As a teenager, Maria Furlough was plagued by insecurities, issues with body image. As a mom raising a daughter, she wanted to make sure things were different for her own daughter.
I had one of the most beautiful memories with my daughter. She was eight, and we went, did an overnight together, and we talked about the changes in puberty. And I said, your body is going to change, you're going to get curvy, you might get a little jiggly, right, like mushy in places that you're not right now. And talking about it honestly and frankly and go, that's okay. And to, you know, get her brain thinking about that preparedness that when it happens, it's not something wrong with you.
And if our children's bodies start growing, it's okay. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You'll find us online at familylifetoday.com.
Are there some strategies for parents who want to raise strong, confident, secure daughters? We'll talk about that today with Maria Furlough. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. You guys raised boys. You have three boys, right?
Yes, we do. And I know that confidence was one of the things you wanted instilled in your boys. It was up there on the list, very high. Very confident.
Bob, that's what we wanted. We're talking today about confidence with daughters, which you haven't had experience with, but you understand, Anne, talking to moms about how this is a real issue that moms are facing today as they raise their girls, right? Yeah, I'm so excited about this book.
I'm excited about our friend Maria who's here that's going to be talking about it. But I think for me as a mom with sons, this is something that's important, but there's a weightiness when you have a daughter. And a lot of my friends experienced of just because of the confidence we have, we want our daughters to have it, but truthfully, some of us as moms struggle with it. And I will add, when our boys were just toddlers, we started praying for their wives.
I remember when my oldest was born, he's 33 now, I started a day of fast on Fridays, didn't eat until dinner, and prayed all day. And one of the things we prayed for was confident young women, not an arrogance, but a confidence in who God was in their life and who they were in their identity. And I have to sit here now, 33 years later, and say they married three confident women. They're beautiful, confident women.
It's a very important character quality. Well, our friend Maria, who you mentioned, is with us. Maria Ferlord joining us on Family Life today, welcome.
Thank you, I'm so happy to be here. Maria is from Huntersville, North Carolina, where she and her husband Dave live. She is the mother of five, one daughter and four boys. That's got to be an interesting dynamic. Yes, it is.
We are a ball full of energy at our home, absolutely. And your daughter is the oldest. She is the oldest.
She is my sweet 12-year-old beautiful gift, my first and only daughter, yep. And Maria is an author, she's a Bible study teacher, she's written a book called Confident Moms, Confident Daughters, helping your daughter live free from insecurity and love how she looks. So really, at the heart of this book, when you're talking about confidence, you're saying one of the great confidence robbers for women today is the issue of beauty and appearance, right? Yeah, for a lot of women, it starts there.
We can't get past it. It's kind of like the first test of freedom. If God can give us confidence over the way that we look, then freedom and confidence over all of the places, and including our faith, is just, is an open door from there.
So, it's really important. Insecurity about appearance, something that plagued you as you were growing up? That's where it started, and that's what I noticed as I grew up into my 20s. Insecurity started for me as a young teenager, about 11, 12, with the way that I looked. And what I realized as I grew into an adult woman, that insecurity then morphed into different places, into my mothering, into my relationships, into my marriage, into my faith.
And so really, for me, acknowledging that and realizing that in a lot of young women, that's where it starts, that's why I believe it's so important for us as moms and mentors and youth workers and aunts and grandmas to really help young women tackle this in their life. Was there a trigger when you were 11 or 12, somebody say something to you or something that set you off to start to go, oh, wait, do I look okay? I think it was puberty, Bob. That'll do it. That's where it really begins.
I really want to know. You know, I'll never forget, there was a young friend of mine, she was over, I was about 10, she was 11 or 12, and she said to me, just wait, everything on you is going to start growing. And I remember her saying that to me and feeling the sense of dread, like, is that a bad thing?
Clearly, I'm not supposed to like that. And so that stuck in my head and then as it started happening, there weren't conversations about this is beautiful thing, your body is supposed to change and it's a wonderful creation that God has made. And you know, that is something that I am able to preemptively talk about with our girls to say the bodies that you're, the change that your bodies are going to go into, it's okay. But I know that that's where it started for me.
And then, you know, for me at the time, it was magazines, you know, Team Bop magazine, now it's, you know, Instagram, Facebook, everything, right? But really starting to compare myself to what I saw in those pictures and realizing that I didn't feel like I looked like them. We're sitting there with two women, do you think women ever avoid this? I mean, is it... You grow out of it, is that what you're asking? I was thinking as a young woman growing up, a young girl growing up, obviously I don't know and we didn't have daughters, but I honestly would look at it and go, I don't think it's avoidable, but maybe it is. I'm just thinking you experienced it, I know Anne experienced it. Can girls grow up without that magazine image, body image plaguing them?
It's a great question and I want to tell you that is what I believed for years and that is why I did nothing to fight it. I thought this is just how it is, we all kind of feel like this and I gave it free reign. But what happened for me, I was in my early 20s and God gave me a beautiful friend and I spent some time with her and her mother and I saw for the first time in my life two confident women that did not currently struggle with their body and had never. I watched them and I was like, just studying them, I'm like, what is this? What did it look like? What did they do or not do that appealed to you?
Yeah, so there was a couple things. I was standing at In-N-Out Burger in California with my friend. In-N-Out Burger. Of all places that talk about body image.
That's right, there you go, it's got to start somewhere. And we were looking at the menu and I was like, I just kind of hate that calories are everywhere now. And she's like, why does that matter? Like, what do you mean? I was like, I'm sorry, what do you mean?
What planet do you live on? She really said that. It's called calorie counting and she's like, I don't know what that is. I was like, what? And so that was her. And then I was spending that week with her mom.
And there was one time I was at family dinner with her and her mom and her older brother was sitting next to me and his mom's arm was like propped up on the chair next to her. I read this in your book and I just, I couldn't believe you wrote this. This was amazing. Are you ready for this?
This is where we're going. And he was just bored. Like there was having like grown up conversation. I don't know.
He wasn't interested. And just one flick at a time, he was just flicking his mom's arm. The fat on her arm. The jiggly part.
Yes, underneath. You know, the part that we hide in pictures, got to get the right angle, you know, don't let anybody see. I mean, people have plastic surgery to fix this. And one flick at a time with like a table full of 20 people, she didn't care, didn't notice, like she didn't stop him.
And again, I was like, what is this? You know, this is coming from a girl, like I would slip in and out of pools my whole life. Like that was something I didn't stop until I really started praying for God to build confidence in me. So this whole arm jiggling freedom was just something that you craved. Like how do you have the freedom to not care?
That's exactly how do you. And that showed me that it's possible. And if it's possible for those two women that I couldn't understand why it couldn't be possible for me, and I remembered that the power that rose Christ from the dead, that same power is living in me. So if God can raise Christ from the dead, then why can't he free me from my insecurity?
So there you go. And where did your insecurity start? Did you have talks with your mom about any of this? What did that look like with your mom?
Was she secure? No, my mom and I both came from generational insecurity. And I think that a lot of us can relate to that.
You know, I've had conversations with women about this topic. And one mom talked about her mom used to like pinch her back fat while she was growing up and say, you know, honey, you got to get rid of this. And so there is a generational sin here that, you know, my mom and I would just really both cry over because we didn't know what to do.
She didn't know how to help me because she was living with a lot of the same hurts that I was. And there was one instance when I was a teenager and, you know, I now know like our bodies go up and down, right? The moon can be a certain hue and pants that fit today will not fit tomorrow. And it's not fair, is it, because women, we have babies, we go in and out of all these stages. Exactly.
There's lots of, you know, evil hormones at play. Like it's just a reality. And when you're growing up in that and you're not kind of just taking that head on, I would take that as a failure.
My genes would be tight and I would think I was a failure. And, you know, I heard stories of in my mom's family of women just, you know, punching their thighs because they hated them so much. And so these were kind of the stories that I heard. And so those one day I just put those genes on and those superhuman Hulk hormones that were running through me, I ripped them down the seam crying, sobbing, ripping them down the seam. Because they were too tight. Because they were too tight. And you just exploded.
Yup. Exploded in sorrow and sadness. And my mom came in and she just sat with me and cried and told me I was beautiful. And, you know, I knew that she believed that that was true. And deep down I knew that that was true too. But we say that all the time, you're so beautiful, you're beautiful just the way that we are.
But I just don't think that words are enough when it comes to this hurt. I remember being young and somebody telling me that and I'd say, well, you think I'm beautiful, but in the world's standards I'm not. And so how do we find that beauty? I think that's the question of where do we find that beauty?
Is it about our physical appearance or is it more than that? Before you get there, though, I want to go back to puberty. No, please. We don't want to.
None of us want to go back there. I want us as parents to keep in mind that as our kids transition into puberty, there's a lot of insecurity, there's a lot of questions. And to just put them on autopilot and think, well, I'll figure this out. No, they need mentors and coaches and people who are having conversations. The whole reason we put together the Passport to Purity resource that we created for parents to do with their kids was to open the door to these kinds of conversations so your kids can feel like I can go to mom and dad and say, what's going on with my body or how should I think about this? You can have those conversations before the issues emerge and before the hormones hit because your kids need you to be a guide, to be an advocate, to remind them of what's true, to say what your mom said to you, honey, you are beautiful, even when they don't believe it. They still need to hear it from their parents. And I just think for moms and dads, don't check out when your kids are in these years. Recognize the insecurity that's there, recognize the confusion that's there, and be proactive in addressing these things.
Yeah, and ideally taking a preemptive strike, like you said. I had one of the most beautiful memories with my daughter. She was eight and we went, did an overnight together, and we talked about the changes in puberty and I said, your body is going to change, you're going to get curvy, you might get a little jiggly, right, like mushy in places that you're not right now.
And talking about it honestly and frankly and go, that's okay. And to get her brain thinking about that preparedness that when it happens, it's not something wrong with you. And I think as moms, it's really hard not to want to physically parent our children up through puberty, right? They're given to us and we need to what? We need to keep their bodies healthy, right? It's kind of in our... Our job description. Yes, our job description.
Right. But that shifts at some point. And as moms, it's okay to shift from the physical taken care of to the emotional and the character and the spiritual taken care of. And we talked about the puberty thing, the hormone thing, like if our children's bodies start growing, it's okay, right? Like that might just be how God has created their body shape to be. And to spend the first decade of their life honing in on the, you should eat carrots instead of cookies.
And you should go out and play instead of being on a video game. But then once that puberty years hit, I mean, we've said it for a decade, right? Hopefully they've heard us enough. And then to shift the conversations with them to be towards their spiritual and emotional.
So our language switches, changes with them. I just had a mom talk to me about her 12-year-old daughter and she said, my daughter is really gaining weight. And I don't know what to say. Should I say anything? What would you say to those moms where you see your kids like, whoa, they're really gaining weight? They're thinking, do I say nothing?
Right. So I sat down and I asked a pediatrician that question because I've had it asked to me so many years. And I wanted to know what the Academy of Pediatrics would say. That's who we even trusted our children's bodies to. And they said, first and foremost, to trust your doctor. You know, if we're taking our kids over the years and it's their 11-year-old checkup and their 12-year-old checkup, 13, 14, and their doctor is not saying anything about it, then we probably don't need to.
They are trained. That's their job to make sure that our child's physical health is on track. The other thing that she said is greater than their physical health is making sure that you as a parent understand if they have the possible triggers for eating disorders. And there are certain indicators.
They're not definite indicators. It doesn't mean if you have this that you definitely will develop an eating disorder. But if your daughter is a perfectionist, if she is highly, you know, highly achiever, if you have eating disorders in your family, then these are things that you have to acknowledge before you ever enter into a conversation about her physical health. And what if the doctor says, oh, I'm seeing that you need to lose some weight.
Could that trigger your daughter? Okay, yes. You know, see, that is where I go into these doctors' visits now. Like, I have desk conversations with the nurses. Like, if this topic is going to be brought up, you bring it to me first.
So you're very proactive. Oh, yeah. I'm mama bear about this particular topic because I have lived, you know, the ramifications of it. And I have seen cases where young women go to their 13-year-old appointment and their doctor tells them that they need to lose weight.
And then a year later, they are in for an eating disorder. Well, how did you get, like Bob said, let's go back to puberty. Oh, no. We don't want to go back there again.
Let's not stay there. Okay, yeah. Because obviously, you say in your book that the mom is the confident standard in the home. Yeah. And then you also, before that, you said when you first held your daughter, you almost broke down. Yeah. Fell on your knees and prayed because you had struggled with this. So take us through that journey. You became, the title of your book, a confident mom, but you weren't.
Yeah. So how did you get there and how does somebody else get there? Yeah, I definitely didn't start there. And before I held my daughter, I was in full-time youth ministry. And so I got to mama, middle school girls through this. And so when I held her, I not only saw my own adolescence flashing through my mind, but I saw the stories of so many young women that had came through my ministry.
And I was crying over her because I did not want that for her. And so this story that I shared about my confident friend and her mom happened before I had my daughter. And so I prayed that day, God make me confident so that I can teach her how to be confident. And so that was a very everyday breath prayer for me when she was a baby. And so as you know, brave prayers come with risks. That was just a lens that I asked God to put on my life that every day when she was young, that I would learn how to be confident in her infant years so that by the time I got there, and I don't say that to discourage a mom who's just entering into this topic with a teenager. You know, my mom and I claimed our healing when I was in my 20s.
It's never too late. But what I also want to say is now's the time if your daughter is just born, if you're wanting to have kids, if you have a toddler, to start claiming this freedom. You know, Galatians says, chapter five, verse one, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. And I wanted to claim that freedom over insecurity in my life so that me and my daughter can be released for His kingdom and to fully be His daughters and not be limited by this bondage of insecurity.
God was good to answer that prayer. It wasn't easy, and it's still not. And in a lot of places, I find myself standing very much apart from what is culturally accepted or even talked about today.
But it is a battle that I am always willing to fight. And so God was good to open up my eyes, and after those couple of years, to figure out tangible ways, tangible and biblical ways, right? There's a spiritual fight between me and God to realize, honestly, insecurity is putting way too much emphasis on myself. There was way too much me focusing, going on in my insecurity. But then also the practical ways of what are some ways that you've allowed the world to seep into your body image.
And how did you get the emphasis off yourself? Because obviously, any one of us can walk by a mirror and we're just consumed the second we take a look. And this isn't just women, obviously, right? It's men and women. It's boys and girls. I mean, I've coached middle school basketball for decades, and 20 years ago, you could have guys take off their shirts and be skins and play the shirts.
Can't do that anymore. I mean, you say that. They look at, nope, there's no way. So there's much more self-consciousness even now with a boy. So it is that self-consumption that you talked about. How do you get over that?
Because it can dominate our lives. Yeah. Can I read you a verse to answer this question?
Please do. Okay. And you touched on it before, too, Anne. This is Romans 7, verse 18. For I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there's no ability to do it. And then later on in verse 24, it says, What a wretched man I am.
And this is Paul talking through his desire to do good and want to be good, but really just acknowledging that there's only Christ in us makes us good. And Christ is the only achievable perfection. And so what I needed to hear after all of those years is, I was not wrong that I was not perfect. You know, you're beautiful just the way you are. Yeah, okay, but can we talk about the fact that there are people that are more beautiful than I am?
And that's okay. But we just always kind of know you're beautiful, you're beautiful. Okay, actually, I'm not perfectly beautiful.
And finally reading in his word and hitting me in the head to say, You know what, Maria? Your insecurity is not based on untruth, but you are not supposed to be secure in you. You are supposed to be secure in me. And so there was a relief to realizing that I was not wrong all of the time when I looked in the mirror and saw things that need fixing. Or I was not wrong all of the time to be so concerned that I was going to do something to mess up because I was going to mess up and because my body was not perfect. And then to begin to put on the posture of, You know what, actually, I'm just going to be okay with the fact that I'm not perfect. And I'm going to accept that because that is the very reason why Christ came to die for me.
There's just a shift in thinking off of myself and what I think of myself onto Christ and what He came to do in me. So if a mom is thinking, I want to raise my daughter to be more confident than I was when I was going through this, you're saying step one is make sure you develop your own body confidence, your own image confidence because you can't take her beyond what you're modeling for her and how you're living. She's going to sniff that out even if you're trying to keep it hidden, right?
Yes, she is. And that's really a part of your thesis here in your book, Confident Moms, Confident Daughters. You start with helping moms to be confident and then from there we can raise confident daughters.
I want to encourage you to get a copy of Maria's book, Confident Moms, Confident Daughters. In fact, this is a book we'd love to send you as a thank you gift in appreciation for your support of the ministry of family life today. Your ongoing support is what makes this daily radio program possible. And this spring we know many of you have gone through some real challenges financially. I know many of our churches are experiencing financial challenges, particular industries are. So we recognize that some of you as listeners are just not in a position to be able to make a financial gift so that family life today can continue.
For those of you who are able to support the ministry, this is a particularly strategic time for ministries like ours. We're hoping that you will be as generous as you can be as you call to make a donation or as you go online to donate at familylifetoday.com. Again, we'll send you Maria's book as our thank you gift when you get in touch with us. The website is familylifetoday.com. You can make your gift online and request a copy of Maria's book, Confident Moms, Confident Daughters, or call to donate by phone 1-800-FL-TODAY is our number.
Again, the website familylifetoday.com and the number is 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. One final thought before we wrap up here today. I know this has been a season for many of us when we have been prone to the anxious, to worry. This is something Jesus addressed in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 6. He asked why we worry about what we're going to drink or what we're going to eat or what we're going to wear. And Jesus said the issue with worry is we're not exercising faith. We're not trusting in the providence of God, in his care for us. He also said that the way we address worry in our lives is to address the issue of worry in our lives is to be focused on kingdom priorities.
He says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. So, as you find yourself prone to worry in this season, first of all, go to God, confess that you're worrying, put your faith and trust in him and in his care, and then get busy about kingdom things and trust God to provide for your needs. I think all of us are having to deal with this issue of worry in our lives right now and the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 6.
You may want to get out your Bible and read again the last 11 verses in Matthew chapter 6 and let God speak to your heart through his word. Now, tomorrow we want to talk about working out and being physically fit because we know that's important, but how can we tell if it's become too important for us or for our daughters? Maria Furlough is going to join us again tomorrow. Hope you can join us as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas. A crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
