The Mission Driven Mom Podcast

A former MDM Academy student, Karen Bates is now most definitely ON a mission to save orphaned youth in Mexico!

Although she and her family are at the beginning stages, they have accomplished so much already and have a big VISION of what their future holds.

Join me and others as we learn about Karen's inspiring journey so far, and how we can support her invaluable work for God's children.

Get your FREE "Truth Seekers Starter Kit": https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/

In the modern age of DISBELIEF, Andrew Klavan offers wisdom and insights on the 3 MODERN PROBLEMS of: Unbelief, Science, and Radical Politics.

Join me, Lindsey, and Kim as we discuss his profound work The Truth and Beauty, looking especially at theme of FEMININITY and its connection to modern loss of faith.

Check out other videos on book club tips and group discussion on my "Book Club Tips, Tools, and Discussions" Playlist!

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At The Mission Driven Mom, we are empowering moms with principles and purpose. We know that God in His wisdom created a world run by immutable natural laws. We know that true principles flow from these natural laws. And we know that principles are the answer to life's toughest problems.  Yet, when comes time to actually live those principles, the path can be not only overwhelming but incredibly painful. Who wants to exercise regularly? Who wants to save 10%? Who wants to keep forgiving their spouse?  Principles are hard--there's no doubt about it. We can't break them or we will reap the negative results in our lives. So what do we do when we really want to live principles but it seems virtually impossible? Listener's Guide: Use the time stamps below to skip to any part of the podcast.  2:30  Audrey studying MDM Academy with her kids 4:08  Quick fixes make things worse 9:25  Stephen Covey and his son's development 13:32  The power of facing the truth and beginning with ourselves 16:34  Why principles stink 21:50  We can't live principles on sheer will power 22:35  Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the importance of truth 26:48  Impact of principles on the MDM moms 27:38  We need a vision greater than the principles Quotes from this episode: "People are intrigued when they see good things happening in the lives of individuals, families, and organizations that are based on solid principles...And their immediate request is very revealing of their basic paradigm. 'How do you do it? Teach me the techniques.' What they're really saying is, 'Give me some quick fix advice or solution that will relieve the pain in my own situation.'" ~Stephen R. Covey "We knew that social comparison motives were out of harmony with our deeper values and could lead to conditional love and eventually to our son's lessened sense of self-worth. So we determined to focus our efforts on us--not on our techniques, but on our deepest motives and our perception of him." ~Stephen R. Covey "The truth seldom is sweet: it is almost invariably bitter." ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn  "A sense of responsibility before God and society has fallen away." ~Alexander Solzhenitsyn "The sense of greatness is the groundwork of morals." ~Alfred North Whitehead "Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." ~Proverbs 29:18 Books from this episode:     Podcast mentioned in this episode: Find "Intro to Principles" podcast series HERE

Here's an image of the Spiral of Silence for reference with this podcast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_spiral_model.jpg

Get your FREE "Truth Seekers Starter Kit" here: https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/

The more I learned about the history of the sexual revolution, the more I asked myself the question: "WHY?!" I get that people want to do whatever they want to do, but why do we keep pretending like ALL of the results of this revolution have been positive? And why do allow social norms to be loosened to the point of harm to us and future generations?

In the end, our children are going to pay the biggest price!

Join me as I go through the major events of the 20th and 21st century that led to where we are today, and give some insights as to WHY its being done, and WHAT we can do about it!

Become part of THE movement to learn and live true principles which will empower you to become part of the SOLUTION! https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one.” ~M. Scott Peck So often in life we face problems that bring feelings of overwhelm, confusion, frustration or anger. What do we choose to do when we feel these uncomfortable emotions? In this podcast you'll learn about four stay-at-home moms just like you. Women who are smart, pretty, and gifted. Women who love their children and what to be good moms. Unfortunately, though, when life got challenging, they chose to run away, rather than face their problems head-on. This habit of running away, chosen over and over again, created lives for them that were even worse than the original problems they ran away from.  In our modern, face-paced world there are countless escapes we can choose rather than searching for solutions, conquering our challenges and becoming the heroes of our own stories. Yet, feeling proud of who we are and the life we've lived is how we all want to feel. Join Audrey this week as she shares the stories of these moms who chose to run away and the disastrous effects for them and their families. Consider with her how even the seemingly innocent behaviors--reading, vacationing, watching TV, social media--can easily become distractions that keep us stuck. Then look closely at the truth about problems and how they can actually become great blessings--giving our lives real meaning and deep purpose.  Listener's Guide: Use the time stamps below to skip to any part of the podcast.  3:45        We are All Tempted to Run Away - Three Stories 4:26        Story One - Alice 9:08        Story Two - Felice 13:25       Story Three - Jennie Lee 17:32      Are You Running away With an Emotional distraction 21:32      Problems = Pain and Problem solving 23:51      A Helpful Way to think About Problems    28:13     A Final Message and Challenge 29:19     Tiffany - Facing Our Problems Quotes from this episode: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” ~M. Scott Peck, M.D. “Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life's problems. Without discipline, we can solve nothing. With only some discipline we can solve only some problems. With total discipline, we can solve all problems.” ~M. Scott Peck, M.D. “What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one. Problems, depending upon their nature, evoke in us frustration or grief or sadness or loneliness or guilt or regret or anger or fear or anxiety or anguish or despair. These are uncomfortable feelings, often very uncomfortable, often as painful as any kind of physical pain, sometimes equaling the very worst kind of physical pain. Indeed, it is because of the pain that events or conflicts engender in us that we call them problems. And since life poses an endless series of problems, life is always difficult and is full of pain as well as joy. "Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human spirit,

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When God had to whittle down all His commandments to 10, it seems crazy that the Sabbath made it on the list. Scripture tells us He "rested" on the 7th day--but what did He actually do? What does that even mean?

And if God is love, how do the Sabbath, and rest, and reverence, relate to His (and our) ability to love?!

Join me as we explore insights that will (hopefully) inspire you to improve your life and your relationships through increasing your own rest!

Learn more about drawing closer to God and loving Him more in my book The Mission Driven Life: https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/store

“It was no more glorious or joyful to lead a rally than it was to bathe my children.” ~Phyllis Schlafly Phyllis Schlafly often said that women can have it all...just not at the same time. Her life exemplifies that truth. Driven, intelligent, kind-hearted and devout, Phyllis made the most of every season of her life.  First, as a young woman, she worked in a munitions factory while putting herself through college studying political science. Then as a married wife and mother, she set aside her personal aspirations to raise her six children full-time, support her husband, and serve faithfully in her community and church. Finally, as her children left home and the ERA movement heated up, she put her education and life experience behind the cause she knew would affect millions of women, mothers and families for decades to come. A woman who talked with kings and presidents, Phyllis always cited her children as her greatest accomplishment. Join Audrey this week as she discusses what life was really like with Phyllis Schlafly in this interview with her daughter Anne. Originally aired as a FB Live in The Mission Driven Mom Mastermind FB Group, this podcast contains the entire interview, Q&A session, and recommended resources.   Listener's Guide: Use the time stamps below to skip to any part of the podcast.  2:15      Anne Schlafly Cori's Childhood 4:28     Daily Routines 6:30     Her Relationship with Her Mother 7:29      A Favorite Memory 8:22     Faith in the Home 14:00   Her Parents Relationship 18:00   The Feminine Mystique 19:22    A Choice Not An Echo and Other Books 26:25   Actively Fighting ERA 36:41   Mrs. America, the mini-series 40:35   Learning More About Phyllis Schlafly 42:37   Questions and Answers from Listeners 55:10    Resources to Educate Others Quotes from this episode: “Part of her success was that she always made herself available.” ~Anne Schlafly Cori “Women can have it all, just not at the same time.” ~Phyllis Schlafly “All women work. If you're a homemaker you work.” ~Phyllis Schlafly “You may believe that the person sitting next to you will not be saved but you're going to work together on this issue.” ~Phyllis Schlafly When asked if she always wanted a large family - “I came from a family with two children. My husband from a family with four. Those numbers are good, but if you are happy and having fun things just happen.” ~Phyllis Schlafly “Home is not a concentration camp. It is a sanctuary.” ~Anne Schlafly Cori “Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.” ~Phyllis Schlafly “The feminist movement taught women to see themselves as victims of an oppressive patriarchy...Self-imposed victimhood is not a recipe for happiness.” ~Phyllis Schlafly “It was no more glorious or joyful to lead a rally than it was to bathe my children.” ~Phyllis Schlafly Books from this episode:             Links from this episode:

Through ideologies like "wokeness," LGBTQ+, postmodernism and others, we are fed a constant diet of the "your truth, my truth" paradigm. Although there is some truth to the idea that you and I see things very differently, we don't have to choose between the concept of "your" truth and "the" truth--when we properly understand what they really mean, and how they can work together.

Join me in this podcast for images and stories that will help you discern between these concepts of truth and learn how the natural law can be seen more clearly!

For more discussions of these ideas or to join my book club check out the Audrey Rindlisbacher library: https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/

To learn more about how you can more closely align your life with the natural law and true principles, check out my book The Mission Driven Life: https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/

Learn more about how principles can bless your family by getting TWO FREE CHAPTERS of the book The Mission Driven Life: Discover and Fulfill Your Unique Contribution to the World: https://www.themissiondrivenmom.com/

What began as a simple family planning session, turned first into complaining, then arguing, then ALMOST a mom lecture session with accompanying frustration and resentment.

What saved us?! Principles!

Luckily, after decades of learning and trying to live by the natural moral law and true principles, in this parenting moment, I had the foresight to check myself and turn to teaching truth, rather than giving another lecture. This simple change was much more effective than I ever would have guessed. And it's something ALL of us can do!

Get Your Copy of Our "Mothers of Principle" Masterclass (yes it's for everyone!): https://www.themissiondrivenmom.com/offers/sb48V3KF/checkout

Transcript: 

Hello, my friends. I am such a planner. I always have to have everything all scheduled out and know exactly what's coming up, and in fact, COVID was really especially hard for me because there was nothing fun coming up on the calendar, and it just made me feel so down not to have something that I was looking forward to and that was going on.

An excuse to get outta the house and go have a good time. And so I have, for years, I've drug my family into the family room, living room on Sundays and made them plan the week with me, sometimes the month and sometimes longer than that. And. They mostly try to be good sports, but especially my husband is not much of a planner.

Some of my kids aren't really planners and to be fair, it does often go pretty long. And so the fact that they know they're gonna be draft in the living room while we're planning out in detail everything that's going on is not their favorite. I gotta know that, who's making dinner and who's driving who, what place and do we have everything covered?

I can be spontaneous, but I do really like to schedule things and just to have structure in order. Yesterday we were doing the traditional, okay, let's plan the week, let's plan the month. And I had some ideas around, I've been trying to get this summer going, 'cause it's springtime and if we don't get stuff booked, then it may fill up for like summer vacations and things like that.

And so I've been concerned about starting to look into plane tickets and. Nailing down dates and all of that. And of course my daughter has, gym all through the summer and they have a traditional week off. So we're planning the week and then we start looking at kind of the future. And so I've been wanting for a little while to bring up the family vacation and.

We have been talking for the last couple years about going to Williamsburg in dc. My two kids left at home, have never been, and of course with my son, he's very passionate about all things law and politics and all of that. So it's especially up his alley. And to be honest, I think my daughter would really enjoy it as well.

She just doesn't realize how much she would enjoy it. And so we got to that point where we were. It was time to talk about the family vacation, and maybe they were already a little, tired of planning. It hadn't actually been in my defense all that long. We planned it. We'd only been at it for maybe, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes at that point.

Which maybe to you seems long, but it's pretty reasonable over at our house. So I started talking about, okay, we wanna do this Washington DC and Williamsburg trip. And what I wanted to propose, which was something that Blaine and I had talked about several times was, should we fly out there and just see those two places or should we road trip it?

Because we're here in Dallas, we're in the middle of the country, and we could probably see, some cool southern stuff, civil war stuff and whatnot. Historical stuff, but other stuff too. Just cool things. I haven't really done my homework yet, so I don't know what all those things are.

And so what I wanted to do was start a conversation about should we road trip this? And if we wanna do that, let's start thinking about the places where we'd wanna stop. Now there had already been complaining about different things. My son loves his school, but it's quite a drive and his schedule's pretty confined and tight and he wants to have more free time.

And so for the last two or three months he's been talking about how he'd like to do something different next year and, but he doesn't ever actually sit down and actually make a plan. He just complains about it. And it actually costs us quite a bit of money for him to go to school there just because of tolls and gas and everything and wearing tear in the car and uniforms and everything.

And then of course our daughter's gymnastics is like expensive and she's been injured. So we began going to therapy and just all these things that, we're. Spending a lot of time and money, like supporting tennis and supporting gymnastics, and she has to be on an online private school. And so then that's, and all these ways in which if you're a parent, if you're not a parent, just try to imagine yourself there.

But it's a lot of sacrifice and not just in time and money. And I try to tell my kids this, it's a lot of emotional energy, spiritual energy, mental energy to. Make the things happen that are important to them and they do their work, they contribute. They're good responsible kids.

But there's been the last few months, more and more complaining and we got to this point in this planning session where we were talking about the trip and all of a sudden Camille is like. I just don't wanna do that. And she's complaining about how she doesn't wanna go and, or she doesn't wanna go on that trip or maybe we should go next year and she doesn't know what she's gonna see there and just gets crappy about it.

And Seth has like already been complaining about other things and I don't know, just something about that moment. It really hit me and I just snapped and I was like, I got into my, mom lecturing mode and just saying, look, we don't have to go. I'll just, we'll just not take you, dad and I will just plan a trip, if you're not gonna appreciate it, and all that kind of stuff.

And so I started down that, down that path that is easy to go down, that we seem to all go down a lot. And then it really hit me. There are fundamental reasons why this is happening and there are principles here that are not being honored and that is why we're having this problem.

I. And luckily I was able to I guess just years and years of hammering it in my brain and talking about it and teaching it and thinking it, and most of all, just practicing it myself. I was really grateful in this moment because instead of just going off for 20 minutes or raising my voice and yelling at them, or feeling out of control or taken advantage of, or all those things that are such a temptation to do in that moment.

I did start into my, we'll do this, but then I stopped and I realized, okay, there's some principles that you're not living that are affecting our family. And one of the major, one of ones of those is you're in gratitude. And we've been down to Mexico to serve in the orphanage several times and we have relationships with those orphans and we love them dearly and, we have so much compared to them, and I just, I can't remember all the things that I said, but essentially I tried to help them see that, when you're not grateful, nothing is ever enough. You could be. Living in this free nation and have two devoted parents, you could have, a belief in God and a relationship with him.

You could have good health and good food and a loving family and really just absolutely everything at your fingertips and still be caught up in what you don't like and be full of ingratitude and. As soon as I started to teach the principal the proper way, instead of everyone feeling negative and defensive, they got really quiet and introspective.

And it doesn't always actually go down that way. And we are definitely a family that's trying to practice living the truth the best we can, but. I could, I said, when you're ungrateful, you are lying to yourself and you're lying to the people around you because you're only looking at one side of the story.

You're not actually saying things that reflect reality. And when you focus on the negative, of course, you. Feel worse, the people around you feel worse and you, because we're all creators, because we're children of God, we bring more of that negative to us as we focus on it. And that led to a broader conversation about telling ourselves the truth.

And I told my daughter, I said, these are some of the things that I have heard you say about gymnastics, but actually these are some of the things that you could be saying about it. And they're just as true. In fact, I think they're more true, and I think they're more faithful because they're not what you're afraid of.

They're not things out of control. They're not the things that you don't like. They're the things that are true. And I just talked for a few minutes about. And I just reminded them of all the things that we did in the Mission Driven Teen program when we did it a couple years ago, which they know and which they've practiced, but they've forgotten, and they're just not practicing those principles at the moment.

And I just said, I, we are responsible for our response to life all the time. That is why everybody reads Man's Search for Meaning, and everybody quotes Viktor Frankl all the time because here's a man in a concentration camp. Who is surrounded, by, it's misery. It's misery, it's hell, like he is living in hell.

And he says that basically the concentration camp environment was a, an in ir irrefutable evidence that we can't choose. We can't always choose our circumstances and we can't choose the things that happen to us in life, but we can always choose our response. We can always choose to look for the good, to tell ourselves the truth, to be a source of light and faith to the people around us and to ourselves rather than darkness, negativity, gloom and doom.

Blame and shame. Like all those ugly things he says. He says, there weren't very many of them, but the fact that there were any camp captives. And there were a few who walked around giving away their last crusted bed bread and trying to console those that were trodden down and to be a source of comfort, that they were outward looking instead of inward looking, that they were outward focused instead of inward focused is a testimony of the fact that we can always choose that.

And I'm not perfect at it. Nobody's perfect at it, but. I was able to cite some examples of some people in my children's lives that they respect and honor who are this kind of uplifting presence most of the time, who look for the positive, who see the positive, who point out the positive, who tell themselves and other people the truth about what is, and what can be from a positive frame of reference and who are outward looking, so that when you're in their presence, you know that you matter.

You know that they're thinking about you, you know that they're gonna be a light. And the, we were in the kitchen doing this planning and the space, the environment, the atmosphere just got much more quiet and somber as it really sunk in. And it was helpful that we'd learned these things in the mission driven teen.

It was helpful that we read scripture and talk about natural law and true principles. It was helpful that they'd been to Mexico and they'd seen firsthand how those orphans live. And it was, they know their stories, it was helpful that we had a backdrop. It was incredibly helpful that we had shared language so I could bring them back to, it doesn't have to be this way.

We can. See the good we can move toward, we can move toward our goals in optimistic ways. I love and Schwartz and Lo, in their book talk about realistic optimism, which I think is just such a perfect way of thinking about this, that we are striving to be. In a positive space as much of the time as we can, but in a realistic way, and that's why I love to talk about telling yourself the truth versus affirmations. Affirmations aren't a bad thing, and we do need to set goals and visualize the future. We still need to be creators of the future in that way, and so there's not anything fundamentally wrong with affirmations. They work for people, but in the moment when we're trying to ground ourselves and we're trying to get back to what's real and recenter ourselves.

There's no better place to do it than to tell yourself the truth, to focus on gratitude and to have a realistic optimism that lifts you and the people around you. And these are actions of faith because they are against the natural way of going, right? Like it's easy to slip into the negative. It's easy to see the bad side of things and to focus on what we don't like and to be ungrateful.

It's the faithful thing to choose to control our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviors so that the people around us have a more wonderful life. And frankly, we're the bene biggest benefactors of all of that because we get to live with ourselves and we are full of realistic optimism. And so we like getting up in the morning and we like our lives because.

We are looking at the good and seeing the good in that. And so it was really sweet. They both reflected for several minutes and they apologized. And then my daughter, just out of nowhere, how can I help make dinner? And and we just started working in the kitchen together and she was just thinking, and I could tell, she was very thoughtful, really taking in.

Kind of the reminders of the truths that we've been trying to teach in our home, and we all need reminders, right? And then after several minutes she said to me, Hey mom, could you do me a favor? And I said, sure. And she said, could we make some kind of plan around? I have that I have some kind of consequence if I complain about gymnastics.

And that was just a very mature response from her. To she, it's been hard. I'm not, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. It's been a hard six months for her. She had a back injury and she was in a brace for two months that she hated, and then she lost her muscle mass and then she's had to try to get back and she's still just struggling along to try to get her skills back.

It's a huge upward climb. It's discouraging. It's hard, like we all have those times, but she's realized that. Or remembered that if she'll tell herself the truth about how far she's come and how good she feels, and about how meaningful her goals are to her and how she wants those things, then she can more fully practice the faith that's necessary to get her where she wants to go, and she's not gonna get there on negativity and in gratitude and lying to herself because in gratitude is a lot of lying.

And we are seekers of truth and we want to tell ourselves the truth and we lie to ourselves and to other people all the time in all kinds of micro ways that we just don't even realize. So I just thought I'd share this event at our home from last week, from yesterday. It was helpful for all of us.

It was a good reminder to me that I could do better at being more grateful. I could do better at. Thinking about what really is the truth and striving for more realistic optimism that will help me and the people around me. And so that would be my message to you this week is think about that and evaluate your own interactions.

The self-talk that's going on in your own mind. The things that you're telling yourself and other people when someone asks you, how are you? What's your first response? 'Cause I always wanna be like honest and like transparent and all that kind of stuff. And it's so reflective of like how, I don't know, like how am I don't know, how am I feeling in this moment?

You can think about what's your response when people ask you how you're doing. What kinds of things do you think about? Have you thanked someone in your life today for how their life has made yours a little bit better. Have you pondered on the myriad of blessings that are yours that, that you didn't even, you aren't even responsible for.

They have just shown up by virtue of where you were born or how you were born, or opportunities that have been given to you, or opportunities that you've taken advantage of and grateful for things, choices that you made in the past and grateful for the choices that you get to make today because you're a creator.

And so you can start fresh today and you can create the future that you want and you can be. The person today that you really wanna be is a really great, I think her name was Dorothy Brand. She wrote a book a long time ago that that Earl Nightingale quotes her several times. I actually never read the book, but she said, act as if it's impossible to fail.

And that might be a good little mantra for today. Act as if it's impossible to be negative, that only good things are surrounding you. And you'll notice that you notice more. And that your day will be a little bit brighter and a little bit more positive because you're in that space where you recognize that no matter where you are, no matter who you are, no matter what you have or Perceivably don't have, you can create today, and you can make it better than it would've been by focusing on what's true and what you have to be grateful for.

So thanks for listening today. So grateful that you're here. If this was helpful, please give a review and share it with a friend. And if you don't have the my natural law presentation, it's available over audrey ocker.com. You can grab that video training for free, and I will see you next time.

Alli Deeble has been teaching The Mission Driven Teen Academy for 3 years. All 58 youth she has taught have grown in significant ways, learned life-changing principles, are meeting their needs better, are inspired to move toward life mission, and have a strong sense of who they really are!

In this podcast, she shares her experiences about how the program works, and why it's had such tremendous impact in her life and the lives of her students. She shares tips and tricks for teaching the program, and her immense enthusiasm to continue sharing this program with many youth to come.

If you're considering doing The Mission Driven Teen Academy with your teen, your co-op, your school or anyone, or if you want hope that teens today can lead us into the future with truth and confidence, this podcast is for you!

Check out The Mission Driven Teen Academy here: https://www.audreyrindlisbacher.com/mission-driven-teen-academy