I am so uninterested in this pithy self-love, self-care, self-empowerment mantra that is given to me by Instagram influencers,

like so uninterested in it. It is fake, it is fleeting, it is ultimately completely unsatisfying. I mean, give me self-implendiping. self-empting any day, any day over self-obsession. There is joy and service and the end of self-cinnerness is misery. And I'm going to keep going just on this tangent just for a little bit. Here's what the people propagating the self-love gospel don't know and apparently don't want you to know that sacrificial love is so much better than self-love. It's so much better.

Like, and right now we're talking about earthly sacrificial love, like from a parent to a child, we haven't even gotten into Christian's sacrificial love yet or Christ's sacrificial love. But the kind of love that manifests itself in putting others before yourself is so much more gratifying, so much more fulfilling, so much more satisfying than the kind that only thinks about yourself. And you might be thinking, okay, Allie, but are these things really mutually exclusive? like can't you believe in self-love and love other people? And the answer is this. It's something that we have discussed many times before, but the Christian, we're not called to self-love ever. The Christian is not called to self-love, not once in the Bible, are we called to love ourselves more? The Bible is radically

unconcerned with us loving ourselves. Why? Well, the answer is in a verse or at least a phrase that we all know, Leviticus 1918, love your neighbor as yourself. The answer is because we already do. Loving ourselves is human nature. And if you don't believe that, I'll explain. So first, let me say, it is a lie from the pit of hell to interpret that verse that I just read as meaning you can't love your neighbor until you love yourself. That is deceit from Satan. We are born loving ourselves. That is not mean that we always think that we're awesome and beautiful all the time. That's not what that means. It means that we are born looking out for ourselves. This is why we teach toddlers to share. We never have to teach a toddler to be greedy. It takes effort to sacrifice for others. It takes effort

to see the best in others. It takes effort for us to lay aside what we want for the sake of others need. It takes no effort at all for us to look after ourselves, to make excuses for ourselves, to do exactly what we want. We are naturally very concerned with having our needs met. Ephesians 528 through 29 says in the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself for no one ever hated his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it as just as Christ as the church. So sure, we think negative thoughts about ourselves. There are people who feel like they hate themselves so much that they're even driven to things like depression and suicide. But even in the tragic case of suicide, that person is looking at.

looking out for themselves. They are looking to escape pain and despair. And okay, here's where Christ comes into this. For these people, for all of us who are self-deprecating, who are negative about our own abilities or appearance or whatever, the answer for our insecurity and despair is not more self-love, which is so fleeting and so unsatisfying. It is God's love. It's that sacrificial love, not just the sacrificial love from a parent to a child, but the ultimate sacrificial love of God who sinned his son to die for us. That is the answer the Bible gives us for our anxiousness and heaviness. It is not self-love or self-care. It is God's love and God's provision for us. It is not in thinking of ourselves more that we will have more peace. It is in taking our eyes off of ourselves

and fixing our gaze on Christ that we will have peace. So if you struggle with defeating thoughts, you will accomplish nothing by telling yourself how awesome you are. You'll feel good. for a few weeks, then the self-deprecation will come back in. My advice to you then is to take your eyes off of yourself and look to the cross. You want to know confidence. Consider that you, a sinner, get to approach a holy God with boldness because of Jesus. You want to know security. Consider that Christ, in Christ, you are eternally a child and an heir and a saint,

and there is nothing you can do to change that. Not because you are faithful, but because God is. So the answer to our anxiety and insecurity and negative thoughts about ourselves is not found in us. It is found in Christ. And if you keep looking to yourself and your ability to love yourself for satisfaction, you will continually end up disappointed, I promise. And I have learned that yet again, through mothering my daughter, I have been reminded yet again that the world just has absolutely nothing to offer us when it comes to joy.

It has nothing to offer us when it comes to peace, when it comes to satisfaction. It gives us very cheap substitutes for love and care. God, on the other hand, shows us real love, sacrificial love, through Christ, and then tells us to love him and love others in the same way. And he created us in his image with the capacity to do that. Not in the same perfect way that he is, but in a reflective way. There is a reason why Jesus calls his disciples to self-denial and never once calls them to self-love. When it comes to understanding human nature, I am going to go with the creator of the universe, not some random Instagram influencer who hasn't the slightest clue what she's talking about.

Surrender and sacrificial love. These are two things that I have learned and am continuing to learn. And it's true what they say that having a child is sanctifying. It is so sanctifying, even more so than marriage, which marriage is very sanctifying as well. You are stripped of yourself. And amazingly, you find yourself wanting to do it again. It's crazy. God made us this way. And I truly think he does so to remind us of the gospel. His love for us,

his love for his son that he sent to die for us and our need to love and to be loved deeply. You know, our generation apparently is having fewer kids or we're waiting longer to have kids and people are worried that our population isn't growing quickly enough because people aren't having kids the way that they were. And that really concerns me. And it doesn't concern me because we'll have fewer kids, although I do think that that is, that's obviously the problem. But it also concerns me because we have fewer parents. And I think the lessons in compassion and empathy and sacrifice and love and surrender that we learn as parents is not just good for us as individuals. It's not just good for us as families, but it's good for us as societies. And that's not to say that people who

aren't parents aren't also very compassionate and empathetic and can't be very wonderful people because of course they can. But these are unique lessons that you learn in motherhood and fatherhood that I think benefits us as a whole, as an entire community, as an entire nation. And I worry for a generation, millennials, who are already known for being entitled, that the most responsibility that most people have, that are most people aspire to have who are in our generation, seems to be owning a dog. That worries me because I think it's going to have an effect on our collective character. Again, that's not to say that single people who don't have kids can't be wonderful people

because they can. They can be selfless in many awesome ways that are significant to society. but I just worry about having more and more people who choose not to be parents simply because they want to do what they want to do and they don't want the sacrifice that comes with it. They don't want the inconvenience that comes with it. That really worries me for our collective consciousness. And that certainly I am quite sure has something to do with the godlessness that has increased in our society and has increased, particularly in our generation.

we have the largest number of religious nuns, which is N-O-N-E-S, more than any other generation. I'm sure that has something to do with the childlessness as well and just this kind of God of self that our generation seems to be so keen on serving. But there's also something that I want to say to those of us who are moms. I talked about this on Instagram the other day. We have to be really careful. And I don't mean this in a sanctimonious or judgmental way at all. I realize that I'm a newborn mom.

I don't have all the motherhood experience in the world, but I think the principle still stands, whether you are a new mom or have been a mom for 50 years. We have to be careful about how we talk about motherhood and public and especially online. Now, I am not saying that we shouldn't be honest about our struggles as moms. I'm not saying we shouldn't be vulnerable

and shouldn't be honest because I think we should. I really appreciate people who share their struggles on social media. Some of my favorite accounts to follow on Instagram are parents of people of kids, with special needs of kids who have some kind of sickness. Those kind of accounts, they just really strengthen my faith. They give me a lot of deep joy to see people abiding in Christ when it's really difficult. And I love that they share their vulnerably and they share transparently.

I think that's good. But there is a trend of hating on kids from moms on social media of talking about how your kids are driving you to drink, how you can't wait for your husband to get fixed or you're so glad that your kids have started school or whatever. And I think we just need to be really careful about how we talk about being parents in public because it has an effect on other people. If we talk about how joyless and how terrible it is to be a mom as if we are victims of motherhood, how attractive are we really making that to the next generation and to those around us? I mean, I think we would be crazy to think that some, not all, but some of the deep negativity

that we see about parenting on social media by parents would be crazy to think that that doesn't somehow also attribute indirectly to the abortion culture that we see overtaking our society. There really is this trend that I see among teenagers. And so that wouldn't be millennials. That would be like, I guess, Generation Z. There's really this trend online that I see, especially on Twitter, of dehumanists. humanizing and bullying babies. I know that sounds weird, but there's a lot of viral videos on Twitter that are borderline

child abuse towards babies that people laugh at. There was this video or there was a picture of an unborn child, I think, at like 10 and a half weeks gestation that the comments that people were making about this child and laughing at this child talking about how they would throw it against the wall to see if it stakes all of this terrible stuff, truly demonic, truly hateful, just evil, evil. I mean, it's true what the Bible says about the eyes of their hearts just being darkened and how people are corrupted in their minds when they are apart from Christ. It's horrible.

And we have to be, especially it's Christian moms, we have to be salt and light. And again, that doesn't mean that we just pretend that motherhood is perfect and we're perfect moms and that we always have our hair done and that our house is always perfectly clean. I'm not saying that. But we have to emphasize and glorify the joy, the profound joy of motherhood more than we do the so-called messiness. That's not to say we never talk about messiness, but we need to be talking about how awesome, how rewarding, how much better it is to pour ourselves out for our kids than it is to pour

ourselves out for ourselves. How much better sacrificial love is than self-love. How awesome it is to have a family. How wonderful it is to get to surrender to God. As Christians, we should be encouraging our fellow Christians to see children as a blessing, not as a burden. Not to see them as something that you put off until you've done all of your travel, not something that you put off until you have achieved some kind of accomplishment at work. But, and this is, I'm speaking from experience in this regard because this is how I used to view it. But as a blessing, as something that we accept with gratitude and something we approach with

both surrender and sacrificial love, knowing that God is going to teach us these things, that I certainly didn't go into pregnancy knowing these things already. Like I said, I'm a naturally self-centered person. I want to do things my way. I want to do things for myself. But God, through marriage and through motherhood, sanctifies us of those things. Through many means, he sanctifies us from those things, but especially in relation to the family. And he made it this way.

He made it this way. He made marriage to be a reflection of Christ in the church because he cares about us learning his gospel deeper. And he made mothers to love their children and fathers to love their children in a way that reflect his love for us and his love for Christ that he sent to die for us because he wants us to know the gospel deeper. I guess I should say more deeply. I'll correct my grammar on that, but I think you know what I mean. And I'm just so thankful and privileged and honored

that I am in a position to get to learn that. I really am, and I know it's going to be hard. There are going to be days that are much harder than the newborn stage. I realize that there are going to be things that I go through with her that are going to be much harder than just getting four hours of sleep a night. I totally, I understand that.

may not know what that feels like yet, but I understand that. But what I also know is that there is joy in this. There's joy in the self-empting. There is joy in the self-denial. And for those of you who are not moms yet, but who are planning to be or maybe you're pregnant, I am so excited for you. I'm so excited for you. I wish more people told me that when I was pregnant. So many people tell you, oh, just wait. Oh, just wait. It's going to be so hard. Just wait until you don't sleep. Just wait until you're miserable. Just wait until your boobs are because you're breastfeeding. Just wait. People, I don't know why people like to commiserate. I am so excited for you. That's all I'm going to say. I am so pumped for you to get to experience this. It is a joy. It is a privilege.

It is awesome. This is the best thing that I have ever experienced in my entire life. Nothing comes close to this. Not a single thing. And I've done a lot of, a lot of, I've had a lot of fun experiences in my life. Nothing comes close to this. I'm so excited for you. And for those of you who are moms, who are grandmothers, I should include dads and grandfathers in this. Just thank you for everything that you've done. If you haven't gotten the recognition that you deserve, I'm giving it to you now. Thank you. It's a lot of hard work to raise responsible humans. I don't even know the, I don't even know the beginning of it yet. But I understand at least a little bit what that must be like. So thank you for that. Thank you guys for listening to this and my update. I actually had a lot more written down

that I wanted to say, but I think this covers it. This already is going over our 30 minute mark. Wednesday, we're of course going to talk about the news. Friday, haven't decided what we're going to do. If you have any suggestions for Friday, let me know. I'm going to talk about deconversion next week. So tune into that. Please like and share this podcast. If you like and share it, I think I meant review and share it. If you love it, follow me on Instagram, subscribe on YouTube, and I will see you guys on Wednesday.