And that’s true no matter what your ideology is. I think it’s important to learn how to pay attention to your internal thermometer and learn coping and emotional regulation tools so that you don’t scream at your family.

And one of the reasons why. We’re screaming in our families because we’re living in a super weird time, and at the same time, we’re all just kind of like moving through it without really grappling with it.

And the reason we’re not grappling with it is because we don’t know what’s going on. So it’s not that I’m unwilling, at church, to sit and talk to my friends and say what I think about what’s going on, being scared that they’re going to be combative towards me. I don’t feel that at all. I don’t know what’s going on.

And so I know that I’m not gonna bring an informed opinion about what’s going on. All I know is it seems crazy, and then I can go to the internet and watch people who have large followings tell me what they think. That’s really it. I don’t feel at this point that I could actually get to the bottom of what’s happening in many of the major controversial issues that are going around right now.

So I feel foolish, I feel dumb. I don’t wanna sit in a room and be like, I watched this Tucker Carlson video and he said this, and it sounded right to me. So why don’t we all think that? I know that’s not really good research or logic and we’re all doing some form of that, right?

And there’s so much misinformation and there’s so many voices. I like Taco Carlson. No beef with him. it’s just a good example of. My knowledge at this point is just coming from what major influencers are saying, and I recognize fully that I don’t really know. Right? I just don’t really know.

So no, I don’t wanna talk about it with my friends. I don’t feel like there’s anything that we can do about it. And against the backdrop of this weird society that we’re living in right now, and this. Super weird administration where we don’t understand the decisions that they’re making. We’re having to raise kids, we’re having to raise kids, and we know that AI is changing things, but we don’t really understand how, so we don’t know how to prepare them.

So I’ve homeschooled my kids and we did classical conversations this year, and as I’m thinking about the amount of time it took for me to participate in that program. And to hold the hearts of my girls as they were like, oh, this thing is due and I have to do it. And me being like, that thing that you’re doing does not matter. It’s not important.

I’m trying to decide what we’re gonna do in the fall. How am I educating these kids? And I brought this up to my husband and he’s been really diving into AI and kind of asking himself, you know, where, how should he position himself for a career? Where is this going? Do we want to be part of it? Do we not wanna be part of it?

And I said, you know, what are the skills that these kids are gonna have to learn? Really and truly because for a while we said they need to be able to ask good questions. Okay, but how do you raise children to ask good questions? Where’s the curriculum for that? I’m not sure I know how to ask good questions.

And maybe even if I ask interesting questions, I actually don’t know where to go anymore for the truth. I dunno where to go anymore for the truth. So, you know, I can teach them to Google something, I can teach them to AI something, but the answers that come back, how do we know if they’re true or real? We don’t.

And that’s why we’re seeing an increasing amount of people consume slop, which is short form video or shows on Netflix because we’re just trying to numb ourselves out from this weird dystopian society that we’re in. We’re not quite there, but we’re headed there and we’re trying to raise good humans in this environment.

And it was interesting, my husband said, really, we should teach them emotional regulation skills because we don’t know what’s gonna come up, but we know we need them to be calm and to think clearly. I thought that was so interesting.

And a great deal. My work is around that. But that’s not why he said it. He said it because he genuinely believes that no matter what happens, we just have to teach our kids how to cope with hard and stressful things.

And I think you can do that without fear mongering, right? Like you can take kids on a hike and kind of push their levels and watch them have an emotional experience around something difficult, and then coach them through that and say, all right, I know your brain is telling you, probably things like this right now. Let’s explore that. What’s your brain telling you? How do you wanna respond?

And he was saying about school, understanding, scheduling and time management is really important. So it almost doesn’t matter what school we’re teaching them. Let’s just give them enough stuff that they have to be, especially my 15-year-old cognizant of her schedule and all the moving pieces and long-term projects and pacing them.

Because whatever she ends up doing, whether she has a job or as a mom, or even chooses a religious vocation, she’s gonna need to choose something there and she’s going to need to manage her time. So time management is a skill. And then emotionally regulating yourself when there’s a lot on your plate.

So we’re all asking ourselves what kind of summer we wanna have, and I know there’ll be a bunch of cute Instagram things I remember. A couple years ago when it was like you only have seven summers left with your kid.

You know, they were counting the summers and then last year it was like, let’s have a 90 summer. And then I’ve already seen some things that say, let’s have an analog summer. There’s gonna be some sort of cute internet campaign around the kind of summer that you want.

But I want us to say out loud how weird it is to be raising kids and wondering, is the world falling apart? And I don’t have the language for it. We will call this time something. 10 years from now. 10 years from now, we’ll look back and we’ll be like that time and it will have a name.

And it’s really been COVID through now it’s like COVID was one thing and then we’re gonna throw in AI and then we’re gonna throw in whatever’s happening in the government, which was happening with the previous administration too, right? Like this really isn’t a party affiliation thing, it’s our just lack of trust in any kind of information or anything reliable. Or that anyone is taking care of us, right?

And so it’s like if you had two checked out parents, and it doesn’t matter if your Republican parent is the parent on board, or your Democrat parent is the parent on board, you’re just like, well, I can’t really trust either of those parents, so I’m on my own. But then you’re looking around going, where is my agency? Where is my control?

And when you don’t have any control, you just entertain yourself. That’s why so many, that’s why so many moms are turning to short form videos and they end up scrolling just to cope with their lives, and then they’re beating themselves up for that.

I don’t have the answer. I just want us to start saying the truth about it, that it’s really hard to watch what’s happening right now. And to see things like the assassination of Charlie Kirk or the really charged emotional conversations around ice, and then have your kid be like, can I have another juice box? It’s so jarring.

And then you’re like, yes, no. Is there too much sugar in that? What am I doing with my life? Is all the food poisoned? And then you’re like, I should teach these kids to read. And then the other day, one of my kids was doing a project and I had this thought, well, should we just AI all the resources? Like do they really even need to understand how to find books and research things?

And we’ve already moved a little bit past that. A lot of kids Google things, but AI is just another level. And do I need to teach them about how to ask AI for where the resources are and then to confirm them, and even if we confirm the resources that AI pulled, who’s confirming that that resource was the right one? Like it all feels like it’s built on a house of cards, right?

So I don’t know the answer for what kind of summer we’re supposed to have, but I want us to link arms and say it is weird right now. And we are still having to parent these children for a future we cannot even see. And I love you and I’m with you and we’re in the trenches together and this is weird together.

I was thinking about Britain in World War I, World War II, and you know, they put the signs on, keep calm and carry on because collectively as a country, England was like, Hey, we’re at war. There’s some bombs happening, but I still need you to teach the times table of your kids, right? So they literally like put up these posters to try to keep everyone calm. I need you to keep doing your jobs.

And I feel like the backdrop is weird like that. Obviously there are no bombs in the United States right now, so it’s not a physical safety matter, but the psychological warfare and the misinformation and the lack of knowing who to trust is so high right now. And then we’re supposed to be taking care of these kids.

So if you’re sensing that and you don’t have language for it, or you feel like you’re going crazy, I just wanna say you’re not, it doesn’t feel like enough to say things are really weird right now. That’s like a very casual sentence for describing. The level of uncertainty and the lack of safety that we have.

Again, if you grew up with an alcoholic parent, you were always listening for the door. You’re listening for the follow of their footsteps to see if they’re dragging them on the floor or not. You’re looking at their eyes to see if they’re red and glassy or not. You’re like, is this gonna be a safe version of my parent or an unsafe version of my parent? You never know, so you’re always on guard.

And that’s what’s happening to us right now on a national level, and I haven’t even spoken anything about finances and how expensive everything is. It is a weird time and we are not saying it clearly to each other, and I think the reason is not that we’re scared to say it.

I don’t feel scared to talk about it, but I don’t feel informed enough to talk about it. I would feel foolish to sit around with my friends and try to comment on the war in Iran. When I so clearly don’t really know what’s happening or why. We can talk about a video that we saw on YouTube. We could talk about what somebody else is saying about it.

But my confidence level that I have any depth of knowledge there is so low that when someone goes, Hey, how are you doing? It ends up for me being like, oh, I’m good. We’re about to do soccer season, and that is not at all how I feel. I feel weird. I feel uncertain. I feel foolish trying to decide what curriculum I’m gonna do with these kids in the fall and I will pick something and we will work on our Times tables.

And I’ve been really focused on virtues with these kids and with emotional regulation skills because if nothing else, I wanna raise kids who are kind, who speak kindly to other people and who know how to cope with stress. ’cause I don’t really know what world we’re preparing them for.

And I try to keep them off screens and I don’t let them hear a lot of conversations about. The weirdness of what’s going on because they wouldn’t be clear conversations anyway. If I feel shaken up and unsafe, all the more would a kid listening to their parents talk about that?

So I’m just here to say things feel really weird and you’re not alone. And we still have to plan a summer with our kids. I help moms cope with the summer, so I’m outlining our summer program right now with fun things to do with kids and how to make your summer schedule and how to make rules about snack time and screen time and all of that. I mean, I’m still gonna do it.

But I just really, truly, and fully wanna acknowledge what a weird backdrop there is around deciding your rules around screen time and snacks for the summer, and. I don’t know what to do about it other than to just come here and say, it’s weird right now and I love you and I believe in Jesus Christ and it’s going to be okay.

And he wins in the end. And all of this is just a lot. It’s like the scary part of the movie. We’re watching a movie right now and this is the scary part, but in the end, he wins. Got gotta hold onto that. We’ve gotta hold on to the hope and the trust that we have in Christ. ’cause we’re not gonna find it in the world.

And that’s something you can teach your kids too. Like, Hey, let me tell you who Jesus is and what he did for us and why it is everything and why we should pay attention to some of the things that are going on. But we can’t really affect most of the things that are going on on a national level, but we can pray and we can believe.

And then we can turn around and be kind to each other. I really have been having conversations ’cause kids are naturally unkind, most of them, right? Kids naturally are a little bit of barbarians and they want all the resources and they want all the fun things that they can have. And if you let them decide, they’d eat chocolate cake and watch movies and they wanna spend all their time with their mom, and I’m totally fine that they come out that way. Right.

But my job is to teach them to speak kindly to each other. It starts at the family and then to go out into the world and create more kindness, not more of this sharp and divisive tone that is coming out of so many of us. And listen, it’s because we’re scared and we don’t know what to do. So I understand why, but I want to raise kids that are kind. I think that is the Christian message.

And again, I just wanna say like I’m with you and it’s weird and I don’t have the answer. We need like a really catchy poster that we can all put up that just says like, I don’t know, somebody come up with a really great catchphrase for, it doesn’t matter what political beliefs that you have right now, it is a weird time to be a mom and raise kids. Okay? But we gotta clean to the Lord and it’s gonna be okay.

Alright my friends. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me and have a blessed day.