Gems of Motherhood

A lifetime of hard work and dream chasing has made actress Gigi Orsillo the newest “overnight success” story. A homeschool mom turned working actress. Today we’re going to talk about Living Out Your Dreams. 

Gigi shares her story about God restoring her dreams. In a very surprising way, God showed up unexpectedly for Gigi. 

We've all seen other parents "lose it" ― at a restaurant, the mall or in the grocery store. Sometimes we wonder why the parents don't have better control of their emotions (and their kids); other times we're just thankful that it isn't happening to us. Today my guest Becky Kopitzke shares about Identifying Your Cranky Triggers.

So many of us have cranky triggers yet we don’t bother to take a deep dive into discovering what they are and how to better understand them. To better understand cranky triggers, we must identify what triggers us, whether we feel cranky with our self, our kids or our husband. The root of this is sin and it is all rooted in the heart. It’s interesting that many of us don’t even know what triggers these behaviors, but we know something is wrong. 

“Understanding your triggers is a spiritual exploration. What is the root of it?” 

Becky likes to think of triggers in terms categories. For example, spiritual, physical, emotional, and environmental triggers. There are so many things to consider before we point the finger at others. However, if we don’t intentionally explore our feelings and emotions what happens next is a sweltering of anger and frustration. Becky warns that not digging deep into our emotions allows anger to take over, and further isolates us as moms.

When it comes to core worldview subjects, such as, life, marriage, race, gender and materialism, should it be Christ or culture that decide our convictions? My guest Dr. Carol Swain shares her thoughts about how we should live a Countercultural existence.

Dr. Carol shares about growing cultural trends in our society, like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Queer Theory, which are anti-Christian, anti-Civil Rights, anti-Constitution and unAmerican. People have compared CRT and Critical Queer Theory to a religion. They’re very dangerous ideologies which have taken our country by storm. 

“The Bible created one human race. Any group can be racist and evil toward another group. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the color of our skin.”

She explains that such ideologies teach our children to be conscious about differences, like race and sex/gender which they’re not naturally inclined to process like adults. She says that, “It is teaching our children the wrong message about race and [gender].”

In addition, Dr. Carol shares how many public school systems are pushing Critical Queer Theory to children as young as five years old. These children are being taught that they can choose their own gender. This indoctrination is demonic and shows an aggressive liberal agenda in school. As a result of the societal pushes of these ideologies, we can see the consequences in our children and their behavior. We have a class of children who are now questioning whether they were born in the wrong body and are feeling inordinate guilt or resentment simply due to their racial group.

Today we’re going to focus on the subject of prayer. Does teaching your children how to pray feel overwhelming? There are some families who pray consistently and others who may be not even know how to pray. My guest Stefanie Schindler shares about Praying for your Children and Teaching Them How to Pray.

Stefanie shares about the power of praying over our children emphasizing its importance as a change agent. The enemy knowing this actively tries to distract moms, cause to fall into prayerlessness and we need to recognize that. If we don’t recognize it, then our children will be blindsided by it. Because of this reality, Stephanie taught her own children how to stand up against the Prince of Darkness because she did not want to fall victim to his schemes. 

“We have incredible influence over our children’s lives especially when we stand up in the spirit for them.” 

Stephanie encourages moms to pray for their children to have their own faith. She also shares how important it is for moms to pray for God to give our children discernment and be light in their darkness. 

“I want my kids to have a lot of hope and that their lives have a purpose.”

The Word says honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. This is a commandment with a promise. Today my guest, Dr. Scott Turansky shares about Teaching Children to Honor and Respect their Parents.

God has designed honor to be a valuable tool that every child must learn. The word “honor” is used in nine specific commands in the Bible. It speaks volume of how much children must be taught and learn this lesson. But, where do they learn it? It starts at home. 

We sometimes use respect and honor interchangeably, yet there is a difference. Respect comes from the Greek word “fabas” and it’s where we get the word phobia from. When we teach respect, we teach them manners. Honor on the other hand comes from the Greek word “time” which means to value someone.

The idea of honoring centers on adding value or valuing a person. When we teach children to value something, we must emphasize ways where they can do more to add to value to their parents — that means you and I. The key word is initiative. And the key concept is contributing to others. In other word, honoring and respecting parent simply adds value to our children’s lives as they experience God’s purpose in establish parental order. 

“One of the definition of honor is that children are looking for the extra thing to do.”

If you look at culture right now, it’s no secret that families are under attack. With so many families struggling, we want to equip you to build a healthy Christ-centered family.

Today my guest, Erin Davis is back on the show. She will be talking about developing a Christ-Centered Family Calendar. What is the one thing you can pull out of your home? How do you spend your time? How we spend our time is a really strong indicator if we’re building your family around King Jesus. 

Erin shared about the 7 feast in Leviticus. She discovered the feast years ago. She felt beat up and exhausted towards the end of the year during the holiday. And she felt like she would miss Jesus. When she began studying the Jewish traditions, she realized that there’s something to those sacred rhythm. She shared about observing and celebrating just as the children of Israel did. 

“Each feast really correlated to the Gospel. It’s an interruption on our of our regular business and our regular rhythm.”

Sometimes we need to dream, make plans and take steps forward. My guest, Annette Trucke shares how as moms we need to step out of our comfort zones in order to freely pursue our God-given dreams.

Annette shares her story about finding her God-given dream while weaving in the complexity of her journey. She honestly relies how scary pursuing our dreams can be at times, but how we have to trust God in the process. In her own journey, she learned the importance of having godliness with contentment. 

"We have a collection of things in our hands. We can see God’s touch on everything. We have to trust God and the process.”

Annette also shares how to wisely and honestly discern what we’re good at, and eliminate the things that were not good at. The comparison game is extremely not beneficial. Instead, we should recognize who God made us to be. She shared her experience finding her way and what God showed her in the process. 

“Trust God in His timing. There are ways to prepare when you’re in the wait. Appreciate where you are at.”

We all have been through some crazy times the past 2 years. But it’s never too late to start believing in your dreams and looking forward to a what you want to accomplish in the coming, days, months, and year. My guest Kathleen Hardaway, is an inspirational speaker with a passion to encourage and equip people to live out their God-given dreams. 

Kathleen shares about her book Dare to Believe. In her book, she gives a step-by-step guide to realizing our dreams in accordance with God’s ways. According to Kathleen, people usually give up on their dreams because we live in a culture embedded with “instant gratification.” Most people are unwilling to sit and wait for the Lord, and instead refuse to realize the full purpose of God.

She also shares about the importance of knowing and living out ones spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts, your talents and your temperaments are key. Those three things are who we are, that’s how God made us. If you understand those three things about yourself then you should be pretty confident to move forward. And if you’re walking in your gifts, it will give you joy. 

“Spiritual gifts is key to walk in your spiritual walk.”

Are your children ready for school? This is a question most parents often contemplate yet don’t realize the complete answer until years later. Truthfully speaking, a child's social, emotional, and behavior skills are equally critical to school success; however, too many children in this country are starting kindergarten without them. My guest, Mary Duncan talks about school readiness in young children. 

Mary explains what school readiness means and how to identify it in your own children. Simply put, before a child enters kindergarten, they should be able to recognize shapes, count one through ten, take turns in a play setting and more. 

“There’s so many aspects to preparing our children for school. Attention span and bonding is very important, building vocabularies and including new words during specific time of the day is just as important.”

Mary shares how important play is to a child development. And how play is work for children. She also suggests different activities that moms can do with their young children to enhance school readiness. Mary likes to break the five main subject areas which is pre-math, pre-science, pre-social studies, pre-writing and pre-reading. She breaks those down into each of the years and then work on what to build in those foundation pegs. Her timeline for child preparedness is instructive and helpful to cultivating an environment of learning.

Mom Fatigue Syndrome is real. It’s pervasive. And it creeps into every facet of a mom’s life. My guest, America’s #1 Mom Coach, Hannah Kelly will talk about the Mom Fog.

“I kept on having failure after failure. Whatever could go wrong went wrong. I realized I was struggling with mom brain.” 

Hannah shares about what she was like when she first became a mom. She struggled mightily remember simple day to day tasks and she wondered why. She finally realized that she was going through a mom fog. After seeking God for His intervention, He stepped in to guide and help her find her way through the fog. 

“As moms, we have this thing where we call categorical thinking where we believe if we get one area of our life successful, all the other areas will implode. We subconsciously sabotage ourselves.” 

Hannah wrote a book called the Mom Fog. She shares about why the average programs and techniques do not usually work for moms. She also shares some tips on how to work on being a better mom starting with rewarding yourself with self-love and self-care.