The Proverbs 31 woman

today we're going to talk about the proverbs 31 woman because she is someone that we ought to look at she is uh given as a role model for godly womanhood in the bible and so i think it's so opposite to a lot of what we're taught as women especially at least women my age maybe they're taught a little different now although i've talked to some young girls and i don't think they are but this woman is a busy girl but i think that's what we don't like about her it's like oh my gosh i can't do all that she's like up in the morning and she's off at night and she's working working work and work and working and we sort of have a culture of productivity that if you're really really busy then you have a meaningful life and that's not really true but i'm going to read this and i've never read this particular passage out of this particular bible before so we're both going to read it together this is a messianic bible it's the messianic jewish family bible that i have so it's written by jews it's translated by jews uh jewish scholars who are also christians but they translate the hebrew in slightly different ways and so i haven't read i've read much of the old testament from the new testament from in this bible but i haven't read the proverbs yet in this translation so i thought this would be interesting for us to read it together and what i want you to note in the in your comments is not what she's doing i don't want you to make note of what she's doing because what she's doing is unique to her culture i want you to make note of who she is what kind of woman is this and if this is a model for mature godly womanhood this is something that we should aspire to all right and so not all she's doing but who is she so let me read about her and as you hear a word that describes who she is not what she's doing but who she is put it in the chat okay it's called titled a woman of valor in proverbs 31 starting in verse 10. an accomplished woman who confined her value is far beyond rubies her husband's heart trusts in her and he lacks nothing valuable she brings him good not harm all the days of her life she selects wool and flax with her hands and works willingly she's like a merchant ship bringing her sustenance from afar she rises while it's still night and provides food for all of her household and portions for her servant girls she considers a field and buys it from the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard she girds herself with strength and invigorates her arms she's working out she discerns that her business is good her lamp never goes out at night she extends her hand to the spindle and her palm grasps the spinning wheel she spreads out her palms to the poor hold on my husband's grinding my coffee excuse me one minute now he's gone a long time all right her lamp never goes out at night she extends her hand to the spindle and her palm grasps the spinning wheel she spreads out her palms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy she's not afraid for snow for her house for her whole household is clothed in scarlet wool she makes her own luxurious coverings her clothing is fine linen and purple her husband is respected the city gates and when he sits among the elders of the land she makes linen garments and sells them and supplies sashes to the merchants strength and dignity are her clothing and she laughs at the days to come she opens her mouth with wisdom and lessons of kindness are on her tongue she watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness her children arise and bless her her husband also praises her many daughters have excelled but you suppress them all charm is deceitful and beauty is vain but a woman who fears adana will be praised give her the fruit of her hands let her deeds be her praise at the gates so who is this woman what are some of her character qualities okay so let me just see what i see in the chat if i can see anything good morning everyone i'm seeing if you see any character qualities of her love this topic yeah i do too all right so let's see what are some of her qualities what a trustworthy diligent yes diligent wise thoughtful strong strength strong thoughtful valued she rises up she girds herself hard-working discerning discerning financially thrifty strong hard-working discerning okay stewardship thanks to howard yep thank you howard she's not afraid she extends her palm resourceful fearless giving dignified helps the needy honorable kind self-sufficient prepared i love that overworked well she's doing the work so she might be overworking strength and dignity kind kind resourceful a woman after god's heart debbie says valued trustworthy accomplished industrious thoughtful generous strong discerning courageous stylish thrifty wise kind watchful loves the lord god fearing unreachable goals someone says she's a blessing to people she's accomplished all right admired independent loyal leader responsible this is amazing do you think that we're taught as christian women to be those things today or do you think we're taught more to be dependent and submissive and helpless in terms of doing obviously she was decisive she decided whether she was going to buy a field she had money to buy a field she didn't talk to her husband about it she decided it says she discerns that her business is good she considers a field and buys it she has stuff to sell to the merchants this is a resourceful woman energetic prepared and this does not threaten her husband at all you know one of the things i did last year was i stood up to john macarthur and contradicted him when he said empowered women make men weak this is one empowered woman she's an empowered woman she's got what i call a big circle of great character qualities now we may not choose to do all the tasks that she did those were her choices and she had them to make but she wasn't a helpless dependent childlike woman who had no voice who had no choice who didn't work she worked she had her own money she discerned her business was good she had a thriving business she used her money she stewarded herself both physically and financially we see in here at least and she was generous to others so what is it that keeps you feeling st stalled in the person that you're supposed to be this is the woman that god is saying hey i want this some of these character qualities for you too my question to you this morning is what are the character qualities you want for yourself what kind of woman do you want to be not what you want to do because what you want to do comes out of who you want to be so what kind of woman do you want to be and what's in your way who squashes that so there's a poem that i don't have it with me but but it's it's something like the oak tree lies in the acorn and the butterfly in the cocoon and the bird in the egg all right so in our immature state of the acorn the cocoon the egg were not fully developed yet but as we go through our lifespan god calls us to mature he says put off your childish ways and put on mature ways grow into your full capacity as a person as a woman what stops you from doing that especially for my audience it's often another person it's a person who feels threatened by your strength it's a person who doesn't want you to thrive because if you thrive you might leave him and that would leave him helpless and dependent on you he doesn't want you to be strong because that threatens his ego or his self-image and so therefore you stay stuck in your immature place or maybe you say suck in your immature place because of lies that you've been taught by your church by your parents that a good woman all she wants in life is to be a wife and a mom those are two wonderful roles but that's not who you are that's what you do for a season you're a wife and you're a mom and i hope you're a good one but there can be bad wives and bad moms too depending on who you are so what kind of character qualities do you want to embody and what's getting in your way that's what i want to talk about today i want to help you get out of your own way because sometimes we have limiting beliefs like i can't i'm not smart enough i couldn't get a job i couldn't go back to college i couldn't start my own business why not maybe there's some obstacles out there like a husband who doesn't want you to do that or small children or other things but maybe the obstacles are in here and you're telling yourself i can't i love that this woman is not a fearful woman now everything changes in life and we've never more experienced it than this year everything is still in a state of flux and changing and we don't even know who's going to be our next president it's up for grabs everything is changing our whole culture may change from a democracy in a capitalistic society to a socialistic society in the next year we don't know nothing stays the same but do you live afraid of that or can you smile at the future unafraid because you know who you are you know you're capable you know you're confident you know you're resourceful and confidence has nothing to do with um bravado confidence is i know i can handle the changes that are coming in my life i'm not afraid of them i can handle them i've handled them in the past i will handle them in the future i maybe don't even know how i'll handle them but i'm confident i will be able to with god's help figure it out that's a strong woman but i don't see a lot of those women these days and so i want to ask you what's in your way is it an obstacle out here could be is an obstacle in here that's more likely many of you know i've shared the story that i had an obstacle inside my head it was not an obstacle exterior so when i was in graduate school for my master's degree when i was 21 years old or 22 years old i told myself that i couldn't go for my phd why not because i'm not smart enough because i don't know how to write i'll never be able to write a dissertation i can't do it there's no way no one's ever encouraged me in my writing skills and i don't think i can write a whole phd i'm not smart enough to finish a phd and i don't want to embarrass myself that's what i told myself now i laugh at that because i have written seven books but i didn't write them until god called me to write them but i had the abilities to write i just didn't know i had the abilities to write right and so sometimes we get in our own way of our growth and our development because of lies we don't even know their lies we think they're truth it's true i can't write i said that's not true and even if i didn't know how to write very well i have learned to write after seven books i write a whole lot better now than i did the first book right and so we can learn these things and so one of the things i love about this passage is this woman didn't stay stuck she didn't stay living afraid she lived full out and used all of her gifts what stops you what stops you from living full out using all of your gifts and for you if it's sometimes obstacles on the outside or obstacles on the inside like mine was with writing i would encourage you to attend our webinar on next tuesday i'm going to do two live webinars talking about four lies that are in here that we believe that keep us stuck and afraid in our destructive marriage and maybe you're out of a destructive relationship but you're still living stuck and afraid and you might still have some of those lies inside of you that you don't even know our lies but they they they structure the end of your story and so i want to teach you how to get unstuck and so if you want to join that webinar just go to my website leslievernic.com and then forward slash join webinar you see one of the things about the proverbs 31 woman that helps her to smile at the future unafraid she lives her life as an owner and what i mean by owner versus a victim she lives her life as a steward like this is my life i only have one life to live so if i were writing a story and i were writing a book okay so if i'm going to write a book about my life all right let's say we're writing a novel it's a true true novel a true book about my life right but it's a storybook it's not just a content uh nonfiction book so i'm writing a story about my life and i'm on chapter 10 and um you know so now covert 19 is hit now elections and we our country's in a ton of apparel and other personal issues in the outside of my life okay i can't control those god oftentimes sets the scene wherever you're in your story he sets the scene but you write how the character writes out her story i've shared this before on facebook live and i'll do it here's the scene and this is it it impacts the end of the story so she was an owner of the end of her story that's why she wasn't afraid whatever obstacle came her way she worked through it so here i was in san diego san diego last january before all this hit and i was at mastermind doing some business work with other colleagues that some of them i met some i didn't met but we rented a big house in la jolla a bnb that we could just share it's cheaper that way than running a hotel and i was the first to arrive had to go to the bathroom couldn't get in the door couldn't get in the gate couldn't get in the gate so here's the setting of my story what was my obstacle the gate won't open i can't the code doesn't work the gate's locked i can't get into the house so i'm calling everybody trying to figure out what to do and this is my story i'm sitting on the stoop waiting to go to the bathroom thinking i'm going to pee my pants that's my story that's how the character's playing me my character is playing the story so someone else one of my colleagues when i hadn't met a young woman about 30 emily she gets out of her uber she goes to the gate and she goes she pushes it it was never locked you see because i thought it was locked because it was closed and had a big gold lock and key on there i thought it was locked and because i thought it was locked i never even pushed to see if it was open that affected the story it affected the way the story might have ended i might have sat on that stoop and peed my pants because i never even tried to push open that gate how many of you have lies that you believe like mine i can't get a phd i don't know how to write so i never even tried to move forward because i was so sure that the lie i believed was the truth i never even questioned it this is important ladies because this woman has developed her self you might look differently on the outside as you develop yourself not everybody's gonna do what she did but what are you made to do so an oak tree is not a rose bush or an apple tree we're not all the same but if you want to be who god called you to be and be able to live your life full out and smile at the future unafraid then you have got to identify what are your obstacles and what holds you back and begin to move through them and don't let any one person including a spouse step on the person that you were meant to be have you ever blacktopped your driveway and it starts to get cracks on it because it's getting old or worn out or maybe it didn't have a crack in it but all of a sudden it gets a crack in it because this little seed decided i'm not letting this blacktop keep me from being what i was supposed to be right whether it's a weed or whether it's a dandelion or whether it's a little shoot of a little bush or tree that's coming up through that blacktop and it cracks your blacktop because it's saying i'm not letting anything including blacktop stop me from coming up and being what god the creator made me to be how about you what stops you what holds you back so often we as christian women have been told we should just be happy being a wife and a mom and i hope you are happy being a wife and a mom if you're in a good marriage but that's not all you are that's part of what you do who was she i'd like you right now to write whether you want to write it in the feed or just write it for yourself what are three or four big circle items that you'd like to be in you i'd like to be wise i'd like to be generous i like to be kind those are my three right now so if every day i say to myself whatever i do today whatever i do i don't know but in that doing i want to be wise i want to be generous and i want to be kind and then at the end of the day ask yourself so how do i do today not did i get all my 55 things done but was i wise was i generous was i kind in whatever i did if i did my facebook live if i washed my dishes if i played with my dog how did i steward my day today so that i was wise generous and kind that's what it means to walk in core strength which we're going to talk about on tuesday so if you don't want to walk deformed physically mentally emotionally or spiritually and you want to stand up straight and be the woman that god's called you to be you need to have core strength just like you do physically as women we're getting older and if you don't work out and you don't strengthen your arms she says she girds herself with strength and invigorates her arms i love that she's not letting herself get all flabby she wants to stand up straight she's developing her core so she doesn't turn into an old lady that curls over on herself and we can do that on the inside too because we haven't done our work we're so busy we're so busy fixing everybody else we're so busy doing without any reflection of is this what i'm called to do is this is what god wants me to do you can be busy you can be busy busy busy and still live a meaningless life that is not what god wants for you so what's what are your what are your what are your um three things i want to be truthful wise diligent kind generous okay berlin strong forgiving wise and god yeah fearless calm and wise i just want to know what god wants me to do with my life god let me just do one quick more teaching god tells you 95 so don't worry about the 5 because once you do the 95 the 5 will become very clear right but if you don't do the 95 percent of what he tells you to do with your life then you won't know the 5 because you you're not equipped right so he doesn't give he doesn't give his his power to do some other things to babies right so right now 95 percent of what god tells you to do is very clearly said in the bible i want you to grow i want you to mature i want you to put off your old self and put on your new self i want you to be wise i want you to pray without ceasing i want you to love one another i want you to love your enemy i want you to forgive i want you to learn to speak the truth in love i want you to learn to discern evil from good because sometimes evil looks good it says in hebrews 3 13. i want you to listen to wise others i want you to learn the word of god i want you to apply yourself to work doing the word of god not just learning the word of god if you do all those things that god already tells you it is my will in first thessalonians 4 for you to mature and live a holy life if you do that then the opportunities will show themselves very clear about what you're to do with all that character right with all that maturity but if you're immature and you're still a baby spiritually and you don't apply the word you might know the word but you don't apply the word you don't do the word god says you're fooling yourself and you're not useful to him so don't worry so much about the the end game worry about living the moment now and the person god's called you to be and as you do that one of our biggest tasks in life two is for us to be fully mature just like a baby if a baby doesn't grow and doesn't mature then it's not going to know what it's supposed to do right because it can't you've got to learn your math tables and you've got to learn how to walk and you've got to learn to go to the bathroom in the toilet and you've got to learn how to get along with other people and you've got a lot of maturing to do before you're able to go out on your own and have your own job and do those things but if you don't do that work you're going to stumble and all the other stuff so one thing is you're to grow and mature to the best of your abilities and the second thing that you're to do is that everything in your life you're to do to make god famous it's not about you so all of your gifts and all of your talents whether you're talking to somebody at the laundromat or you're talking to somebody on facebook live or you're just writing a thank you note to somebody everything that you do is for god's glory to make him famous and so people can see jesus in you and if you get that done and you mature you can put your head down on the pillow and say i had a life well lived but if you live small and you live afraid and you never grow and you never mature because you're so afraid your husband won't like you or your mother won't like the new you because that's not what they want you to be well you've missed out it doesn't matter if you've written seven books it really doesn't if you've never become what god called you to become all right so want to answer some questions here hold on gotta unsleep my computer tends to fall asleep if i don't all right i feel like i have to choose between someone else raising my kids or having money i love working but feel guilt do you think this woman felt guilt how do you work through that so um i don't think it's either or i don't think it's either or i think you can raise your kids and work now you can't work 80 hours a week and raise your kids but i think you can work and raise kids so i how you how you shuffle that so for me how i did it was and not everybody can do it this way but i i i wanted to work too i love working and i like my kids too didn't like them every day but i did but i didn't i didn't multitask well i still don't multitask well so for me if i'm in work mode i wasn't really good at switching into mom mode and going back to work mode and switching into model mode and so for me i worked two full days a week so i worked on tuesday and thursday or monday and thursday something like i can't remember what it was and i would get up in the morning kiss my kids bye go off to school and when they were littler i didn't do that as much but when they were in school they went off to school and i went to work and then my husband came home from work and he took care of them he fed them dinner he put them to bed now you get home until they were in bed right and i would be counseling in my counseling practice so i would work two full days and see them in the morning and then i'd see them the next day and i'd be mom um and even when they were little i did that one day a week with a babysitter you know i would see them in the morning give them hugs all that and then i would be off and i would do work and do what i needed to do um and then also there were other times during that season when they were littler is that i would work in the evening so that my husband come home and take over and i'd go to work and so i think you can do both um but where the guilt is coming from is something that's more of a mindset okay so there's there's beliefs that you have like my belief that this door was locked when it rose it wasn't really locked caused me to sit still and not take action right so if we believe that only a stay-at-home mom is a good mom then we're going to feel guilt if we don't do that or if we believe that our kids will hate us if we're not the kind of mom that stays home and bakes cookies and makes you know giraffes out of paper mache with them all day long then we're gonna then we're gonna feel guilty because we have some false beliefs that i have to perform in certain ways in order to be a good mob you know i remember a conversation and my daughter and i just laughed about this recently because she wanted a different kind of mom she wanted a betty crocker mom who you know had an apron on and would like bake cookies every day after school and all that and i and you know so she said mommy i i you know i want you to be this kind of mom i don't want you to work i want you to stay home i want you to do this and i said that's not the kind of mom i am and this is really important because and we talked about it recently and she laughed and she goes that's not the kind of mama i am either you know we kind of try to fit into this mold of what we think everybody wants us to be or what we think it's supposed to look like and when you try to fit a square peg into a round hole what happens you have a lot of friction and it never fits and yet that's why i brought this up because we have this christian idea of and i remember when i tried to do this like oh i dreaded the idea of homeschooling my kids and that was very popular when my kids were little and i just like can't do it i just can't do it i can't stay home all day with kids that would be like pulling my nails out um couldn't do it and so you have to discern what god's equipped you to do what god's gifted you to do it doesn't mean you can abdicate your responsibility just because you don't like cleaning doesn't mean you don't have to clean your house but it may be that you don't want to be a cleaning lady for life right but if cleaning is your thing you might be an organizer you might love to do that for other people right so discern i can't stand the sight of blood there's no way i could be a doctor or a nurse i can't even look at it i can listen to bloody stories and horrible stuff that people do and have had to happen to them i can hear all that some of you can't do that so you know what your capacities are let yourself be the rose be the sunflower be the apple tree whatever god's called you to be instead of feeling like oh i'm guilty because i'm not what you want me to be i'm not i'm not i'm not that kind of person my strengths are here we all have weaknesses i'm sure she had them too right and so be who you're supposed to be and that isn't perfect there is no perfect mature person but mature in who you are supposed to be not who your husband wants you to be or your kids want you to be and there's i'm sure overlapped so if you put down your three words kind generous for whatever those words were i'm sure your kids would say well no mom i don't want you to be that what they might say is i want you to do certain things for me and you might say that's not in my wheelhouse to do i'm not gonna bake cookies because first of all i will eat most of them and that's not good for me it's not good for you either we'll bake cookies at christmas time we'll bake cake for your birthday every week not gonna have it and guess what my kid's okay and i didn't feel guilt so don't let yourself feel guilt about that um we are taught great things until we get married then we are supposed to put all of our self aside and completely merge into our husbands who says who says did she do this i think that's one wrong teaching of some of the complementarian churches teaching these days not all of them some of them taught to become an extension of him how do i start teaching my girls to think differently but still yearn for a healthy marriage the yearning for a healthy marriage is hardwired into us we all yearn for healthy we all yearn for relationship and connection god has wired us for that if you've watched any psychological studies the the wire mesh mommy you ever see that study with the monkeys so they had a monkey fake monkey mom with uh breast or you know fake breast with a bottle there and but she wasn't furry she was just a wire mesh mommy and the baby monkeys would go and drink from her but she wasn't cuddly they didn't like her so as soon as they finished drinking they'd hop over and they'd go to the furry you know stuffed monkey because that monkey felt more like a mommy we're hardwired for connection can't get around that so the yearning for a healthy relationship yearning to be connected to someone and intimacy in marriage is just right in there so she can do that but this is where we do our girls a disservice there is no way that we teach our boys that that's all there is to their life is to just get married you just get married and have a family get mad we don't teach our boys that we also say and what do you want to do with your life and what's important to you what do you think god's calling you to and here's some of the gifts i see that you have we do that with our boys because we know it's not just marriage and family that's all there is to them but for our girls we don't why not why not for you to be a healthy adult girlfriend part of your maturity a healthy adult is capable of stewarding and taking care of themselves right so they don't need their parents anymore if you're an adult you don't need your parents anymore and that includes financially because now you are self capable of earning a living now i'm not against putting that on hold for a while if you choose to because you want to homeschool your kids or you can because you have the opportunity to stay at home but if something heaven forbid happens to your husband or your marriage if you're a healthy adult you're not so afraid of that because you are capable of supporting yourself and your children you haven't skipped that step of maturity why are we teaching our girls it's okay to skip that you don't have to get a career you don't have to think about what you want to be when you grow up because you just can be a wife and mom and that will be the rest of your life not for many not for some of you then what then you're forced into a situation where you're stuck in a marriage that's abusive because you don't know how to work and you don't have any experience and you're afraid and you don't have confidence teach your daughters that part of adulting is not just getting married of course part of adulting is you get to have sex and get married and all that part of adulting is that you have to be financially capable of taking care of yourself so if something happens to your husband you are financially capable of taking care of your children and you know at the back move back in with me right that's an adult you move out and you take care of you financially emotionally mentally spiritually i don't have to baby bird feed you anymore right that's what an adult does but we don't teach our daughters that somehow we move them in from growing up to then being taken care of at least financially by their husband and again i have no problem with that if there's a mutual and reciprocal agreement about that and there's freedom for both to access the finances and all of that for a season but if you're a nurse or you're a teacher or you have any other profession like i was a licensed professional do not let your license expire just because you're not currently working do not let all of your skills go down the toilet thinking oh i love being at home i will be home the rest of my you don't know that you don't know that prepare for the future and the unexpected because you don't know what things are gonna turn out to be like all right i have to let go of resentment toward my husband who doesn't carry his load i was and i am a strong woman teaching taking university classes raising three kids by myself managing my home and the rental home good for you i am struggling in this area trying to encourage myself with thankfulness yeah you do have to let go of the resentment because the poison is in you it's not hurting your husband at all sometimes we carry resentment and we think you know i resent them for the way they are and they don't care they don't care that's why you had a lot if they cared they might have changed it but they didn't so for you to carry that it's like for you think about just put it on put put resentment as a 25 pound backpack on your back full of rocks and maybe symbolically you should do that go get your backpack stuff it full of couple rocks till it gets to be about 20 pounds and carry around for the day and ask yourself do i want to carry this around forever no take it off let it go forgive forgiveness doesn't mean what he did was okay or you wouldn't have to forgive it right forgiveness doesn't mean that you take care of him or mitigate the consequences or let him back in your house or in your life or in your any of that forgiveness is taking the backpack off of resentment and bringing it to jesus and saying it's yours to take care of with him but for me i don't want to carry that backpack anymore and you can do this girlfriend you can i was to be strong and proud of myself but i am scared of criticism and anger from the other half how do i get past this first of all a healthy person applauds your growth so let's put it in parenting okay what would you do if your husband your current husband whoever asked this question and you had a little boy or a little girl and they were so proud they said look mom i can stand on one foot right so they're learning balance and your husband said that's stupid stop that oh i guess i i i'm silly for standing on one foot look mom i learned how to do my cursive oh shut up you're just being a show-off what would you do if your husband was squashing your child's growth your child's pride good pride in their growth in their maturity look i remember my and my children finally learned to go in the bathroom in the toilet you know the number two and they said mom you know here it is and you know you wanna yay not shame them and so if your husband is shaming you for your growth in confidence and competence and diligence and wisdom and in skill building there's something wrong with him that's where your mindset has to shift because he may not change that because his own insecurity your growth threatens him right that would be my guess your growth threatens him because maybe he's not growing and he doesn't want to grow so if you grow you might grow apart because in marriage when you join together it doesn't mean you both stay 18 forever or 22 forever i hope not but that you grow together and you might always go at the same pace or in even the same way but you're both still maturing and if he doesn't want to he wants to stay an 18 year old or 14 year old boy and you're maturing that's going to threaten him unless you become the mama to take care of him which is pretty unappealing for both of you right and so it it he will try to shame you just like just like a a a dad or a mom whose child is is you know blossoming and you feel threatened by that if that's hitting your narcissism or your ego in some way you will try to squash that just like i gave you some examples so here's where you have to have the mindset this is his problem i'm not going to feel intimidated by that this is his problem and i think you could even talk to it like you could say to him i don't know why you feel like you have to put me down all the time i you know finish a college class or every time i get a promotion what's that about so now you're saying it out loud that may not do anything for him it may it may give him an opportunity to say i wonder what that is about why do i do that my dad always did that or and that might provide some self-awareness and some self-growth or it might do nothing other than get him to shut up a little bit because you call him on it right like hey this is your problem i'm not sure why you have to do this but every time i seem to do well you put me down what's that about and now you're calling him out on it in other words i'm not gonna take it in anymore i'm gonna lay it out and show you what it is what you do with it is your problem but i'm not letting you stop me anymore gary thomas wrote a great book called when to walk away and if you scroll into my blogs maybe about a month back he wrote a guest post and he told a story about a woman whose husband constantly squashed her growth and he said you know our job is to serve god and we can't let anyone get in our way including a marriage that where someone is threatened by our giftings or our callings you know and so if your husband if you're supposed to be an oak tree and he's stepping on your little seedling coming up you got to go around it and keep coming up you can't let that he may try to squash you but what i don't want you to do is let that guilt or that shame or that oppression mess with your mindset of you still need to grow yeah scared of criticism and anger right so so that's what the work you need to do is not to be scared of it it's going to happen but don't be scared of it right just accept that he can't handle your growth and keep going and hopefully he will learn to is it too late to begin life at 50 plus discovering who i am as a person for goodness sakes moses was in the wilderness for how long because of some stupid tax he had to pay because he wasn't paying attention to what god told him to do right and he didn't start really becoming hoses that we know i think until he was much older right you got still a lot of life yet girl and i have women in my coaching groups and stuff who are in their 50s who are doing some going back to college doing some amazing things and no please please you might have another 40 years maybe another 45 years you don't know how long you're going to live so live i have come that you might have life and have it to the flawless gary haugen who's the um director of the um i can't think of the agency but it's the one that international justice mission i i j m the one that does a lot of the legal work for sex trafficking and stuff he wrote a book i can't think of the name of it but in there he tells a story about his dad taking him to hiking and he was a little scared to go hiking and so he convinced his father and his older brother to let him stay in the visitor center for the day so he he said i was in the visitor center for like six hours and they were on this adventure and they got all scraped up and it rained and he said when they came back down he said um you know they had amazing stories of life and i was bored to death and i learned i'm not living safe anymore you know and so sometimes we just want to live in our little cul-de-sac and we don't want to we don't want to live exciting life you could go on missions trips you could become a teacher you could do tutoring you could do all kinds of stuff i don't know what your gifts are but look at your gifts look at your interests and begin to ask god use me let me live full out for however long i have all right will the workshop be appropriate for a teen girl 16 years old [Music] parts of it will there there's one lie that we're gonna talk about divorce and so obviously that won't be um applicable to her she's not in that situation is god hate all divorce but i think really understanding um some of the lies like what is dying to self mean that's one we're going to cover in the workshop um and we're going to be talking about core strength what does it mean to build core strength so it certainly might bore her a little as a 16 year old because 16 year olds don't tend to like that kind of thing but if she's interested i wouldn't not have her come okay um one of my friends is married to a lawyer and lives really comfortably we were talking on the phone and she said i always knew that i was not going to need to work and that did not sit well with me i've always had to work and help my family me too dr i've worked since i was like eight years old and because i actually like to work i'm having a hard time not being resentful how do i take this weight off well first of all i'm not sure what the weight is like are you jealous that she doesn't have to work and you have to work because you're saying i like to work even if i mean i don't have to work anymore i i could retire i like to work i like i don't want to i don't want to live the rest of my life just playing i want to minister i want to still do kingdom work right so even if i didn't have to work and i don't have to work financially it's not why i work financially i work because i love my work and i love my ministry and i want to continue to be wise and generous and and kind and give out what god's showing me so i think if you can sort of see her as the loser i don't have to work well no you don't but why wouldn't you want to contribute and maybe she does maybe she does a lot of volunteer work and that gives her the freedom to do that and giving but if she's just spending her life getting manicures and going to the spa with her friends and playing pickleball i mean i don't have any problem with spas or manicures pedicures or pickleball but that's not a life those are some activities so if that's what her life consists of she's the poorer for it so certainly don't be resentful of her or jealous because she's living a skim milk life she's living for pleasure and not for purpose and so don't confuse the two she might have the ability to live just for pleasure but we look at people who live just for pleasure and they're addicts and they're unhappy and they often commit suicide because there's no meaning to their life so when we work god has created us to work and it's not just to make a living it's to create a purpose to our life and pleasure is not the purpose pleasure is the recreation from the work which is fine but that's not a life what is the role of autonomy in marriage how do i live my best life when my life choices affect my husband example i always wanted a dog so my best self was decisive and bought a puppy husband is not a fan of the puppy and never wanted a dog inside was i wrong to get the dog anyway because it's my house too and my best life has a dog in it well i think those kind of things that impact just like a child um you know if you were expecting him to take care of the dog or love the dog or if he's allergic to the dog all those kind of things if you're together there is a whether it's a husband or even a roommate there's a bit of mutuality and respectfulness about how does this impact you and are you willing to have this impact you right how does this impact you and are you willing to have this impact you how's that going to affect you not responsible for your feelings but i'm responsible to care about your feelings especially if i've committed to do that in marriage but even a roommate you know i'm gonna i'm gonna get a dog how do you feel about that i don't want a dog i don't wanna smell a dog i don't wanna see a dog poop i don't wanna have to clean up a throw up if you're not home i don't wanna how do you deal with that right so i think those would be things that you do need to talk about in a marriage but here's where mutuality and reciprocity come in a healthy relationship there's a give-and-take in that so sometimes when my husband and i are in a disagreement about that i'll say well how important is that to you right so i might say well for me getting a dog is a ten that's how important it is to me how important is it to you not to have a dog he said you know maybe five six so my importance is higher than his lack of want right now if his was a one we would be so far apart we might have to think of other things is there a different kind of pet we can get or all those kind of things so that you are caring about the relationship more than caring about getting your own way right and i think that's part of the discipline of being with people is that you don't always get your own way all the time even if what you want is perfectly legitimate right perfectly legitimate to have a dog but when you're married somebody doesn't want one or a child you know it it's not wise just to not care how they feel if it impacts them if the decision impacts them now if i say i'm gonna get braces or i'm gonna go to counseling it doesn't really impact them per se financially maybe a little bit but it's not like some creatures in the house that they have to take care of so i think there's times when they might not want you to and it doesn't really impact them the same way a little financially but not in terms of having another person to take care of or something around them that they may be allergic to but i do think that there is there is this autonomy and i think here's where christian women have learned to just melt into their husband's wants you want that all right then i won't get it that's important to you all right well then i won't do it it's important for you to keep moving and getting your promotion well then i'll just have to keep adjusting right i think there's a time where you have to say hey it's it's it's a tent for me and you might have to use words like strong direct words husbands men we've talked about this before don't communicate very um indirectly they unless they're covert abusers but if you need something communicate more directly with them like this is this is how important it is to me it's a 10. it's not negotiable right so that they know you really mean it but then you have to mean it and and so does that does that not matter to you that it's that important to me but i think there are some people both men and women who believe marriage is in a measurement relationship where you just kind of melt into one person and sometimes women believe that and you know they feel very threatened if their husband wants to do other things and he wants to have friends and he wants to go hunting or playing golf and there's men who believe that hey if you if you want to have girlfriends and you want to go out to a women's retreat or you want to work what's wrong with our marriage aren't i enough for you aren't i enough for you and no no marriage was never meant to be our all and everything nor was one person meant to be enough for us that's that's our god then and that's not him so no you're not enough for me right and i don't want to put that burden on you right so it's not not an insult you know insult that you're not enough for me the reality is is that you i want you in my life but i want other things in my life too i want marriage in my life but that's not all my life i want other things in my life too i love you but i have other things that i love too i love my dog i love my mother i love my girlfriends i want to see them as well when you have a a person who's very insecure and the only way they feel loved is if you forsake everybody else and they might use that scripture forsaking all others you know and you know that's the relationship with god that's not the relationship with the husband yes we're to leave and cleave but it doesn't mean and we never see any examples where they aren't connected with other people in a larger community even when they're married all right what's the best approach to breaking codependence after a divorce do your own work do your own work all right so a co-dependent will look for another person to fix or to cling to instead of doing her own work so i would say give yourself a fast like i'm not dating i'm not going out i'm not doing any of that for a while i'm going to do my own work i'm going to go to you know um co-dependent coda co-dependent no more if you want a free you know support group out there i'm gonna get some counseling i'm gonna go get some coaching i'm gonna join a support group for codependents i'm gonna read on it i'm gonna work do my own work that's what you have to do you have to do your work there's no shortcut to maturity and healing and you have to do that for yourself if that's where you want to go my husband is not the only one resisting my growth my adult children are not happy that i am changing they want me to stay there and continue serving them and we've talked about this over and over again so if you are a woman who has adult children and you had this mindset that i have to be my everything for my kids and i have to be the mom they that's all they see you guys as a role you are a role like my cell phone you're an object you're an object to serve them and when you start saying wait a minute i'm a person i kind of like to go back to college i'd kind of like to you know hang out with my girlfriends no i don't want to babysit your kids all the time i kind of had i had an idea that i might like to write a book and i want some time to do myself they don't like that because you have never been a person you've always just been a role a mom a grandma a wife so why are you changing it now mom we like you that way because we can we can pick up and use you whenever we need to use you and then when we don't need you you can go do what you want right and so please please please if you're a younger woman and you have younger children don't do that don't and i'm sorry that our teaching has been so poor on this don't do that don't let your kids think that your whole life revolves around serving them it's a very narcissistic point of view that you're actually enabling them to have in their mind and that's not good for them and it's certainly not good for you right one of the things that's so critical to a two to three year old child is to to realize that the whole world doesn't revolve around meeting their needs you see when you have a baby that's what they think that everyone revolves around meeting their needs i cry you come and that's good we're supposed to because we want to create a secure base but there comes a place in that infant's maturity where they come up against reality there's a new baby in the house usually around two or three right and now i'm not the center of the world anymore boo hoo i've gotta share i've gotta i've got to mature right and if you don't do that if you're knocking yourself out to keep your kids happy that they're the center of your world well guess what now you're in this woman's boat and they're adults and you're you're saying i'm tired of this and they're not tired of it because they still like you serving them whenever they need it so it is an adjustment for everyone and i think it's best if you could humbly confess that you thought this was a good idea when they were growing up that you would be their everything but as you've matured you don't see that this quite the same way and you have some goals of your own for this life and it doesn't include just being a mom and a grandma and you're sorry if they don't like that but you would hope that at some point they would come to appreciate that you're a person too and you have a calling on your life that god wants you to do and it's not just being a mom and a grandma and a wife all right let's see two more questions and then we're gonna go what happens if your husband is financially prosperous has given me a place to start my own language school but hardly helps with the upbringing of the children hardly shows interest in your plans nor asks about your health problems he just says he has given me the space for the academy but he does not know the type of business that has to do with education he sees me struggling with raising my kids and the problems involved and when i get upset he says if you want you can go out and find a way to make the money that i can make while i stay home but will you be able to come up with this amount of money all right so i think here's where you have to kind of think through some things in an adult kind of way your husband sees himself working hard to contribute to the support financially of the family's needs as well as your new business startup right and maybe he sees himself as you know maybe and i don't know the hours he works but maybe he works 60 hours a week to do that 50 hours a week 60 hours a week to do that in his mind his expectations are you have the freedom to organize your day to include your parenting include your business and maybe put in 60 hours a week too to do those things when you want him to work 60 hours a week doing this part and then come home and put in another 15 or 20 hours a week parenting then he may say hey i don't think that's fair and maybe it is maybe it isn't i don't know so i don't know what the hours are but how we worked it out in our home was that hey we're both parents so it's not like you get a pass from parenting just because you work and i'm home all right so when i when you're home you're a parent and i'm a parent we're both parents when you're not home i'm the parent right because or the babysitter's a parent because somebody's got to be the parent so when you're not home when you're working you know but on weekends those kind of things you're the parent too so then we had to negotiate on weekends how are we going to parent who's going to be the parent if i wanted to go get my hair done or i wanted to go work or i wanted to go to something else or he wanted to do something else it wasn't always assumed i was going to be the on-call 24 7 parent and i think those are things that you have to talk about early in parenting and early in pregnancy hey how are we doing parenting here i'm not the on-paul parent and i have to ask you to babysit our children these are your children too right it just it always amazes me when a woman will say oh i want to come to the retreat this weekend but my husband doesn't want to babysit the kids i'm like he's a parent i mean he doesn't want to babysit the kids he's not the babysitter he's the dad right so but you've allowed that you've allowed that mindset that he gets to decide i don't want to be a parent on saturday because i want to golf all day he is a parent he is a parent so but i hear also in your tone kind of a victim mindset like i don't have choices if your husband's prosperous then maybe you can hire someone to watch the kids while you do some of your business work so you're not so it's not worn out right maybe you need to go for some counseling coaching on parenting things so that you can get some more wisdom if your husband doesn't want to contribute and thinking through some problems with your kids if you have the money to get extra help get the extra help then get cleaning help so so no one else can parent your kids i always said it this way no one else can parent my kids so i've got to be the parent you you can hire a nanny and all that but that's not parenting no one else can parent your kids but you but somebody else can clean your house somebody else can do your wash somebody else can cook your meals or you can buy your meals i mean you don't have to do it all and so if running this business and starting this business and you know i don't know how much you know about your husband's business and i wouldn't get all bent out of shape if he's not all that engaged in yours either this is your business this is your baby you you take it on you you own it do the work for it and if he's not he's not all that interested then you know i i consult with lots of people on my business i don't know anything about business i was a social worker i didn't wasn't a business person but now i have a business i have employees i have people who i have people i have to pay i have to figure this out i don't know how to do that i have to ask people and hire people to help me to do that you may have to do that too that's part of your maturity as a business owner right and it may be that he's got his plate full and doesn't want to be a partner in your business just like you're not a partner in his work so those are the autonomy kind of things that you have to start talking through and being okay with him saying no i don't wanna i don't wanna be a part of your business i'll support you i'll give you you know money to start it but i don't wanna i don't wanna i don't wanna help you in it so hire someone to help you on it or join a mastermind or get involved in you know people who are doing what you're doing and networking with them so that you're getting fresh ideas and business ideas and not feeling so helpless about all this all right all right one more what do you do when you want to move to another state to help children do to corona but husband tells you husband tells you yes takes you to look at houses and then changes his mind gives you false hope um i guess you need to say why'd you change your mind you know i think that's a big decision to make as a couple that you're going to move your whole life to help your children with corona i mean corona is temporary it's not a permanent state of affairs unless you truly want to move to be near your kids for lots of reasons not just corona so maybe a compromise is to say well i do really want to help them right now so how about i rent an apartment then i'll go and stay and get a temporary rental rental a house rental apartment six month rental three month rental you know whatever your finances can afford um because he's not ready to make that decision right now um and i think i think you know we would want the right to have a press pause change my mind kind of option in certain decisions that are life-changing decisions like a move and so to ask your husband you know he went with you you looked at houses and now he's changed his mind for whatever reason i don't know but i think that if i were open to moving and i went someplace and i got there and i saw i don't think i really want to do this i hope i would have the right to express that too so i don't think he's being a bad person for saying i i want to put a hold on this right now i'm not sure i'm ready to do this or i don't like that area or i don't want to live so close to the kids or whatever it might be but i think if you temporarily want to go to help then then put it in option b i want to help they need help um this is what i'd like to do and see what happens see if that's that's a better option for both of you that he can live with a temporary kind of thing versus a permanent thing for now all right so this is part of part of having a healthy relationship with someone is that there's communication and there's respect and there's curiosity versus condemnation judgment accusing attacking so in this situation i think he has a right as an adult to change his mind and reevaluate his decision without you being resentful about that but then now what how do we renegotiate this problem with our kids and helping our kids do we do this temporarily for now and then we evaluate in a year or what do we do and how do we talk about this in a respectful adult mature way and that's part of where we need to do our own work we can't make them do their work but do our own work so that we're not under reacting or overreacting to certain things and we're able to communicate clearly what we're unhappy with and what we'd like to see different and what we're willing to bring to the table to see if that can happen all right so i hope you sign up for the webinar it's leslie bernick.com forward slash join webinar and it is going to be tuesday next tuesday at noon eastern time we'll be doing a live webinar and then i will be answering your questions and in that frame it'll be a little bit more private versus facebook so we can ask you know some more personal questions if you need to about your family and then also uh we'll be doing it at 7 30 the same night so tuesday next tuesday the webinar you cannot attend if you do not register if you register and you find you cannot attend it's okay you'll get a replay uh it'll be like a 24 48 hour replay that you can watch it if you want to won't be forever but you can watch it you'll get an email about that so if you know you can't come but you want to see the webinar then sign up anyway because you only can watch it on a replay if you've signed up for it okay thank you so much for this time this week it's been a lot of fun we'll be doing some more of these uh in the future probably back at my cabin because i'm going back to pine top next week so it'll be dark and in my little little 1400 square foot cabin that's very rustic and dark i sort of like the bright i'm i'm i don't like being in the dark it's a cabin i don't want to paint the walls because it's you know they're wood and that's cabiny look but i don't like being in the dark so much but um i don't like the 115 degree temperature either here though so it's pretty darn hot and my feet have been swollen and i've been hot and out of breath and played pickleball last night and my blisters on my feet because my feet got so swollen they were rubbing on my shoes so i'll be kind of happy to go back to the cooler weather so i will see you next week from pine tuck we will be doing the webinar from there take care and god bless have a good weekend bye-bye you

Channel: Leslie Vernick

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Length: 63min 37sec (3817 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021