[0:00] Hey guys, welcome back to an ADD Woman podcast.
And on today's episode, I'm going to talk about a few different things.
Last episode, I definitely talked a lot about how I plan to spend our summer, how I plan to kind of survive our summer.
And I know I briefly mentioned a little bit about what's going on with one of my kids and his struggles in school.
And I kind of want to dive into that a little bit better today because I think it's really, I think it's really important that we humble ourselves as parents, especially as parents of kids who need more or who need, you know, different, different things that, you know, that I think that most parents kind of will attribute to themselves as like, oh, if my child is doing really well in school or my my child is doing really well in athletics that that's because I'm such a great parent.
And I just I just want to assure you guys that that's that's not really how parenting works.
[1:01] Should it be how parenting works? Absolutely. I wish it was like so black and white that like if we do this one thing, then our kids are going to be great and they're never going to have problems.
But I was just listening to a different podcast this morning that was talking about the mind trap of that exact thing so let's dive into it I'm really excited I think this is gonna be good.
[1:30] Welcome to an ADD woman podcast I'm your host Lacy Estelle this is the podcast where we talk about all things to do with ADHD from a Christian woman's perspective, I'm so glad you're here, and I can't wait for you to realize all the amazing things that God is doing in your life.
[1:50] So in full disclosure, okay, I'm going to just be completely transparent.
One of my children has always struggled in school, always.
But the last two years have been extreme, I would say.
Now, this is my child that I have always struggled with. we've always butted heads.
And it's not that we argue or we fight.
It's just that I think I had in my head, especially after growing up with ADHD and struggling as much as I did, I think I had it in my head that like, oh, if I just give my kid what I needed at the time that I didn't get, then it'll just right the wrong or it will just make it better.
The missing component that I I really needed when I was in school, if I just give that to my kid, then magically they're just going to succeed.
And that's just not how, it's not how that works.
First of all, I think we need to really recognize that relationships, our relationship as a mom or as even a dad or anything along those lines, whether your kids have ADHD or they don't, that relationship, It's not transactional.
[3:03] It doesn't work in a way of, you know, I give something to you and you automatically give it back.
And we learn this as parents. We learn this really quickly because when our children are babies, there is no giving back.
You know, what they give back to us is their cuteness. Right.
And poopy diapers and sleepless nights. Right. So we recognize pretty quickly that it's not a transactional relationship.
And really, you don't want that.
You know, you don't you don't want your child to feel that they're only doing something because you are wanting them to do it.
Or you also don't really want them. I don't want my son.
I want him to do well in school because I know he's capable of it.
And I know how good it feels to be recognized for all of your efforts.
[3:47] And I know how good it feels to be looked at as smart and as educated, I guess.
But I can't want that for him.
I can't want that so much that I make it so he has to do it.
Or I can't want that so much that he just decides he's going to do it himself.
Our relationships with our kids or with our spouses or with anybody, they're not transactional. Now, if they are transactional, most likely that's an employee-employer relationship, right?
That's not a parent-child relationship or a husband-wife relationship.
Relationship so you have to let go of your preconceived ideas that if you just do certain things that your children will have ample success or they'll overcome their adhd or you know even down to the idea of like medication my son has it in his mind that if he just got back on medication he'd be able to flip the switch and he'd be able to get caught up in all of his classes that he's he's behind in.
And I had to tell him, I'm like, listen, it really doesn't work that way.
You can get on medication.
I want you to get on medication because it's what you want.
But at the point that you are at, everything is building on top of it.
So it's not going to be something where all of a sudden you're not going to be able to get on medication.
[5:15] You're still going to have to force yourself to consume a medication.
Huge amount of information at a rapid rate, okay?
And in doing so, you're going to be really overwhelmed and really stressed out.
Even with medication, it's not the best way to learn anything.
So I want to get into how we kind of cope with that and how we can recognize, you know, what does the Bible have to say about a transactional relationship?
Do we have a transactional relationship with God? Yeah. So I want to answer those questions.
In doing so, So I think it's really important that we recognize that there has been a lot of a lot of information that has come out in the last few years.
And, you know, maybe this was a thing before I was exposed to it.
OK, maybe it was. I'm not 100 percent sure.
But there's a few different podcasts that I really like to listen to.
I don't listen to them on a regular basis. I wish I did.
But they are the Alisa Childers podcast.
[6:16] And she's an apologist. She talks a little bit about cultural issues but she primarily relates them to you know the church and she will give a lot of good information when it comes to from a mother's perspective I also really like Natasha Crain's podcast I unfortunately cannot remember the name of it right now but I did finish her book called Faithfully Different it's excellent in those things they both are talking about you know the having an understanding of what our worldview is and recognizing how that plays out in what we expect of our children.
And in the most recent podcast that I listened to of Alisa Childers, I was actually listening to her interview with one of the Duggar girls.
I believe it's Ginger Duggar. And I know she's gotten married.
And so I apologize that I don't have her current last name pulled up.
But she wrote a book recently called Disentangling Faith from Fear. Jinger Duggar Vuolo.
[7:11] And it was interesting because one of the things that Alisa actually picked up on was the fact that she used this word disentangling.
And she asked her, she said, you know, how did you, why didn't you just run straight to deconstruction?
Because there's this movement of deconstruction within the Christian faith of people kind of picking apart different things that bother them about the Christian faith and feeling as though that there's no right or wrong answers to those things within the paradigm of the Christian faith, because a lot of churches for a lot of years, unfortunately.
[7:47] Weren't necessarily biblically sound, and they didn't focus their primary message on the gospel and the redemptive work of Christ.
And in Ginger's case, her family, was under the influence and the teachings of a man named Bill Gothard.
Now with Bill Gothard...
[8:09] I will say, and I can courageously and comfortably say this, is a heretic.
And if you're listening to my podcast and you're not a Christian and you're probably thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, this girl's just like out here calling people heretics.
But I can tell you right now, he is definitely teaching something that is not founded on the Bible.
And his teachings are, I think, I think the thing, one of the things that Ginger mentioned in the episode was that, and I will make sure that I do link to that specific episode of the Elise Childers podcast in the show notes so that if you want to listen to the whole thing, you can.
The point I'm trying to get to is that Ginger ended up talking about how the intention of Bill Gothard's teachings is good, but it preys on the fears of parents.
[8:58] And those fears are that your children will end up, you know, ruining their own lives, that they'll go off and they'll rebel and they'll do all sorts of things they shouldn't do.
And his teaching is based on the idea that if you just do the things he tells you to do, if you raise your kids the way that he tells you to raise your kids, and he claims that the things that he's telling you to do are based on the Bible.
But Jinger ended up finding out that a lot of them, majority of them are not, and especially in the way he presents them.
So the idea is that if you just do the things he tells you to do, and if you just, you know, remain faithful and do these things, then your children will turn out fine.
And the idea there is, again, a transactional relationship not only with a parent and a child, but also with God.
Because what he says is also that if you step outside of the lines that he draws or that he is telling you God drew, which is not true, if you step outside of those, then you are cursed and then your family's cursed. And.
[10:05] That all comes back to this idea that we have a works-based faith when we don't.
We do not have works-based faith.
And I really like the way that my pastor put this, where he said, there are two things that are true at the same time.
And as much as in the culture that we live in these days, we like to say there's no such thing as two truths.
But in this case, there are. And he said, God is sovereign, and you are also responsible. And he said, and where those two things intersect is kind of a mystery that scripture gets pretty clear that we do have both.
We have grace freely given, but we are also accountable for how we take advantage of that grace.
Don't take advantage of that grace, how we display that grace, that love to others, how we go about our lives and continue to propel the gospel forward and explaining to people and showing people through good works what Christ has done, doing things because Christ has redeemed us. us, right?
[11:10] So before I go too much further, I related a lot to what she was saying about the transactional idea, because even though in her case, her situation was definitely more cult-like, I grew up surrounded a lot by a lot of the word of faith and health, wealth, prosperity gospel.
And not so much you know I don't I don't like to say that I was like in it because I think that it was just my own misunderstanding of scripture and not actually looking at the scriptures myself which I since did if you go back and you listen to my bio from I don't know season one some episode.
[11:52] You can hear that you know I had this idea of a transactional relationship with God And the idea was, well, if I just do the things that God has always wanted me to do, you know, if I get married or if I go to church or if I read my Bible or, you know, if I tithe my finances, then God will reward me.
When God didn't do what I thought he should do because I wasn't actually praying and trying to discern the Holy Spirit's will for my life.
And instead, I was just basically saying, well, I'll just do the right thing, quote unquote.
And really, were my actions in my younger years based on what the Bible says about principles relating to marriage and having children and things along those lines, yes.
[12:44] They were. But that doesn't necessarily mean that in my mind, my thought was, well, if I just get married, well, God will fix all of our problems.
Our problems will be fixed because the whole reason that we argue and we have
[12:55] all these issues is because we're not married and God can't bless a sin, right?
Because we were living outside of marriage. We were living in the same home.
And again, that comes back to this misunderstanding of a transactional relationship
[13:10] with God. And And it doesn't, first of all, it doesn't work that way.
Are we accountable to the things that we do? Yes.
So Titus 1.15 says, To the pure, all things are pure.
But to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Indeed, both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but by their actions they deny him.
They are detestable, disobedient, and unfit for any good deed.
And in cross-referencing this, you can also look at Proverbs 30.12, where it says, There is a generation of those who are pure in their own eyes and yet unwashed of their filth.
And not only in that, but also Luke 11, 41, but give as alms the things that
[13:47] are within you, and you will see that everything is clean for you.
[13:50] And also looking at Romans 14, 23, but the one who has doubts is condemned if he eats because his eating is not from faith and everything that is not from faith is sin.
Do not destroy, going back, sorry, going back to Romans 14, 14.
I am convinced and fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.
But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him, it is unclean.
Now, that's something to wrestle with these days, right? Because here's the struggle. Here's the wrestling as a Christian, right?
We want to take off the idea of a transactional relationship with God because that's not how it works, okay?
And instead, when our hearts are broke open and we We become pure, not because we've done anything that is pure, because we were born into sin, we are sinners, but because we recognize Christ's redeeming love for us so much so that we know that even when we were sinners, he died for us.
That is the type of love that breaks you open. If you imagine for yourself anybody that you really love.
[15:04] Saying, I would die for you. You know, most of the time we see it, especially in Hollywood, we see people say, you know, they say things like you watch on movies and when somebody has passed away, the person who still loves them, who's still living says that, you know, they want to honor their memory and they want to do the things that they would want them to do.
As a Christian, that is, that is how we live out our faith, right?
So we can't come to doing things for God from a place of fear.
We have to come from a place of faith.
And so when we recognize that, then it becomes much clearer where our lines are drawn compared to other Christians' lives are drawn.
And there are some things that I do undoubtedly believe are sins that you are supposed to stay far, are far away from.
To the Christian, what I believe is not okay.
[16:02] To another Christian that they may feel, or maybe they don't feel convicted of that.
Maybe eventually they will feel convicted of that. Maybe they will never feel convicted of that. I don't know.
That's the mystery, right? That's part of the mystery.
Now, when you read in the Bible and it says, God says you should not do this.
Well, that's God's will and that's his perfect will for your life.
And if you mess up, when you mess up, you're not, you don't want to be thinking, oh, well.
[16:32] God's going to punish me. Sometimes God works that way. There's proof of that in both the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
But most of the time when we're living out our actions as Christians based on that fear of like, oh, if I just don't get it right, well, then we really need to examine our hearts and where are our hearts in relation to our motives for Christ.
Christ when I, when I do things, when I have to interact with people that, you know, are not Christians or even I would say to go so far as they're anti-Christian.
They're not even just, you know, not Christians. They like don't like Christians.
I have to ask myself, because a lot of me, a lot of me gets mad.
I get defensive about it. Like, how can you not love my savior?
[17:19] He's, he's, he's amazing. But I have to remind myself that I don't know their heart. I don't know what has happened to them.
And I have to treat each of them as one person, one human being, one soul.
And I have no idea what God has planned for their life or what I'm doing.
So I have to instead get on my knees and I have to pray and ask God to intercede in my interactions and to help me to reflect his glory to them in a way that they can see him.
And that doesn't always look the way that we want it to look.
Okay. And so if we can recognize that is not the type of relationship we have with God, then we can also recognize that that's really probably not the type of relationship we should have with our children.
You can't have, a lot of people like to ask the question of if God knows all things, right?
And he's sovereign and he's the one that made Adam and Eve.
And then he put the tree in the garden and said, don't eat from it.
Why even even bother putting the tree in the garden, you know, if he knew that they would fall.
[18:21] And one of the things that I really love, and my mother will tell you this,
[18:26] and this is something that was taught by an apologist that has since passed away.
And she says, because you can't have love and control at the same time.
You either have control, complete control, or you have love.
[18:42] Now, I do believe that God is in control.
I do believe that he is sovereign. I do believe that Nothing happens in our lives that don't first pass through his hands.
And I've come to this conclusion because I recognize that what God wants with us more than anything is a relationship.
It's the same thing we want with our kids.
Okay, now we have this idea in our head of what would just make everything better for them. Well, you know what?
What will make things the best for them is to be there for them and to make sure that they always know we're there for them. When my son was young, I was so scared.
I was so scared of who he would become.
I was so scared of what he might wrestle with or what he might be tempted to do in his teen years.
And I lived out that fear. And in that, I did things as far as disciplining him when I was young and I was younger, and they didn't really work.
They're really just more so division between us we used to fight and when we would fight i would yell and i'm getting mad at him and sometimes we would both be on the brink of tears or i'd be crying by the time it was done sometimes he would be too because he was a kid and i've had to really recognize that my idea of what i want for him is not necessarily what god has planned for him.
[20:03] And even though i recognize the opportunities that would be made available to him if he could get his schooling right if he could just get caught up or if he could just get to a point to where we're not super concerned about him not having enough credits and all those things then maybe god could actually do the work i had a friend tell me one time who has struggled immensely over the last few years and i think this is where i'll end this story because this was very profound to me.
And I remind myself of this all the time, especially when I start to think in the lines of, oh, I just need to do this, or I just need to do a little bit more of this, or if I need to do a little bit more of this, and then everything will work out good. And I have a friend.
I don't know how often she listens to my podcast anymore. She's a really good friend.
Amazing, really. But she has struggled for years with infertility.
And I asked her, I said, why don't you want to to consider, you know, IVF.
Lots of people that I know of who have struggled with infertility have been able to get pregnant with IVF.
And through that, okay.
[21:13] Once they get pregnant once, their body changes because it starts to recognize how it should be producing its hormones, how it should be regulating hormones, how it should be doing things, right?
It's almost as if the pregnancy kind of throws the body back into the natural cycle of things.
Maybe they got disrupted by birth control or medications over the years or just poor genetics or bad eating, whatever. ever.
And I'll never forget that she said to me, God doesn't need IVF to give me a baby.
[21:46] And I was like, I mean, yeah, yeah, you're right. God doesn't need anything to give you anything.
God doesn't need my son to get all A's for his life to bring glory to God.
God doesn't even need me to be a decent parent for my child to actually get all A's.
[22:07] I've known so many kids, so many people. Now, do statistics say otherwise? Sure.
Yes. You are more at risk of dropping out of high school if you have one absent parent in the home.
You are more at risk of using or abusing drugs if depression runs in your family or ADHD runs in your family and you don't get on medication.
Yes there are statistics out there that show that want to put us down to a science okay they want to take psychology of human beings and make it predictable they want to make us predictable but that's the beauty of our our worldview that's the beauty of being a christian is we recognize that.
[22:50] Our God can do unpredictable, impossible things, and they don't define us, you know?
He could miraculously help my son totally flip the switch when it comes to his grades without any intervention, without an IEP.
If that is what he wants for my son, he can do it because he's God.
But he doesn't always do things the way that we as humans think he should or think he will or think he or think would be the best thing for us. Right.
So I just want to encourage you if if you're struggling with a relationship or anything, really, and in your mind, you're getting this idea that maybe it's something you're doing or maybe it's that you're not doing enough. off.
That's not how relationships work. As ADHD moms, I kicked myself for so long because I didn't have a college degree or I didn't have a job that allowed for me to be home with my kids or I wasn't there or I had children out of wedlock.
All of these things that I felt, whether that was something taught to me by the church or was something taught to me by society, all of these parameters that I put on myself that I said, oh, well, it's because I didn't do this.
And it's because I didn't do that. And it's because, because, because, because, because.
And really what it comes down to is it has nothing to do with that.
[24:20] It has nothing to do with that. And I kind of wish, I wish it was that black and white.
And ironically, in the interview that I was talking about with Elisa Childers and Ginger Duggar, she said the same thing.
She goes, once I realized that it's not that black and white, I got really scared.
[24:35] She got really scared. Why? Because that's when she realized that she could do all the things.
She could do all the things she's supposed to do and she could still totally miss it. She can miss grace.
Like, let that sink in for a second. Just imagine, okay?
I see it all the time these days. I see it happening all the time with women my age. Okay, I'm in my 30s.
I had children young. I actually just finished having my last child.
[25:05] Whereas majority of friends of mine are just getting into having children.
So they're only on maybe their first, maybe their second.
Maybe they're at their third. But majority of them are not done having children.
[25:17] And I see it all the time. They went to school. They went to college.
They met their spouse in college. They got married right after college.
They got careers. They started working in those careers full time, I might add.
They start buying houses and they buy cars and they do all these things.
And then they're like, oh, we're ready to have a baby.
They have that child. They hold that child in their arms and everything changes for them.
Everything. All of a sudden, they're like, I don't want to go back to work.
Wait a second. How am I going to pay my student loans? because now the most important thing for me is here in my hands and I don't want to walk away from it. I want to be a part of everything.
I want to do everything with this baby because I want to set them up for success.
[26:03] Do you see how this is a cycle? This is a constant cycle of us believing that we just have to do these specific things and then all of a sudden everything will be right with the world. That doesn't work that way.
The reason we feel this way is because this is not our home.
Our home is heaven and in heaven everything will be right everything will be better everything will be there will be no tears no sorrow no anger no malice everything will be wonderful but we yearn for that here still and we do all these silly things and we tell ourselves like i'm just more productive if i just get my house clean if i could just keep myself organized well then maybe my kids could pass their classes or maybe their reading comprehension would come up or whatever. And, doesn't matter. Now, you're probably listening to me at this point and you're
[26:57] thinking to yourself, Lacey, this is not what you usually talk about.
You talk about how practice makes progress and practice makes progress.
And guess what it does? Because again, I'm going to come back to you.
[27:06] God is sovereign and we are accountable. Now, when you're practicing the things that you're trying to live out and you're trying to change your lives, you have to take a good look at your heart.
I don't record a podcast on a fairly regular basis, and it's because I struggle not just with consistency, because I do, but because a lot of times when I sit down to record, I have to ask myself, am I sitting to record this because I'm ready to serve my audience in a way that will help them and bring glory to Christ?
Or am I sitting to record this because I want to pitch a sale to them, or I want to ask them to buy something, or I want them to listen to me and think that I'm super awesome? What is the reason I'm recording?
If I'm not ready to sit down and record because I want to give glory to God through what I say on here or through how I help you or anything along those lines, then I don't want it.
So you have to do the same thing.
You have to sit down and say, okay, what is my motive behind what I'm trying to do here?
If it's fear-based, let it go.
Let that fear go, step into faith, and then keep moving forward in a way that brings glory to God.
And again, God doesn't need, he doesn't need your schedule.
He doesn't need you you'd exercise every day.
[28:34] He doesn't need for you to do anything to do the things he wants to do in your life.
Now, what those things are and what you want, they might not always match up, but I can tell you it's going to be good.
[28:47] It's going to be so good. Because every time that I think that things are going to just be terrible forever, God shows me a different way. He shows me a different perspective.
He shows me a different way of looking at things that all of a sudden I'm like, this is good this is really good, So I'm going to end this here. One last thing I do want to mention,
[29:11] and I apologize because this is getting a little long.
Coming up, I'm going to be doing, I'm a guest on a different podcast that I would love for you guys to go take a listen to. She's awesome. She rocks.
Her name is Jennifer Roskamp. Her website is theintentionalmom.com.
She is a previous acquaintance of mine.
I would say, you know, kind of like work colleagues kind of thing because we do the same thing, right? We both have blogs.
She has a podcast, I have a podcast, we're content creators, and we're especially, both of us are definitely in the space of helping moms who feel very chaotic to thrive.
[29:48] And what Jennifer is really good at, though, is she's really got a lot of the productivity stuff down.
And I would love for you to check her out, go give her a listen, and then just keep an eye out because I'm going to be a guest on her podcast coming up soon.
And I think that would be, that podcast episode would be really, really helpful.
I'm talking about how to thrive with or without ADHD and I'm also and I'm going to link in this episode I want to share with you seven daily devotions for the scatter-minded mama and I am sharing that on her podcast as well but I'm also going to give it to you here so if you want to download that just to get you started it's free it's something that I just wanted to give away a starting point for anybody who listens who feels like I'm just so overwhelmed with either trying to read my Bible, trying to stay in the Word, trying to go to church, you know, all those things.
Just sit down, be still with God, doing these daily devotionals.
There's only seven of them. It's just one week. And I'm not even going to ask you to do them every day from Sunday to Saturday. That'd be too much.
Just try them. Read them. See what they are.
Get my perspective. perspective, and then let's talk about them.
I would love to hear from you. I would love for you to email me and say, hey, I got your seven daily devotionals.
This one really spoke to me, or hey, I got these, but I think you missed the mark on this. I know some more context about this scripture or whatever.
I love conversations like that. I would love to have them with you.
So thanks again for listening.
[31:16] I hope you guys have a wonderful, blessed week. Bye.
Thank you so much for listening. What would really help me more than anything, thing, if you feel inclined, is please leave me a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that's Spotify, Podbean, Apple Podcasts, all the like.
It really helps for the show to show up for other people that maybe they need to hear it. Thanks again for being here. I appreciate you so much.
[31:44] Music.