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Many kids grieving divorce never have words for what they're carrying. Blake Hudspeth grew up through four different stepfamilies and knows how family change can shape a child's view of love, trust, and belonging. On FamilyLife Blended, Ron Deal talks with Blake about the grief parents often overlook, the questions kids rarely ask out loud, and why feeling "fine" isn't always the whole story.

Show Notes and Resources

• Watch this episode on YouTube 
• Get a free download for how to build love with your stepchild
• Read the article: Bridge Building: Strengthening Relationships with Stepchildren
• Get your copy of The Mindful Marriage
• Ministering to students tips sheet
• Send the Blended team a donation

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Spirit of God E6 — In the biblical story, God's Spirit fills specific characters. They are to lead and organize Israel, to be priestly mediators of God's covenant, and to prophetically speak God's words to the people. We’re calling the Spirit’s special anointing on these prophet-priest-kings, “the Spirit of the messiah.” In this episode, Jon and Tim explore the Spirit of the messiah in King Saul and King David,  two very different portraits of a Spirit-filled ruler.

CHAPTERS

OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

View this episode’s official transcript.

REFERENCED RESOURCES

SHOW MUSIC

SHOW CREDITS

Production of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey and Aaron Olsen edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie.

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FROM TODAY’S RECAP:

Join Me To Build Your Best Fall – https://buildyourbestfall.com/ 

You love your home. You chose things that matter to you, yet it can still leave your shoulders tight by day’s end. Myquillyn Smith, known to many as The Nester, offers house hushing, a gentler way to help your home feel calmer.

She calls it house hushing. It’s for women who care about beauty and want their homes to feel calm again. The goal isn’t to empty your rooms; it’s to quiet them so your body and mind can settle, too. House hushing can clear your countertops and leave your home feeling more peaceful.

What You'll Learn in This Episode:

Timestamps: 

(00:00) — What house hushing is: decluttering for women who love beauty 

(01:52) — Cozy minimalism, and why "get rid of it all" scares beauty-lovers

(05:13) — Backwards decluttering: the room-by-room reset 

(06:37) — How to do it: pick two rooms and live with less for 48 hours 

(08:37) — Bringing back only what's needed, and why decisions get easier 

(09:47) — Alli hushes her kitchen: what she found and how it felt 

(12:05) — Closed storage, moving furniture, and the power of small changes 

(14:51) — Letting your functional, beautiful things be the decor 

(18:33) — The two things that change a room's volume: contrast and scale

(21:06) — Three things that make any big room cozy: rug, drapes, lamps 

(22:10) — Lighting, lamps, and the case against overhead lights 

(25:04) — Spicy takes: clocks, fake plants, tiny decor, and ceiling fans 

(29:58) — Decorating trends worth ignoring, and the "order of decor" 

(32:25) — Fun favorites: shows, a book, and the perfect puzzle 

Links to great things we discussed: 

I hope you loved this episode! Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts and Spotify s

How do you create a healthy relationship with your in-laws? Jim Daly explains three key steps for setting good boundaries between their kingdom and yours.
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What happens when our kids grow up and our role as their mom begins to change?

This is something I think so many moms struggle with, but we don't always talk about it. When our kids are young, there is so much support and conversation around parenting. But once they become adults, the challenges can feel much more complicated and lonely.

We can find ourselves comparing our kids' lives. Where did they go to college? Are they married? Do they have kids? What are they doing with their lives? And then there are the harder questions. What happens when our adult child makes choices we don't understand? What happens when they pull away from us? And what happens when there is little or no contact at all?

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Jim Burns about one of the hardest topics many parents face: estrangement from an adult child. We talk about what estrangement can look like, why parents often ask themselves, "What did I do wrong?" and how we can move from heartache to hope.

One of the biggest reminders in this conversation is that we cannot fix our adult children. But we can learn how to love them well, communicate differently, and keep the door open for reconciliation.

In This Episode, We Talk About:

Connect with Dr. Jim Burns: 

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In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared talk with Phillip Lasater about how ancient Israelite and Jewish writers understood the self, personal agency, emotion, and human flourishing in ways that can be very different from modern assumptions. They explore how concepts like fear, the heart, and individuality function in the Hebrew Bible, how texts such as Ruth and Genesis 22 invite readers to engage the interior lives of biblical characters, and how ancient Jewish traditions understood human beings as having the capacity for godlikeness and ethical transformation. Together, they invite listeners to recognize the distance between modern ideas of the autonomous self and ancient biblical conceptions of identity, challenge assumptions readers unconsciously bring to Scripture, and consider how the Bible’s diverse perspectives on human agency and flourishing might reshape the way people understand themselves.

Show Notes → thebiblefornormalpeople.com/episodes/episode-335-phillip-lasater-the-self-phillip-and-personal-agency-in-the-hebrew-bible

Watch this episode on YouTube → https://youtu.be/wn2wKoJ_L5Q

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Deuteronomy 20:4 was spoken by Moses, not to one soldier before one battle, but to an entire nation standing at the edge of years of warfare, enemy after enemy, again and again. What the priest was instructed to tell them changes everything: the Lord your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you. Not that He will help you fight, or hand you strength for your fight, or cheer from the sidelines. He does the fighting. That distinction matters enormously, because fighting and wrestling are not the same thing. When you wrestle something, your arms are wrapped around it, and you cannot put it down because you are the one holding on. Some of us are not exhausted because our battle is hard. We are exhausted because we are wrestling with something God is already fighting. Moses did not promise the Israelites they would never face the same enemy again. He told them who would be doing the fighting when they did. That is enough.

Today's Bible Verse

"For the LORD your God is the one who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies to give you victory."
— Deuteronomy 20:4, NIV

Ponder Today

1. God does not just help you fight — He is the one who fights. The promise of Deuteronomy 20:4 is not that He will strengthen your grip on the battle. It is that He goes and He fights. That is a fundamentally different posture than the one most of us have been taking.
2. Fighting and wrestling are not the same thing. When we wrestle a worry, our arms are around it and we cannot put it down because we are the ones holding on. Exhaustion in the Christian life often comes not from hard battles but from wrestling what God is already fighting.
3. Handing something to God and then taking it back is not failure — it is the pattern we are learning to shorten. The goal is not a perfect record of surrender. It is noticing sooner when our hands are full again and giving it back one more time.
4. Moses did not promise the Israelites would never face the same enemy twice. He told them who would be doing the fighting when they did. A war that keeps returning does not mean God has stopped showing up. He keeps coming back to fight it.
5. "This isn't mine" is a complete and sufficient response to a returning worry. You do not need to figure it out, wrestle it into submission, or explain why you picked it up again. Open your hands and give it back. That is the whole move.

A Prayer for You Today

Heavenly Father, here I am with this again — the same thing I brought You last week and the week before. I am honestly tired of listening to myself pray about it. But You knew this would be a long war when You said You would fight it. You promised You would go with me and fight for me. Not once have You declared that I had to win it on my own. Lord, I have had my arms wrapped around something You never handed me, and then wondered why I am exhausted. Forgive me for that. Help me open my hands. When I pick it back up, help me notice sooner. Shorten the distance between grabbing it and giving it back. You are the One who goes and who fights for me. Help me live like that is true. In Jesus' name, Amen.

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If you're still praying and starting to wonder if it's working, I wrote Praying Through Life's Battles: 90 Days to Strengthen Your Faith for you. You can preorder it now at battleprayers.com<