Today's Heartlift with Janell
Sometimes the story we tell ourselves is not really true. Sometimes the story others tell about us is not really true. On "Today's Heartlift with Janell," Author, Trauma-informed, board-certified marriage and family specialist, and Professional Heartlifter, Janell Rardon, opens conversations about how emotional health and mental fitness effects absolutely every area of our lives. When we possess and practice healthy, strong, resilient emotional health practices, life is so much better. Read Janell's newest book, "Stronger Every Day: 9 Tools for an Emotionally Healthy You."
Today's Heartlift with Janell
276. Motherhood and Mental Health, Part 1
This conversation is more than just a chat; it's a guiding light for mothers seeking solace and understanding amid their spiritual and parental odyssey. We learn of the five steps of spiritual transformation highlighted in "Moms at the Well: Meeting God Through the Mothers of Scripture--a 7-Week Bible Study Experience. Authors Kathy Tuan-McLean and Tara Edelschick share—ranging from the loss of a child to the power of Scripture in an increasingly digital age—resonate with a raw honesty that speaks to the heart of every listener. Their insights encourage us to cling to the tangible presence of faith, even when the storm clouds of parenting loom large.
Our episode invites mothers everywhere to open up about the struggles that often remain unvoiced. We discuss the impact of anger, the legacy of generational trauma, and the quest for spiritual growth that can emerge from the darkest times. By exploring scriptural stories and modern-day challenges, we highlight the potential for healing and personal responsibility in breaking free from the past. This episode doesn't just offer comfort—it's a call to action for mothers to become agents of shalom in their own lives and the lives of their families, to join us in sharing their stories, and to believe in the transformative power of motherhood to change our world. Join us on this profound journey, and let's uplift one another in this sacred role.
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A short reading from the introduction of the Birth of a Mother how the Motherhood Experience Changes you Forever the Motherhood Mindset. In a sense, a mother has to be born psychologically much as her baby is born physically. What a woman gives birth to in her mind is not a new human being, but a new identity, the sense of being a mother. How does this identity emerge in each woman and what does the process feel like? There are many books about the physiological and practical aspects of motherhood, but far less is written about the mental world where the new identity is formed. Becoming a mother is accomplished by the labor each woman performs on the landscape of her mind, labor resulting in a motherhood mindset, a deep and private realm of experience. A deep and private realm of experience. This motherhood mindset is not born at the moment the baby gives its first cry. The birth of a mother does not take place in one dramatic defining moment, but gradually emerges from the cumulative work of the many months that precede and follow the actual birth of the baby. What produces this motherhood mindset? How is it unique to each woman, yet shared by all mothers? What phases does it pass through and how can you identify the passages of this remarkable new inner realm and learn to navigate its waters. Well, that is the subject actually of this book.
Speaker 1:The Birth of a Mother, stearns continues. We start at the beginning. Who exactly is a mother, and is she inherently different from other women? It may sound like a simple question, but in fact it strikes at the most basic assumptions held by the psychological and therapeutic communities. When you have a baby, it will determine for a certain period of time what you think about, what you fear or hope for and what your fantasies will be. It will influence your feelings and actions and even heighten your basic sensory and information processing systems. Having a child will redirect your preferences and pleasures and, most likely, will realign some of your values In a most startling way. It will influence all of your previous relationships and cause you to reevaluate your closest associations and redefine your role in your own family's history.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to today's Heart Lift with Janelle. I'm so excited to have you sitting around the table with your cup of something delicious To be part of this conversation in honor of May, we will spend the next three Wednesdays in conversation about mothers, motherhood, mothering and mental health Two topics near and dear to my own heart and near and dear to our guests today. I've invited two remarkable women to our table today to help guide our conversation. They have co-authored a new, incredible seven-week Bible study called Moms at the Well. Meeting God Through the Mothers of Scripture, published through InterVarsity Press.
Speaker 1:Kathy Twan McLean has her PhD from Northwestern. She is the National Ministry Director for InterVarsity. Fellowship Started that work in 1990. Intervarsity was very integral in my becoming a well-taught new follower of Christ at James Madison University way back in 1980. She is also a spiritual director and she is married to Scott and they have three young adult children. Tara Edelschick, her co-author, has her EdD from Harvard and she is married to Scott and they have three young adult children. Tara Edelschick, her co -author, has her EdD from Harvard and she has taught in many arenas. She's been an educator of high school students in New York, grad students at Harvard, homeschoolers in Massachusetts and incarcerated men taking college courses through the Emerson Prison Initiative. She has three children and is a grandmother as well.
Speaker 1:They begin their book with these words we always wanted to be mothers, yet neither of us was sure it would ever happen. For Kathy it was because she was the unmarriageable daughter. For Tara it was because her first baby was stillborn. So when God gave us children, we were delighted and grateful. As women with doctorates in human development, we thought we were going to be great mothers, mothers who didn't exhibit the sin patterns of our mothers and grandmothers. Mothers who didn't yell or criticize or worry, didn't yell or criticize or worry. Mothers who would write the book on how to be great moms. And then motherhood hit. They are so honest and authentic in our conversation today that I have had to break this up into many little parts. Not sure I'll try to fit it in three weeks, three episodes, but it was just so rich that perhaps we just need to have a online workshop with them to really help us dive deep into the depths and depths and depths of motherhood. So welcome to the show, tara and Kathy. Thank you.
Speaker 3:We're really excited to be here.
Speaker 1:I just am so excited as well. So, as I just prayed, I need to calm down. But the good thing is that my community and my listeners here just know how to deal with me being excited. It's kind of my mojo. You all have written this incredible Bible study, incredible seven-week Bible study, moms at the Well, and you did it together. So I always love, I love story to begin with. So, either Kathy or Tara, if you wouldn't mind giving us, or both, your side of the story of how this came about, how you know each other, because co-authoring isn't easy, but I know that I can sense already that this is such a God thing that he's brought you together.
Speaker 2:Well, Tara and I have known each other for over 20 years. Wow Her husband and I have worked together within a varsity Christian fellowship, especially at Harvard and in the Boston area for decades.
Speaker 1:Okay, sorry, I take a while there. Didn't even know Harvard had an IV.
Speaker 3:Sure does.
Speaker 2:We have undergrad, graduate student and faculty yeah, so Tara was actually one of our students, and what we like to joke about is she showed up and my first experience of Tara was teaching attempting to teach her a Bible study during a retreat, while I think my son, who was a baby, was in a backpack.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, wow. And.
Speaker 2:Tara, who was a relatively new believer at the time, kept on questioning everything, kept on saying, where do you, where do you see that? And I would say, well, let's look at the text and she'd go okay. And I thought this woman is so scary, she ends up dating Jeff. So, so cute.
Speaker 1:So scary, so intellectual.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she had these red rimmed glasses. Oh, I bet she did Wow.
Speaker 1:What did you major in Tara?
Speaker 3:I'm just going to ask. At that point I was doing a doctorate in human development psychology with a kind of I was focused on childhood bereavement.
Speaker 2:So Tara and I started writing together some. I think it was around 2003. So we have actually been in a writer's group together for over 20 years and that was because both of us wanted to write memoirs. And we're working on writing. I personally really felt like God had told me I needed to be writing, and so we wrote and wrote and we blogged and we did all sorts of things and really never published anything in a fascinating but COVID did publish.
Speaker 1:If you're on a blog.
Speaker 2:Yes, we published blogs, we published articles, not together, but with our writers group. We would, you know, really work on stuff and talk about it. But the big turning point was actually COVID. We were doing a program with InterVarsity where we were running this. Basically we called it a digital Camino, had webinars and I was moderating one on suffering, and Tara has quite the story, which I'm sure we'll go into later, around suffering. I mean, it's both her academic field and her personal experience. And so I said to Tara afterwards we really need you to write your book on grief. And she comes back to me like half an hour later and I'll write my book if you help me.
Speaker 2:I'm like, oh, this is not my field unlike tara, I did not do a doctorate from harvard in grief and I was like so, but she kept on being on me. She's like pray about it. And I said finally, I think the next day, well, I'll help you with your book if you help me with my book, because I've been trying to write a book on spiritual formation for moms, really on motherhood, for decades. Oh, I just got chills. But I had all this conflict in another resolution when I was younger and I just didn't have the structure. So Tara's like done, I'll do it with you. And then she's like we'll write your book first because she actually has experience on spiritual formation. Well, at the time I didn't even have very much personal experience with grief. Sadly I do now, having lost both my parents this past year. But so that's how it began and we've been working at it ever since. So it's been what a four-year process probably.
Speaker 3:I just want to add one thing that isn't quite clear yet. So we've been writing together for 20 years, but we've also been in two very committed friendship groups. So we've been in a prayer group for over 20 years. Wow, wow, wow, yep, with the same women mostly.
Speaker 1:The same women for 20 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, one woman has died, so we walked through that together, and a couple others have been added, but there was a core of four of us at the beginning praying for a friend in crisis, and those four are still there.
Speaker 1:That's the greatest ministry of all praying for a friend in crisis. And we've just those. Four are still there. That's the greatest ministry of all. Is that powerful?
Speaker 3:intercession when women come together. So that's really cool to hear. Yes, and in that group we've had divorces and addiction and children who've left the faith. And I mean you as a, as a we're, kathy and I are also almost 60. And you know, if you've been living a long time, there's just a lot of hard stuff.
Speaker 1:Hard, real hard.
Speaker 3:Real hard and we walk through it together. And then, once COVID started, we're in a group with 12 women who meet Monday through Friday, 730 to 8 am. Wow, so we meet five days a week. Since COVID started Five days a week On Zoom. Some people make it once a week and some people never miss. Some people never miss. Some people have seasons when they have to step out for a little bit. Talk about a book that we're reading Monday through Wednesday. We pray for our kids on Thursday and we do Bible study on Friday.
Speaker 1:So you get the whole formatting of a group, which this Bible study. I have it written down here, boy, have they done this? Well, and I have. Can we please review the model? So I want to make sure. So just stay tuned, you guys. We might hop around a lot but we will eventually get, because there is so much depth here to talk about. But you definitely understand the model and I did not know that you had these two committed groups before I wrote on this big paper in big red letters Review this model, because it's beautiful how you are formatting group for this seven-week study. So I mean bravo, because that is once again. I'm going to say it. I always say this when women gather in the spirit of unity, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, sharing the stories, watch out, watch out, watch out, because it is going to be an indomitable movement.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what's happened in our groups. So it was interesting even in the writing of this, because we started out with it being a book, and part of IVP is rejection, with their like moms don't have time to read a book which were like. Then they said why don't you make a workbook? And as we kept on working on it, we kept on thinking you know, there's got to be a way that we're going to emphasize community, because we really believe that that is the central piece. It is that we want people to meet God, but the way we, especially women, often meet God is through community.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I know for me personally, that's probably the primary way that I hear from God, meet God, feel loved by God through the arms of my sisters, as well as family and others, and so, therefore, we wanted to have a way to make sure that happened. Now, of course, we have friends who are doing the book on their own, and I think you can really enjoy the book on your own.
Speaker 1:Oh, I think so for sure yes.
Speaker 2:But we really, really want to see groups of moms.
Speaker 1:So it was a book but brought it down to this Bible study format, which I can totally understand. Everyone's so busy.
Speaker 2:Well, and the funny thing is that, you know, we realized as we were attempting to write the book that we thought, boy, every time we tried to write scripture it reads so boring. And it was so weird because, being both InterVarsity people, you know, tara steeped in it with her husband and as a volunteer, and me just my career has been with InterVarsity we're such Bible people that we thought how can the Bible feel so boring when you write it?
Speaker 1:I love that you said that, though.
Speaker 2:They just kind of skim over it when people actually write about it in books, and so part of the joy in even using this format is that because we love Scripture so much and we love how God speaks and there's such good news in Scripture that we were able to actually have that be at the forefront.
Speaker 1:I know, and I just hope that I don't know about you, but having the scripture on our digital devices there still is nothing like opening up. I have my Bible over here. It's too far for me to reach. I don't want to reach it, but just I, just yesterday morning I just had to open it. I'm like I just don't want to listen on my phone, I don't want to listen or look on my you know iPad or I just I gotta hold it, you know. So I just hope and pray that, um, that that happens. Tara, before you share your life story in a sense, would you mind reading the introduction, or at least page, not the whole, but up to up to well, I think it's just page one, yeah, where you give us the five steps. It ends at the five steps.
Speaker 3:would you read that I need to that's so nice.
Speaker 1:Get quiet you guys, it's so good okay.
Speaker 3:We always wanted to be mothers, yet neither of us was sure it would ever happen. For Kathy it was because she was the unmarriageable daughter. For Tara it was because her first baby was stillborn. So when God gave us children, we were delighted and grateful. As women with doctorates in human development, we thought we were going to be great mothers Mothers who didn't exhibit the sin patterns of our mothers and grandmothers. With doctorates in human development, we thought we were going to be great mothers mothers who didn't exhibit the sin patterns of our mothers and grandmothers. Mothers who didn't yell or criticize or worry. Mothers who would write the book on how to be great moms. And then motherhood hit. If you saw us in our worst moments, you would agree that we are not the women to write about how to be great moms.
Speaker 3:Motherhood has been one of the most challenging experiences we've faced. Kathy calls the 14 years of parenting three young children her dark night of the soul. Tara's children say she has dictator syndrome, often when she is struggling to believe that God is trustworthy to care for her children. Motherhood has stripped us bare, exposing our deepest fears and failures. Yet God has also used motherhood to transform our lives. In the midst of all, of motherhood's highs and lows, Jesus invited us on a journey of spiritual transformation deeper and deeper, into his transforming love.
Speaker 3:This Bible study, therefore, is not filled with advice on how to be a better mother. There are a ton of great books out there to help you do that. This just isn't one of them. Instead, by studying the lives of biblical women, especially mothers, we will meet the God who invites us into a process of spiritual transformation that takes place in five steps 1. God meets us where we are. 2. God welcomes us into honest conversation. 3. God calls us to trust and obey. 4. God transforms us and sets us free. And five, god invites us to be agents of shalom.
Speaker 1:Those five steps, my goodness. I'm going to read the next line. You have to. I just turned the page. I know Go ahead.
Speaker 3:What do you notice about these five steps? That's right, they all start with God. As we'll discover, god meets us where we are and then initiates every step along the way, allowing us to say yes or no to each invitation.
Speaker 1:While these steps are not necessarily linear after all, god is never constrained by a formula We've been surprised by how often they show up in the stories we read in scripture, as well as in our own lives and experiences. You're just going to have to get it yourselves to hear and read the rest. That's all I'm giving you today, because we have the authors here and I want to hear from both Kathy and Tara. Tara first. That's the unimaginable having a stillborn.
Speaker 1:Now I think that in my generation of growing up in the church, we have done what we now know is called spiritual bypassing, and I think back in the day I don't know if you would have ever experienced this something like this happens which, as I said to you before we came on, it has just happened to someone in my spheres of influence, a very young mama and husband, godly couple, sweet as can be, and they had a stillborn. What do you, you know? What do you even say? I think back in the day, you know it would have just been God knows. Yes, we'll pray for you. Now, I only had a miscarriage and I know when I miscarried, I already had one child. So the cliche answer was well, at least you have one. So I'm just wondering I don't know how old were you? How on earth did you get through that?
Speaker 3:So there's more to the story which you read in the last chapter that's not here, which is that when that happened. So what happened was my, my first husband died from a complication a screwed up surgery, a messed up surgery, a messed up surgery. Oh, and 10 days later, I had a stillbirth with our only child.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness gracious. Wow, was this as a follower of Jesus? No, this was okay. Is this pre-Kathy?
Speaker 3:No, yeah, pre-kathy, pre-meeting Kathy, I don't know, maybe I'll let Kat. Well, if, if we told you the story in the last chapter, you, you won't even believe how you, you will not believe how Well you're just going to have to read it, you guys, cause you know I am, I only am privileged.
Speaker 1:I'm not holding it yet, but I have the PDF from the publicist, so I will not tell a soul.
Speaker 3:Everyone's going to have to get it. But as soon as we're done, I'm going to be reading that last chapter. Don't you worry, because I haven't gotten that far. Okay, so let me say that after that, it is a miracle that I'm a Christian, because Christians said crazy, outrageous things to me.
Speaker 1:I just I'm so sure, and I just on behalf of all of us who are uneducated I mean, that is what I pound the table over. I am going to go to my grave with the end of my years of working in the faith is to bridge that gap between faith and mental health, Because I know I've said ridiculous things. I just didn't know. I didn't know what to do. That's why I'm asking you, like, what do we do in these serious moments of grief for people?
Speaker 3:So I would say the number one thing we don't want to do is explain God. God is mysterious, god is sovereign, god is loving those things are all true, but God doesn't need us to explain what we can't actually explain. So the two worst things that people said to me afterward and let me tell you these are from loving people oh yes, oh, well-meaning for sure, absolutely. One said just the very typical God has a reason for everything. And just because we don't know doesn't mean there's not a reason. And I just thought is this your advertisement for God? Because if so, god's. A jerk Like this is not helpful to me. Somebody else said that it was good that God had the baby die because it would be easier for me to find another husband.
Speaker 1:Good that God had the baby die because it would be easier for me to find another husband.
Speaker 2:I'm not even going to respond. Oh my gosh, I'm once again.
Speaker 1:I mean this just goes on, and I hope not. I mean I wrote a whole second book on. Is it well-meaning or meaning so to do my dissertation on that? But I might you know, because it's a fine line between mean and well-meaning, but we are going to choose to believe it was just well-meaning because of a lack of education, and that's a huge part of what I want to do is help people have the words.
Speaker 3:It's also fear.
Speaker 1:Yes, for sure, absolutely, I agree.
Speaker 3:I'm afraid of living in a world. I built my Christianity around this idea that God is essentially Santa Claus and when God doesn't behave like Santa Claus, it's so disorienting when you don't get the miracle, when you've been praying for forever, the person still dies. You're high schooler, you know like.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:And so they're afraid, and so they're reassuring themselves as well.
Speaker 1:It's mystery. We're so afraid of mystery, are we not? We're just so afraid of the unknown, myself included, until you've lived long enough where there are unknowns, yes, and you have to wrap your head around the mystery.
Speaker 3:Here's the one Christian who said the right thing.
Speaker 1:Okay good, I love this.
Speaker 3:He showed up in the hospital where I was after the stillbirth. He said I have no idea why God would let this happen, but I do know God loves you. Oh, and he also said something that I think is not in the Bible he said and I know that your baby is in heaven. Okay, so he said. And so if you ever want to read this with me, we can read it.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 3:And then he showed up at my house, did all the things that my husband would do he changed the light bulbs, he took out the trash, the refrigerator, like he just did stuff at the house. He happened I'll put that in quotes to be on sabbatical that semester, so he was available to do these things. And he kept begging me to read the Bible. I said you know, tony, let's start with the Bible. I said why would we start with the Bible? If you want to read something, let's read the Quran. And he said well, jesus is the only one who claims to have been God, so let's start with that. And I said, tony, there's tons of people in insane asylums who claim to be God. That doesn't mean we should start reading them. Anyway, he eventually broke me down and we started reading the book of John On the phone.
Speaker 1:Best place to start.
Speaker 3:On Saturdays On the phone. On the phone, wow, because he had a wife and kids. You know he couldn't that was my next question.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm waiting for you to go and I married tony. No, tony was married no.
Speaker 3:So we started reading on the phone on saturdays and by the end of the book of john I believed wow, I love that.
Speaker 1:okay, you guys, heartlifters, you heard it. I just want you to learn this is such going to be. I knew it was going to be a layered conversation and it is, and so, tara, I invite you back to talk more about the book of grief that you're writing or have written, or and I are going to get on that very soon. Yes, please do, but you know.
Speaker 2:You can see why I said Tara, we need your book.
Speaker 1:We do need your book and there is a. I mean, I think that we can honestly say there isn't anyone in the world at least in my world who has not experienced a real serious depth of grief of late. Particularly my mother died of COVID. You know, there's just and I've had one story, one story, one story.
Speaker 1:So okay, so heartlifter just had to take an exhale here because Tara's story and her journey through grief is so layered and so helpful and so hard for her to share. And here she is doing it. So in week seven she continues that in the chapter when Our Hearts Are Breaking. So please, please go to that until we perhaps can continue that conversation with Tara at a later date and we do talk a little bit more about it as the episodes continue. But I did want to transition here to Kathy's foundational story and what drew her to writing this book, and it's all about Kathy's dark night of the soul. So it does have a depth of grief involved in it, but it's so honest, so authentic and, as you'll hear me say, there aren't many women who would bear their soul and say mothering was not the picture that she had in mind.
Speaker 3:So here we go, maybe can I help you stick with the grief and the book and we can transition to Kathy a little bit? Yes, I'd love this. You can edit this later. No, I won't. Okay, so Kathy can talk about her dark night of the soul.
Speaker 1:That's where I'm going. I want to know because who is honest enough, who is honest enough, number one, to put out in public that parenting and motherhood is, who isn't the best thing that ever happened to me. Okay, kathy, dark night of the soul, wow.
Speaker 2:Wow yeah, and I'm so grateful for spiritual formation that gave me those that language.
Speaker 1:Me too, yes, st.
Speaker 2:John, yes, yeah, I think that partly what was going on for me is that I really wanted to not be the angry, raging mom that both my mother and my grandmother were. Okay, yeah, and I was determined and I just thought I could do it. I thought I was going to be better and I wasn't. In fact I may have been worse, despite being a Christian, despite having the power of the Holy Spirit, despite having the gift of forgiveness and all the rest. And I did everything. I went up for inner healing prayer at church. I confessed to my friends and to my husband I, I did, uh, yeah, I did lots of healing classes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You did all whose classes.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we have a healing class we have yeah all these different programs at church and still I just could not stop being just feeling murderously angry.
Speaker 1:Would you not say I mean you just defined for us. Put a face hate, to say that honestly. But to epigenetics, and once again, another strong thread that goes through my work anyway is childhood trauma and how it just does. The scripture is so right the sins of the father, they just pass on and they pass on. And so I mean I'm pointing to my breathing room, I call here. I have spent hours and hours and hours and hours with women such as yourself, you know, and we'll go back to spiritual bypassing Just pray for you to go, do this, do this, go in the prayer line. Okay, kathy. So here you are. You have just confessed rage, like feeling. That's not even anger, that's rage. That's always going to be a clue to me that this is something you have. You were grown up in that atmosphere. Safe to say, yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you know, for our chapter on anger, we actually look at Herodias.
Speaker 1:Okay, just a quick pause, kathy. Let's go ahead and give the seven chapter titles and emphases as we continue. Here we have week one when we feel unseen. Week two when we're worried. Week three if you get there after week one and two, when we're running from pain Wow. Week four when we're caught in a comparison trap Uh-huh. Week five when we're angry. Week six when we're grasping for control I mean, why don't you just hit all the main targets? And week seven when our hearts are breaking uh, well, I have circled when we're angry. So, herodias, who's herodias and why did you choose her?
Speaker 2:is the one who engineered the murder of john the baptist yes, oh my gosh yes herod's wife? Yes, she, you see the generational piece. Uh, when you look into history, at her family history and how her grandfather murdered a whole bunch of his kids, including her father, how she was married off at age eight, I have never dug into this.
Speaker 1:This is please. This is amazing. I'm going to love it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting too, because then you can see, right, it comes down the generations. She received it and then she passes it to her daughter who she makes complicit in the murder, and so we do definitely see this generational piece. And it's funny because we've tested all of our chapters with various groups. You have chapters with various groups and so when we tested the anger chapter, we ended up having people having so much sympathy for Herodias, even though she ends up murdering out of anger.
Speaker 1:Because once you understand, her trauma.
Speaker 2:You can see why she ended up where she did. And yet at the same time she murdered Jesus's cousin.
Speaker 1:I know I know, but no one's talked about this? Nobody Maybe. If they have, I haven't heard them. This is so critical because, am I right in saying, Kathy, this is the tension that I deal with as a trauma-informed therapist. It's like you've got to hold that trauma in one hand, but accountability in the other. Okay.
Speaker 3:Let me just say this about Herodias, and we can get to Kathy, because I think her story is so huge. In each of the chapters or weeks of this book we study one woman from the Bible, sometimes a few women, and in every one you see those five steps of transformation and you get all the way through them unless a woman says no. So God is always offering, god is always offering, god is always inviting, and he invites Herodias as well. But she says no, and so the murder isn't because she's rageful and traumatized. The murder is because she's rageful and traumatized, and when God reaches out through his prophet to her, she spurns that invitation. That's really important.
Speaker 1:That's critical, okay, yep. She says no to her healing. She says no to the invitation that there is a different way. But it's going to require a pause and reflect back on some of the things that Kathy and Tara have given us today, because they have given us quite a bit and we will continue with part two next week.
Speaker 1:I wanted to read this from Kathy and Tara's book Motherhood gives us the chance to experience God's transformative love in the midst of both the highs and the lows. Jesus will be there through the joy of wobbly first steps, the warmth of cuddles and the pride of watching your child accomplish something she never thought she could. And he will be there through sleepless nights and temper tantrums, anxious days waiting for a scary diagnosis, angry fights when your teen breaks, curfew and anguish as your adult child's marriage struggles. Jesus promises his transformational presence and love in the midst of it all. What a great promise, not only for us as individuals, but for our children, our communities and our world. As God's love transforms our individual lives, we become agents of God's kingdom, joining God's mission of shalom, the biblical vision of harmony and wholeness. That's what shalom actually means it's harmony and wholeness for the whole world.
Speaker 1:I'll go back to those five steps, the one that Herodias. Go back to those five steps, the one that Herodias. Herodias said no. She said no to God's transformative power. She said no to standing in the gap and slaying the generation upon generation of sin that was being passed on through her family line. We will just call it sin for what it is. They missed the mark. They committed murder. They were filled with rage, started with anger, and Herodias chose not to stand against it and transferred that onward through her own actions and then brought her daughter Salome, into it as well. Here are those five steps, and I just urge you here, in this beautiful month of May, where we are talking about motherhood and mental health worldwide, think about these five steps that God invites us into this process of spiritual transformation. One God meets us where we are. Two, god welcomes us into honest conversation. Three, god calls us to trust and obey Maybe the hardest, I'm not sure. Four, god transforms us and sets us free, makes us whole. And five, he then invites us to be agents of shalom.
Speaker 1:Wow, kathy and Tara surveyed over 700 moms to better understand their experiences of motherhood and how those experiences affected their faith. These moms ranged in age from 23 to more than 60 years old and had anywhere from one to seven children. 24% of them were single, adoptive, divorced or fostering parents, and nearly 40% were women of color. To better understand our survey results, they write we conducted in-depth interviews with more than a dozen women. Each of their stories was unique, shaped by their personalities and histories, and each was inspirational. And yet yet each shared, along with other survey respondents, different ways in which motherhood was difficult, really, really difficult. So they write this. When asked to describe the hardest parts of parenting, the most common responses sounded like these from eight respondents I don't have other mothers with whom I can share what's really going on with me and my family.
Speaker 1:It's lonely. I used to be so close to God, but after children I don't have time to do what I used to do. The amount of worry I have for my children can take my breath away. The gospel that is preached is too thin to help me navigate my experience of motherhood. I never know if God thinks I am being too lenient or too strict, working too much or too little. I can't balance it all and I feel like I'm failing at everything. I have so little control over my temper, my children's decisions and their safety and I feel vulnerable. I see my own sin in my children and I feel hopeless to change it. Wow, I wonder if you identify with any of those respondents? I certainly have. I certainly do and I'm sure that I certainly will in the future.
Speaker 1:So those five steps for spiritual transformation.
Speaker 1:One more time.
Speaker 1:God meets us where we are, he welcomes us into honest conversation, he calls us to trust and obey, he transforms us and sets us free and he invites us to be agents of shalom.
Speaker 1:If you would, I would love to hear from you over on Heart Lift Central, at Janelle Rairdon at Heart Lift Central, and subscribe to the podcast so that you can receive when next week's episode comes out. And if you would be so kind, share this episode with as many mamas as you can, because I truly believe that motherhood is the secret. It is the secret to making our country and our world whole again. And if you would like to donate to Heart Lift International and support this podcast and support the work that we're doing to actually make home and family the safest, most secure place to be on the planet, would you be so kind? No donation is too small. You can go to janellrairdencom, slash, heartlift, dash central and all of this information and all of the connections to find Moms at the Well and to find Tara and Kathy will be in our show notes. I can't wait to be with you around the table with a cup of something delicious for part two.
