I came in and I'm, you know, at this point, just a couple of weeks away from delivery, and just heard the words that I never thought I would hear. which were just I'm sorry. And, um Just had a moment. um to acknowledge what he was telling me. that there was no heartbeat.
And that Our baby had died. Susan was devastated, but we reminded her of God's unfailing love. And so Focus on the Family really was monumentally instrumental in teaching me this truth and healing me. And the resource of Focus on the Family was teaching me to grieve with hope. I'm Jim Daly.
We need your help now to deliver hope and joy to hurting people like Susan. Give before December 31st and your gift will be doubled. Donate at focusonthefamily.com/slash family. As November and December land on me, I realize, you know, my family, we have these points that are stressful and then I'm not as good as I think I am when it comes to all the cooking and all that kind of stuff. And why isn't anybody helping me even though I didn't ask anybody to help me?
And the overwhelm can get to every area and you feel like not only am I failing, but I'm in this boat alone.
Well, you can hear the desperation in Kathy Lips' voice as she shares that perspective, and she's with us today along with Sherry Gregory to help you deal with stress this holiday season. Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. Hey, John, this can be one of the most joyful times of the year, but it can also be one of the most stressful. Many listening, you have wonderful relationships with your family. Maybe some of the extended family, not so much.
But for others, this is a time of year that brings a lot of anxiety as you're spending more and more time with, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's. And we want to help you navigate that in a better way, hopefully in a more Christ-like way. That's the goal. You know, we're here at Focus on the Family standing with you. We want to put resources into your hands, even to the point of providing some counseling if you need that.
And it's okay. Don't be embarrassed. Call us if you need help because this is a real stressful time of year. Yeah, and our guests are going to help us navigate that. As you said, Jim, they are Kathy Lip and Sherry Gregory.
They have together written a great book called Overwhelmed, How to Quiet the Chaos. And restore your sanity. And this is a good time of year to do that, to just do a check to make sure you're strong going into the holidays. Ladies, welcome back to Focus on the Family. Thanks so much for having us again.
It's great to be here.
Okay, now you have this book titled Overwhelmed. How many people, particularly women, think, oh, a book is overwhelming to me? Come talk about it. Yeah, you're going to make me read about how to not be overwhelmed.
So the busy person, how do they digest this?
Well, I think there's a couple of different ways. I think that you could just go to the chapter that applies to you. Oh, that's good. Yeah.
So if you're saying, I'm not overwhelmed by this, but this is killing me, then go to that chapter. And then I think broadcasts like this are exactly where you start to get into the conversation. And then the book just gives you the tools and techniques to really live it out. Yeah.
And that's a good thing.
Now, Sherry, do you think, you know, with the holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, all of it right here, can you actually not feel overwhelmed? I think it's absolutely possible. And Kathy knows that I'm the Scrooge of the two of us. I tend to be a little more higher anxiety. I'm more easily overwhelmed.
But I think when you have a strategy, when you have a plan, and when you can be at least somewhat flexible with your expectations.
So I think a lot of our overwhelm comes from having really high expectations, and then there's reality.
Well, you too. And what's so fun is watching you as friends because you've been here together before. And even off-mic, it's just fun to hear the way you both process life. And for the person that may not feel overwhelmed, I don't feel like I get that overwhelmed, but I may be deceiving myself. I'm not giving myself a drum.
You know, sometimes you live in self-deception. We just need to get gene in here to see what's really going on. There's got to be one person that lives in an overwhelmed state. But what does that feel like? That's what I'm driving at.
For that woman that's feeling stressed out with the holidays upon her and all the expectations, like you mentioned. Sherry, that you know, I got to cook perfectly, I got to prepare perfectly, I've got to host perfectly. I'm already feeling people going, no, stop talking about it. I think especially for the holidays, what overwhelms me the most is this sense that I've got to keep everybody happy and that it's all up to me for everybody to have the perfect Thanksgiving or Christmas or what, you know, whatever the holiday is. And so, two things happen: first of all, there's more people because we tend to gather together, so I have more people to keep happy.
So, if this is your normal operation, you can do it one-on-one, maybe two-on-one. But when you have 15, it becomes overwhelming. I can keep a small handful of people pretty happy. I shouldn't be trying, but I often can do that. But you multiply that out by more people, and suddenly I'm spread too thin.
But the other thing that happens during the holidays is I forget self-care. And so, I'm staying up too late, and I'm not drinking enough water, I'm not watching much nutrition, I'm not exercising, I'm not getting my rest, and all of that starts compounding. I'm keeping everybody else happy, but I'm not taking good care of myself.
Okay, Sherry, I need to ask you this, though. In this moment of stress, Have you ever snapped at your husband? Have I ever not snapped at somebody? I'm just wondering. I'm just curious.
Yeah, but then the problem, of course, is that the solution that. My husband has is, well, then just don't do all this stuff. And then comes the, well, you just don't understand. I think I'm feeling like that's a good idea.
Well, and you were talking about self-care. I would say the other thing that happens in the holidays is our normal routines get so interrupted.
So like when Sherry and I might normally be checking in with our friendships. During the holidays, it's harder to do that because we're so concentrated on our family and the people that we're expected to take care of.
So we can't talk down the crazy for each other. And I think when it comes to the holidays to say, okay, we've got this crazy relative coming or this situation is always going to blow up to be able to say to a friend, hey, would you pray for me? Hey, I know you have this situation with your blank in-law too. Give me some tools to deal with it. There has to be somebody though that doesn't even have that friend.
So how do you go about developing, you know, some friends that you can actually be honest with? And really the benefit of it is that many people are experiencing the same kind of stress. Absolutely. We just don't, you know, we don't put it on our social media page. Right.
So I think instead of finding the friend, the key is to be the friend. Huh, that's good. And to be the safe person that you can say, I'm having this bad circumstance, you know, and hearing what they have to say. And just say, if you don't have any answers, it's okay not to have answers. But to say, I will pray for you.
Let me know when your mother-in-law, brother-in-law, whoever is causing you the crazy is coming into town. And I will be praying that entire hour. And to be that friend for somebody. And that's how you can connect with people to be able to share some of your own angst as well.
Now, you have created a quiz that can help women to identify if they're the overwhelmed person. I think it's probably self-evident, but does a person really not know they're overwhelmed? I think there's different kinds of overwhelm, but the thing that we find with the women who've read Overwhelmed is so many of them think that the problem is them. Like there's something wrong with them or if they're overwhelmed. Or that they're, it's just me.
I'm just stupid. Everybody else can handle everything. Everybody else got the manual for life and I didn't get it. But what we found in doing the research for overwhelmed is it's not that we're overwhelmed because we're stupid. We're feeling stupid because we're overwhelmed.
And so to find something like that out, like it's not my fault. It is there's something I can do about it. And, you know, following some strategies to lessen the overwhelm, we actually can get back to a place of normal. You know, it's interesting. We can often mention Martha and Mary in a very cutting way.
I mean, I think I've done it if I think about it. You know, if someone in my family is working hard and, you know, kind of grumbling about it, I say, hey, why are you acting like Martha? It's not a compliment. No, no. In fact, you know, you look at Mary, why did Mary get to sit at the feet of Jesus?
Because somebody else was taking care of business.
Somebody was cooking. Absolutely. And we think about it this way as well. You know, when we think about the overwhelm during the holidays, I think what we think is, I should be that Mary who's able to sit at the feet. What we think is, this should be easier.
And we think it's easy for everybody else. This should be easier. I love my family. You know, we have a couple of problem people. Maybe I'm the problem person sometimes, but this should be easier.
And what we need to do is normalize that these holiday gatherings, getting together with the people we love, always bring some additional stress. And to. plan for that and say it's okay but to know we're not crazy for feeling stressed out okay so i hear what you're saying in terms of identify triggers right basically absolutely for the holidays you do tend to get everybody commingling people that within the family extended family that you might you might not say hey let's spend time together right for whatever reason so in some ways it's a great spiritual exercise i'm sure the lord is pleased when he orchestrates ways to put you with people who irritate you why because so you can grow right absolutely that's part of it i think also though to go in with some ground rules How does that work?
Okay, so my family, we've got extended family with, let's just say, a varied. assortment of political spiritual Sociological beliefs.
Okay. And so there are certain topics That if we bring up, if somebody brings up, it is not going to be good for our relationship. And I have to realize nobody's going to help me change my mind, and I'm not going to help change anybody else's mind over the turkey dinner. That's just not the place for it. This needs to be a place where we connect as a family, not try to convert the people who are sitting around us.
Now, it doesn't irritate you that you're the only one that understands this.
Well, this is why the ground rules. This is why it's important to talk about it before the events happen.
So, Roger and I have an agreement that if that happens, we shut it down. And we have said at family gatherings, we do not speak of this at this table. If you want to set up another time to have a conversation, we would love to engage you. That's good. You just say it.
We just say it. We have an agreement. My husband loves peace, and I also want to love the people around my table more. And it makes they make it very hard sometimes. And so, to be able to say, Hey, we just don't.
Talk about that during at this holiday gathering, but there are other times I would love to sit down with you and have coffee and discuss it.
Now, this sounds very good hypothetically, but I need a real life experience. Oh, yeah.
Okay, so I will tell you, recently we were visiting my husband's family, and we have very different political views. And we've said it before, hey, we are not going to discuss X, Y, and Z at the table.
Well, regardless, somebody always, you know, there's that person that's the instigator. And as soon as that happened, I said, I thought we had had agreement that we weren't going to talk about that.
So I'm going to excuse myself because I can't be here for this conversation. And I got up in the middle of the restaurant and I excused myself because here's the end thing I want to get to. I want to still be able to sit across from you and love you. And when you are constantly poking and prodding and trying to get a reaction out of me, I get to choose whether I engage or not. You don't get to control that for me.
And the best way for me to do that is say, Hey, I thought we had an agreement. It's not working out how we said it was going to. I need to excuse myself.
Well, let's put a hypothetical out there and you guys can respond to it. But let's say a woman's listening and she struggles with their in-laws because of that difference of worldview or whatever it might be. But her husband thinks they're great. This is so much fun to have the family over. We love spending time together and we laugh well together.
Let's expand the tips a little beyond the ground rule of not talking about that issue. Maybe it's politics. You know, they always say politics and religion. But what would be some of the other ground rules?
Well, I'll give one right off: to schedule time. Just for your husband to be with his family. Seriously. I like that. Go miniature golfing.
Yeah, do something to say, you know, when I am in that situation, I will say, you know what, I'm going to go spend four hours and I'm going to go write or read something or I'm just going to go take a walk. Because here's the thing: my husband has the relationship with his family and he's used to, you know, their family systems and all of that. And my ultimate goal always is to love them better. That's my goal. And sometimes loving them better is saying, you know what, I'm going to take some time just for myself and to schedule in that self-care helps so much in a tough situation.
I also have made the ground rule of we stay in a hotel. We just stay in a hotel because I just need a break. And so to do this, My goal again is to love them better.
So, how do I do that? And if I'm just sitting there biting my fingers so that I don't say anything to offend anybody, I understand I'm a better person to participate when I've had adequate sleep, when I've had adequate time to myself, all of those good things.
Now, that's good, but some people might not be able to afford a hotel. But you're saying, bring your camping gear to meet me. Yeah, do what you want to do. And to say, hey, if we're going to go visit our family, we're going to budget for this. Or you stay with the family member that you can.
Get along with best. You know, there's a couple of lessons in what you're saying. And Sherry, I'd love to hear, you know, your in-law experiences. You're not going to hear any of ours. Joe and I aren't going there.
But you're saying work on yourself. You know, you're at a person you can control. Right.
You can't change other people's perspectives and all that. And that's a good thing.
That's really a Christian truth. That's following Christ is all about looking at your own log in your eye before you take the speck out of your brother's eye.
Well, what I see being so important here is the level of intentionality. And these decisions aren't being made the day before Thanksgiving. These decisions are being made a month or two or three in advance so that there's time to execute them. Elaborate on the decision-making. What does that look like?
Like you and your husband are saying what?
Okay, well, in my case, I was referring to Kathy's decisions. All that's happening. Let's talk about Kathy's decisions. Absolutely. Everybody tell me about Rogers.
This conversation. For me, it ends up being a little bit more internal because my overwhelm tends to be: okay, this year he better not say the kind of thing he normally says. And so I try to like mentally control other people or steer the conversation so the conversation doesn't go someplace that ends up being hurtful to me. And what I finally had to realize is I cannot control other people. I know, I know.
Crazy as it sounds, I've tried every way there is. And so what I've learned, for example, I have a habit of reaching out to other people by being transparent and vulnerable.
So I'll share a weakness. I'll share something that I failed at. And I expect that they're going to return that. That's how we're going to bond together. But there are certain family members I've discovered, they take advantage of that.
And so then they'll turn the conversation and I feel bashed on. And so then I'm like, well, I chose the wrong one. Let me choose another weakness. Let me be vulnerable. In a different way, I just need to choose the right one.
And I finally realized: no, I need to quit choosing vulnerable things and I need to start talking about the weather. I need to have a list ahead of time of very safe topics, and then I just need to listen and ask questions and listen and not be as self-revealing. Because for me, that's what was always very overwhelming. And I'm sure for you that feels shallow, though. It does.
I can hear Gene and I having that discussion too: that okay, now it doesn't feel like we're connecting. And that's a disappointment. It is, but it's also an opportunity to listen and learn and not insist on doing things my way. I want to go back to something you said, Kathy, and both of you probably have some insights on this. For the woman who's saying, Well, I like the idea of loving my family better, whether it's my biological family or my birth family or my in-laws, I want to love them better, but getting away or staying in a hotel, that's going to bring shame and judgment on me because I'm not part of the game.
I'm not part of the party. What's her issue? How do you get over that?
So, what I've had to do is say: you know, every family comes up with their own set of rules. And I get to participate in making the rules for our family. These are not things that are handed down to me. I'm a grown woman. And I get to participate in what's going to be best, not just for me, but for my husband and for my kids as well.
And sometimes, you know, we hate to say it, but sometimes our kids need to be protected from other people in the family, from unkind words, from judgments, from why doesn't he go out and play with the other kids? Why is he always reading a book? Those kind of things. We have to be the mama bear and say, you know what? We love you.
We want to have a relationship with you. You don't get to comment on my child. That's just not one of the things that you get to do. And so this is all, I know it sounds very self-protecting, but here's the thing. It's allowed me to have the relationships that I can.
And, you know, biblically, what we need to do is we need to love as far as we are able. As far as we are able to do it, I need to sacrifice. I need to love. But like Sherry said, I don't have control over the other people. As far as it is up to me.
I need to be at peace with everybody. And I have discovered the best way to be at peace is not to be selfish. When I'm with people, I am with them. I don't have my phone out. I'm looking them in the eye.
I'm saying, tell me about this activity you're doing. I want to hear about the Bible study you're at. I want to fully engage, but I also know my own limits. And so I want to make sure that my family is well protected, taken care of, and I want to miss my relatives so I can see them again. It's true there are people who confrontation does not come easily, right?
Probably more than half of the population fit in that category: Christian, non-Christian.
So, how do you get up the Energy. Sherry, you may fit that. I don't know. But how do you get up the ability, the will, the courage to say, okay, we're going to set boundaries? Because it's hard for some people, especially within the family.
It's also really difficult when you've done it one way for a long time and you recognize it's not working. One of the things I recognized is I had a belief that since I'd always done it a certain way, we just had to keep doing it that way. Like we couldn't change. And so deciding to say, you know, we've used to do this, but we've decided to do it this way now. Or we tried this, it's not working.
And so we're going to make this decision now. But I think it all comes back to expectations. Every family expects different things. Like when my husband came to our family for the first time, there was no stuffing because I'm part Middle Eastern, and so our Thanksgiving is all Middle Eastern food. There's no stuffing or mashed potatoes with gravy.
And, you know, for him to be a little bit more than that. Remember fighting words right there. I mean, no, he thought that was terrible. And so if we can see all of this as much of this as a matter of preference, whether you stay in the family home or you stay in a hotel, I I don't believe that's biblical. You know, that's something we get to choose.
And to say, you know, we've stayed with you in the past, this year we're staying in a hotel. There doesn't need to be a discussion after that unless you participate in it. And I think it's expectations and time. When you're telling mother-in-law the night before we're staying in a hotel, that's wrong because I feel like that's disrespectful to her expectations. But when we say, you know, this Thanksgiving, hey, next Thanksgiving, we're going to need to do things a little differently, whatever that is, that gives people time to adjust, to wrap their brains around it, and be respectful of the family that they are a part of.
Right.
So, given Thanksgiving's just around the corner, maybe this year, suck it up. Right.
This year is triage. But for Christmas, we can come up with contingency plans. And so the first conversation is: if you're married, the first conversation is to have with your spouse. And so to be in agreement there and to say what is best for us as a family and for a family as a whole. Because really, what you're trying to do is you're trying to honor everybody the best you can.
And you got to position that properly as a unified front. It's not going to be the husband says, well, Jane didn't want to stay with you.
So we got a hotel. Oh, yes. Hear it loud.
Now, I think people are leaning in and listening to this because we're talking real life situations here, and we can all Pinterest our faith and say, yeah, everything's fine. But for the most part, you know, there are the uncles, the aunts, the in-laws, et cetera. Where's God in all this, though? I really want to hear a clear kind of message that this is what God wants from you.
Well, I really do believe that our chief concern is to be at peace with everybody. As far as we are able to make that happen. And so it's not about fighting for our rights necessarily. When we're in a family, we have to lay down some of those rights. It's saying, how do I honor everybody and how do I show?
My love for God has transformed me. And I'm able to love well. And so I come from a family where not everybody is a Christian, and where for some of them, Christianity is hard to see because they feel that they've been mistreated by Christians, or people they love have been mistreated by Christians before. You know, that's their perception. I don't know whether it's reality or a truth, but I need to be the person that says, For me, Christianity is about God's love, and it doesn't stop just with other Christians.
It is God's love transforming the world.
So I lay down my rights in many ways. I only pick them up for the things that I think are important and that will move the family forward. Kathy, I'm aware of your history, a family history with Roger. You're a blended family. We are blended family.
Probably 30, 40% of the Christian community would identify with that as well. I want to be mindful of there's lots of reasons it happened. Absolutely. So let's not go to the judgment thing, everybody. But in that context, what can you do to...
see that, understand the complexity of it.
So my husband is an engineer and one of the things that he was told early on is that when you're developing something as an engineer, you can have it better, cheaper, faster. Pick two out of three. You're never going to have a product that is better, cheaper, and faster. When it comes to blended families, and let's also talk about in-laws and things like that, I feel like you have, there are three things. You can celebrate on the day.
You can have everybody there. you can have people be happy about it. Pick two out of three. Okay, that's good.
So what we've chosen for the most part is we do not celebrate on Christmas. We do not necessarily celebrate on Thanksgiving. Every once in a while, it kind of works out that. But we have a child who's married and has her in-laws. We have other original biological parents that are celebrating.
And so we want to be the home that it's easy to land in, that it's comfortable. We're not saying, well, it's not Christmas because it's not the 25th. You've broken our hearts because you're not here on the day. We want to be the place where they come, they get filled out up. They know that love lives at our house and we're going to laugh and we're going to eat great food, but it doesn't have to happen on the day.
And also, if somebody's not able to make it, we say, you know what? We're so sad because we are going to miss you, but we understand your life is bigger than just our family. Let's pick another time and let's do dinner together. No, that's all good. We often call on the day.
We'll call our siblings. Yeah.
You know, if they aren't able to make it.
So that's a lot of fun. Hey, Kathy and Sherry, this is. That's great. More questions around the corner, though. I want to stick with it and come back tomorrow and pick the conversation up and talk about a bit more of the complications that we face here at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and these holiday periods.
Can we do it? Please. What a great conversation with Kathy Lipp and Sherry Gregory today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And we trust that their insights have encouraged you as you're preparing to interact with family members on a variety of occasions this coming season. Yeah, preparing for that.
Hey, you know what? It is such a wonderful time of year, but those family gatherings can bring stress and strife. The good news is they don't have to. And I love the ideas Kathy and Sherry gave us to step back, take a breath, and reset some of those scenarios. Yeah, and we want to come alongside you with practical tools and encouragement so you can build a stronger, healthier relationship with all those in your family, especially during this holiday season.
And you're going to find Focus on the Family has lots of helpful resources waiting for you. Yeah, a good place to start is by scheduling a free consultation with one of our Caring Christian counselors. You can do that. They'll listen to you, pray with you, and give you some guidance on your path toward healing. We also have Kathy and Sherry's great book.
Book, Overwhelmed: How to Quiet the Chaos and Restore Your Sanity. Who doesn't want that book, which you can get directly from Focus on the Family? It's full of relatable stories and practical ways you can navigate those more stressful moments. And when you give a gift of any amount to Focus on the Family today, we'll send you a copy as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. This Christmas season, you have a wonderful opportunity to deliver hope and joy to families in crisis through your support of Focus on the Family.
Your gift can bring real hope to couples on the brink of divorce, parents who feel overwhelmed or maybe they're in a crisis, and others who need encouragement right now.
So please give today. Donate and get your copy of the book Overwhelmed when you call 800, the letter A and the word family. 800-232-6459. or stop by the show notes for all the details. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
Next time, we'll continue the conversation with Kathy Lipp and Sherry Gregory, and once more, help you and your family thrive in Christ. God is at work, and He's calling His people to rise in truth. Truth Rising is a powerful new documentary from Focus on the Family and the Coulson Center. See how ordinary Christians choose courage in a culture that needs truth. Watch Truth Rising today and find out how you can become an agent of restoration and hope.
Visit truthrising.com today. That's truthrising.com. Yeah.
