Q&A Panel Discussion On Biblical Womanhood: Respond at Home

Panel: Little Holloway, Sarah Conti, Amy Rasmussen, and Amy Davis.

Moderator: Bethany Clark

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What encouragement would you give to the mama that continually feels like she’s not doing enough by simply being at home with her little ones?

Sarah Conti:

Alright. So yeah, I think with this question, it’s important to realize that culturally, there is a war for our mindset here. Our culture qualifies staying at home to raise kids with words like just or only, and there’s a message that we’re not being all that we could be, that we’re missing out or that the world is missing out on our would-be contributions. And when you’re in the trenches in the day-to-day of nap times and sippy cups, it’s really easy to lose sight of the enormous calling that you’re fulfilling. And if you look at scripture, Titus 2 says older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanders or slaves to much wine, they are to teach what is good. And so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. And I really wanna focus on that idea of a keeper of the home, or in 1 Timothy, it talks about managing your household. And I think my challenge to women is to see that as bigger. It’s really easy, when we hear that phrase, to shrink it down to something really tiny and make it about tasks and jobs and things that we are doing and think that it’s less than.

And we really need to expand our understanding of household and see it as a sphere of influence and ministry. Starting with the people in your household, your husband, your children, and spilling over to the people of your neighborhood and your church and your community. So if you are in a season where ministry outside of the home is challenging, if you have a lot of really little ones, there are so many ways that you can invite ministry in to that sphere by simply folding people into what you’re already doing, by having people share your dinner table, have someone come sit with you and fold laundry and talk about the Lord, and just fold them into what you’re already doing, and it doesn’t have to be a big extra that feels undo-able in that season.

But even if you’re at a point in that season where you’ve got nothing left in you for dinner guests or for laundry hangouts or anything like that, you’re still in the midst of possibly the most intensive gospel call of your entire life. So I was thinking about this last night, and I was thinking, if a missionary came to your church and said, I’m planning to go live with a people group for the next 20 years, learn their language, study their culture, translate biblical truth into a format they can understand, serve them, love them, build relationships, take care of their sick, feed their hungry, live among them every day, live out the gospel in front of them, speak the truth of God’s word into their lives in the hopes that they’re gonna repent and believe…

And if they do, I’m gonna disciple them and nurture these new believers and walk with them with the Lord, we would be like, “That’s fantastic. That’s so admirable. That’s so honorable. But really, on a small scale, that’s what you’ve been called to do with your own little people group for the next 18 years at least, and really for the rest of your life, from the very beginning when you’re faithfully filling sippy cups, you’re providing a picture of provision and you are a giver of good things. And as you serve and care for them when they have nothing to give you, you are their first picture of Christ-like love, and you get the opportunity to even point past yourself and point them to Christ. And so you get to read them Bible stories and teach them who Jesus is and show them how to pray, but even more than those really formal times, the big discipleship happens in the little moments. And that’s why it’s such a big deal, just that you’re present, just that you’re there. Because in those moments, those teachable moments, someone is gonna speak into your child’s life and you want it to be you.

So when they wake up in the morning and stumble out with their bed head and their footie pajamas, and they crawl up beside you and you’re reading the Word of God, that sows seeds. And when they see you filled with joy and verbalizing your thanksgiving to the Lord every day, that sows seeds. And when they lash out of anger at a sibling or they come home with hurt feelings from a friend, and you get to walk them through that and point them to truth, that sows seeds. And when they come to you in tears broken over their sin, and you get to tell them about Jesus, and the God of your salvation, who when they repent and turn to them, says, “Neither do I condemn you, so go and sin no more.” Then you get this huge privilege of pointing them to Jesus. And as they get older, they’re gonna face tougher battles and you’ll get to show them how to hide God’s word in their heart, how to call out to Him in prayer, how to listen to the Holy Spirit, how to flee from sin, how to love others well, how to fight in justice, how to take care of the vulnerable, how to share the gospel with lost people, and just the day in and day out of loving and raising these babies is a never-ending pouring out of the gospel. It’s a constant bending of the grace and mercy and loving kindness of the Lord to these little people in your house, and it’s just an absolutely irreplaceable role, and it’s temporary.

We get one shot at this, and it goes fast. My oldest is 12, she’s two-thirds of the way through her years in my house. I’ve got the next one is 9, she’s half way through. So it goes fast, and I just would really encourage you not to waste these years, don’t waste the days, don’t waste the moments, just be present and really keep the big picture in mind, and don’t ever, ever feel ashamed of being just a mom, because laying down your life for a couple of decades to sow and weave the hope of the Gospel into the hearts and minds of your kids is a huge calling and a great privilege.

What encouragement would you give to the mama of littles that feels like she can never get anything done?

Amy Davis:

I’m gonna answer that one because, first of all, my personality is definitely not inside the box or whatever, type A, and so it is really hard for me to do a to-do list because I can easily write out a to-do list but to keep up with it, to check off the boxes, to do the things on the list, that’s a whole different thing. So one thing that I would tell you is from the great theologian, a friend that I have, Sarah, who said, you need to lower your expectations of what you think you need to accomplish in a day. Because if you lower your expectations, which are mostly put on ourselves. So for the most part, we’ve been looking at social media, we’ve been looking at what older moms or more season moms are able to do or able to accomplish, and then you’re looking at your three little kids and you’re like, “Why can’t we do what they are doing? Come on, guys.” And you’re trying to will them to do what you’re wanting to get done on your list, and they’re like, “I don’t know what a list is. I don’t know that I’m supposed to be doing a list.”

So your kids, they aren’t concerned with you getting your stuff done every day, so my encouragement right off the bat is to lower your expectations so that way you’re not disappointed by the end of the day. But seriously, a lot of people need to kinda chill out and realize, if your kids are safe, if your kids are healthy, if your kids actually have clothes on in the winter and ish in the summer, you’re killing it. Because the big heart problem that our kids have is that we are trying to take them to too many classes, take them to this many practices, trying to get them involved in this sport or trying to cultivate them into being doers, we think that’s what we need to be doing. But what we need to be doing is what these ladies are talking about, it’s cultivating hearts that are thankful, content and patient, and just the characteristics that hopefully one day the Holy Spirit will drive home into their hearts to be fruits of His Holy Spirit in their lives. But one thing I just wanted to say, for me personally, this past pandemic, we haven’t had groups of at camp. And so Spencer’s been home on the weekends, and that has just been crazy for us. We’re just like, “What are we gonna do?” And so we came up with Saturday project day.

Well, I am a project-oriented person. If I’m gonna paint a mural in my house, yes, I’m gonna do it all the way. I’m just very project-centered. And so whenever I have my kids, and they’re 9 or 10. Wait, how old are they? 9, 10 and 11, yes. They are super capable of a lot of things where they weren’t when they were younger. But I was talking to Spence, and I was like, “Oh my goodness, we’re done with one.” One yard work day, one weekend, and the next weekend. He’s like, “Okay, we’re gonna do this yard work day.” And I’m just like, I couldn’t get anything done last week, I couldn’t do anything, and he’s like, “You’re not supposed to be doing anything, you’re supposed to be managing three kids and teaching them how to work.” And I was like, “Walk me through this process, Spence. I need to know what we need to do here.” And so he was like, “You are not supposed to get anything done when you’re managing kids, you’ve got to teach them how to do the work.” And so I spent an hour Moving gravel.

Let’s get a different shovel, da-da-da-da-dah, checking she’s not doing what she should have been doing, we’re trying to redo… Okay, these are the directions again, and then drinking jet water. And you know, for an hour I’m just zipping back to these three, and I had real conversations with them, interactions with them, laughed a couple of times with each one of them in that hour, and that was the work, not the rocks. And Spencer will sometimes use this, there was a farmer who had four boys and he raised them growing corn on this huge, huge, huge farm, and as soon as the last kid graduated from college, he sold the farm and moved in town to a small apartment with his wife, and his… One of his kids was like, “Dad, why did you sell the farm?” And he was like, “I wasn’t raising corn, I was raising men.” And I think that that’s kind of what our mentality needs to be. Our goal is to teach our kids how to work, but not necessarily to accomplish all of these big giant tasks that we’ve created in our own mind anyway.

So yeah, just look at your project list, maybe do one big project a week, maybe shorten the length of your work day, give yourself a time, 3 o’clock, I’m done. No more laundry, no more this, no more that, I’m just gonna play. Just little tips like that to help make your days run smoother without you feeling like you have to conquer everything on your monthly to-do list in one day, so.

When we are in small groups, most of the prayer requests are prosperity-driven. How can we shift this to be centered more on other people’s needs?

Sarah Conti:

I’ve had a ton of experience with this ’cause I teach music lessons and for 20 years I’ve been doing this, and for every lesson, I pray with the kid beforehand. So most kids, their prayer request is that they can choose between praying for something or praising God for something, and most of them are for things that they want, or in the last two months for the Coronavirus to be over. That’s what so many kids were saying, “I wanna pray for the Coronavirus to be over,” but it was so sweet to see this little boy’s heart today, and it’s evident that his mom has been talking with him about it, he’s like, “Because, I don’t want people to be sick, and especially those old people.” And he had this soft heart that wasn’t just, “I want this to be over, because I wanna get back to having fun,” he actually cared about relief for people, and Jesus does care about relief for people.

And I read this morning in my devotions about Jesus saying like, “Become like a child to be in the kingdom of heaven and don’t ever quit praying for these simple desires and these simple needs that we have, but let it lead you to see God for who he is and see his heart, see his provision.” And it’s been really cool as I teach these lessons to see when God pushes me to push the kid a little bit further, and to see where God’s heart would be in that prayer request or to completely contradict what they’re saying. Sometimes I’ve literally said, “No, we’re not gonna pray for that, because you just want that selfishly,” and they’re like, “Oh yeah, you’re right.” So it is, it’s so fun to be a good friend to each other, whether it’s in your small groups or your friend groups or whatever it is, to say, let’s bring our simple needs to the Lord, but let’s always be looking… Like, Jesus taught us to pray for his will to be done.

And that everyone’s truest needs would be met and sometimes what we’re praying for isn’t our truest need, our truest need is to find sufficiency in Christ, you know? So just to be led by the Holy Spirit, to ask for the Holy Spirit, to pray for the fruits of the Spirit. Bethany was bringing that up like, “don’t just pray to be happy, pray for the joy of the Holy Spirit regardless of your circumstance.” And so, praying over the fruits of the Holy Spirit is awesome, something I do all the time and need to do more, because I need to relinquish my anxiety and ask for the Holy Spirit’s peace. I need to reject my apathy and ask for God’s sacrificial love, and just praying for those things and helping each other to pray for those things, ’cause Jesus said that the Heavenly Father loves to give the Holy Spirit to anyone who asks for him, and that is the best thing that God could give to his children.

I talked about that earlier in the week on the podcast, about prosperity gospel, and I thought about that later, ’cause I didn’t want anybody to be confused, like, is it wrong to pray for this situation to pass? Is it wrong to be… And there’s not… It’s just… There’s a fine line as we walk with the Lord, that we don’t put ourself above what the Lord wants to do in our lives, and a lot of times, even in that talk I was mentioning that, it’s those times that are hard that reveal that layer that we didn’t even know was there, that jealousy, that insecurity, that it rises when the trials come or when something bad happens, or we walk through something, and I think that’s the trick. It’s not that we don’t pray, like Musa said, “Go to the Lord like a child,” He says, Come to… My kids, do not run up to me and say, “mother, blah, blah, blah,” they don’t talk to me like that. They’re like, Mama, I need, boom. And it’s days where I am not patient with them, but the Bible says that He is so patient with us, God is so faithful and so patient, and he wants us to come, but in that are we praying His will?

And that’s the trick when I find myself, man, I just wish this would be done or this would be fixed. I was telling them earlier, one of our kids right now, every time he prays and… And you guys probably know this when you’re “dear Jesus, thank you for this food, thank you for this day,” and he always prays that we’ll have fun, always. And so, what we’re trying to do is just change that language to, like, Amy was saying, the fruits of the Spirit, let’s not pray to have fun, because you know today’s rainy and we’re not probably properly gonna do anything really awesome, but let’s pray that we’re gonna have joy in that rain, in that when we’re gonna do this laundry right now, it’s not gonna be fun, but we’re gonna have joy in that. And so, I have to do that. I hear myself say that to him, and I know that that’s for me, I’ve gotta have my… My perspective has to change to meet the Lord…

The Bible says in Romans 8 that all things work together for good, for God’s glory, right? According to His will and His purposes. A lot of times I pray that and I want my will, and I insert that mentally, even if I think I don’t believe that, but we don’t… We know that when hard things come, we do. That sneaks in, and so that’s just fighting and praying God’s will for our lives, asking him like a child, but then being willing to submit to his answers and go deeper with the Lord in those circumstances.

What tips do you have for helping a husband that is struggling to deal with depression or anxiety?

Little Holloway:

 The fact that there’s a freedom where he’s bringing his darkness into your marriage, but you have the light of Christ and the hope of Christ, and the strength and the power, the resurrecting power of Christ. So, knowing that you can bring that to the table, in his battle with this. 1 John 1:5 says, The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And I remember when Kilby was maybe… So Kilby’s my oldest, she’s 20 and married now, and when she was maybe six, I was out of town and she was staying with my mom, and my mom’s mom was there also, so my grandma. And she had had some strokes and stuff, and Satan was just picking on her mind and she would just have bouts where you could literally tell she was having just like a demonic attack, because she was so weak mentally to battle it, and it was just awful thing to see. And so, I was out of town when my mom called me and she said, nanny’s like really having a hard time, and she’s like, not coherent, she is literally like being attacked by Satan and just having a really time mentally.

So I told my mom, I said, “Okay, you need to go get your Bible and read to nanny. You need to go get the Scripture and just read it out loud.” So, she puts the phone down, I can hear some commotion, she comes back and she said, “Oh, Kilby’s found a Bible and she’s already doing it.” And it was so cool, Kilby even at that age was like, she knew the power of the Word of God, and she was just reading it to my nanny and my mum said she just slowly calmed out of it. And I think that’s such a visual of the power of scripture. And even like a couple of weeks ago, we were headed to Florida on vacation, and I was… I left… We left out and we were going on a vacation with our family for like 10 days. While I was kinda just in a little bit of a bad funk, and I remember Tucker was already asleep, Lailee was already asleep, and I just started singing hymns in the car and the Lord just lifted my mind, just like, pushed me right out of it.

So there are like, tactics, battle strategy tactics to use that the Lord really is delighted in when we use and not just flail around, wanting the best to happen. Also, for your husband, if he’s okay with having a group of men, women, whatever, whoever you trust, that would just basically form like a band of prayer for him. Yesterday, I was trying to tear a piece of paper out of a notebook like this, but it was bigger and I kinda pulled it from the side and it like, “Oh, this is hard.” But then, if you pull it from the edge it rips right open and the Lord was like, “Yeah, this is like, what prayer’s like,” and having people around you, it’s stronger than just going one at a time like that. And so, if he would be comfortable with having a group of men and women that could pray over him, especially, when he’s having a hard time. There’s also like, there’s a… I have a prayer app on my phone its called Echo app, and you can put whatever in, so a certain point of every day, one of my kids will pop up, it says Pray for Kilby and Greg, you know?

And so, that’s pitiful that I have to have that, but I do throughout my day, so even something like when your husband is having a hard time and he lets you know, if you have some kinda just prayer circle going on that would be effective. And then, just like, you personally keeping your eye on the Lord, there’s probably not tons psychologically you can do to help pull him out of it, but just even the scene where Peter is walking on the water and he is recognizing Christ and aware of Christ, and he’s walking on the water, and then instantly he’s aware and recognizing the tall waves in the darkness and he goes under, and he drowns. So, in any situation, fixing our eyes, and it’s like, for me, I have to talk myself into that. You know, it’s not an easy process because Satan doesn’t want it to be that, he wants us to live defeated all day, so verbally talking myself and looking at the Lord, and letting him lift me out of it. So, just a few things of encouragement, I don’t know if that’ll help.

What should you do when you feel your church isn’t aligning with the word of God, how do you Biblically address that?

Amy Rasmussen:

I’ve had a couple of great experiences with this, because the Scripture is really clear that if… That one, Jesus wants His church to be unified and that His love doesn’t just forsake us when we fail or have a blind spot, right? And so, we shouldn’t do that to his church either. But he comes to us in love and he helps us and he corrects us, and Scripture also tells us how to approach church leadership, ’cause it says, “Don’t rebuke an elder, but… And treat him as a father.” And so, because I had been studying my Bible and everything, God prepared me for these instances, like one specific one I’ll share with you guys, I was part of like a prayer and worship ministry, it was so awesome for my spiritual life. I was a baker in a bakery at the time, so I got up at 3:00 every morning and would bake till like 11 o’clock, and then I would go to this church and get to play music for like, a couple of hours every single day, and the church was just open for people to come in and commune with the Lord and listen to the music, or read their Bible or whatever, and it was awesome.

Well, after a few months of doing this, I was invited to come to more of like a service that was happening there and play with the band or whatever, and so I did, and during that worship service, at some point, the singer started going off in tongues, but there was no interpretation. And so, I was so torn because I was like, I can’t in good conscience based on what I know from the scripture, continue to participate in this ministry, but I’m not gonna… I don’t wanna just drop out and these are my friends, I love these people, they really are my family in Christ, you know? And so, I just arranged a talk with the pastor and spoke to him, and because he had been in that type of church his entire life, he hadn’t been taught about the importance of having interpretation, even though it might seem so clear, if you have studied that or it has jumped out to you, or you have been taught that, if you’ve been brought up in a church where something is just the way that it is, right?

He had never had somebody talk to him in humility and just honesty and say, “This is why I can’t participate in this, because it doesn’t align with scripture,” and he appreciated it so much and it was such a beautiful conversation. And I still stepped out of it because he wasn’t in control of how those particular things were run, because it was part of a bigger denomination and so on. But it was just a good opportunity to say, Okay, if God gives me insight to see that something isn’t aligning with scripture, that it’s for the purpose of intercession, to pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ, and to also personally intercede and talk to them in humility, not to post something on Facebook, not to criticize them to my friends, not to just abandon them and then wonder what happened to that person, you know? So, that’s what I would wanna encourage to single women especially, and then… Yeah.

How can you encourage someone who is grieving while respecting personal boundaries and not sounding cliche?

Sarah Conti:

So, First Thessalonians 4-13 says that we do not grieve as those who do not have hope. But I think an important part of this first is to realize it does not say that we will not grieve. And so I think the first thing that is important, if you’re coming alongside someone who is grieving, is that you don’t feel any obligation to try to talk them out of their grief. So sometimes as Christians, I think we feel a lot of pressure to put a positive spin on things and use verses that are really hope-filled verses, like, that God works all things together for good. But we don’t need to try to slap this band-aid over this huge gaping wound that somebody has, by just putting a positive spin on it. Because we also need to remember that the Bible is also full of passages where we see people lamenting and grieving. And so just remembering that we don’t need to try to fast forward a season of hurting for a friend, and they are going to have to walk through it, and Jesus is going to be near them as they do. And they might not even always feel like he is, but he will be.

And they’re gonna have to walk through just crashing waves. A lot of times grief kind of is not just on a straight line path, it’s like these waves of different emotions, and they’re going to have to walk through that, and so… That’s okay. And it’s not something that has to be fixed. Sometimes they may be angry, sometimes they may feel like they cannot stop crying, sometimes they may be feeling detached, and these are all things that happen with grief. And it’s not our job to fix it, but we can walk that road with them, and so let the waves that crash on them, splash on us too. So if they are weeping, let us weep with them. And if they’re angry, be an understanding ear, that they can vent without trying to over-correct their theology or something, like let them process their grief and be a friend that they can laugh with and then dissolve into tears with five seconds later. So it’s okay if you don’t have the perfect words, and it’s probably better if you don’t try to, but if you can just genuinely extend love and compassion. And I think a lot of times when you’re walking through a season like that with someone, your brain’s going crazy with verses. That you’re like, Oh well, this verse and this verse, it’s popping in your mind, and I would encourage you to take those verses and pray them over that person.

Maybe before even speaking them. Just really use discernment of when and if you need to speak those things, and obviously there’s a place for speaking truth, but I think largely we can just be present with somebody and we can pray over them. And then, with discernment, speak truth when that will be helpful. And finally, just looking for practical ways that you can lift other burdens. So if there’s a way that you can serve them and bring a meal or babysit or take care of something else on their plate so that they don’t have an additional stress there, then that’s a practical way that you can serve.

How can we be using the time we have been given?

Amy Davis:

That’s why we’re trying to do better. Anyway, all that to say, it could be easy to spend all of our time just doing projects, learning a new skill. I think a lot of people got into bread baking around here. But I think that those are great things to learn how to do, but the fear is that we get busy, busy, busy, busy, just as busy as we were, because that’s our mindset, that’s our mentality is to just go. We get up and we don’t stop until it’s time to go to bed. And so one thing that I’ve really been thankful for in the season is…

Right about the time all of this stuff started happening and we’ve had to stay at home, this book, the… Little mentioned it a couple of months ago on a podcast, The Ruthless Elimination Of Hurry, it’s a like orangey red book here. So if you ever find it, you should get it. But it’s really awesome, a lot of us have been reading it, just about how to manage your time and how to create space in your day for the Lord. Because a lot of the times, for myself, I can just get busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and just there I’m making all my three meals, cleaning up all my meals, and I can work, work, work, work, work, until at the end of the day I’m just exhausted because I haven’t had any energy geared towards just cultivating a deeper relationship with the Lord. I’ve had no stopping time. And so I’ve really had to get my mind re-focused on, You know what? You need to right now spend 15 minutes sitting right here and looking out of this amazing view of the mountains. Just sit here and just absorb it, just take it in. Because you don’t have to make stuff and distract yourself from what’s around you, like enjoy the time that God’s given you, and all of us, by thinking about God and cultivating a deepness and nearness with him. So being able to cultivate a new quiet habit of stillness before the Lord and not busying ourself, being able to rest in the Lord, stepping away, maybe…

There are some really cool settings on your phone that will limit the amount of time that you’re even on your phone, that will shut your phone off for you, or at least shut down certain apps, so you are only allowed for your, however long you set yours, like mine is only like an hour a day can I spend on social media. Because I can really just get sucked in on dog grooming Instagram accounts, come on. But that’s gonna be a phase that I’m over really quick. I’m a phase person. So anyway, I am, and this is just a dog grooming phase, I’ll be out of it. But learning how to use this time to cultivate a nearness to the Lord has been huge for just my happiness, honestly. For my contentment, for my joy, just being able to every morning get up and make myself spend that quiet time with the Lord, stillness, just to invite Him in to being in my mind all day, and aware of Himself throughout the day as I do whatever. But then also stopping and making myself sit instead of always having to be doing something just because I’m at home. So I’d encourage you, a lot of you whoever asked that question, because we definitely need to stop filling our schedules up.

So I have definitely watched way too many shows during the Coronavirus shut down, but I have repented of that and asked God to help me. So I encourage many of you to do the same thing. Also, there are so many cool things that you actually can do. I’m sure a lot of people have done things that they haven’t had the time to do or whatever, and it’s something to thank God for. And I also wanna just thank people that have been doing awesome stuff that I know of. I wanna thank Amy, who started like a whole the mask making thing for our church. There’s a lady in our church, Debbie Gray, who when I asked some ladies to write the ladies in the jail, she was like… I said in the message, I was like, Okay, there’s been like six or seven ladies who’ve been meeting for church services on their own. ‘Cause none of the church groups are allowed into the jails right now. And these are people, like I mentioned this before, who haven’t been shown by human beings their worth and value and dignity that God has given to them. And so it’s not too late. Yes, there’s a long road ahead for them, but it’s not too late. And so that… She was like, I really feel led to write those ladies who were going to church. And then about five minutes later, she’s like, God won’t let me away from this; I’m gonna write all of them.

And so she’s literally writing all the ladies in the jail, in our county jail, and she’s such a godly example to me and has been for years, but when she said that, I just started crying, because I know that she’ll let the Holy Spirit lead her in writing those letters, and that those ladies will feel God’s love through those letters. And something as small as that, of responding to God’s love for people who have been neglected, who have been just basically abandoned in the world, is a great thing to do with your time during this time.

Way better than sitting down and watching a show. So, I really encourage you guys to do that. And then also, because foster care is so dear to my heart, get trained, get your license during this time, ’cause you can do it online. And how awesome would it be? I have a little boy in my home right now, and there’s been so many times I just wish that there had been a family available who had a dad in the home, because he needs a dad. His dad doesn’t know the Lord, and he’ll end up probably going to be with his parents, and I just crave that for him so bad, but there’s just no one available. But I was available, and I’m still thankful for the hours that I’ve gotten to spend with him in the Word and prayer and trying to set up meetings, time for him to hang out with godly dudes and stuff like that. And he’s gotten a lot more than he would have had if nobody was available, ’cause DSS literally will leave people in their homes because there’s nowhere to put them. So I really encourage whoever’s out there, just become available. Because like Amy said, you can lower your expectations. And you don’t have to have this whole awesome program ready, a perfect house, a perfect marriage, anything like that.

If you can keep them safe, if you can keep them clothed, if you can keep them fed, if you can keep people from coming in and out of your house with drugs, you’ll be a great foster parent.

Resources:

• 1 Timothy 6:12
• 1 John 1:5
• 1 Thessalonians 4:13
• 1 Peter 3:15
• Galatians 6:1
• The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer