Listen to two ordinary, imperfect, Jesus-lovin moms—Renika and I—as we hash through our weak spots, encourage each other, and find the strength that comes when we allow ourselves to be honest within the sisterhood of motherhood.

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📓Cas’s newsletter designed to encourage Christian moms that she has lovingly entitled + the sanitarium +:

https://casandersen.substack.com/

🌟Instagram: @casfromthesanitarium

In 2012, Missie’s husband of 11 years left her for a family friend. Her kids were 7, 5 and 1. Listen as she talks about her journey of walking with God through a terrible circumstance and all the ways He has remained strong and faithful to her despite everything that has come her way.

Missie brings some serious seasoned mom vibes to this conversation and reminds us that it’s not about us being perfect parents—it’s about God’s perfect love working in and through all we go through as mothers.

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📓Cas’s newsletter designed to encourage Christian moms that she has lovingly entitled + the sanitarium +:

https://casandersen.substack.com/

🌟Instagram: @casfromthesanitarium

…and a spicy little *bonus chat* about spiritual warfare.

Buckle up, Christian mums, because we’re about to talk about the best and only defense against the raging mom-guilt monster: the blood of Jesus.

And, of course, because I can’t just sit still and do the easy, acceptable thing, I’m throwing in a complimentary talk about the mildly controversial subject of spiritual warfare. Opinions differ in the Christian world about spiritual warfare, yet despite the different ways of looking at it, the Bible is clear that God has given us the mandate and the tools to fight the things that are against us.

And fight we should, because the second-best way to rid ourselves of mom guilt is to stop doing the things that make us feel guilt and shame in the first place, and this is where the spiritual war work comes in.

Here is a link to some of the concepts I mention in this episode and the verse references to back them up:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Iyw1tmmD23nd34f01thMqgMURzMUTOrzhdvCgHK4li8/edit

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📓Cas’s newsletter designed to encourage Christian moms that she has lovingly entitled + the sanitarium +:

https://casandersen.substack.com/

🌟Instagram: @casfromthesanitarium

In this episode, Cas interviews her friend Mo about the near death of her second child, and how God used it to begin to unravel the core of Mo’s tendencies toward anxiety. You can find Mo on instagram at @nightsongdoula or @themartinsmakemusic.

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📓Cas’s bloggy newsletter thingy designed to encourage Christian moms that she has lovingly entitled + the sanitarium +:

https://casandersen.substack.com/

🌟Instagram: @casfromthesanitarium

In this episode, Cas talks about everyone’s favorite subject: sanctification! Except this mini look at what the Bible says about the oftentimes painful purification process God puts us through won’t leave you with a massive guilt trip and a burdened heart. The Bible is better than that.

Sanctification, purification, and holiness aren’t just religious words we throw around when we don’t know what to say to people who are suffering. Rather, they are, as Jesus put it in the beatitudes, the way we come to the place where we can “see God.” And seeing God is a big deal that is worth all the fires we live through.

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📓Cas’s bloggy newsletter thingy designed to encourage Christian moms that she has lovingly entitled + the sanitarium +:

https://casandersen.substack.com/

🌟Instagram: @casfromthesanitarium

Listen as my good friend Renika talks about raising kids in the Lord when you have no example from your own childhood of how to do that. Renika was raised in a low income, single mother home and she shares how God has helped her overcome the inertia of her childhood so that she and her husband can offer a different, healthier and more God-focused life to her 2 kids. For more information on Cas’s motherhood newsletter, go to casandersen.substack.com

This episode is for those of us who struggle with what to do with the worst moments of parenting—the times we yell, the times we fail, the times when we are overwhelmed with how often we fall. Though these moments are dispiriting, Jesus offers us some advice on how to not lose sight of our walk with Him when we are dealing with them. In this episode Cas shares an expanded translation of Mark 8:34 (which is the verse that talks about denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Jesus) that she found in a book by Greek scholar, Kenneth Wuest. The implications for motherhood in this verse are massive, even to the point of giving us practical advice on how to not only survive the current stress in our homes, but to turn that stress into stepping stone opportunities to walk closer with Jesus. Here’s the link to the expanded translation of the New Testament that Cas uses in this podcast: The New Testament: An Expanded Translation https://a.co/d/d0XF8Kl. Also, Cas mentions that this translation is out of print but, upon further investigation, Cas realized this was not true, so please disregard that comment made during the podcast. You can find Cas’s motherhood blog/newsletter thingy at https://casandersen.substack.com/

Cas spends a few minutes rambling about one of her favorite things about kids, which is how slow they are to judge—how accepting they are. She brings it around to how Jesus, when we allow Him to shine out of our lives, makes us into a person that is child-like in that way. Our kids show us an example of how much of a blessing it is when we are the sort of person that others feel comfortable around.

Have you ever had a situation go so-not-as-planned that you were thrown into a circumstance you never expected? Yeah, that’s what the birth of my first child was like. And I know I’m not alone in this. Many mothers try to plan out the details of their children’s birth but at the end of the day, some of us are reminded we never had that level of control in the first place… kinda like motherhood in general, no? Hope you like this crazy story and for more motherhood oriented content, visit my blog/newsletter thingy, + the sanitarium +, at casandersen.Substack.com