And Why That’s the Best News a Christian Parent Could Hear
A few weeks ago, I shared three things God was teaching me during our family’s trip overseas. I wrote about trusting God instead of trying to control every outcome. About how exhaustion magnifies what’s already happening in our hearts. About how our children often take their emotional cues from us before we ever say a word. [Read it here]
But a couple weeks after we came home, I became curious about what God had taught my boys. I sat down with each of my four boys—ages 8, 11, 14, and 16—and asked them nearly the same questions about our trip. I expected similar answers. After all, we’d experienced the same flights, the same conversations, the same friends, the same bustling cities, the same beaches, the same meals, the same worship service. Surely they’d all come away with the same “big lesson.”
I couldn’t have been more wrong!
One son mostly remembered playing games and building friendships.
Another kept coming back to how much perspective he gained seeing how people lived and realizing how easily we can become selfish when we forget how much we’ve been given.
One couldn’t stop talking about conversations with local young men after riding a bamboo roller coaster because he realized, “They weren’t really that different [from him].”
My oldest surprised me the most. While everyone else noticed people or experiences, he couldn’t stop thinking about how missionaries shared Christ through businesses, friendships, and everyday life. He was fascinated by how the gospel was being communicated thoughtfully within another culture.
The same trip.
The same parents.
The same conversations.
Four completely different hearts learning four completely different lessons.
And somewhere in the middle of reading back through all four interviews, God gently whispered something to me; this is what discipleship looks like.
Discipleship is not about producing identical children or nor is it about making sure every child walks away with the exact same lesson. Rather, it’s about faithfully creating opportunities for each child to encounter Him in the unique way He designed them.
As moms, I think we quietly carry a lot of pressure.
We read the same Bible story to all our kids and wonder why one is captivated while another is fidgeting. We ask the same dinner-table questions and wonder why one child talks for twenty minutes while another shrugs and says, “I don’t know.” We pray over all of them and secretly hope they’ll all grow spiritually at the same pace.
I know I’ve felt that pressure.
But interviewing my boys reminded me that God isn’t raising carbon copies. He’s shaping unique image-bearers. Each with different personalities. Different gifts. Different ways of noticing His world. Different questions. Different hearts.
That realization was incredibly freeing.
But here’s something else I realized: the trip itself didn’t disciple my boys.
I could have taken them halfway around the world, checked every sightseeing box, flown home, and missed the whole opportunity. What mattered wasn’t simply where we went. It was how we walked through it together.
Before we left, we learned about the culture and talked about different worldviews.
While we traveled, we asked questions, we noticed, we wondered, we prayed. At dinner, we talked about what surprised us. At bedtime, we processed what we’d seen. And when we came home, we reflected on how God had been at work.
Those conversations didn’t happen by accident. They were intentional. And I think that’s the part we often miss.
As parents, we spend so much time trying to create meaningful experiences for our children. We save for vacations. We sign them up for camps. We plan family traditions. We look for teachable moments. Those things are wonderful. But experiences alone don’t disciple our children.
Parents who intentionally help their children interpret those experiences through God’s truth do.
That realization has changed how I think about parenting. It has also reminded me why I’m so passionate about coaching moms.
People sometimes assume my ministry is about helping moms feel less overwhelmed. And while I certainly want that for them, peaceful motherhood has never been the destination.
It’s the starting place.
Because moms who are grounded in God’s Truth are able to notice when experiences either illustrate that Truth or reveal a lie. This leads these moms to know how to ask better questions and create a home where conversations happen naturally. They are able to help their children interpret life through a Biblical worldview.
That’s where discipleship begins. Not with perfect parenting. Not with having all the answers. But with a parent who is willing to slow down, notice what God is already doing, and invite their children into it.
Looking back, I don’t think Indonesia changed my boys. God did. Indonesia simply gave us something to process together. The truth is, you don’t need a passport to do that. You can do it after a difficult soccer game. While watching a thunderstorm roll in. At the grocery store. During bedtime prayers. After a hard conversation with a friend.
Every ordinary day is filled with opportunities to ask, “What did you notice?” “Why do you think that happened?” “What do you think God might be showing us?”
Those simple questions are often where discipleship begins.
So if you’ve ever worried that your children aren’t all “getting it” the same way, take heart. Maybe God isn’t writing the same story in each of them. Maybe He’s faithfully writing four different stories.
Your job isn’t to produce identical outcomes. Your job is to faithfully create spaces where each child can encounter the same faithful God. And friend, when you do that, you’ll discover something beautiful: the simple truth that it doesn’t all depend on you. But the joy is that God still chooses to use imperfect parents like us to guide His children to Himself.
The greatest legacy you leave your children won’t be the trips you took or the places you visited. It will be that, wherever life took them, you consistently helped them learn to see the world through God’s eyes.
If this article stirred something in you, it’s probably because you want more than peaceful days—you want to raise children who know Jesus deeply and follow Him for life.
That’s exactly why I created the Peaceful Mom Reset.
Because intentional discipleship doesn’t begin with having all the right parenting answers.
It begins when a mom learns to recognize the thoughts, fears, and lies that are shaping her home. Peace isn’t the destination. It’s the foundation for becoming the kind of parent who consistently points her children to Christ.
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