Don’t Idolize Your Children

How can we love our children well but not idolize them? 

How can we help our children manage their extracurricular activities and not put them above the Lord? In this episode, Brody walks through what child idolatry is, the dangers of it, and how we can raise our children faithfully. 

Parents, let’s make our children’s discipleship the number one priority. Brody walks through how he’s done this with each of his children regarding academics and sports.

• A Conversation on Parenting (Brody & Little Holloway)
• The Pirate Monk podcast (where Brody was a guest)

Ephesians 6:4

Transcript

As we’ve done some parenting stuff here recently. I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people. And I wanna tackle some of that.

I wanna tackle some stuff like where do sports fit in? How do we love our kids well, but not elevate them to the point that we’re like worshiping them, like child worship. So I think it’ll be… I think this will be practical and it’ll be just a follow-up in recent and in a mini series I guess, that we’ve done recently. And something that we’ll frequently come back to, go all the way back to the beginning of NSR in the spring of 2020 and Little and I sat down and did some parenting stuff. And so it’s always well received and asked for. So here we go. Let’s get into it.

How Do We Not Worship Our Children?

How do we not put them on a pedestal? And how do we lead them well? How do we then help them manage their own extracurriculars. That’s something I wanna talk about. So I’m gonna just do bullet point lists and make the most of this. Now I’m doing most of this from the hip. I don’t have a lot of notes. Most episodes, I think I’ve mentioned, I try to use a lot of, I try to use not a lot of notes, but like a clean bullet point list. I do have some bullet points I wanna talk through. And so we’ll make the most of this. A lot of this though, is gonna just be from the hip. So, what is child idolatry?

“Anything I can’t stop thinking of is an idol…”

We used to sing a song at Snowbird that had these two lines in it. “Anything I put before the Lord is an idol. Anything I can’t stop thinking of is an idol.” And one of the hard things about parenting well, is to not put our children in an unhealthy position of where, like child worship, you got the, you’ve got on one hand, child sacrifice with the abortion industry and the money that they make and the demonic control of that industry, I think by the dark forces of evil. And then you’ve got, I think if you go back and you study ancient cultures, particularly the Canaanite culture, they literally sacrificed their children to their gods. See, we see that, the flip side is we’ve got this distorted. We see a lot of child worship where children are what give people their value, or what control their lives.

1.Keeping it all in Balance

And so I wanna talk, first bullet point is keeping it all in balance. Got guys that can’t make it to work on time because they’re helping with the morning routine. And man, you gotta keep it in balance. You gotta, as a dad and a mom, you’ve got to make sure that you’re providing for your family. And so go to work on time, get your job done, figure it out… The difficulty is figuring out the balance of work and home and everything that’s associated with it. I think it’s important that I recognize in this, the first principle that I think I wanna cover is the principle of making their discipleship and their apprenticeship as Christ followers my number one priority. That’s my first job as a parent, more than providing anything else for them.

“Make their discipleship and their apprenticeship as Christ followers my number one priority…”

It’s important that I’m making their discipleship, my number one goal. So I want them to follow Jesus. I want them to understand who Jesus is at a young age, that’s gonna maybe look different than it does in the teenage years. I’m reading Bible stories and we’re memorizing scripture and we’re praying, and then I’m living. I’m trying to live a life of example. I’m not gonna get it right every time, but I’m trying to example for them of what a Christ follower looks like. And so their discipleship’s my number one goal. If that’s my number one goal, then travel baseball or cheer or fill in the blank can’t be the number one goal for this kid. Now, what distinguishes the number one priority for a kid over other priorities? I think you could say things like, how much time do we spend focused on this?

How much money do we spend focused on this? How much emphasis is placed on this? When you’re missing church three out of four weekends because you think your kid’s gonna make it to college to play baseball, I will tell you after 25 years of watching parents do this, that he’s, that’s not gonna change his trajectory. Keeping him outta church and doing that is not gonna change his trajectory.

The stress and tension and the balance of trying to give kids exposure to camps and travel tournaments, but also keep them in church. It’s a struggle. One of the things they did was they went the Christian school route, and then that way they’re having conversations about the Bible and conversations.

So they’re, they put more emphasis on the club team than on the school team. That’s one way I think. There are other things with Tucker, my son; I remember he had the opportunity to play on some good basketball teams, but we’re like, Hey, you’re not gonna miss Sundays. I mean, one, occasionally, okay, but you’re not gonna miss Sundays. And so missing one Sunday a month was not gonna be okay with me. Missing two or three was not even gonna be in the conversation. So he missed maybe a couple a year because of events he had. And I think, just the main thing is not letting it become a point of legalism, but then being realistic about what opportunities is this gonna afford him. So there was a point in his journey where we knew there were some opportunities to go and compete in some high level camps and combines; ESPN, Rivals Under Armor, Nike.

And he went and competed in those events, and they were one day events by invitation only, and they were Sunday events. And so we missed church, but they were the types of events that we knew if he could perform well and get, that he was gonna get the exposure he needed to play at the next level. Which brings me to my next point, sub-point, within this, you need to be realistic about assessing your child’s abilities. Don’t think that your kid’s gonna go play next level ball when they can’t, when they’re barely making a team or they can’t, like if they’re not showing out at the local level, then traveling around and spending a thousand dollars a weekend and staying in hotels and missing church and playing in tournaments is not gonna be like the magic pill.

“Be realistic about assessing your child’s abilities...”

We learned that. And so I think that what I would pair that all down to is find a few opportunities that are gonna give you a realistic understanding of where your kid is, get them assessed. iIf it’s a baseball player, have them assessed by a pitching… An elite pitching coach, an elite hitting coach. Have them assessed by a volleyball coach that is high level in the club world or whatever, get a realistic assessment. They can look at that kid as an eighth grader and have a good idea. The other thing is sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, just let them have fun and play school ball. I’m just telling you, man, it drives me crazy parents that, this is, again, 25 years of observation and I’m ranting a little bit, but that just live their lives for their seventh and eighth grade kids to play in basketball tournaments and these little rec centers three hours away, but they, it takes them outta church for the weekend, or it alters like every other aspect of their lives.

So I think it’s important, some things I’ve learned as a dad is like that eighth to ninth grade year, that’s when you need to start getting serious about assessing them, having them assessed. So, like my daughter, who is a junior right now, her ninth grade year, I had, we had her assessed by some elite coaches that we trusted and they gave a realistic assessment of where she was. And then you know what you’re working with, and did the same thing with Tuck when he was a ninth grader. So be realistic and know, okay, I want my kid to be really good, but the reality is he’s probably not gonna be a division one athlete. Maybe he could play division two or NAI or something like that. And so is it worth the time and money and energy and emphasis that we’re gonna place on this?

What message am I gonna send to this kid about this sport? Is she gonna get a cheer scholarship? Is he gonna get a golf scholarship or a baseball scholarship or a football scholarship? There’s no travel football, so football’s less of a deal. There are camps, there’s like a camp season in the spring and a little bit into the summer. So then you can do, go do these one day, two to three hour combine style camps, but baseball, basketball, volleyball, softball and cheer, those seem to be the weekend consuming events. So be realistic in your assessment. 

2. Don’t Live Vicariously Through Your Child.

What do I do to let my kid have a cool growing up experience? And I am gonna share some personal things that Little and I did along the way. Maybe some right, some wrong, but that we can look back and say, yep, this worked, this didn’t work. And we’re still in the middle of it, too, with our youngest being a 10-year-old. So the first thing being have a realistic idea, like get that kid assessed and then sub-points being seventh grade’s too early. Like there are people that have been prodigies and at sixth and seventh, I remember the Pistol Pete story. It’s like crazy reading about his childhood. There’s some dudes like that, but I’m just telling you, man, you talk to high school coaches and division one college coaches, and they’ll say a lot of their athletes didn’t even start doing stuff until eighth grade.

My brother was a phenomenal college athlete, is a high school coach, is a really good assessor of talent. And he did not let his son start playing football until junior high, seventh grade, like not the first year of middle school, but second or third year of middle school. And he said, I’m just not gonna run him through his elementary school years doing this and getting bad habits and not, maybe he’s not even gonna be a football player and he’s not gonna be good at it or not like it or whatever. I got a cousin, the same thing. He kept his kid out of football. Tuck played football from second grade on, but our next two boys we’ve held back on that. And so I, you gotta figure it out.

But the point being, getting that assessment around eighth grade, ninth grade is probably good. Definitely ninth grade and then you know going into their junior, their sophomore year, what they’re gonna be capable of. And there’s so many things that have to come together in that anyway. They gotta have a phenomenal amount of natural ability. I’m talking about a phenomenal amount of natural ability. Then they have to have an insane work ethic; then they have to have a crazy academic work ethic. I’m glad to answer questions, email us, and I’m glad to share more in depth. Let us know if you’d like to hear more in depth about Tuck’s journey and what that looked like academically, athletically, the sacrifices that had to be made and how we balance that specifically with church and youth group and ministry.

That’s the first point. Don’t be a stumbling block or a hindrance to them becoming the best that they can be at something. If you see you’ve got a kid who’s a phenomenal vocalist, get her good lessons, but do it locally. And as she gets older and has opportunities to maybe perform through some programs at school or, maybe an opportunity presents itself for her to go be a part of the school of art. Those are big conversations that’ll need to be prayed over and talked through. But I think just being realistic about that is so important. And then so I’m gonna do everything I can to maximize their opportunities, but realistically, and the second part of that is I’m not going to hinder them. I’m not gonna hinder them. There could be, this is, in our culture right now would be the more rare side of this. There are people who might hinder their kid from reaching their full potential.

Second thing is don’t live vicariously through your child. There’s three things I wanna say here on child, on parenting children who are athletes and these three things. The first one would be, and we’re, this is not only gonna be an episode about sports, but I do think it’s something, we’re such a sports saturated culture, and especially with this issue of how, you know, where’s the balance?

Not making sure that they’re at practice or that they’re having opportunities to, or letting ’em play at the local 1A high school, but not getting them realistically assessed by higher level talent judges. You got a kid that’s dominating, and I remember there’s a couple of football programs in our area, Robbinsville High School and Murphy High School, where historically, and I’m not throwing anybody under the bus here, and I would say Andrews High school, but like all the one, we’re in a 1A conference, which is the smallest division. And I think there’s a danger, there’s a tendency to be more obsessed with winning that conference and winning the state championship than there is with preparing kids to go play at the next level. And I think it’s because there’s been so few kids that have gone to play at the next level.

And one of the things I’ve seen is that, some kids might have had the opportunity but would’ve taken some hard decisions to maximize those opportunities. So don’t inhibit and then, don’t stand in the way of it, but then do everything you can to help them get to the next level. Now, I want to give you a little, a personal story and a little bit of clarity on this point of how do we take, like if a kid… You recognize your kid’s got a unique or an exceptional… He’s exceptional in an area; she’s exceptional in an area. It could be sports; it could be academics; it could be the arts. And I wanna just talk about that for a minute here, and tell you how we navigated that with Tucker. If you’re listening to this for the first time, you’re not familiar with my family or our dynamic.

My son is… He’s a football player. He is an All ACC receiver and punt returner at Virginia Tech. Last year as a freshman, he set a team record as a punt returner, as a true freshman. And he’s been an exceptional athlete, but there was a lot that went into figuring out is he the caliber to go to the next level? And if so, what level? I remember visiting Mars Hill, which is a Western North Carolina university, that’s division two. If you’re unfamiliar with the way college athletics are sort of layered. The top level is what’s called, and we’re talking football here. I don’t know how other sports work. I know basketball and football, that’s about it. But the top level would be division one and it’s BCS, Bowl Championship Series or CFP College Football Playoff, that would be ACCSEC, big 10, big 12. The big names, The Alabama, The Clemson, The Texas, those schools, Michigan.

And then within division one, you’ve got power five and group of five. So the group of five would be the kind of the tier two conferences, but still are phenomenal, I mean like, top tier athletes, but tier two conferences. So that would be conferences that have schools like Appalachian State, Marshall Liberty, and so really good football, so there’s that level. Then there’s division 1-AA, what it used to be called, now it’s called FBS… No, now it’s called… It doesn’t matter but… FCS Football Championship I think. And so it would be like the next tier down Western Carolina University is the school close to us that’s in that.

And then the next tier under that would be division two, which division… And so division one, all division one stuff, they give full scholarships. Division two, you get a partial scholarship and they have to be creative how they’re gonna give other scholarships. So if we’re gonna give somebody a full scholarship, they really have to get creative because they can only give about, a small percentage of that can come from athletic scholarshipping. So they gotta be creative with things like Pell Grant, other financial aid, academic scholarships, things like that. And then you’ve got division three, which there are no scholarships given. So division three, no scholarships, division two, no full scholarships, creative ways to get kids there. A lot of kids play and don’t receive any money. Division one, full scholarships across the board or walk on where you get no money, but there’s nothing in between, really.

And then there’s NAI, which is kind of its own animal. So I remember going through this thing where we’re like, we gotta get Tucker evaluated and see realistically, is he a division one caliber athlete? Is he an NAI athlete? I remember visiting early in his high school career, some NAI schools, one was either University of Cumberlands or Cumberlands University. It was up right on the Tennessee-Kentucky line. And we went up there and looked at their football facility and really small, but an opportunity to play at the next level, and so there’s that option. Then we went to Mars Hill University, which is locally opportunity to play at the next level, but really small. We considered Western Carolina, we went to Liberty. And at that point, as his freshman year, Liberty was kind of like the dream. What if he could play here? That’s where his mom and I went. And so that was kind of the school that was at the top of his list.

And then… So I remember having this conversation. Here’s the point I wanna drive home. I remember having this conversation when it became evident that he was going to be able to play at some level at the next level, but there’s so many things that have to line up. You have to have a high school coach that’s willing to recruit, get you recruited, that’s gonna work hard for you. In some sports, you’ve gotta go into the club series. So like in girls soccer, they don’t, typically, the bigger programs don’t recruit from high schools, they recruit from these club networks. So it’s what you would call travel, a travel team or something like that. Same with volleyball and basketball. You’re gonna get more notoriety and more recruiting in those realms.

So the equivalent to that in football is to get yourself into these entry-level camps as a freshman for like Under Armour, Nike, they have these big camps. And then out of that, people start to get invited to these more restricted camps. And if you go to one of those camps and you score well, you do well, then, you’ll get invited back and then you go through the ranks until eventually you’re at these really elite one-day events where you’re competing against the best of the best, and then a lot of recruiting takes place there. So this is the sentence; this is the statement that I made to Tuck that I wanted to share with you. 

I said, 

“If you want to go to the next level, I’m not gonna do it vicariously through you, but I will make sure that I do my part so that when it’s all said and done, I won’t be the one that held you up. I won’t be the one that kept it from happening. But you gotta do the work, you gotta have the drive, you gotta have the want-to, you gotta have the talent.”

So you gotta have the talent and the ability, the drive to do it, which includes the classroom, the dining room, and the field and the weight room. So there’s four components here. Are you willing to do what it takes to add the weight to your body? Are you willing to do what it takes to be a 4.0 student? Are you willing to do what it takes in the weight room to do the extras, to work on speed and agility? Are you willing to do what it takes on the field? And what that translates to is the extra work, the after hours work, the before hours work. If you’re willing to do your part, I will do my part. I will not measure my failure or success based on what you do. But I will not allow you to measure your failure or success based on what I do.

So I’m not gonna hold you up, but I will empower you. I’ll get you where you need to go. I’ll do my part. As parents finding that balance where it’s like, okay, we recognize this kid has the potential to play at the next level. And that early on we didn’t know how much potential, but after his sophomore campaign and some camps that spring, some legitimate people, like legitimate people in the industry said, oh no, he’s good enough to do X, Y and Z. He can do… They said he’s a division one athlete. We had some guys that train guys for the NFL combine, some college coaches, some former NFL athletes, like we got him evaluated, and then with that, what we had to do is, put in the work of having some after hours training.

So anyway, hope that kinda helps bring some clarity to that. Just an observation. Alright, so find that balance. It’s all about balance and tension. Balance and tension. So don’t live vicariously through your kid. Don’t disable, enable and don’t keep them from being the best they can be, but be realistic in your approach and do everything you can as long as they’re willing to do their part. So that’s that on sports and extracurriculars, and don’t live outside your means for this. Don’t, again, I remember finding out real quick, man, you go to the travel tournaments for whatever sport and stay in a Hampton Inn for three outta four weekends. You spend 800 to a thousand bucks right quick in a weekend or in a couple of weekends. Depending on what weekend, it gets expensive fast. And so don’t rack up credit card debt and don’t spend money in a poor stewardship manner. Give them time and attention. Time and attention. And what I mean by that is don’t, like, the best time for my kid is not me cheering for them when they’re on the court or the field. That’s good, and I need to be at their games. And they need time and attention outside that. They need it in that, and outside that to give them balance and to anchor them. I think it’s real important.

3. Give Them Time And Attention

So give ’em time and attention. The greatest economy that you can speak, that you can invest in a child is the economy of time and attention. Time, if I’m willing to set other things aside that I would like to do or that are valuable and important to me to spend time with my child, I don’t know, man, that’s super important. That’s so valuable. I look back at raising three kids now, and thinking about how we’re gonna finish the next three they’re raising, over the next eight years, we’ll finish out. And I wanna make sure that they get the best of my time and energy. I remember years ago, my first kids thinking, when I come home exhausted, I wanna do whatever I will have to do for them to not feel the weight of my exhaustion, but to get the energy I need to really make the most of the afternoons and even evenings.

So time is so important. And in that, I wanna live out an example that I would want them to follow. I think it’s so important, man. So the last two things I wanna do in this episode, let’s talk about academics. We talked about sports. Let’s talk about academics. And by the way, sports were for us, first kids stayed right here, went to the local public school after homeschooling all the way through middle school and played a little bit of sports locally, but not a lot. And it was great, great experience, she did great academically, won some really cool awards. It was awesome. Next kid started homeschooling, got to middle school and couldn’t play RecSports anymore. And just was driven to play sports. If anything, Little and I would give him the opportunity not to play.

Are you sure you wanna play this year? It’s all he wanted to do. So we narrowed it down and then we said, you can play two sports a year. We’re not gonna do a year-round obsessive sport, but we’re also not gonna do a sport, three seasons out of the year and add a fourth summer league or whatever. We’re not gonna do that. So pick two seasons and we’ll do that. And that was gonna be all the way through until he got to school bowl. Seventh grade, he makes a transition to public school. 10th grade going into the junior year re-classes and moves to a prep school so that after legitimate talent assessment from some people in the industry realizing, okay, he can play at the next level, but not from here. He’s gonna have to go to a bigger platform, a bigger stage.

And you’ll know if you make, I mean, it’s gonna be, gosh, it was a hard decision. It was a big decision. But we made that move and it paid off. The next kid homeschooled through middle school, moved, but did not go to the local high school because of the fact that she’s a soccer player. And at that point, we were having her assessed thinking, okay, she could play at the next level. So we went to the next school over, which is Murphy High School, because they had a girl’s soccer team. That was the right move for our family and we were willing to do that to give her the opportunity to succeed. She has since, she’s had a phenomenal soccer career, we’re halfway through her junior season. Let’s see, we’re six games under our belt, I think we’re three in three. We’re sitting at 500. We’ve lost two really close games. Six games in, I think she scored eight goals and has four or five assists. She’s having a great career, but has said, I don’t wanna play college ball.

All right, cool. Let’s make the most of high school. Have a good time with it. She’s not on a club team. She’s not traveling. We’re just having a good time. It’s awesome. So that’s been our journey to this point. Next kid, kid number four is now finishing out seventh grade. So we have started the talent assessment process, and just lightly, mildly with a local, a fairly semi-local person who’s kind of assessing and training with her. So we’ll know over the next year, how hard do we wanna hit the throttle with that or do we wanna back off?

4. Desire for Them to Hunger for Knowledge.

So that’s been, there’s our personal, that’s kind of our personal journey. But academically, it’s been, no, we’re gonna keep the throttle down, whether you’re homeschooled or secular public school or private school, Christian school. We’ve done it all, except for, not really Christian school, but we’ve done private school. So Tuck, the oldest boy went to private school for two years, junior and senior year. The other kids all had a blend of homeschool and public school. You gotta figure that out, but regardless of what you figure out, academics have to be taken serious because that’s gonna condition them. How are they gonna work later? What kind of workers are they gonna be? What kind of thinkers are they gonna be? Are they gonna be students of the word? I want to program those mechanisms that make them hunger for knowledge.

I want them to hunger for knowledge, so I gotta put that in them if it’s not natural to them. So academics have to be a big deal. So how do you not become obsessed and consumed? It’s a little easier with academics, I think, to not become obsessed a lot easier than it is with sports. ‘Cause academics is just like every night, we’re gonna make sure we’re doing the homework. We’re gonna communicate with teachers. Let me say this. Let me pause right here and say, mama, leave the teacher or the coach alone until they cross a line that they don’t have the authority to coach. But if they’re not playing your baby, maybe it’s because your baby ain’t good enough to be on the court or the field. And I would say even if your kid’s sitting on the sideline and you think that your kid is legitimately better than the kid that’s in there. Maybe it’s the coach’s son or whatever, and he’s getting to play more and you… Look, your son or your daughter is gonna learn through that, the best thing you can do is teach them how to deal with adversity. Not going over them and giving the coach an earful because he’s not getting enough playing time.

You’re not helping your kid when you do that. You’re prolonging his adolescence. Let him figure it out. Let him work for it and don’t, just don’t be that mom. Same thing academically, the teacher’s not picking on your kid if your kid’s getting called down in class or your kid’s not making the grade, like, help ’em make the grade and make ’em make the grade, make ’em make academics a priority. I think that’s super important. Alright, last and I’ve rambled. I hope this has not been a rambling episode. Gosh, I hope it’s not. And we’ll do more. I’ve got so much content that I haven’t looked at, like, I haven’t gone into like my notes, but I’ve got, if we start working through like Ephesians 6:4, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring ’em up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. New American standard and ESV say that the exact same way.’

5. Do Not Provoke Them to Anger, but Rather Seek to Bring Them Up.

There’s one prohibition, one instruction, don’t provoke, but bring them up. And man, we can unpack that. I’ve got five points each with about a dozen bullet points under it that we’re gonna unpack in a different episode. But let me just say this. You have to get… The third thing is, you have to get the discipline component right. Discipline for your child as a parent. You disciplining that child is directly connected to their discipleship. Discipline is discipleship, it’s development. Development is discipleship, discipline is discipleship. And let me just say, let me give you some considerations for raising teenagers. Communicate with them. Listen to them as often as you speak. Now, a lot of times, they won’t talk to you, but listen as much as they’ll talk and try to give them opportunities to talk and like, this can be a struggle, man. It can be tough to get a kid to like, Hey, I need you to talk to me right now, but just work at that and any little bit of communication is positive.

So celebrate those expressions of love that remind them that you love them unconditionally. I don’t care that you missed the game-winning layup. It doesn’t, man, let’s go get pizza. Let’s go celebrate the fact that you’ve got two legs that work and two hands that work and the health to be out there playing ball. You’re not sitting in a hospital somewhere going through chemotherapy with a childhood cancer or leukemia. Like that sounds drastic, but why would we not celebrate? I’m thinking there’s some games that some days where you’re like, dang, that really stuck. My kid stuck it up.

We struck out and lost the game and I ain’t gonna lose the game. It’s a game anyway. Express love that’s unconditional and celebrate even in the failures because there’s something to be learned. Maintain a firm, but loving position of authority in the teenage years because you are in charge. And then work to remove guilt and shame when they fail. Don’t exasperate them like that. That’s a big part of that. So Ephesians 6:4, their discipleship is critical. At the end of that, he says, raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. That would be the discipline, the development, the discipleship of that child in the Lord is your number one priority. So we’ll follow with an episode where we’ll walk through five aspects of that. I’m gonna stop right there, though.

I hope it’s been helpful. Let us know, please give me some feedback on this because that was kind of a rambling just… That was more like we’re sitting around the campfire and just spitballing some parenting thoughts, especially as it relates to child idolatry, sports idolatry, grades and academics idolatry. Don’t live vicariously through your kid.

“Celebrate big victories and learn from the losses…”

Celebrate the little victories. Celebrate the big victories. Learn from the losses. Teach ’em that and then drive them in the classroom. Drive them in their discipleship by spending time with them, investing in them, loving on them and letting them know that, set an example for them. Let them know that Jesus is the most important thing to you, not your work, not your hobby. It’s important stuff and for those of you that are parents to toddlers, man, get after it. Now’s the time to establish that. You can establish that now.

If you’re parents to teenagers, don’t feel like all is lost because you didn’t do these things early on. Go back to something we’ve talked about in the past, the three phases of parenting. The cop phase, the coach phase, and the counselor phase. You’ve got toddlers, you’re the cop. You’ve got teenagers, you’re the coach. And it’s hard, if you miss the cop phase, to try to play cop to teenagers. It’s real hard where any of us that have done it know it. But if I do this faithfully, then I’ll have a voice in their lives for the rest of their lives and get to play sort of that patriarchal matriarchal counselor, that sage counselor role. And I’ll tell you this, man, your kids are teenagers or early twenties and they feel wayward, they’re gonna come back around. They’re gonna come back around if you’ve raised them and stayed involved in their lives.

“The cop phase, the coach phase , the counselor phase…”

And for the dad out there, that’s got the prodigal son or daughter, don’t lose heart, don’t lose hope. For the mom that feels like all is lost for your child, don’t lose heart. Don’t lose hope. We serve a God who is able to save and to keep and to protect, and he’s able to bring the prodigal home. So pray, believe in that with confidence and hope in that. Amen, Amen. All right, so the last thing is recently, was interviewed for the Pirate Monk Podcast. The Pirate Monk Podcast. We’ll find the link for that. I think they do YouTube. I think they post their stuff on YouTube. Anyway, Pirate Monk podcast, and they were just asking me about discipleship and what we do at SWO. And it was good. It was good. I think those guys are doing cool work. It’ll be a cool thing for you to look into, for our men to look into.

It’s geared at men. Anyway, good stuff. So Pirate Monk podcast, check it out. And what do we got coming up? Staff orientation around the corner, women’s Respond Conference around the corner. Virginia Tech Spring game around the corner. I’m excited. It’s springtime. We’re almost out of it, man. It’s been a rainy few days last week and I had the opportunity to go to Fort Myers, Florida, and then travel over into, in about an hour from there for some meetings. And oh my goodness, it was like 80 degrees and sunny and low humidity. I was in… It was just amazing. I needed that. Anyway, hope your spring’s started off and revving up in a good way. And let us know what you think and what you’d like to hear. Thanks for being here and listening to No Sanity Required.