Motherhood Without All The Rules - Maggie Combs

As a mom, do you feel inadequate, frustrated, and sometimes overwhelmed? Don't miss today's Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. Loving our children well is tied to remaining in Jesus.

If we really want to love our kids even when their disobedience feels personal, even when it's very perpetual, then we have to be abiding in Christ. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, author Maggie Combs shares encouragement for moms who need freedom from the pressures that motherhood brings. But is it the pressure of being a mom, or pressure moms feel from others, or that moms put on themselves? We'll find out as we talk with Maggie about her book, Motherhood Without All the Rules, Trading Stressful Standards for Gospel Truths.

You can find it at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Gary, have you seen this in your counseling, or as you and Carolyn were raising your children, when they have a hard time living up to some impossible standard? Well, Chris, I find it most often in my counseling office, and really it's been more common during all the pandemic, because so many mothers have been put under the stress of, you know, educating their children from home, and they weren't doing that. Now the homeschoolers, they were already set up for that, but the mothers that sent their kids to school in so many places in the country now, as you know, they're still not back in school.

And so, you know, just wrestling with all of that, along with everything else they already had in their minds. So yeah, I think there's a lot of moms who feel a lot of stress, and wonder, am I doing it right, and how's this going to affect my children? And it's normal for mothers to have some level of stress, but I'm really excited about talking with Maggie today about this concept. Her name is Maggie Combs, C-O-M-B-S. She's a wife, a mom of three boys. She writes and speaks. When motherhood overwhelmed her, God drew her closer to himself through the writing of her first book, Unsupermommy. You can find out more about her and our featured resource today, the new book, Motherhood Without All the Rules.

Just go to 5lovelanguages.com. Well, Maggie Combs, welcome to Building Relationships. Thank you so much for having me. Maggie, tell us about your first book that Chris just mentioned, Unsupermommy, and how you went from that to this book, Motherhood Without All the Rules. Give us the journey. So my first book, I had just had three boys in three years, and I had a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and a baby, and so I wrote that book, the book that I needed. It's for a mom who is just deep in the exhaustion of those early years of motherhood. She had all these glorious expectations for how she thought motherhood would go, and then, you know, only a few of them materialized, and now she's just really exhausted.

So Unsupermommy really teaches women to let go of what they expected motherhood to be and begin to see their weakness as the starting place for God's strength in their lives. And it just came from my desperate need of God, and then this thing happened, this magical thing, where my boys started to grow up, and motherhood didn't get any simpler, but it definitely got physically easier than what it had been. And so I figured, like, wow, now is my time to do all those things that would make me a good mom.

Now is my time to grow. And so what I did was I started trying to sanctify myself with my own teeth-grinding grit, instead of relying on an active relationship with God. And I found that I had really begun to adopt society's system of standards of what makes a good mom instead of doing the hard and holy work of walking with God. No wonder it wasn't working. I can't exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in relating to my children without being in the Spirit myself. I can't demonstrate the gospel to my children if I'm not living in the gospel myself. So that's where motherhood without all of the rules came from.

Yeah, it sounds exciting, so let's jump into it. What do these rules come from that moms have? Are they self-imposed? Do they come from culture? Do they come from the church? What are your thoughts on that?

I would say yes to all of the above. In this book, I am primarily dealing with rules that come from our culture, especially if you were raised in the church like I was. There's plenty of those church rules that aren't really God's rules, but they've kind of flipped into our thinking. And the problem with all of these rules, whether they come from culture at large or the church or ourselves, is that they can't offer the growth and freedom we're searching for.

Only the gospel can do that. So the stress that comes out of this, of having this standard set up there for us, can distort the way a mother's thinking and the way she's feeling about herself. What I hear you saying is that if we can think in terms of the truth, the gospel, the scriptures, it'll give us a different perspective and a better perspective. Yeah, I call these stressful standards because society doesn't think they're stressful.

They actually think, this is how moms get freedom. But we know that in God's upside down kingdom, the way society does things is usually the opposite of the way God does things. And so we're really looking for an opportunity to take a step back from just living day to day and say, how is what I'm thinking and considering and building my life on? Is it the truth of God's Word, or is it just something that's been spoon-fed to me as the perfect answer from all my troubles?

Yeah. Give us an example of a stressful standard that may not be a biblical standard. I think this one is so pertinent to this time that we're living in, in the pandemic, it's, everything depends on you. And moms kind of say this in two ways, like, I'm so stressed out, everything depends upon me, the buck stops here, you know? And then sometimes we wear it like a badge, like, do you see this? I keep these children alive.

And it can make us feel good about ourselves, like, I did this. But it's actually, the gospel truth is that God is the best parent. He is the one keeping our kids alive. He is the one who's in control of our circumstances, and he's not only our Heavenly Father, he is the perfect parent to our children. And so that allows us freedom to still be thoughtful in motherhood about the decisions we make with our kids, but they don't have to carry the same weight, because we know that ultimately God is in control, and he's sovereign, and he loves our children and wants what's best for them, and he knows what's best, so much better than what we do.

It all doesn't depend on us. Moms and dads are instruments in the hand of God, but ultimately it's God that provides the real needs of children. So what are some other of these rules that interfere in the life of a mom?

One is you need an escape, and the gospel truth for that is that God supplies exactly what you need, because these little escapes, like maybe running to the pantry for a chocolate bar when we're really tired, they're momentary, and there's nothing wrong in and of themselves, but it's just that they're not God, and we can't live and place all of our hope in the next little escape, or it will always disappoint us. Another is that society tells us that we have to be more than just a mom. That might mean we have to be the perfect mom. We have to be a certain kind of mom. Society tells us you can figure out what you're the best at, and then you have to be better than being just a mom. But the gospel tells us that we actually find our lives by losing it.

When we follow the path of Jesus, we can serve our family without losing ourselves, because we are hidden and safe in Christ. Maggie, you're talking about these stressors in our lives, the things that really aren't true, and I think less than three weeks now, coming up to Christmas, there are a lot of moms, dads too, but a lot of moms that are doing some preparation. It's got to be right. It's got to be the best. It's got to be the best Christmas ever, and there's a lot of stress in that and probably some wrong thinking.

What do you think about it? Yeah, I think moms tend to have a fear instead of a FOMO. It's like a FOMCO fear of my kids missing out. And they think if they don't do everything just right and create this magical childhood, then their children will blame them later or maybe problems that they have later.

It'll be all their fault. They're making their children their identity, and they're also making themselves God in their children's life. And so moms are told that this is their only chance with their children. And God tells us that even if we fail to have the perfect Advent calendar finished or that yummy Christmas morning breakfast, he can redeem even our imperfections because his strength covers our weakness and our identity is in Christ alone. I think, Chris, a lot of times about Christmas, we have ideas that come from our childhood that either we want to repeat or we want to make our children's experience better than the experience we had when we were children at Christmas.

There's nothing wrong with wanting your kids to have a good time at Christmas, right Maggie? But if you put you under such a burden that you become over-anxious, I don't think God's pleased with that, would you say? Yeah, and then we have this tendency to, if we want things to go perfectly, to really control. And we set up ourselves as moms. I call it the kingdom of mom. And we rule it to make sure that everything happens exactly as we planned. And then we might miss out on opportunities to really get down with our kids and share the gospel with them, because we're so stressed out by making our little kingdoms look perfect.

Yeah. Well, you know, in the book, you're very vulnerable on several points. Here you are with three sons, and you share in the book that there was a time when you felt guilty for hoping to have a daughter. How did you reconcile those thoughts and feelings? Yeah, this was a couple years of a battle for me, because I had really looked forward to having a daughter since I was a little girl.

I'm very close with my mom, and I wanted to experience that kind of relationship myself. And then when I didn't get one, I struggled with real grief over that disappointment. But because everyone who sees a mom of only boys, or I'm sure only girls, assumes, oh, you must have wanted a girl, they all have an opinion about how I should be feeling about my child's situation.

They might tell me, like, oh, you've got to try for one more, or it's okay, boys are the best, or you should just be happy with the three children that you got, right? And that can create feelings of guilt and shame about the emotions that you are processing. So it was a very confusing, very painful time. And I found that I no longer wanted to believe that God had a good plan for my life, at least in that area. So I thought, well, I've got to kind of pull myself together and look at all these blessings God has given me, because that's what people told me to do, well, just look at everything else great you have. And I kept telling myself, you've got to feel better, because God gave you these other blessings, and you've got to appreciate that. But what I found was that one good blessing, or many good blessings, can't balance out a painful disappointment. And that's because only a relationship with God can balance out our grief. Psalm 145 was a real comfort to me, because it says that God is faithful and kind in all His works. And through meditating on that, I realized that God was actually using my disappointment as a kindness, because it served to draw me near to Him. It showed me how much I need Him, and how much the things of this world will never satisfy me.

And I know that near to God is always the best place for me to be. So, well, when I was finally able to recognize that it could be God's good, kind plan to not give me a daughter, so that I would always be continually longing after Him. And before we got married, my wife told me that she wanted to have five boys, because she came from a large family. There was ten of them.

And I think seven of them were boys. And I was in love, and I said, Oh, that's fine, babe, whatever you want, you know. But we had a girl first, and she said, once our daughter was born, she was still just had her up on her lap holding her in the bed. And she said to me, she was still under anesthesia.

And she said, it's a little girl, but I couldn't help it. In those days, you didn't know what it was till it was born, okay? I think that having children never looks quite what we planned for it to look like. And it's just God being like, Yep, guess who's in control?

I am. Yeah, I think most people have an idea of kind of what they would like about children before they have children. You know, it's nothing wrong with that, but we have to recognize that we're not in control of all of that. What would you say to a mom who has three boys or maybe three girls and wants a boy?

What would you say to her? The advice that I give to other moms who are grieving any loss of a dream or a plan that they had for motherhood is just to learn to actually lament and grieve those things, because a lot of time we are too ashamed to even let ourselves experience the emotion. And if you can grieve while resting in the gentle care of God, you're going to find that that process happens a lot more quickly.

And we can pray that the God of all comfort will then be a comfort to you and in the process to teach you that Jesus really is better than every blessing of this world. Well, you mentioned this earlier that moms are told today that they need to escape or they need an escape, and that can take many different forms. And there's nothing wrong with having a break from the normal routine if and when you can arrange that.

But you have some cautions about that. What are the healthy ways to pursue on the spiritual side? We sometimes call soul care or self-care.

What are some healthy ways of doing that? Like I said, the simple escapes become problematic only when we set our hope in them. So soul care and self-care can look like we're doing the same actions, but they come from an attitude of our heart. If our heart is, I deserve this kid-free morning or this bath or this pedicure, you know, these are the things mothers dream about, right? When we say, I deserve that, and take it, we are not relying on the God who says, come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. But instead when we change our motivation, we say, Lord, I need you, and I'm finite, and I can't do everything because I'm not God.

Please show me ways that I can get rest in my current circumstances. That transforms even the same activities that we were doing before, because they come from, instead of an attitude of I deserve this, an attitude of I know that I'm not God and I need rest, and that humble attitude is what will change them to be really nourishing for our souls. You talk in the book also about God's discipline in our lives. Some people always think of the word discipline as being negative, but you say it's a positive word, and I think I certainly concur with that. So talk about God's discipline and how he wants to use even the painful experiences that we have in our lives. Well, parents know about discipline, right?

Some days it feels like that's the only thing we even get to do. And if we take a step back, we know that discipline is different than anger-induced punishment. We know that good discipline looks like helping our children grow and mature. It includes teaching them what God's truth is instead of letting them make up their own truth. It means setting boundaries. When the world tells our children there are no limits, and it might even mean withholding good things, like I talked about with my experience of not getting a daughter, so that our kids would experience the best instead of treating them to every little thing they desire.

We know that vegetables are better for them than candy, so sometimes we withhold candy, right? So we also know that best discipline happens in those moments of discomfort. So if we consider that God is our Heavenly Father, our perfect parent, then because He loves us, He's going to allow us to be uncomfortable and even experience sometimes painful circumstances for the goal of growth. In God's kingdom, we don't deserve comfort and ease, and He is actually too kind to give them to us. In our discomfort, we discover the joy of completing a marathon that leads to growing in God instead of a vacation in the muck of our heart's earthly desires. You make that point that God sometimes doesn't give us what we ask for or what we want, and we might see that as Him not being kind, but that what God allows in our lives grows out of His love for us.

To me, that's a pretty powerful point. Yes, we don't always get what we want, but if we recognize that God responds to us out of love, what we do get comes out of His love, even if it's a hard thing, and His intentions are good out of that thing. But there's a double-edged sword with that, Gary, because I am not like God when I look at my motives. I almost think what you're saying in that is, my motive has to be to love my children deeply. Let's go back to having a celebration at a birthday party, Christmas, whatever it is. If my motivation is, I want to make my child happy because I didn't have a good birthday party or Christmas when I was a child, then I get wrapped up in the response and the glitz and the glitter and all that, rather than the relational aspect of that. Does that make sense, Gary?

Yes, I think so. The fact is, we have ideas of what will make our children happy, and sometimes those are good ideas and sometimes they're not good ideas. Sometimes we cave in and do things for our children that they're asking us to do that we know in our minds are not good.

Giving them three candy bars just before lunch. But God loves us too much to do that. He knows what's good for us, and He will not give us, even if we ask, things that He knows are not good for us. So to me, I think we trust God's love and recognize that we're not perfect as parents. Or even you can feel guilty, Maggie. Let's say there's been a divorce, and you feel so bad about that that you will go overboard on one area or another to make up for what happened back there. And so it's a hard thing to look at those motivations, isn't it?

Absolutely, and the motivations are essential because that's where the heart change happens. And I'm just thinking of there's this new term called snowplow parenting. You know, there was helicopter parenting, now there's snowplows, and they just... Snowplow parents kind of go before their children and just push everything that might possibly cause any sort of tension or discomfort in their child's life to the side for them, including, you know, calling teachers and trying to get their assignment in when they were late, or get them full credit, or those kinds of things. And that's when we have to go back to who we know God is as a parent, that He uses hard circumstances, not just so we should use them with our children, but we need to allow our children to feel a little bit of discomfort sometimes, because otherwise they don't have need of God.

And the last thing we want is our children to grow up not even recognizing their need of a Savior. Maggie, you talk in the book about mom shaming. What is that, and what's the root of that? So there's this poll that I think it's 9 out of 10 moms feel like they have been shamed for something they've done, right? And so I was like, we've got to figure this out. What's this shame coming from? And what is shame even? We all know the feeling, right? But what's identifying what it is? And counselor Ed Welch defines shame as the deep sense that you're unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you.

And that's end of his quote. But I also like to add something you didn't do that you thought you should do can make you feel ashamed. I feel like that's really common in motherhood with this list of all these things we should do, right? But while we might see shame as an external force, the most dangerous part about it is that most of the shame actually happens in our own minds.

We shame ourselves. I find myself struggling with my worth as a mom. Sometimes I'm thinking something doesn't go just how I plan it. I think, am I even any good at this? Does everything I did today have any value?

Do I have any value? And thoughts like that, they sound too extreme spoken out loud, right? But they find a place to really thrive and grow in a mom's mind. And the root of mom shame is really where we have put our identity. Have we put it in the work that we're doing as moms?

Or have we put it in the work that Christ has done on our behalf and the acceptance that he bought for us on the cross? Can anything good come out of the mom shaming concept? Well, the world tells us not to be ashamed of anything, right?

Because the best thing we can do is just be our authentic selves. But this just cements the shame, because it means that if we failed at something, that failure isn't just something that happened, it's who we are, and there's nothing we can do about it. But the good news of God's grace is more than a game changer, it's a shame changer. Because if you're a Christian, Jesus died on the cross for your sin. His righteousness covers your sin before the eyes of God. Which means that if you're experiencing guilt and shame, you can come before him, you can confess your sin, and then experience the freedom of being under the work of Christ. So your guilt and your sin is no longer your identity. As Christians, we are new creations, we have been given a new identity in Christ. And from that place of acceptance, you will find freedom. That's the message of the Christian faith.

Yeah, absolutely. Here's a fear, I think, that many Christian parents have. And that is that they will raise their children, and later those children will walk away from the faith. Give your perspective on that. Yeah, I don't know a mom who doesn't struggle with this fear.

It's just so pervasive, right? We want our children to come to know the Lord, that's our deepest desire. But what happens is that if we start to place our identity in motherhood instead of in Christ, then what happens to us as moms if our children don't come to Christ? Because if you're a Christian mom, having a kid who can recite an entire book of the Bible, or who grows up to be a missionary, is kind of like getting an A+, right?

It's like, I did something really good here. But this way of thinking is living in a world of karma. It says, if you're a godly mom, you'll get godly kids. I know there are women listening who are like, I've done everything, I did the very best I could, and I've got a kid who's not following the Lord.

We know, even though we tend to buy into that system, we know in our hearts that's not true if we look around us. God does not reward us with godly kids because of the hours we spend laying down our lives to teach the children the path to follow. Why else are we doing all this work then, right? If we're not going to be rewarded with godly kids, what's the point of all this motherhood work? So we've elevated motherhood into being the best virtue that a woman can do, right? And the reward is that we get these godly kids, but we're wrong with that. When we do the work of motherhood, the reward is that we get to be part of God's kingdom. We get to be glorifying him and growing in intimacy with him. And he is always our greatest reward. So how can a mom get rid of the fear that her child will reject Christ and walk away?

I don't think we completely get rid of it. And so I asked a friend of mine, though, who actually had this experience. She had a daughter, she had done all the good Christian things. She had two children, and one of them grew up to follow the Lord, and one of them took a different path for many years. Praise the Lord that that child has come to repentance. But I said to her, I said, man, I've not walked as far on this path as you have, so what advice would you give me?

And she told me something really simple. She said, you just have to keep asking every time you have that fear that your child will never come to know the Lord. You have to ask yourself if Jesus really is better than everything in the world, even godly kids. And I'll be honest, I can't always say that I believe that, right? But I'm working to believe it.

I'm praying to believe it. I'm taking that fear before God and laying it down and saying, please Lord, help my unbelief. You know, I think there are parents who are listening, and certainly many, many parents in the country, whose children have walked away from the faith, either when they were in college or even after college.

And in my office, they typically ask the question, what did I do wrong? And what I remind them is, first of all, we can't control the decisions of our children. Every human being has freedom to choose to walk away or to follow God. We can't control that. We do influence our children to be sure. And all of us want to have a positive influence on them by demonstrating the Christian life. But the other thing I share with these parents is, listen, God's first two children went wrong. Adam and Eve, they had the best parent possible, you know?

And they went wrong. So don't put yourself down. You're not totally responsible for the decisions that your children make. Now, if you look back on your life and realize that you made some terrible mistakes that influenced them in a negative way, certainly go apologize for those things.

Yes. But don't take the responsibility that you caused your child to respond or to walk away from Christ. Those are my thoughts. I love that you said that, because no one has ever passed redemption. God can still work. And so just going and even humbly admitting to your children that you know that you made some mistakes might be the thing that makes God look really good to them. That saying you're sorry, asking for forgiveness, and modeling what a Christian life looks like, even if now they are adults.

Yeah. You talk in the book also about many, many other challenges that mothers face, and fathers too, for that matter. But I know there are those who are listening who are facing, maybe not the challenge we've just talked about, but they're facing a lot of challenges with their children. What encouragement do you have for those parents who are really living under a lot of stress and strain right now in parenting their children? I like to remind them that motherhood isn't a sprint. It's not even a marathon.

It's more like one of those endless Iron Man triathlons that you just don't know how anybody ever completes that, right? And one way to endure in motherhood is to just expect that every challenge is going to unfold slowly, to remember that God does not work on our timeframe. And so we have to plan to expect to wait. Sometimes not expecting to wait is the hardest thing about waiting, right? And it's really hard in today's society.

We have Google at our fingertips 24-7 if we have a question. If we want something, we have free two-day shipping. We get what we want when we want it. But motherhood is a world of waiting, and we must expect to wait. And as we wait, practice submitting even the small things to God, to His Lordship, and we will find a lot more contentment in waiting for the answer on that big thing. And then the second thing that helps us persevere is just to focus on the faithfulness of God. In the face of great challenges, ask yourself, is God faithful to equip me and accompany me in every challenge I face? Is God better than everything else I desire? And in the words of that great song by Andrew Peterson, He is. God is always faithful, so you can make a habit of counting up His faithfulness, maybe in stories from the Bible and in your own life, and then your own faith will become steadfast.

You will persevere because you will know God's faithfulness. One of the things you discuss in the book in terms of our relationship with God is having a regular quiet time with God, and you're saying that that should be a priority. Speak to that issue. So I hear a lot of people, they want to let moms off the hook. How could a mom have time for quiet time, right? But moms can't afford not to do quiet times because humans were made for the presence of God. It's being in the presence of God that produces holiness in us and produces the spiritual fruit that changes how we react to our circumstances. What are some other daily rhythms that really create intimacy with God? And how do you respond to moms who just say, I don't have time, I don't have time for that?

You know, the name quiet time is pretty deceptive because quiet time doesn't usually look quiet for a mom. Sometimes it looks like coffee and highlighters and snuggled up in your big chair with the fireplace on, but more often, it's abiding with God throughout your day. And I like to tell people abiding is just a fancy church word that means to remain. And we can do this as moms by tying some of our spiritual habits to our daily rhythms. So I suggest that moms do things like pray for their kids when they brush their teeth. Practice scripture memory as you walk the dog. Listen to the Bible. There's so many great Bible apps now as you wash the dishes. And we have such a tendency to forget about God, right? The worries of our day come in. So we need to create rhythms that keep tying us back into God and reminding us that we need to look back to him in these everyday things that we do.

And I want to tell you, if you can't make the time, I think you're selling yourself short. Moms are very capable people. They can manage to keep all of their people fed for a day, get them off to school and activities, keep the household running smoothly, pour themselves into whatever job or ministry or calling that is before them that day. And I believe that a mom can apply that same kind of industry and creativity to identifying unused spaces to meet with God. So it might not look like that 45 minutes alone doing inductive Bible study, but it doesn't have to be quiet. So take some time to figure out some rhythms for how you can incorporate God throughout your day so that you're never missing out on your intimacy with him, even if the kids get up before you can get your Bible study done. I like these ideas that you're sharing of making the most of your relationship with God, consciously thinking of God while you're doing other things, brushing your teeth, washing dishes, and those kind of things. I think that, to me, that's a great idea because, let's face it, it is time sensitive. Mothering is time sensitive, and you can feel like, I don't have time to sit down and spend an hour listening to God or talking to God.

But you're going to make time to brush your teeth. Yeah, absolutely. Redeem that little pocket of time to recenter your heart on God.

Yeah, yeah. And the other thing I hear you saying is that a mother's relationship with God is going to greatly impact her relationship with her family. And so that needs to be priority, that if she's walking closely with God through some of these things you're talking about, she's going to be a better mother and she's going to be a better wife. Yeah, the best thing you can do for your marriage and for your parenting is to meet with God every day. Healthy relationships with other people slow from first having a healthy relationship with God. So it's absolutely essential.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about marriage, because marriage also takes time. That's another factor for a mother. And of course in my counseling office, I'm often hearing, you know, the baby came along and I lost my wife.

You know, she went to the baby and I lost my wife. So let's say that you and your spouse have disagreements, which I think every single couple does. How do we find, how do we work through our differences in a marriage and don't lose our sense of unity and our sense of being loved by each other? Yeah, the first thing is, I think it's a myth that we have to agree on everything. We're not going to agree on everything because we're two very different people.

And you know what? God chose both of us, mom and dad, to be the parents for that child. And we can be united in our common goal of raising godly children, raising children who know the Bible, who love the Lord, and do it very different ways. But it takes humility as a mom, who's often maybe the person who has read more books about parenting, right?

And she's read all the studies and she's done all the research, so she feels like, I probably know the best way to parent. So it takes humility. So I really try and encourage moms to take some humility and then take some steps to be united despite their differences. And one step is to just have fun together. You know, if you have fun with a person, it's a lot easier to get along the rest of the time. So I highly encourage people to do date night, however their situation allows, but to make it an actual priority in their lives. And then second, I encourage women to let their husbands love them.

Now, that sounds kind of funny, but as women we can be like, well, you brought me flowers, but I really wanted you to clean the toilet. And it reminds me of someone's book I know. I've heard that.

Who could that be? I tell the women in there, instead of forcing your husband to only speak your love language, try to identify and recognize the ways that he is actively loving you. Don't just assume because he didn't do it my way that he isn't doing it, you know? Yeah, give him credit.

I'm sure you have something to say to that. Yeah, the ideal obviously is if he will speak her love language, but if he doesn't and he speaks one of the others, give him credit for that. Yeah.

Exactly. And then I just tell people that it's great to read books and everything, but the best thing is to seek a mentor in your local church, someone who can really come alongside you and help you figure out the nitty-gritty of marriage. And then finally, it's just to pray for oneness, both mental and physical, because when you're a mom, it can be hard to feel like you want to physically be with your husband, but that is part of intimacy and it is essential. And so it's okay.

It might be a little embarrassing at first, but it's okay to pray that you grow in those things and you can come together in unity. Yeah, absolutely. You know, say a word about the whole area of discipline of children. We alluded to it a little bit earlier, but children will disobey rules, and as parents we have a responsibility to discipline them. Give us a perspective on that because this is frustrating for a lot of mothers. Well, my kids never disobey my rules.

Just kidding. So I think dealing with disobedience might be the hardest part of parenting because our kids' disobedience is often two things. One, it often feels kind of personal. It's directed at a rule that we have set up and tried to establish in our home. And then it's also perpetual.

It's just really repetitive. They disobey in the same way over and over, and we can't figure out why they can't just get it together, right? But like us, children are very slow learners. We often feel like we're kind of in a war against our children, but God tells us that we are to love our neighbor.

And you know what? The kids in our house are our nearest neighbors, and his call to love our neighbors and consider them first is part of our call to parent our children. So I talked a little bit about abiding. That's from John 15. I think it's not an accident that in John 15, right after Jesus has been talking about abiding and remaining in him, he also reminds us this. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. So loving our children well is tied to remaining in Jesus.

And no wonder moms can't afford not to spend time with God. If we really want to love our kids even when their disobedience feels personal, even when it's very perpetual, then we have to be abiding in Christ. The whole issue also of helping a child acknowledge wrong and helping a child learn how to apologize for wrong. That's a huge issue, is it not?

Absolutely. And I think that they learn to do that from seeing our example. So when we are in a big conflict with our children, it's just inevitable. We are also going to end up sitting in that conflict. Maybe we'll get really angry.

Maybe we will get really self-focused or be really prideful about it. But I bet that in almost every conflict we have with our children where we're trying to discipline them for some sort of disobedience, we have also committed a sin that we need to ask for forgiveness for. So I think that it really helps children to learn healthy reconciliation. If they see us admit, you know what, Mommy also made a big mistake here, and that's a sin against God. Even praying repentance for yourself in front of your children so they can kind of look over your shoulder at your prayer life is huge for setting an example for them to then humble themselves and say, maybe I didn't do this right. Maybe I need to say I'm sorry to you. Maybe I need to repent towards God. The great thing about it too is that if you're having a hard time extending forgiveness to your child because of the personal nature of the disobedience, then once you experience the forgiveness of God, it makes it so much easier to extend forgiveness to a fellow sinner.

Absolutely. I've long said that there are no healthy relationships without apology and forgiveness for one simple reason. None of us are perfect.

You know, parents blow it and children blow it. But if we teach them how to apologize and how to forgive, we're teaching them a huge skill that's going to help them the rest of their lives. Well, Maggie, this has been a delightful conversation, and I know that especially the mothers who have been listening have picked up on some ideas, and they'll get more ideas, of course, out of the book. So thanks for being with us today, and thanks for taking the time and energy to write this book, and may God continue to bless you and your family.

It was so great to be here. Thank you. We hope this has been an encouragement to every mom listening.

Maybe today's resource would make a great gift. You can find out more about it at fivelovelanguages.com. The title of the book again is Motherhood Without All the Rules, Trading Stressful Standards for Gospel Truths. It's written by Maggie Combs. And again, you can go to fivelovelanguages.com. And next week, if you have a spouse who isn't a follower of Jesus, don't miss a conversation about praying around Jericho.

That's coming up in one week. A big thank you to our production team today, Steve Wick and Janice Todd. 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.