LOVE IS FEARLESS

We don't experience brave love in our places of perfection; we experience love in our places of real need.

This episode is a conversation with four siblings (ages 16-26) who not only live together--but work together, too.  These three brothers and one sister are the band, "Willow City Music." We asked them to share about growing up--not measuring up, and how they work through the struggles that are a part of real life as a family.

Thank you Beecher, Ezra, Liza, and Asa Proach!  We had a blast recording this episode with you.  Hang on to the end, friends--they give us a spontaneous taste of a great new song!

Doug and Janet wrap up this episode with these life-giving take aways:

• Children benefit when they watch parents love each other well.
• Children benefit when they experience the love of their parents.  Experiencing love is not the same thing as knowing our parents love us.
• As parents, we get the privilege and responsibility of discovering all the ways our children will trust us and let us love them well.

Listen now--and subscribe.  Thank you for sharing the BRAVE LOVE podcast with your friends--and for leaving a review!  

There is great hope.

Being the parent of a newborn, love seems to happen naturally.  As our children grow, relationships can get challenging--and love can get tangled with control and manipulation.  Our children can unintentionally learn things (from us!) in ways we never intended.  

Take heart!  You don't have to get everything right.  Brave love offers opportunities to learn from our mistakes--in ways that help our children, too.

Join Doug and Janet on this episode, and linger in these take-aways:

• Grace allows us to admit when we're wrong instead of hide when we mess up.  Parents (and grandparents)--we get to model this.  This is a great habit for children to develop when they're young.
• Children are designed to grow up to be young adults.  Adulting isn't to be avoided at all cost.  We find deep satisfaction when we can take care of ourselves (including ask for help,) and take care of one other person at the same time.  This is the life of an adult.
• Any species that fights its own maturity is an endangered species.  We are designed to grow up--and find maturity deeply satisfying.

Listen now--and subscribe.  

Thank you for sharing the BRAVE LOVE podcast with your friends--and for writing a review.

Together, there is great hope!

 

Our children don't take the journey to the land of "rebellious" in a day.  It's a journey to a distant land.  It's a long walk of the soul.  Rebellion doesn't get fixed--and it can be resolved.  

Our conversation with Wynema Clark continues in this episode--about rebuilding trust and learning how to live in healthy relationships with our teenagers--instead of toxic relationships.

Doug and Janet offer these take-aways to encourage parents loving bravely:

• Put relationships first. Healthy relationships bear the fruit of maturity--naturally.
• "The evidence of maturity is our capacity to love and be loved." (Education by Design, Not Default by Janet Newberry)
• The goal is not fixing behavior, but rather restoring relationships.  Healthy relationships allow time for resolution of significant issues.

There is great hope.

 

Our friend Wynema Clark joins us on this episode to begin a conversation about 3 questions she sent us on a text message:

1.  What does brave love look like when you are just now hearing about it and your 15 year old is out of control?

2.  A lot of parents that I get to talk to want to connect with their teenager but their kid has absolutely no interest in being within a 10 ft. radius of them.  How do you cultivate that relationship?

3.  How do you walk a kid with no interest in you or what you have to say toward maturity?

Brave questions on this brave love episode--with these 3 take aways:

• We are all invited to experience the love of God as a child.  As we grow up, we are all invited to share the love of God as the Father does--especially in our parenting relationships.
• We have authority (and wisdom) as we get older and gain maturity--not so we can "Lord over" or "grade and evaluate," but instead, so we can help.  Our children won't let us help them if they think our motive is for them to please us instead of trust us.
• For some of us--our children are older than 15.  Trusting the transformation of brave love for ourselves and sharing brave love with our children is still our great hope.

This is part 1 with Wynema; join us in the next episode for part 2.  Listen now and subscribe.  There is great hope!

In our previous episode about purity, we talked about helping our children (and ourselves) distinguish between feelings (which are very real--and may not tell us the truth) and deep desires (which are from God--and that invite us to dream!)

Today's episode invites us to encourage our children to dream--BIG!  It's a unique conversation about helping each other and our children untangle lies from truth while living life by design, not default.

Janet and Doug offer these 3 take-aways:

• When we stop dreaming, we live in a world small enough to earn or deserve all by ourselves.  God invites us into a bigger world.
• Dreams ask us to trust God because we are hoping for the things we can't accomplish all by ourselves.
• When our dreams don't come true, we can ask others we trust to help us sort lies from truth about ourselves, about dreaming, and about God.

Join us on this episode--there is great hope.  Dream big dreams!

This conversation welcomes Emily Soule, the Family Ministry Director at Grace Life Fellowship in Baton Rouge, to the BRAVE LOVE podcast. Emily helps share the good news about purity--for us and for our children. This is our great hope because of grace.  Grace changes everything!

Doug, Janet and Emily offer some radically beautiful ideas about purity in this episode--and these 3 take aways:

• Desires are God's heart for us, so we can trust them.  Feelings are a gift from God, too--and may or may not line up with our desires.
• Community matters.  Family matters.  We all need a safe place to ask for help.
• Purity is an identity statement, not a behavior statement.

Listen to this episode--and subscribe to the BRAVE LOVE podcast.  Contact Emily for her recommendations for great books to share with your children--and more good news.     https://gracelifefellowship.org     There is great hope!  

Transactional relationships teach our children to work for their identity (and redemption) in a generation that is already losing its taste for God.  Trading trust for trinkets puts our children in bondage--working to earn.

BRAVE LOVE offers freedom--and this episode offers five practical steps to connect with our children in transformational relationships.  Janet and Doug offer these take-aways, too:

• Live life together--in love, not transactional relationships.  Childhood is a season of growing up, not measuring up.
• Affections are caught, more than taught.  Invite your child to fall in love with good and true and beautiful and real.  There are the things that will build integrity and inner strength, and lead them into a life that is fulfilling.
• We're not designed to work for love.  Love is a more powerful fuel than fear.  Let's teach our children to be moved by love--not impulse, emotion, or adrenaline.

Join us on this episode.  If you haven't yet--please subscribe!  Thank you for being a part of our BRAVE LOVE community. There is great hope.  

Our children are living with socially acceptable addictions because we offer them prizes for performance. Two things happen when we let our children find their strength to do what is required of them from the motivation of "I can get what I want if I do what you ask:"  

1. We allow a fueling system to be built in their bodies that requires a "rush" to literally move them to do what needs to be done.
2. What is missing from their fueling system is the chemical of relationship (oxytocin)--that builds inner strength.  Without it, immaturity isn't transformed.  The weak stay weak.
   
   Janet and Doug offer these vital BRAVE LOVE steps to take in relationship with our children to help the weak become strong:

• Build relationships of trust so your children can ask for help in conversations without shame.
• Have "hard" conversations with your children when they're young, so you can have them when they get older.  They'll never be as young as they are today.  Start now.
• The resolution of addiction is not sobriety--it is connection.  We are created to need healthy relationships; without them, we will be addicts--by design, not default.

Follow this link to listen now--and to subscribe.  There is great hope.
This episode promises a link to this article:
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/fortnite-and-the-collapse-of-parenting

So often, the mantra in our homes is "be good."  Get good grades. Behave. Get your chores done... "Be good...at school, at work, physically, emotionally, mentally..."

This mantra wears us out--and tempts us to keep score.  "Be good" doesn't help us connect in healthy relationships.  

"Love one another" is a mantra that starts a whole new conversation--about trust...and about impact and influence.

Join Janet and Doug as they remind us of the hope that comes with the transforming power of BRAVE LOVE.  They offer these take-aways with this episode:

• Building trust is not the same thing as being good.  Being good is often about me, my behavior, and my gain.  Building trust is about connection.
• Impact and influence--for good--is not the same thing as being good.  Impact and influence is about what is good for you--and what is my effect on you.
• Love has an impact and influence for good in the lives of those who trust us--and let us love them.  Trust is the door that opens that lets love in.

Listen now--and subscribe.  There is great hope!

When life is about measuring up, we need a lot of labels to explain why we're not.  Education has handed parents a pattern that says children must earn and deserve--instead of receive because they need...and because they are children.

Join Janet and Doug on this episode that offers three take aways for redeeming childhood:

• Childhood is a season of growing up, not measuring up.  Growing up happens because of the love received in relationships of trust.
• Childhood is a season of life designed for transformational relationships--not transactional ones.  Children get because they need, not demand.  Adults get because they earn.
• When we offer our children a honest childhood, we offer the world trustworthy adults.

Listen--and subscribe.  https://janetnewberry.com/podcast/
There is great hope!