Todd and Beth Guckenberger: 11 Children and a Global Orphan Mission (episode 37)

0:00 Do you love a prodigal? Do you feel like you are lost in a scary and endless wilderness? Welcome to the When You Love a Prodigal podcast. I am Judy Douglass and I spent more than 15 years in that wilderness. I believe together we will discover help and hope for your journey. Well, welcome. I hope that our series on prayer was such a special thing for you. All of us, prayer is our major resource for living the Christian life. But when you have a prodigal, when you love someone who's making those not so good decisions in their lives, prayer is the most important resource that you have. And so I hope that was helpful to you thinking about how you can make all the difference for the one you love from your knees. There are other things to do, but that's the first one and the most important. So thank you. And today, oh, I think you're going to love our conversation today. I have here with me two friends, fairly recent friends to get to know, but Todd and Beth Guckenberger. And for those of you who are crew, or Campus Crusade people, they met in crew at Indiana University, or is it University of Indiana? It matters in Texas, what you call my school. So I've just been thrilled to get to know

1:39 them. But I'm also thrilled about the work that they do. They have a ministry, it's called back to back ministries. And it's got some amazing stuff. Their slogan, kind of, because they're working with orphans in places around the world where there are a lot of orphans. And their slogan here, their saying is until every child is known and loved. And that just resonates with me so much. They say there are 163 million orphans in the world today. Okay, that'll make me cry. And I'm grateful that God let me have one of them to live in our family. And their ministry is on a mission to change that. And the people at Temptebo ministry said back to back ministries is the best orphan care organization operating in the world today. And so that's a lot of what we'll talk about is things they have learned in their efforts to minister, to help, to provide for orphans and abandoned and neglected children around the world. Now Beth also writes books. Her latest is called Start with Amen. And as a prayer person that resonates. But I really love the titles of two

3:16 I just saw. I haven't read. It's one's called Reckless Faith. I'm kind of into reckless. I think we're usually too cautious. And then I really like Throw the First Punch, because, you know, we're in a battle. In fact, the prayer, the last prayer thing are almost was on battle prayers. And so I'm all in tune with that. So what we're going to do today is I'm gonna let them tell a little about their backgrounds and what they're doing. And then I have a few questions for them to lead us into some really hopeful, helpful input for you as you're on a journey with a prodigal, whether it's your child, an adopted child often, or fostered, or whether it's a family member, or a great friend, whatever. And I think they have good input for us. So first question is, tell us a little about yourself and how you got into what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish. Well, thanks first for having us, Judy. It's a real privilege, really an honor. And Beth and I talk often about you and Stephen, how faithful you've been for so many years. So really grateful, privileged to be on the podcast with you. I'll share a little bit. So we went to Indiana University and loved and were involved with Kuru, but felt very missional minded to do some

4:48 international mission experience during those college years, serving in Albania with Kuru, and then also in Mexico with our local church in Cincinnati, where we're from. And so we are our family Beth and I got married right out of college or actually in college, or last year college. And we started an international organization called Back to Back Ministries, where we serve orphan vulnerable children around the world. We have personally adopted five children, we have three biological and then we foster three girls for an extended time. So we say we have 11 total and it's a full brood and a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna say 11 children, we have plenty of material, you just tell me which direction you want to go. I mean, we, some of our children we adopted, most of our children we adopted as teenagers. So we have one son we adopted as an infant, but the rest of them came to us at ages 10 and 14 and 17. And so gosh, when you enter someone's into your family system, and they bring with them all kinds of words and experiences that form their belief and their worldview that you had no input in and suddenly, you're having to try to understand the meaning behind some of their behavior. It creates a lot of moments, it creates a lot of moments that I hope that today as we continue our conversation, your listeners will mostly get the impression that God is with us in those moments. There are some good best practices, there are some,

6:21 for lack of a better word, tips and techniques that we have learned and been taught and discovered, but there's some silver bullet. I mean, it's just so ongoing life of sanctification. So there are moments when we feel like we're killing it. And it's just, it's amazing. And there are moments when we experience setbacks and disappointment and we have to just hold on to Jesus. So before you had all these children, except for your three biological, right? Three biological? Is that what you said? Yes. We started, we adopted two months after we had our first child. So the adoption journey and our bio-children journey, all was all kind of meshed in there together. Okay. I want you to take a minute or two or more to tell us a little about the ministry and how you got into primarily focusing on orphans and needy children. And then we're going to go more into how what you've learned there and with your children will be the most helpful. Yeah. So we were on a mission trip with our local church and we had been on some really spectacular mission trips with crew. So we knew the difference that the trip we were experiencing in the summer of 1996 was lacking vision purpose.

7:41 So on the second to last day, when we were painting a wall around a church we were partnering with from blue to green, pretty sure the year before we'd painted it from green to blue. Todd and I decided to hijack that afternoon and we went and jumped into a taxi cab and just asked the taxi cab driver in our terrible Spanish at the time, if there were any orphanages in the city, because when we had been in Albania in college with crew, we'd spend an afternoon in an orphanage and it had left this impression on us. We found ourselves at an orphanage later that afternoon and after some really creative communication told the director, we had three things in our hand. They had one complete day, 200 US dollars and 20 able-bodied high school students. And if he had access to those resources, what would he do? And really I can tell you every day, pretty much since then, that's how we start missioning our day, trying to figure out what we have in our hand and who God is putting on our heart and trying to figure out how to bridge those the best we can. And that day we had orphans on our heart and those things in our hand and the man told us we could fix the windows if we wanted, they were all broken out front and the kids hadn't had meat every year. And so we thought that sounded way better than painting. So the next day we brought the supplies to fix the windows and enough meat we thought would last the children in that children's home almost a month.

9:05 But we set up behind this griddle and I was grilling out and I didn't have any system for who had eaten and not eaten and how many they'd eaten. And Todd finishes with the windows and comes over, points out this little girl to me and he's like, hey, did you see that little preschooler? And I'm like, I can't keep my eyes off of her. And he said, well, she's been in your line like four or five times. I don't know any preschooler who could eat that much. So I followed her the next time she came up and I followed her into the dorm room where I could see her and the other preschoolers were helping each other lift up their mattresses and they were sticking hamburgers underneath them. And Todd came over to that door frame and we sat in that space and had a conversation that really was the birth of the organization that we now lead. It was just this deep desire to figure out how to bridge God's people who we think would do something about the crisis of orphans if we could just build a bridge between them. And so we saved our money for a year. We were both teachers at the time. So we saved our money for a year, put one salary in the bank. We had no children at the time, so, you know, double income, no kids. And, and at the end of that year, we asked for leaves of absence or quit our jobs respectively. And, and said, okay, we started driving to Mexico and we knew that's where we wanted to serve. We had a few contacts there and so somebody helped us rent a house. And, and it was really, really honestly, it's simple. We just wanted to love the vulnerable kids and serve on a daily basis. We had some skills to offer and some things to, to bring, but it was kind of a, an amazing first year. And then in that first year, we'd kind of talked to a

10:41 few of our friends and family to come visit us and serve with us. And we thought we'd have maybe 50 people throughout the year. And at the end, by the end of that first year, we had about 350 people come alongside and service. And so kind of, we realized overnight that we realized, okay, well, we know people who have need now more than ever, and we know people who can help meet the need and come alongside of it. And we could be a bridge for that. And so that's how Back to Back got started. Yeah. And it certainly has evolved. I mean, in the beginning, all we could see were physical needs. So that's really what we were about, but, and also all we could see was the child. And so we were just so solely focused on the bullseye of the child. And today, 25 years later, we now recognize there's a whole ecosystem around that child. So if we're going to love the orphan, we're going to love their vulnerable, at-risk mother and their incarcerated father and their local church and their entire community that might be marginalized. And so now we have a more holistic approach to the work we do with kids. And we also meet more than just physical needs, because eventually our language caught up and we recognized we want kids to understand the whole reason we're here is because God loves them, has a plan for their life. So we began to add spiritual components to the ministry, eventually educational components as we wanted people to break the cycle of generational poverty. And then probably what we'll spend most of our time talking about, we kind of trucked along for about a decade, meeting physical needs, making sure it was in a spiritual context and advancing children through post-secondary education and into college.

12:17 We thought that was the secret sauce, all of those things. And then we finally really ran into the wall that would become our initial education into the world of trauma and trying to understand the emotional healing that's needed for someone who's experienced complex developmental trauma. Oh, well, first of all, it's probably my husband would probably wouldn't have wanted me to go down on your trips because he knows what happens. All it took was someone saying, could you take this boy? And there it was, we had this boy. And oh, wow, that's beautiful.

12:59 So your children came along in the midst of this and then you kept adding. So talk about that a little bit and then on to, we'll go on to things you learned. So how that we got pregnant that first year we were there. I certainly thought I was allergic to Mexican food. I'd never had so much salsa and beans in my life. So I just thought that all the symptoms I was feeling was associated with that. And it turns out that I did not have a parasite. I instead had something much more significant growing in that belly of mine and delivered our first born Emma in the spring of 98. And even though we were confident my body could work in all of those ways, we had an adoption calling. I really do believe it's a calling that seeded and planted in our heart. We had talked about it even before we were married. We had talked about it. So we had begun the process to adopt a child and Emma was born in May of 98. And then our first adoption was our son who was born in July of 98. So Emma and Evan are only seven weeks apart. And although they're different colors, Evan was adopted from Mexico. The two of them have grown up really as twins their whole life. And that experience of adopting Evan was so rich and so meaningful and so very special to us as a family that it wasn't like we thought to ourselves we're going to have a giant family. It's just as other

14:30 opportunities came throughout the next 20 years. We were just always open to what God might have and how he might build our family. So we eventually had three children out of my body. And after Evan, the next children that we brought into our family permanently were a set of twin girls that we had met when they were 11. And they functioned off and on as foster children for us. They came for holidays and weekends and special events and then came home with us full time right as they turned 15. And those girls are 35 now. They're mothers and wives and college educated and wonderful. But we had no idea what we were getting into, adopting two 15-year-old girls who had lived in an institution since they were in preschool. And man, God opened our eyes. They opened our eyes up in more ways than I can even fully explain on a podcast. The way that God used that experience to grow us up, the way that he used that to bond our marriage together, the way that he used that as a catalyst for growth in their lives, the way that he used it as a testimony in our community. I really do believe God does more than one thing at a time. And he used those young women in our lives to really change the trajectory of it.

15:47 Wow. Okay. I hope some other people listening to this, that there'll be tears and some eyes because God has already been speaking to them. And just maybe he has more to say to them. But our purpose here is to deal with children they already have or people in their lives who have made a lot of bad choices. So both from your mixture of family and especially with the older kids that you had in your home and with the ministry you were doing, trying to make a difference in the lives of these neglected and abandoned and orphaned children. You began to discover, you said, a lot about trauma. And can you talk about that? I don't want to interrupt you on it. I'd like to have you just kind of talk about things you learned and then go into some things you did as a result.

16:51 Yeah, I think in a really simple way, we were experiencing it firsthand in our own home with our older adopted girls, with the experiences, with interactions. But in one of our programs with our team, we lived in Mexico for 15 years. We had a program called the HOPE program. And the HOPE program was really set up like a kind of a hybrid foster home. But it was a home where there were two educated house parents married and they had six teenagers live with them. And they were in high school or university level. And so the kids came to us late stage. They weren't like early foster in childhood rearing years. And what we had experienced, we were investing in kids. They had a great home to live in. The houses were beautiful. They had great house parents. They had good education opportunities. But some of them were train wrecks.

17:42 And we're like, what's going on? And you kind of start realizing something's not working. We're not doing something well. And it would be some things like kids doing stupid, making bad choices or whatever it is. It wasn't necessarily always tragic, but you're like, wow. And so we realized there's meaning behind their behavior. There's something there. And then we started obviously doing research. We got to figure this out. And we started diving into the world of trauma. And we reached out to some experts who came on and trained us. And so we really started diving into that world. But then take that to a personal level and then understanding, okay, the impacts of trauma.

18:23 As parents, you're working hard to parent and figure out what skills you need to develop. But really understanding what each of the kids who are in our home have experienced. And kind of the, it's not really even just baggage. It's their life experiences that are hurts and their wounds that have kind of traumatized them. I mean, that's the simplest way to say it. So then we really started diving deeper and deeper into each of the stories and helping kids come to a place of healing. And I think that before I understood the science, I mean, today we do a whole training and we offer training to other people. It was such a game changer for our organization to begin to understand how to combine what science was teaching us and what our Bibles were teaching us and using that there in those frontline settings. We began to see pretty immediate results and started to share those results with our other staff around the world, and then eventually with other ministries. So today we have a much fuller understanding, but in the very beginning, I can remember just simple little tidbits I can share with your listeners. Like for example, when you've had chronic developmental trauma, ongoing trauma could be in utero or in those first very critical years of life, or it can be over the course of early adolescence. If you've had an ongoing trauma, you have, for lack of a better term,

20:02 I don't know how to say it, but your brain doesn't, it just doesn't process information in ways that are healthy. What should look like warnings, don't look like warnings, which shouldn't feel like warnings set you in an alarmed state and a hypervigilant state. Like your brain is, it's tricking you almost and you can't trust it. And it's really discouraging. And if you're a parent of a child who's experienced trauma, things don't seem logical. And we know that kids aren't working in their prefrontal cortex, so they're not thinking about things like cause and effect or problem solving or multi-step directions or creative thinking. And we say as parents to our kids, like, what were you thinking when really they weren't thinking? Because what's called your amygdala, those little glands behind your ears where our fight and flight and freeze functions end up sitting. When we get what we call fear brain, when you get triggered in some way, your amygdala and the front of your brain, where all that good thinking happens, those two things can't work at the same time and your amygdala is going to win every time. So you literally stop thinking about if this, then that. You stop understanding things like consequences and multi-step directions and creative thinking and problem solving. And so one of the first things that we learned is a way that you can heal your brain is through being heard by somebody, like having someone listen to you heals your brain and play. Play releases the right kind of chemicals

21:35 in our brain that begin to do some healing. And I can remember feeling so hopeful because sometimes when you're interacting with a child from a hard place, it can feel really discouraging, like, this is never going to get better or this is never going to turn around. And when you realize that God actually made our brain, there's some neuroelasticity with the ability to heal. And two of the tools he put in our hands are listening and play. Those are things that parents became parents to do. And the more that I have found in my family, the more that I listen, and the more that I play, the healthier actually our interactions have become.

22:16 Probably you've learned a few things about yourself in the process too. Very much so. Even with any parent, any child, doesn't matter where or who, but we all have our own triggers, right? And those triggers are things that set us off or that excite us or make us emotional. I mean, even understanding that we've all experienced some kind of trauma. But like, so even in our house, we do this thing called a redo a lot. So like, not only do we say, if a child says something smart, I like, or direct back, or maybe- Their first reaction. Their first reaction. You say, hey, maybe you want to redo, or sometimes a parent needs a redo.

22:58 Sometimes my first reaction is wrong and I, hey, can I get a redo? So if you use those terms, those are really helpful in those moments, especially those stressful moments when you're really being reactive rather than actually processing the information. Yeah, we've learned that anger and all of its forms, passive, aggressive, all the different ways we can get angry, is actually a secondary emotion, always sitting on the primary emotion of fear. And so if somebody's acting angry about a sibling or a homework assignment or whatever is causing them anger, as a parent, we have choices. We can either try to control their anger, we could try to match their anger, we can try to hunch them for their anger, or we can do the much more meaningful work of trying to figure out what it is they're afraid of, addressing their fear, and then watching anger dissipate. And we learned that principle in talking about kids from hard places, but that's actually really effective for us in our marriage. When I'm finding myself escalating and getting angry with Todd about something, it's because I haven't taken the time or found the words yet to say what I'm really afraid of. Or if Todd's has an angry reaction or an irritated reaction, he's afraid of something. And I can either react to his anger, or I can work as his partner to try to help him get the information he needs to dissipate those fears that he's having. And so yes, we have learned a lot of things that are about kids, but the most important things that are about kids, but they end up very much and being useful for us as married people and

24:32 as just adults. So thinking about a child who's angry or really making some bad choices or failing in school or whatever they're doing, how would you talk to them about that? How would you approach that so that you can really begin this process you're talking about? Yeah, there's a there's a phrase made popular by the late Dr. Karen Purvis where she says, we need to connect before we correct. So usually, you know, all trauma training, actually, trauma training doesn't change children, it changes the adults who work with children. So when a child's having a big reaction in front of me, and I might be embarrassed by that, so I'm trying to get them to hurry up and stop acting that way. Or I might be inconvenienced by that reaction, because I got someplace I got to go and I don't have time to deal with your feelings. Or like, I mean, those are all sinful things on my end. But as humans, like a child's big misbehavior or big emotional reaction, I don't always think to myself at first like, Oh, buddy, what's going on? How can I help you? I'm thinking, get over it. Or I'm thinking, you know, I mean, that's just my sin. And so the first step really is me taking a beat and realizing there's nothing more important in the world to me right now than the people in my life that God has given me to love. And so whatever I think I have to do in my life in this moment, I need to stop and help them get what's called regulated. So there's, when a child that has a

26:08 big overreaction to some things, you know, behavioral misbehavior, we call that being dysregulated. And as a parent, I have the opportunity in that moment to co regulate them to try to help them to calm down because ultimately where I want them to learn how to, to live is in a state of self regulation where as hopefully as a healthy, emotionally healthy adult, when I find myself getting triggered by somebody on the road or somebody on the phone or somebody in a meeting, I know how to get myself to maintain calm, whether it's healthy self talk, whether I use hydration and take a drink of water or whether I take a break for a minute or whatever I need to do.

26:52 Hopefully an emotionally healthy adult knows how to self regulate, but a child from a hard place, when they get dysregulated, they can stay in that state up to 24 or 48 hours. I mean, and really as the adult, I might, my first job is like, how do I help co regulate them? How do I help them feel safe? How do I help them feel heard? How do I help, help them articulate what it is that they're feeling the needs that they have in this moment that aren't being met that's creating this reaction? And how do I make sure that I help meet those needs? That's a really important role because the more I can meet the needs that my child has, the stronger our attachment is. And it's on top of that attachment, that relational attachment that we get to say all the really important things that we became parents to say. And I think sometimes what happens, especially with kids from hard places is they, if they don't learn to self regulate or if they don't have someone to co regulate with, to help them learn towards a process of healthy self regulation, they tend to look to things and escape to regulate. So alcohol, drugs, rebellion, I mean, there's all kinds of processes. And then, and so what happens is then as parents, you know, typically, especially if you're older, maybe you have kind of a hard knocks thing, well, you look to punishment instead of connection. And then that creates separation and it actually works against you. And what a child from a hard place needs, any more than anything is connection and relationship where that healing can begin. Our human nature sometimes then drives that away

28:26 because we're frustrated, angry or, or, or dysregulated ourselves because of what's happening. And we told them, we've been told that you need to come down on it. You need to be tough. You need to not let them get away with it. And so you said listening is other than prayer, perhaps the most important thing that you do. Yes. And listening with, with empathy and really ultimately what you want to think to yourself, how do I help this child feel safe? Because when they feel safe, all the right things happen in their brain to allow them to calm down. And once someone's calm, then you've got the chance to teach them something, or you have a chance to, to communicate and to connect. I can think about, you know, once upon a time as a parent, when my children did something that was unacceptable, I put them in timeout. And for a child that's has a really healthy attachment with you, those, you know, three, four, five, 10 minutes in timeout, aren't going to damage that relationship. If you have a child that's doesn't regulate very well, that has experienced any kind of trauma, where the relationship is in jeopardy, and you know, for whatever reason, when you time a child out, you're really reinforcing a message. I don't even want to see you like your behavior is so bad. I can't even be together with you. So you need to go to your room, you need to actually get

29:57 out of my line of sight. And I can't quite even put into words how damaging that is for a child who already feels that relationship is threatened. And so we teach in our trauma training about doing time ends. It's not that you don't give consequences, of course, you need to continue to have a healthy balance between structure and nurture. But inside of when you're reinforcing structure, you just don't ever put the relationship at risk. You might, consequences might involve the loss of technology, or consequences might involve, you know, all the different ways as parents we enforce consequences, but never can the relationship even, even temporarily look like it's being put at risk.

30:44 And I would say this is not a, this is easier said than done. Because, you know, you're just, you're just as humans or as parents, you just react. So the best part about having a marriage is, is that you can, you can feed, you can encourage each other. Beth and I sometimes say, I'm tapping out, you know, like I can't, I can't do a social tap in. And it's not a, it's not a runaway. It's hey, I need to, I need to get right before I can actually have a healthy interaction. And sometimes, and especially when, when kids from our places are, are really pushing back, we need each other in that. So it, you know, sometimes it's even a phone call. I mean, we've had, we've got friends that are lifelines for us, you know, to, to reach out to, hey, I'm just, it's driving me crazy. So I think, but I, but I think it's really important even as adults or as parents for us to process it also and have safe people to communicate to. Yeah. And a child, like a child in a typically developing healthy family between ages zero and two, they have heard yes so many times. Yes, if you're crying, I'll pick you up. Yes. If you're wet, I'll change your diaper.

31:49 Yes. If you're hungry, I'll feed you like a million yeses. So by the time they're two, and they try to put their finger in the socket and you say, no, you can't do that. It's not that big of a withdrawal. It sits on top of all of this healthy. Yes. When you have a child that's adopted or experienced chronic trauma or any of those situations, they've only predominantly heard no, no, you're not worth it. No, your deeds aren't important. No, no, no, no. And so one of the, another tool we can put in the hands of your listeners is really to say yes as often as possible. Even if, even if it's a funny way to say yes, like, you know, when our, we adopted a son at age 12 and he had never had access to a pantry like ours that had granola bars and potato chips and jars of peanut butter. I mean, it was in a government orphanage. It was just like Disneyland in there. And so he wanted, he didn't understand how to regulate food conception. And so he was constantly asking, can I have a cookie? Can I have ice cream? Can I have, and so I would say yes within the structure that I would, that was okay. Like, yes, you can have that cookie. Let's put it on this plate and save it for after your, you know, spinach at lunch or whatever. We've wanted him to eat first or yes, you can have ice cream. Let's just have a bite now and we'll have the rest of the bowl tonight before you go to bed or you get, like, if we can say, and those are, that's just food choices. As our kids get older, the more that we can say yes, every time you hear the word yes, again, your brain releases these chemicals that, that bond you to the person that told you yes.

33:23 So we don't want them to hear at home all these nos and then go interact with peers who are wildly affirming and who may then become a greater influence and lead our kids in a direction that, that is not healthy for them. So if one of the most important things you do is listen, that would assume this person is talking. And some people, some kids don't want to talk. They really don't know how to express things anyway. So how do you, how do you go about helping them talk so that you can listen and learn what it is that they're afraid of or what's causing their issues at this time? We probably have different answers or different approaches, maybe just, just different styles. You know, probably the biggest struggle to make that happen is time because it all, because listening requires time. And as parents, you're either tempted to or end up managing your children instead of parenting your children. And so parenting requires time. Management is just a time exchange, right? So I think making time, asking good questions, being present is, is the best way, but I think the biggest barrier is not making time. Yeah. I mean, certainly you are the foremost expert on your own child. So, you know, the kinds of things that they enjoy doing. I have

34:56 a child that talks endlessly when we're shoulder to shoulder, but gets kind of clammed up when we're face to face. So I have to look for opportunities to be in a car with them or on a walk with them or cooking shoulder to shoulder with them. I have to look for reasons because for whatever reason, eye contact feels really intimidating to them. I think sometimes depending on the age of your child, one of our children had an easy, one of our children had an experience at school where he got in trouble and he couldn't quite give us his version of the story. I had heard the adults at school's version of the story, but I just instinctively knew that there was more to it. So I was trying to understand what happened before the thing that he did, they got in trouble and I couldn't get him to articulate it. And then we had some of his little brother's cars, like matchbox cars on the floor.

35:47 And so I just kind of recreated the scene using inanimate objects. Like, so you were here and they were here and he was able to tell me the story through something other than just having to use his words. So again, there's lots of tools out there, whether you use art therapy and drawing, or whether you use like I did in that moment, whatever I had sitting on the carpet next to me. I think the most important thing is to realize when you get your child to talk, be a student and say, okay, it happened before he went to bed. So let's really pretend that bedtime is eight o'clock when really I'm comfortable with it being 830 because that last half hour, that ritual makes him feel safe enough that he's willing to share. Or my child talks the most as soon as they're done with a meal. So instead of feeding them while I'm going to go do something else, I'm going to sit at this table while they eat. Like just being a student of your own child and understanding what makes them excited, what helps unlock that.

36:51 Cause we tend to think all the things we've been taught, these are the ways you do things and it doesn't work the same for everyone. The giving attention and listening, but you have to look for the ways that work for that child. And I remember one day my son-in-law when they had two little boys, he said, I think I have to discipline them differently. And the mother-in-law is thinking, yes, that's a good idea. Well, even children, like we, in our organization, we do a lot of like disc assessment or profile of different staff personalities. You know, those are almost language skills of understanding your children, right? You know, so they speak all different language. The way they hear, the way I hear something is not the way they're going to hear something, but the way the tone at which people, I want people to talk to me is not the tone that somebody else wants to be talked to.

37:48 So I think there's some, that being Beth's saying, being a student of your child is really important and understanding that. I feel like I've grown a ton in this, especially as our children have become adults because you still parent when they're adults, but at the same time, you're not really parenting them. You're really influencing them and coaching them in a way that they're not really encouraging them. But even then, the approach in which you have can either maintain connection or disconnect you. And our hope and heart in our home is to be connected. And it doesn't mean you don't give feedback. It doesn't mean you don't tell truth. It doesn't mean there's not consequences, but it means that you're intentional about the way in which you do those things.

38:30 Yeah. And understanding even in a marriage, and I totally recognize some of your listeners are parents, but for those of you who are in two parent households, we have our own temperaments and tendencies and backgrounds. So for me to realize this one area might be my parenting strength, but this other area is my parenting weakness. And being able to use your spouse as accountability and as a balance for, you know, this is kind of what I'm thinking we might need to do. And like, I think, for example, Todd is a very, he's fabulous in an emergency because he's a very quick thinker. But that so, you know, whenever anybody gets an offender bender, I call him and ask him what to do or like, you know, if child calls with some kind of, I don't know, banking emergency or school emergency, I just, Todd's the right person for them to talk to. But on the flip side, what can happen to a temperament like that is on a scale of one to 10, everything can feel like a 10. And it's not everything is a 10 that doesn't all need a 10 sized reaction. So when, when, you know, he's starting to have an emergency size reaction to the way somebody parked in the driveway or the way that somebody didn't finish their dishes, then that's when I get to balance him out. And, and, and vice versa, like for me, I have, I, he, if Todd errors in structure, I err in nurture. And I, I can sometimes even try to spiritually manipulate him into being overly

40:08 nurturing. You can't really nurture a child too much, but you can be so lenient that they don't understand, you know, how to, how to obey authority. And I'm always telling my son, you know, the one that is our prodigal, I'm desperate for you to understand how God loves you. And, and the way that God loves you has, has he put some limits around you. That's, I'm just trying to model for the, for you, the way that he, he loves us. So I have to learn how to do some of those things when it's not necessarily my tendency or, or preference. Let's go back just a minute. Speaking about trauma. Now, when we talk about, which my listeners have heard a lot about our son, everybody understands that he experienced trauma. Basically, abandonment, no dad, a mom who chose her addictions. And even when he got taken from her, his grandparents couldn't keep him for long-term, for good reasons. And so to him, life was a trauma.

41:17 It had always been a trauma and living with his mom for a number of years, there was abuse, there was danger, there were things going on that a child shouldn't have been there and danger. Yeah, I said that. And so he had lots of trauma and, and people understand that even though they don't necessarily have a clue how much impact that has on a child, especially on their brain. And I've only learned that over this long time. And, but what they don't understand is there are lots of other things that are traumatic to a child and have that impact and that kind of impact, not always the same, but so as you all were learning both with your own children and in your ministry, how do you, what are some things that people might say, Oh, that was a trauma that would cause our child to act this way or the uncertainties of life that, that came out of that makes them fearful people. So could you talk just a little about those kinds of things that they might not have realized would be traumatic? Yeah. And I think the biggest thing for, for me has been understand there's meaning behind behavior. So just simply pausing and asking the question, why, why is,

42:49 why is he or she acting this way or why is he, she, or she making this decision and realizing that there's something behind it. And usually it's a result of some impacts of trauma or the, or the consequences or outcomes of trauma. So neglect, abandon, abused. So, you know, it could be something as what we would think as simple as transitions, you know, Hey, we're going to go in five, we're going to go right now. You know, and that is triggering to a child because they do not feel safe. They do not feel like they're in the, they don't have the knowledge. They don't know what's expected there. It's unpredictable and coming from an unpredictable, unsafe environment then goes, they just, it spirals them out of bounds. Right. And then, but what we're parenting in those moments is their attitude and their actions. And that's not okay because this really has nothing to do with the problem. The real problem is we didn't create an environment that felt safe and secure in that moment. So it can decide. I think the meaning behind behavior is really the best, one of the best tools. I don't always catch it. Confess that out loud because it's hard to not parent, parent the attitude and actions. Yeah. Two, two folks who we really appreciate and trust their research. One is Dr. Dan Siegel. And he talks about how trauma is a term used to mean any overwhelming experience or anything that then creates the inability to cope. So lots of experiences can be overwhelming. I mean, a car accident can be overwhelming. A

44:19 difficult and demanding classroom teacher can be overwhelming. An unexpected experience with the, what should have been a trusted adult like a neighbor or a grandparent or a coach that can be experienced as trauma. Another psychiatrist that we like, a believer named Dr. Kurt Thompson, he says that every child is born into the world looking for someone looking for them and they never stop. So if a child doesn't feel seen, and that can happen in all kinds of family systems, it can happen with very, very busy parents or in large families or when there's a child that has, that demands more attention because of a medical need or because they're high performing or whatever. The child is born into the world looking for someone looking for them and they don't think anybody sees them. There's trauma associated with that. And so I think when we realized that trauma doesn't always have to look like classic definitions of child abuse. And I would say what we do know also about the brain is the impact of neglect is actually worse on the brain than trauma. So feeling neglected as a child growing up or having some experiences of neglect are actually very damaging to the brain. So I think parents often take on a lot of responsibility. Sometimes the trauma didn't happen, maybe happened on their watch,

45:51 but not by their hand. And so again, being detectives and good students of our children so that we see signs and can stop some situation that we're not aware of that's going on or that we can be aware of the people that have influence in our children's lives. I think those are all really important, unfortunately, skills that we need to have as parents. And I think there are different camps of beliefs on accepting the fact that and what the impacts of trauma are. So I would say that there's a traditional old school, pull your boots up or your bootstraps, just get over it. And that doesn't work. So even checking who you are in that spectrum or everything is this is because of the traumatic experience. I don't know that that's always true either. I think we just need to be willing to ask the question, where is this coming from? And why is he or she acting this way or behaving this way? And then diving, taking a deeper dive. And it's not a blame of, oh, this is because they're trauma, you know, they have no choice. It's or it's not a, hey, just get over it and, you know, work harder. That's not gonna happen either. We as parents, especially, we have to be part of the healing process for kids. And it's hard. I'll confess to you that it's very difficult, especially when it's in your face all the time. And it rubs you against every value you have, because you're like, because you can't rationalize it, because it's not rational. It's actually irrational because of the hand that each

47:23 of the children in some of our cases have been dealt and makes it very difficult. Such opportunities, we always, I mean, parenting is just a constant state of sanctification, constantly becoming aware of my own sin, confessing my own sin, asking Jesus for what I need in the moment, self-control, wisdom, mercy, patience, peace, love, whatever I don't have. That is that constant act of releasing what is not okay and taking in more of the Lord. That's the good stuff in the middle of all the challenge. I love that God is so efficient and that he takes the same situation and he does the work in our child's life and he does the work in our spouse's life and he does work in my life, all from the same situation. And he's good at doing that and I'm grateful even if I don't always enjoy the work he's doing. So last thing, just briefly, last comments you would have as you think of these people out here listening who love someone who's put their life in danger, who's rejected them and their faith and whose distance, I can't tell you how many now are apart. Their children have separated from them and will have nothing to do with them. I just read some more of it last night where I was with a group praying and he's gone. So one last major thought to how to do that.

48:57 I'll say two quick things and then let Beth see the major thought because she's better at communicating than me. But one shameless plug, so back to back as an organization or ministry, I believe so firmly in the impacts of trauma and equipping healthy, safe adults to be a part of the healing process for other adults, children, doesn't matter, to heal from their own traumatic experiences, that we created a whole separate entity under our umbrella called Trauma-Free World. And you can find that traumafreeworld.org, but it's resources to equip people with the right skills to work with kids from hard places or adults from hard places and they're really, really, really life-giving. And the other thing I would say is what I've already communicated a little bit is, and Beth has really been a model for this in our marriage and in our parenting is at all costs, don't break relationship. If you cannot break relationship.

49:55 That's my mantra. It is so hard because I was not raised that way personally. If you were misbehaved, you were disconnected or removed. And so if you can maintain relationship, and it doesn't always have to be maybe even in your home, if it's not healthy or safe, I mean, there are boundaries. However, if you can maintain relationship, that's the only way to work towards a process of healing and the relationship aim for that individual. And our sanctification process is part of it. But I will tell you, my tagline on my email says easier said than done, but I mean, if you're in, so I'll keep trying to do that if you keep trying to do that. But anyway.

50:38 Thank you. Oh, when I was growing up, my mom used to tell me when I got in real trouble, go to the 9-1-1 verse, which was Psalm 91-1 about whoever dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. And a number of years ago, one of our foster daughters ran away from home. She was 17. And the day that she ran away, I was so scared. I mean, I was so scared. I didn't even know how to pray. I just was like chanting almost Psalm 91-1. And I was in this like, oh God, like be her shelter, be her shelter. And I realized I had come to believe a lie that I was her shelter and that outside of me, she was unsheltered. And I had to say to her, I had to say to the Lord, I trust you. I'm not even sure if my heart fully does, but my mind knows to trust you that you love her more than I do. And that helped that whole process. That only helped give me peace while we waited to reestablish contact with her. But it also helped me not be mad at her. When I finally was able to talk to her again, because I was afraid, I wanted to be angry. Like, why did you leave and why did you put us through that? And where have you been? And do you know what could happen to you? And instead it was like, oh gosh, God, you've never lost sight of her. And there's so many beautiful verses about it. But honestly, that's the hope for me is God loves her and he's

52:13 using me to express his love towards her. So I don't want to miss that opportunity, but he's not going to stop pursuing and loving our children ever. I mean, he doesn't even want one of us to be lost. So sometimes just letting my head focus on things that I know are true eventually penetrate to my broken heart. Bless you. Thank you so much. And to my listeners, I'm going to put some stuff in show notes. Be sure to find them if they're not on the podcast place you listen, because they don't all carry that. And I just want you to find the resources, but I want you to have heard the heart behind the things that they're sharing. There's a reason that our kids make these choices.

53:01 And we need to look to help discover what that is and help them get healed from whatever is causing that. And I couldn't agree more. Do all you can to maintain relationship, to hold on to the relationship, even when you can't control them, even when you don't have an answer. But if they know that they're loved and that they can come to you, even if they can't come home, that they can, they have someone who is there for them. And healing takes time. And they've given us such a number of really helpful tools to work toward that healing, and also to understand it's about us too, and the things God's teaching us. And I know that's one of my greatest lessons on our prodigal journey is learning God's working on me is much more than he's working on my son. So, so thank you so much. God bless you. Thank you for joining me today on the When You Love a Prodigal Podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Your review helps the show reach more people with the hope and encouragement of Jesus. Don't forget, take a look at the show notes. And for more helpful information, resources and books, check out judydouglass.com. That's Douglass with two S's.

54:39 You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter and Instagram at JudyDouglass417. Until next week.