Uniquely You | Sally Clarkson

It's more about reaching their heart with the imagination of being a virtuous person than it is about some kind of a ten rules to discipline your child. Every child still needs us to respond to their personality with the training that we do. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . Today a mom discusses the joys and challenges of parenting per unique child.

Sally Clarkson will join us straight ahead. The thesis in the book she and her son Nathan have written is that each parent is a unique child of God who is called to raise a unique child of God. Their encouraging resource is featured at buildingrelationships.us. It's titled Uniquely You Exploring Your Child's Extraordinary Distinctive Design.

Again, go to buildingrelationships.us. And Gary, you and Carolyn had two unique children. We've talked about Shelley and Derek here before. Do you resonate with our topic today?

Absolutely, Chris. You remember when I wrote my book Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married? I think the first chapter was I wish I'd known that no two children are alike. Because our two, of course she was the daughter and he was the son.

They were different biologically, but they also were different in every other way. So I can identify with this and I think our listeners are going to find this session to be very, very helpful. I do too. Let's meet Sally Clarkson. She's a speaker, best-selling author of some 33 books. She hosts the popular At Home with Sally podcast, which inspires women around the world. She's been married to her husband Clay for more than 40 years.

They home educated all four of their children. And one of those children is Nathan Clarkson, her co-author of this book. It's again titled Uniquely You.

You can find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Well, Sally, welcome to Building Relationships. Oh, thank you. I'm so honored to be with you. You influenced my life many years ago.

Well, that's good. You know, for those who don't know you, tell us a little bit more about who you are and some of what God has led you to do in your life. I feel like the Lord has been very gracious to me.

I've given him my fish and loaves and he took them and made something of them. I have four children, four adult children from 40 on down. And I found out in the past few years that I am a kind of a one percenter sort of person. So writing Uniquely You was natural to my own life. But I love drinking tea, very strong tea. And I consider it a way to disciple and mentor and encourage other people. I'm a walker.

I walk lots of miles every day. And I've lived over a quarter of my life in Europe and England. So I'm a little bit influenced by international things. So that's just a little bit.

I love golden retrievers. How's that? All right.

Well, all of that sounds exciting for sure. Well, this new book, Uniquely You, seems to be for parents who are struggling to understand their children and how to parent that child. Am I close to what the heart of the book's all about? Yes, you are.

I have a couple of children who are out of the box, way out of the box. And as I mentioned a minute ago, I eventually realized that I was also. And as I was praying about this and I thought, Lord, I really desire to meet the hearts of my children, to be a steward of their gifts, their lives. And yet all four of them were so different. And as I was praying, I began to realize that every single human being has a different DNA, different fingerprints, different backstory, different facial and eye. I mean, we are all made by God to be different. And I thought, if that's really a part of God's design, how can I cooperate with his design to release each of my children to be unique, to not be cookie cutter in such a way that they will be inspired to use their uniqueness for God's glory and for his kingdom purposes.

Yeah. Boy, I think a lot of parents would have profited to have known that and paid attention to that early on. Well, tell us about Nathan. What are some of the unique ways that he has stretched you as a mom? Well, Nathan is a verbal processor, which means that he liked to talk all the time and had opinions on everything. But also he is ADHD, ODD, OCD, dyslexic.

Oh my goodness. And so he had a lot of issues in his life. Sometimes I think some of those letters though mean that a person is brilliant, because I think that kids who question things, kids who think about everything, I look back on my own life and one time my mom said, I wish you would just be normal. And of course that went to the core of my heart.

And she said, why do you ask so many questions? So I think that in an unusual way, the Lord prepared me through my own life to understand and be dedicated to Nathan, even though I didn't quite know how to harness. I used to read him the story of the Black Stallion and I'd say, you know, Nathan, for the Black Stallion to win the race, he had to learn to accept the reins. And so that was my goal to inspire him to run fast, but to accept the reins that Clay and I needed to provide in order to be able to really help him to flourish in his life.

Yeah. Why did you want to write together on this particular book and how did your different perspectives influence the message? Actually, I have to tell you that Nathan, he lives in New York on the Upper East Side and he acts and does all these very, he loves words, he has a podcast. And he came to me and said, first of all, he wanted to write the book different, that there was kind of a prequel to this book, the story of the out of the box kid and the mom who loved him. And then he came to me again and he said, okay, we need to write another book together. And so because I wanted to support his desire to continue to have messages to people, I agreed to it, if he would do all of the legwork.

We're best friends and we understand each other and he has such a desire to reach people who feel like they aren't really seen as they are, people who feel misunderstood. You know, Nathan was going to be with us today, Sally, and he had a film that he was called to. And so I'm sad that we don't get to hear his voice, but I think it's going to be really encouraging just to hear your perspective and for the mom or dad who's listening to hear you say, you know, here are the challenges that and to not look for him to be normal, but to use those challenges and the struggles that are uniquely his for God's glory and for Nathan's good. And the dirty little secret is it's been for your good too, hasn't it?

Oh yeah, for sure. And I, you know, I said to the Lord early in my life, I'm your girl, I will love you and serve you. What do you want me to do? And he said, I want you to raise these very different children to reach their hearts, to send them in the world. And I'm going to equip you to do that because I had never changed a diaper.

I only had boys in my family. And so I feel like I was ill-equipped to be, I wasn't a perfect parent, but I was also ill-equipped to know what I was doing. It was little by little. And I think that people need to know that you have a lot of years to grow into, to really learn how to reach your children's hearts. There's so much pressure on parents today to conform to cultural standards or to what's on the internet or to social media. And I think that for me to realize that I was exactly the mom that my children needed to have, that God had prepared me to be their mother, really helped me to realize that I didn't need to compete.

I didn't need to perform. I was free to walk by faith and to grow over a period of time to be the kind of mother my children needed. Sally, you emphasize that every child is a unique creation of God. How can parents practically celebrate their children's differences while still fostering a sense of unity in the family? We put together, my husband and I are both extremely intuitive in our lives, and we put together 24 Family Ways, which was a series of biblical principles around which our whole family life was built.

We love and obey our Lord Jesus Christ with a respectful attitude and so on. We talked about work. We talked about how they treated one another. And I think that the bottom line for our children, and they knew it, was that unconditional love, affirmation, acceptance of every single person in our family was the foundation for our relationships. And some people have asked me, Well, did you ever apologize to your other children for the ones that were very different and caused a little bit of stress? And I said, If it's God's will for me to have this child, it's God's will for you for this to be your sibling.

And if you respond in love and respect to this beautiful human being who is your brother or sister, then you're going to really grow in ways and in beautiful ways that will help you the rest of your life. Yeah, so the differences can blend together with a sense of unity, even though we're very, very different. Yeah, absolutely. Right.

Right. You know, God talks about understanding a child's personality, their learning style, and their love language. What advice would you give parents who feel overwhelmed by the complexity of discovering all these traits? I think that so many parents are pushed and pulled by their jobs, by their life, by all sorts of things. But I would say, you know, if you kind of just look at creation and say, Oh, my goodness, there's zebras with stripes and dalmatians with dots and squirrels with curly tails, you know, we see just let nature be an encouragement to you.

I know that's a funny thing. But I thought, you know, Lord, you have made my children different for a purpose. And I think number one is find a wise person that you respect and ask them to pray for you, ask them to meet with you and say, you know, you've raised children.

Can you give me any advice? Because I think that when parents feel supported and encouraged and affirmed for who they are, they're much more likely to keep going. Number two is give yourself time to grow. Realize that when you look at the life of Jesus, every disciple was different. Peter was the rock and he talked too much, but God made him that way. And he became such a person for Christ. Thomas was a man in whom there was no guile. And John said, But I'm the one he loved.

And as we look at the differences in the disciples lives and how Jesus treated and honored each of them, according to their own drives. I learned that a couple of my children are extreme introverts, and they wanted time alone. They weren't going to compete for attention, but they needed me. So I would make these chocolate chip cookie dough balls. And I have a little couch in my every bedroom I ever lived in. And I would take them in there, whichever child needed attention at the time.

And I'd say we have 15 minutes, let's be friends and let's eat this chocolate chip cookie and tea and tell me what's going on with you. And I realized that my extrovert and my introverts needed that personal time. My extroverts needed to talk and to do things and to be loud and to verbally process. And that wasn't a negative thing.

That was how God made them. And so just learning over time to really watch and see who they were and what they were like. I know Nathan, he's in New York City, as you said, today in a television show. And he came to us when he was 19 and he said, I'm going to move to New York City and be an actor. And Clay and I are thinking, no, you're not.

How can anyone trust a 19 year old to go to New York City? But actually since he was seven years old, he had been acting out a little speech for a class I was teaching. And he was just my sidekick because I didn't have babysitting for him. And he acted out Audie Murphy, who was the most celebrated hero of World War One for American soldiers.

And he was so dynamic that I had five different people who came up to me and said, this is a future actor when he was seven. And so we tucked that away and we thought as long as we can kind of champion him and walk beside him and be in touch with him and help him to understand the issues that he might face in New York City. Was it a trial to us as parents? Yes, most of our children always were.

But we believed in setting them free in the power of God's Spirit to say, what might I dream for your purpose as God? And yes, it's hard being a parent. And yes, it takes lots and lots of time for loving and words of affirmation, as you talk about, and really meeting their love languages. But in spite of being imperfect, we see how our children each thrived by becoming their own unique adult with their own unique calling. And it started with that unconditional love and words of affirmation. That's Sally Clarkson, and she's joining us today to talk about Uniquely You. It's our featured resource at buildingrelationships.us.

She's written this along with her son, Nathan. And I have to jump in here, Sally, and ask you because you just mentioned the love languages. Earlier in the first segment, you said that Gary's input in your life has made a difference. Can you tell me more about that? What do you mean? Are you talking about the love languages?

Yes, I am. I, of course, when I became a parent, I read every book that was popular at the time, and his book stood out. And I had already been kind of working on a Bible study about unconditional love and words of affirmation actually.

But I didn't have the other three down. And when I read the book, it was as though something clicked in my heart and in my mind that these were the ways that I was going to open the heart of my children and that time that they needed in order for me to listen to them, not to look at my phone, not to look at my computer, but to look at their eyes for me to verbally affirm. One of my children, I was going on a trip one time and she was my youngest.

I had three children, three miscarriages and a child at forty-two. And we were going on a trip and I said, Let me pack your suitcase for you. And she said, Really?

You're going to do that for me? And it never dawned on me that she loved to be helped, that she loved to be served. And I learned that from you. So it was really funny to me. I thought, This is not a big deal, packing your suitcase. But if it means a lot to you, then that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, that's great.

That's great. It's been amazing how God has used that concept of the love languages in marriages and parenting, you know, and really all close relationships because all of us need to feel loved, you know, by the people that we have a close relationship with. We have this whole thing of parenting unique children can present, obviously, unique challenges. So how can parents balance addressing the struggles, you know, while they're affirming the beauty of their child's individuality? I think that finding as much as you can about the issues that your child had.

I read everything I could. I sought out counselors who understood. And I remember the day when we finally found a person who did, you know, some testing on Nathan and they said, Oh, he exactly fits clinical OCD. And she said, He will always have it, he will never change, but you can understand it more and help him to function in a more positive way in your home. And I think that sometimes when our children have difficulties in their relationship, we want to discipline them as though there's some way that we can discipline it out or whatever.

We can't. That's part of who they are and will always be. I've learned that with my children. But I think that getting, having support systems, having input, becoming educated, understanding more.

Your book was an excellent resource for me. I think the more knowledge you can gather and really say to other people, What did you do with your child who is clinically OCD? It helped me to have ways, practical ways to go forward. And the other thing I would say is find some good friends who really love your children and want to spend time with them so that you can have a break. Because I educated my children at home and just to have a break by myself as an adult without children around for a little bit really helped me. And my husband understood that too.

So he would take them away on Saturday mornings so that I could do absolutely whatever I wanted to do. So support systems, education, people who understand you and don't just say you need to discipline them more because that's not the issue with almost any child that that we've worked with. Yeah.

I like the idea of reaching out for help, not just to professionals, you know, though that can be helpful also, but just to friends and others who are perhaps a little older than you as parents and have learned some things along the way. Yeah. Right. So what if a parent who's listening today and they're constantly comparing their child and their family with another family, what advice would you give to them?

I would say stop doing that now. The older my children have gotten and even when they were still at home, the more I realized that in the same way that God created diversity in nature, He created diversity in human beings, that I had my own story to live. There's a picture in scripture of cup. Jesus said, Lord, if it's your will, take this cup from me. And David said, my cup runneth over. Well, a cup is a picture of your portion throughout scripture and every one of us has our own portion to drink. And we can take that cup and throw it across the room and say, I hate the portion that I've been given.

I don't understand it. Or we can say, Lord, help me to drink the portion that you've given to me in such a way that I can flourish. Help me to drink it with faithfulness. Don't compare yourself to other people. Your child is unique to God and needs to be accepted by you. We don't want to raise a cookie cutter generation. We want to raise people who can flourish into the very mold that God made them in, that the very personality that He created. I think if we can get that in our minds, it'll have a tremendous impact on how we relate to those children. You talk about parenting with God, that Him being a part of the parenting process.

What does that look like practically? Especially, you know, you're facing all the day to day frustrations and uncertainties and all of that. How does God and our relationship with Him fit into all of that? You know, I gathered some wisdom along the way just by reading the Word.

And I pictured that God had a file drawer in heaven that was just for my family. And I realized that it was a poison to worry or to fear or to get angry. And so I would pray to God and say, God, here is my child that you have given to me. Give me wisdom for this child.

Lord, please work in their life, but I'm going to leave it to you. I'm not going to allow fear or allow anger to rule my heart because it's a poison to my heart. And then I spent daily time in the Word. And I would read verses like, a gentle answer turns away wrath. And I thought, oh my goodness, I need to be gentle with my children.

And I would just read scripture. And then it became God's vocabulary to me when I was in the midst of normal life. I learned to look into their eyes.

I learned to use a quieter voice. I learned to give my teenagers the opportunity to have hormones and be irrational. It's a lot of practical things that you kind of gather in the treasure chest of your heart so that you can honor them.

And my favorite verse about child raising is, do to others what you would have them do to you. I realized that I wanted my children to understand me. And so I thought, I need to try to understand them. I wanted to hear, you know, encouraging words and life-giving words. And so I made it a goal to give words of affirmation to them. So many different things I thought, if I want this, then this is probably what is going to make a healthy relationship with them. And I don't think you have to feel like doing all the right things.

You just have to do them. You know, Gary, what I hear Sally saying is a lot of this process is letting go and, you know, if it's a poison to worry, then really believing that God is involved in this whole thing. So, you know, you got to believe in his sovereignty. But the other thing, Sally, that you just touched on is you want your child to be who your child is, not who you think your child ought to be.

And that's part of the letting go process, isn't it? Well, I have to say that because I wasn't accepted for who I was as a child, my husband and I were actually working in Vienna, Austria, where we were pastors at an international chapel and with 40 different countries, speaking of variety in our church. And when we had a lot of them over for lunch, I realized, oh, my goodness, there's so many different persons, different points of view, different personalities. And Clay and I talked about the fact that when we had children, we thought, I think I'm going to home educate them.

We'd never heard of that in our lives. But we wanted to give our children a place where they weren't compared to other people by grades or test scores, which nobody should ever do, where they weren't under the pressure to perform or to conform. They worked with us side-by-side. We had hosted conferences all over the world and they would be with us. And so they got to meet lots of people. They were normal children in that way. But it taught us that all of our children are very different, have chosen different professions.

Three out of the four live in the UK and work there. And then Nathan lives in New York City. But we kind of really wanted to give them a life in which they weren't compared. They weren't cookie cutter people. But they were like all the unique stories of people we see in scripture, that they had their own story to live, their own work to accomplish for God's kingdom.

Because they didn't have the pressure of conforming, I think it freed them to say, we would say to them, I wonder what story you're going to tell with your life. I think it's going to be a great story. Maybe you'll be a musician. You're amazing at piano.

Or maybe you're going to be a great writer or whatever. But whatever families can do to just have freedom in the home, a safe place for a child to be who God made them to be, is really a great foundation upon which to build. In listening to The Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman Podcast, he's the author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Mother and son, Sally and Nathan Clarkson have teamed to write our featured resource at fivelovelanguages.com. It's titled Uniquely You, Exploring Your Child's Extraordinary Distinctive Design.

Again, go to fivelovelanguages.com. Well, Sally, the word discipline can be a very sensitive topic, different ideas, especially as the children's personalities and temperaments vary, as we've been talking about. How do you tailor discipline to fit each child while remaining consistent? I think that my husband and I, over the years, kind of cultivated our own particular biblical view of that. He wrote a book called Heartfelt Discipline. He graduated from seminary years ago. He's kind of a scholar. He went through scripture and really came up with a conclusion that it's more about training and habituating our children to our values and to the virtues that Christ had.

It's no, not this, this, no, not this, this. We kind of worked with our children in high training, high love. What that means is we said these are the 24 ways that I mentioned earlier that our family is going to comply with the truth of God's word. If you can't follow these ways, there will be consequences. Maybe for the extroverted child, we would say you have a choice to make. If you can choose to ask for forgiveness or to bring peace in this situation, then great, then you can continue to play.

But if you choose to be a person of disharmony, you're going to have to sit over here with Mommy or with Daddy, or you're going to have to write a paragraph out about what it means to be a peacemaker or whatever. We worked with training, filling their brains with truth and consequences. We just felt like, especially with our own children, some kind of harsh I'm going to control you sort of discipline was just not the way that we were going to work with our children. Does it require more time?

Yes. It requires more time to train, to instruct, to correct, to require consequences. But we found with each of the children, they had different ways that they wanted to be respected and approached and trained. It's really fun for me because I was recently in Oxford again, where my daughter with my four grandchildren lives, and it was like deja vu.

She was saying and doing the exact same things that we did in our house. It was so fun to watch these precious little human beings with their own unique personalities, at a very early age, learn to trust Mom and Dad, to respond to them, to develop a culture of unconditional love together. It's more about shaping the values and the heart, reaching the heart. The heart is mentioned over 800 times in scripture. It's more about reaching their heart with the imagination of being a virtuous person than it is about some kind of ten rules to discipline your child, which every child still needs us to respond to their personality with the training that we do.

Yeah. I think that's a powerful area that a lot of parents miss. We want to, yes, let them suffer consequences, but we want to wrap it all in love because the whole thing we're trying to do is just to help them become more like Christ and more like what He wants them to be. That's great. For parents of multiple children, what are some strategies for nurturing each child's unique gifts without unintentionally creating favoritism or competition?

What are your thoughts on that? As I look back at my own life, I think that we need to be very careful not to compare our children even as adults and as they are adults. You need to determine that even as God loves us equally, I think that He died for each of us equally.

He forgives us all. It's so important to not create a culture of competition in a home. I don't know how we accomplished that, but we just knew that each of our children, I think that love is the oxygen that gives life to each child. With some children, they needed more time, more personal time. With some children, they needed more encouragement or affirmation or understanding. It's so important for us not to compare our children to one another and to free them to become exactly the adults that God created them to be. It's hard and it stretches you, but it will cause you to understand Christ and how we reached His world more with all the people around us. Did you ever notice with Nathan or his other siblings any sense that they felt like, you're the favorite one, the other person's the favorite one?

Did you ever sense any of that? That's not been our difficulty. Our difficulty would be more that sometimes a couple of the kids created more contention and required more time, would maybe sass back or disagree or whatever. Then we'd have to take time with more of the extroverts than the introverts.

We would have to take more time to correct. Our children knew that there was always going to be some kind of talk, correction, whatever. I tried really hard to give each of them individual time, individual focus for what I thought they needed. It was more that, yes, nobody's perfect, no family is perfect.

There were characteristics of Clarkson community that were irritating. It was more about settling the conflict and not allowing one child to take up all the time, if that makes sense. Take us back to the time when you were trying to be Nathan's mom with all of his differences and you really had no idea which way to go or how to do it. What led you down the positive path that you followed? Because I felt judged by my own background and not accepted for who I was. I was very much like Nathan in the sense that I talked a lot and now I get paid to talk.

I ask questions and I thought all the time, I'm always thinking about words. I thought, this is what I wish that my parents had done for me. I wish they had liked who I was. I wish they had affirmed what I did when I was an adult. I wish that they had talked well of me to the other kids.

So, my story, everybody's story is different. The one thing I did want to say is that sometimes I found it hard to find other friends who understood the difficulties of my children that Nathan would sometimes get in trouble because he talked a lot. I would say, I think there's something different going on.

These are things I've noticed with my child. He's very different than the other ones in these ways. Some of my friends would go, oh, he's just a normal teenager. I thought, no, he's not. They would say, or you're just having a hormonal day.

I thought, no, I'm not. This is definitely something different and I need support here. Not everybody understands children who are different. We talked a lot about that in the book. I kind of want to say to people who maybe their children are easily compliant, I don't know if that ever exists, but to give your friends who struggle with an out of the box child sympathy and an ear and support because it was hard for me. We ran a ministry and we had a lot of people that we worked with and it was hard for me to not have some of the time, people who understood. What's one key takeaway that you hope parents will hold onto after reading your book, Uniquely You, and how can it transform their relationships with their children?

I think every human being, every child, longs for love, acceptance, a safe place, a good friend. I would say, if nothing else, ask God and pray about what are some ways I can individually show my child that I am thrilled to be their parent, that I love them, that I am committed to helping them their whole life, that I will be there if they need someone to talk to. I think that one of the most profound things that we will answer to God for someday is, as I was holding my little baby in my arms when she was first born, how are you going to so love that child so that they will believe in my love? How are you going to represent Christ in such a way that they'll see Jesus through the moments of your life so they'll believe in Jesus when they are teenagers? Understand that one of the most profound things we will answer to God for is that He entrusted human beings into our hands to shape and to grow and to love in such a way that He'll be glorified through our behavior and our actions.

Sally, this is really interesting. You brought up in that last segment how the wound in your own life, the love that you didn't feel from your own parents, that you have allowed God to use that for good, not only in your own family and your own heart and life, but also now for other people, so the wound becomes a place of healing. I want to know what it was like for you to hear Nathan. Actually, you read his words.

He says this in his introduction. I was a unique kid who felt the daily pain of a world trying to fit me inside a box that I was never going to fit, but I had parents who listened to God, appreciated His unique design for me, and created a space in our home where I could grow freely into the person God created me to be, to tell the story He had created me to tell. What went on inside when you read those words? I was very grateful, obviously.

I thought, phew, we made it. It was just wonderful because I think there are many times in parents' lives where they don't know if they're doing the right thing, but as I look back, I realized over a period of time that your story becomes your platform for reaching other people. Whatever your story is, if you trust God with it and say, Lord, how can I turn my story, my background, my family into a way that I might minister to other people? We all have a different story, but I think that what you learn and the wisdom that you acquire through that story becomes your platform of influence. It was thrilling, actually, just thrilling. Nathan and I are best friends today.

I would think I could imagine reading those words. Talk to the mom or dad listening who sees themselves in your story, but has been trying to change their child to fit them or into some mold that they have. What would you say to that parent? I would say that, number one, you need to accept your child right now as they are in case they never change. I eventually learned that a couple of my children are clinically OCD and that it was never going to change. Their brains were never going to magically change.

I think sometimes we look for the right formula, the right book, just give me the right rule to make this easier. Sometimes things are not going to become easier in this broken chaotic world, but we can learn how to give it grace. We can learn how to cover our relationships with grace, to make progress, to move forward and learn more about love. God sees you as you are.

Who you are is exactly the person that God wants to use to live your story well. He loves you. He forgives you.

He supports you, and he understands. Sally, what would you say to the parent who feels like, I didn't sign up for life to be hard. Right now, they're just down there trying to figure out why, why, why. What would you say to them?

I think that's a great question. I actually am a little bit Pollyanna at heart. I would have these feelings of God. I'm giving you everything.

Can you make it a little bit easier for me, please? I think that most of us were not in the last generation and in this generation prepared for the sacrifices that God requires from us to be parents. He puts babies into our hands who need to be fed, need to be protected.

There is no choice. We are the ones that they look to for all of the work that it will take to be a parent. I also think that the more I submitted to the hardness, the more I grew in my understanding of God's love, the more I became humble, which I needed to be. The more I thought, my goodness, I am learning more about life and what really matters than I ever could have lived if I had an easy life.

I wish I had understood that to be in a fallen world means that there will be chaos, there will be brokenness, but that God will hold my hand every day as I walk through these difficult times. We can talk to him, right? Oh God, this is hard. Help me, help me. I say, please, do you understand this person?

Yes, for sure. You really believe that Psalm 139 is true, where it says, God knit me in my mother's womb. How does that idea of your child being fearfully and wonderfully made change you as a mom? Well, I had to totally change my expectations of what it meant to be a parent. I thought my first two children were introverts and they were much easier. My second two children were not. I thought I was a perfect parent the first time around.

I realized that I didn't have the formulas. I didn't know everything, but I did have this deep desire to love my children. It required both Clay and me to change, to grow, to learn. I think that most of us are not prepared. We're prepared to have a job or to accomplish things or to go into the world, but most of us haven't been in a culture that is family centered, that is children centered, that sees children as real live human beings with great potential. We're having to learn a whole new area of life that we were never prepared to do. That's just the reality.

Sally, one question before we end here today. Talk to the parent who's listening to you and who says that, I wish I had this 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but my opportunity is gone because my child now is an adult. What do you say to that parent?

I get letters all the time from people who say, I just wish that my parents and I could be close now. I think it's never too late. Jesus was a servant leader. He washed toes and 120 dirty man toes. He took children in his arms and he put up with people. It requires us to be a servant to our children. It may take a while, but Jesus told the story of the prodigal because the father was waiting there to love and bless the child who wasn't as close to him as he hoped.

I think that it's never too late to love well, to serve well, to be humble, to ask for forgiveness, knowing that your adult child still wants and longs for your affirmation. I've often said that I wish there had been parenting books back when we were raising our children, and maybe there were. I just didn't know where they were, but I'd like to say to our listeners today, you are hearing today about a book on parenting that will really, really help you wherever you are in the journey. So I just want to encourage our listeners to get this book uniquely you, because I think this message will really, really give a lot of practical help, and will also point you to God for his help.

After all, all of us need his wisdom. I really appreciate you being on today, and thanks for you and Nathan and your investment in this book. Well thank you so much for having me. What an honor to talk with you after I read your book so many years ago.

Thank you, thank you. Again the title of today's resource, Uniquely You, Exploring Your Child's Extraordinary Distinctive Design by Sally and Nathan Clarkson. And you can find out more at buildingrelationships.us. Again, look for that featured resource there, buildingrelationships.us. And next week, finding hope and purpose as a military wife. Don't miss a practical discussion in one week. Our thanks to Janice Backing and Steve Wick for their work behind the scenes. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio, in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.