Ep. 143 || Nurturing Your Child’s Gifts: An Interview on Faithful Motherhood with Karen Hodge Transcript
This transcript is made possible by our generous donors. Learn how you can join them. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura: On today’s episode of Risen Motherhood, Karen Hodge is joining us to talk about Faithful Motherhood and how to recognize and cultivate your children’s gifts. You probably recognize Karen’s name, as she’s had a huge influence on many of us at Risen Motherhood—and she currently serves as our Board Chair.
In addition, she's the Coordinator for PCA Women’s Ministry, is a pastor’s wife of a new church plant in Charlotte, and is a mom to two adult children, Anna Grace and Haddon. Karen is also the co-author of two books, Transformed: Life-taker to Life-giver and Life-giving Leadership. As I mentioned, Karen has been truly influential with the ministry of Risen Motherhood, and in particular, my own life. She one of the wisest women I know, and I can’t wait for you to hear her share today. Not only do we talk about recognizing and stewarding our children’s gifts, we also get into weaknesses, and how we should view them in God’s economy. And of course, the conversation bleeds into talking about stewarding our own gifts as mothers, and the words Karen shares are powerful, convicting and encouraging. So sit back and listen in as we get to the interview with Karen, Emily and me.
Oh! And one more thing! If you want to check out all our Faithfulness in Motherhood series where we interview women who are further down the path, we’ve put together a new page on our site, risenmotherhood.com/faithfulmotherhood. Head there to listen to all the interviews we’ve done in this series, as well as any related articles and resources we have. Okay, to the interview!
Laura: Well thanks Karen for being on the Risen Motherhood podcast today!
Karen: I’m thrilled to be here!
Laura: We’re so excited. For those who don’t know, Karen is a dear friend of mine and of Emily. She’s actually our R|M Board Chair! I know we mentioned a lot of this stuff in the show intro, but I can’t help but share how meaningful it is to finally have you on our show. We’re excited to be able to talk to you today about faithfulness in motherhood. First, why don’t we have you share a little bit about yourself, your family, what you guys are currently doing, your children—things like that?
Karen: Oh, sure. As we’re talking today, I’m in the midst of a move, which is pretty characteristic of my life. I’ve been a pastor’s wife for 29 years this past Sunday. We were in a congregation with Laura in Naperville, IL. I’m married to Chris. We have decided to leave the big church and go plant a church from scratch. We did that once before, so we know what we’re getting ourselves into. It’s going to be called King’s Cross, and it’s just outside Charlotte, NC. We have two adult children: Anna Grace, who’s married to Kevin and lives in Denver where they have their own animation and graphics company; and Haddon, who lives in Washington D.C. as an economic analyst for the federal government—basically a geek who writes papers and loves his job. [Laughter] Anyway, I love my family and anytime we can get together, it’s a good, good thing. I also serve as the Coordinator for Women’s Ministries in the PCA, which means I connect people to people, and people to resources, and churches to churches. Often I tell people I’m a hinge; I stand in the gap and connect people. And I love to connect people to Risen Motherhood any chance I get.
Emily: Well, you have been a blessing to us in that. Our listeners won’t know this, but Karen has been a real spiritual mother to us as well. She’s come in from a ministry role and prayed for us and shepherded us through decisions and things we’re evaluating. The things we’re going to talk about in today’s interview are things we’ve experienced first-hand with Karen. She’s someone who is further along in her faith and ministry, and able to see our strengths and weaknesses and help us process those in light of the gospel. We’re really grateful to talk to you about that today!
Karen: Glad to be here.
Laura: So, as we shared, we’re talking about nurturing your children’s gifts. Karen, why don’t you start us off by helping us understand how do you identify your children’s gifts? And once you do that, how would you biblically foster them? I feel like this is a question I’m already starting to think about with my six year-old. I’m not sure where to even begin.
Karen: Let me preface everything by saying I’m not a perfect parent. I have adult children, so everything you hear today is going to be from 0-100% effective. [Laughter] There have been lots of things I’ve had to repent of over the years.
I think when we think about giftings for our kids, you can think in terms of natural giftings—the ways God made them with aptitudes that make them good at certain things—and spiritual giftings, which we’re looking towards. Of course, that doesn’t come until after conversion. So the question you asked is how do you identify those things? Well, I think it’s done best within the context of community. The family is a community, right? But there’s also the context of a church community, which is where they can see older people in their life modeling those things—whether they’re the natural gifts or spiritual gifts. So you’re looking, you’re listening, you’re present to your kids, you’re debriefing with your kids a lot in that church community. It’s not something segmented in parenting; it’s integrated into everyday conversations. In other words, you might say to your kid, “I really noticed you lit up when you served in that way.” Or, “It really seemed like you connected to this group of people because they care about this.” That type of thing. I know from my own children’s life the people in their lives who affirmed their gifts besides their parents. You kind of hear the echo around the room. I may have said, “Haddon, I really think God has made you this way,” but when that other person said it, it went to a whole other level of affirmation. To say, “This is something I think God has uniquely designed you to do,” is great, but it’s even better if that older person says, “Hey, will you come and do this with me?”
So how do we cultivate those things and foster those things? It’s really about discipleship, which sounds like an educational word. It seems very classroom-like, doesn’t it? When I think about parenting, I think about it in terms of discipleship. Discipleship is “follow me as I follow Christ.” So, what did Jesus give his life to? He gave his life to serve and not be served. And that takes gifts, all kinds of gifts. So discipleship, at its heart, is showing people—your kids—who Christ is and showing them how to use their gifts in a meaningful way in the body of Christ.
Emily: It’s so interesting. Even though God designed us in a certain way and we can see that in our children—their aptitudes, strengths, giftings—we can also see how that can make them puffed up or desirous of achieving for their own gain. Everything we do—because we’re on this side of the fall—is impacted by our sin, brokenness of the world, inability to achieve what we want, lack of opportunities to try. To flow into that next question, how do we take those strengths, point those out to our kids, and filter those through the lens of the gospel, which puts a different spin on those?
Karen: Anybody who knows me knows I talk about this world a lot. Again, it’s one of those words that you think is a Sunday school word: stewardship.
Laura: Oh yeah, that’s your favorite word. [Laughter]
Karen: Well, you said it Emily: the gifts don’t belong to you. Rule number one is teaching your kids that the way God made them is for his glory, and the gifts don’t belong to you to use for your own glory. But we’re hard-wired for performance. We live in a performance culture. Even on the backs of our minivans are the showcases of our performance culture. What are you uniquely gifted to do? Just go to a stoplight and you can figure out what a family values. Your time and talents don’t belong to you. Anything God has given you in your hands to do, you do it for the glory of God. That means when you’re making choices about how you use your gifts, you can ask yourself this question. Let’s lay it out:
“Hey mom, can I sign up for ____?” How do you make that decision? You ask, “Can I glorify God? Will this be a good stewardship of our gifts? Will this be a good stewardship for our family?” And that narrows it down to what’s at the heart of discipleship: investing in eternal things with our kids. So that means the Word of God and people. We use our gifts to further the Word of God and be in relationship with other people. That’s what they’re for. They’re not to get a trophy, even though you might have some.
Laura: I think that’s one of the most formative things that you’ve taught me as you’ve counseled me over the years with my own gifts. I can only imagine how you did that with your own children, and what a gift that’d be to them! That’s something I’ve so appreciated: my gifts are not my own. In many ways, it’s encouraged me to do really scary things, like Risen Motherhood. I came to Karen and said, “I can’t do this! I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if this is the right move for me.” It was wonderful to hear her talk to me about stewardship, my giftings, where God has put me, what he has in front of me—that was really impactful for me to start R|M and continue it. You’ve really shepherded both Emily and me in knowing our gifts are for the Kingdom, for the glory of God. In many ways I feel like R|M wouldn’t exist if you weren’t whispering in my ear; I’m not even kidding. This is turning into a moment here. [Laura sniffles and laughs.]
Karen: Aw. well I’ll tell you this: listen to the first thing you said, “I can’t do this.” That’s where you begin. When we think about gifts and show our kids how God has made them, the first thing they have to acknowledge is, “I can’t do this.” “But God can do this through me. He made me, and he made these gifts. He will give me the strength to employ these gifts in whatever the stewardship looks like.” So there’s a humility that has to be cultivated in our kids, and they have to see it modeled by their parents, who actively say, “I can’t do it.”
Laura: I think that really helps when looking at our children’s weakness or areas they need to grow in. They’re saying legitimately, “I can’t do this,” but there’s the call to say, “We do hard things for God’s glory.” Sometimes we are out of our comfort zones. I see areas in my children that I think I’d like to foster a biblical character quality that I think they need to grow in. Are there any tips to help foster some areas of weakness we might see in our children?
Karen: Here’s the first question: are you okay with being weak as a parent, and are you okay with your kid being weak? Now that’s not popular. We share what our kids are great at, but we don’t ask for prayer in something they’re struggling with. That doesn’t come up very often in women’s Bible studies. When I think about my own life, there are far greater pitfalls with our strengths than our weaknesses. Paul is right. When we are weak, he is strong. His grace is sufficient in our weakness. And that’s what we boast in! We boast in our weakness! But that’s so counter-cultural. God gives us these things, so we would be dependent on him.
What parent doesn’t wake up every day and pray for their kid to be spiritually mature? That’s what you guys are doing at Risen Motherhood! What is spiritual maturity? Dependence. It’s not strength, it’s weakness. So actually, when our kids come to us and say they can’t do something or they’re so frustrated, that’s a classroom right there. You stop and say, “You know what, bud? You’re right. You can’t do it, but God can.” And then you lift their eyes upwards. They’re going to grow up like Haddon and Anna Grace, and they’ll be working and hit a brick wall—whether it’s personally, relationally, professionally. They’re going to say, “I can’t do this.” You’re training your kids to lift their eyes in dependence to God now. So, weakness is a wonderful classroom. Parents have to be okay with being transparent about their own weaknesses. That may not be the answer you wanted to hear—
Laura: No, that was great.
Emily: You’re laying out the good news of Jesus Christ—how it meets us as a mom and how we deliver that to our children. It’s the very thing we feel when we come up against those hard spots in motherhood where think we can’t do it anymore or we don’t feel sufficient for the task of raising these children, but then turn to Jesus. That’s the exact same answer we give to our kids.
I’ve been encouraged when I’ve communicated that to my kids in a moment of their discouragement, and then watched as God has given them mercy. Maybe they’ve woken up the next morning and we say, “It’s a fresh new day and a fresh new chance, so let’s praise God today for the way he’s sustained us!” It’s really encouraging.
I also appreciate how you mentioned earlier about slowing down and going to God in prayer, being willing to be open-handed and asking how to best steward this. That doesn’t necessarily mean taking the easiest route or most comfortable path for us as parents or for our kids. But we can rejoice over how God is going to meet them even when we didn’t pick the most comfortable or glamorous activity. We’re not training them in the skills that all their friends may applaud them on, but we’re training them in something eternal. Lord willing, we’ll see how God develops their Christlikeness and character in that. It’s good, but it requires us to do exactly what you’re saying: stop, pray, think, and wait. It’s not, “Well, everyone else is doing it! Sign up our family!”
Karen: I love what you just said too, Emily. You have to stop every day. And as a family, we used to also do it on Sunday night. We’d say, “We’re Team Hodge. Team Hodge is going to be deployed this week. What are we going to do? Haddon’s going to be doing this. Anna Grace is going to be doing this. Dad’s doing this. Mom’s doing this. How do we work together with our gifts—as a community—to advance the kingdom?” It’s rarely comfortable or convenient. Just acknowledging that’s part of our calling in this broken world is understanding what it means to serve in a broken world: it’s not going to be easy. But it’s going to be good and sweet.
Laura: Mm. Well Karen, you hinted at this earlier about the local church coming alongside your kids, helping to reinforce some of the same things you were saying at home. Can you expand on that? How did they play a part? Why is the church important in investing into your kids? How is it an extension of the family? Did you do anything specific to make this happen?
Karen: Well, it was organic, and it should be organic. I think we think programmatically in churches, like we shove people with their own age and they miss out on the intergenerational glory of the church. When my kids were little, we were in a church plant, so they were constantly with older people. So much so, when we moved to Naperville and a church that had all the bells and whistles and programs, the number one thing Haddon said was, “How am I going to be with any older people?” He could see the lack as a sixth grader; he knew that was huge for him. We intentionally said, “You’re going to have to work hard at this.” As God brought people into their lives, we had them over for dinner. Many of them said, “Forget your parents. Let’s go eat out by ourselves.” Again, that is discipleship. Transformation—really understanding how God has gifted us—happens in the context of community. It cannot happen in isolation or taking some diagnostic survey. We think we can figure out who we are, because that’s what’s at the crux of it: who are you? Every kid who goes to college has to put that on an essay; you’re preparing them now. We’ve had a lot of ministry with kids and when they get to that essay, they don’t know what to put down. The question is about how kids are being rooted in their identity in Christ, not their abilities; so they don’t go to college saying, “I’m a _____,” instead of, “I’m a daughter/son of the King.” We want to them to think eternally. Here’s a quick story that puts all these pieces together:
When Anna Grace got married, we said, “This is your one shot. You’re a pastor’s kid, so if you want to do your own thing and not invite everyone, you can get married here in California where you’re at school. But if you want to get married at our church in Naperville, well you know, it’s a covenant community celebration. That’s the way it’s going to be.” She wanted little kids to come; we had tables with crayons. It was total glory and chaos. But here’s the picture I want you to see. When Anna Grace got married, she said, “I don’t only want people from NPC. I want people from every congregation who have shaped me.” We had served in Charlotte, Birmingham, south Florida, and Chicago. Those people came and sat with our family at the wedding. When we came around the corner—people told me not to do the ugly cry, but I did—I saw the bride of Christ who had prepared the bride, Anna Grace, for Kevin. God used every single one of those people. I turned the corner and saw all of it together, which was a little foretaste of glory. That’s what we get to do in the church. We’re preparing the bride to meet the bridegroom. As a parent, you’re preparing your child for eternity, to meet the bridegroom. As an older adult in the church, that’s what you’re doing with the younger people. That’s a sacred calling; it’s a really sweet thing. Every day, we’re pointing them towards the destination, and the destination is home. Everything we do to serve, to relate in community has to have that eternal perspective.
Emily: Wow. I absolutely love that story. I hope everyone who’s listening today—because we can get really focused on what’s going on in our homes and what our kids’ needs are—remembers not to lose sight of what we’re preparing our kids for. Sometimes I can only see that I’m preparing them for bedtime, and maybe beyond that, adulthood. But that reminder that I’m preparing them for home, for eternity, to meet Christ…
I thank you, as a younger woman, for reorienting our perspective today and for encouraging us to not lose sight of that beautiful, sacred calling. I really appreciate that.
Karen: Well, we’re going to get home before we know it, friends.
Emily and Laura: I know.
Laura: Well Karen, thank you so much for joining us on the Risen Motherhood podcast today. For all of you guys who want to find out more about Karen, you can will be able to find links to her books, social media, and the link on our show notes at risenmotherhood.com. Of course, head over to social media to follow us @risenmotherhood on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. We’ll have links for Karen there as well! Thanks again for joining us Karen. We really appreciate it.
Karen: It’s been my delight.