One of my (many, many) weirdnesses in parenting my teens has been the fact that every. Single. One of mine is opinionated and fairly strong in personality.
This is weird for me because I was totally the opposite. I was an I-excel-in-being-a-doormat-and-pleasing-the-world teenager.
There’s always this weird tension for me when summer break splats on our family like an ice cream cone on a sidewalk.
The kids are fatigued, even exhausted, from school. Heck, I’m tired from the school year.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
She gave me a gift that day.
Years ago, my friend and I sat on my back porch in Uganda–no doubt with tea or coffee in hand. I was preparing for our first home assignment, and the forecasted meltdowns of at least one jetlagged child in a crowded plane where everyone would be able to sleep if it weren’t for your kid.
Our youngest would have been three, and 20 hours of flying or so makes full-fledged adults want to throw their own fits sometimes.
My friend’s wise words to me that day: “People expect kids to mess up. It’s how the parents handle it that makes the difference.”
I think of God’s words that it’s his kindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). If my kid did the limp-body thing in the middle of the aisle, bawling when everyone’s hoping to get off the plane, I can scoop him up and whisper in his ear: I know you’re so tired. We’re almost there.
If he hits a sibling in his exhaustion, I can calmly discipline with a consequence, rather than blowing my own top.
(We discipline differently for rebellion than for childishness, no?)
Their inevitable childishness or outright sin is going to happen, despite my perfectionism, control, or vigilance. But what I do with those invitations to love my kids like Jesus?
That’s my (Holy-Spirit-fueled) choice.
Maybe these don’t feel like a huge “aha” to you. But this jewel folded in my hands has offered me comfort–when, say, the principal called to say my son was caught jumping off the urinals in the school bathroom, trying to touch the air freshener.
Or having teens, when I’m discouraged by choices they make.
But that idea doesn’t just extend me comfort. There’s wisdom in expecting our kids to be childish–or even to be sinners. I mean, God actually prophesied that his kids would screw up.
It prevents me from being as crestfallen when I discover my child spit cherry pits on the floor.
Yet, to quote my mom, I’ve learned to always expect your kids are smarter than you think they are. And I’m not just talking about them understanding a great deal about adult dynamics and conversations in a home. See, they’ll also be crafty at seeking out ways to sin.
I mean, we’ve all been in those conversations where you or a sibling reveal to your own parents what you were actually getting away with in high school.
Don’t get me wrong. Yes: Have lofty hopes and goals for your kids. Don’t water them down or dumb them down.
I believe in the “aim small, miss small” philosophy: If we aim for holiness and perfection in our kids, the consequences of them making decisions off that mark are hopefully far less.
And yet, it’s healthy to totally anticipate they’ll mess up, as sinners like ourselves tend to do. (If we don’t, in our shock that our little angels would do such a thing, we might be prone to shame-parenting.)
So my thoughts are these, when my kid acts like a kid:
So when your kid acts like a kid this week? Don’t miss your chance to show them Jesus.
Bouncing Back: Helping Your Child Open the Gift of Failure
Reading Time: 4 minutes
One (just one) of the problems with writing a parenting book is the whisper spitting in my ear sometimes as I parent my oh-so-real-life teens. Like the one who yelled at me across the lawn this morning. (See? I’m wondering if I should have let you know that.)
Enter the Whisper: And you wrote a parenting book?
Even though none of that book hinged on my perfection or my kids’. Even though, as I’ve reread my own words, I wouldn’t reel any of them back in.
(Which says a lot. Often in life are words I wish I could reel in.)
And there’s this: If anything, parenting teens has underlined and added exclamation points all over the spiritual disciplines in Permanent Markers. And not one bit because I was the one to write them down.
I needed to teach every one of those principles to my kids–for this day. Right now. Spiritual disciplines and life skills are one way of preparing our kids, packing their metaphorical backpack for a day we don’t know they’ll need it.
A word picture, perhaps?
I admit to watching all aired episodes of This is Us. In one of the final episodes (spoiler alert, here), principal characters Kate and Toby’s legally blind three-year-old, Jack, is shown navigating the path to their Saturdays at the park.
Kate’s written a jazzy song about how exciting the park is–and all the dangers Jack, with the help of his cane, needs to dodge on the way, from the traffic to the dog turds.
At the beginning of the song, Toby asks if perhaps he and Kate should hold both Jack’s hands. But Kate insists Jack needs to find his way.
From everything to the curb to the buzz of the overhead electrical lines, preschool Jack feels his way to the park.
Later in the episode, the gate to Jack’s room is left unlocked on a different, chaotic day. As parenting days so often seem to be.
And Jack dons the red boots he always wears to the park, attempting to find his own way.
Understandably, the entire family is frantic. But even though Jack has wondered out into the world, and his parents are attempting to swallow sharp chunks of guilt–it is Kate’s song, worn into the ruts of Jack’s memory, that saves his life for an unexpectedly life-threatening afternoon.
That, and the help of a grandma who listened to Jack when he mentioned he always wore his boots to the park.
I cried buckets in this episode.
Because in all the ways I feel powerless as a parent, showing my kids ways to fall in love with God has protected their souls even when they feel out of reach. When I don’t really know where their souls are.
So things like teaching our kids to listen to the Holy Spirit, or to have self-control, or that the Bible is true?
Those lessons have shaped their brains when we as parents aren’t there at all.
Another one of those disciplines–community–has also anchored my kids, when mentors and yes, their grandparents, have gone out to find my kids when I don’t know exactly where to look, and the world feels so big.
Jesus’ Body, too, is a prerequisite for God-honoring parenting.
Like the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, God has sometimes mapped out a path through a distant foreign land for our kids–in order for their relationship with God to become intimate.
(See, the prodigal son’s heart was far from his dad’s waaaay before he left. Why else would he hurt his dad by taking off with half his dad’s money?)
Please understand me: This is not some underhanded plug for my book. This to affirm you.
The ways you’re teaching your child like Deuteronomy 6 says–in the car, before bedtime, those long chats after school–are singing a song to them, wearing ruts in their brain.
And it’s not just preparing your kids for the good things it will do: So they can teach Sunday School someday, or so they resist temptation at their locker one afternoon, or so they’re ringing a bell for the Salvation Army in the cold at Christmas.
It’s also so they are safer on a dangerous day. So they remember their way.
At the risk of this post being a bit dark: A couple of years ago, I watched my friend progress through the nightmare of her husband’s stage four kidney cancer. From diagnosis to the day she became a widow—and single mother of three—took just over 100 days.
One night, as I transferred the children to their grandparents and we lamented the agony of their reality, her mother remarked that in her mind, she could still see my friend running around in footie pajamas as a child.
I realized we never know what life skills, what knowledge of God our kids might need in the future for which today must prepare them.
The days were indeed long, and the years short when that window was blissfully wide open for me to teach my kids a love of God.
Don’t phone this one in. Keep teaching them God’s ways–for the day you can’t see coming.
What kind of [spiritual] personal training does your child need?
7 Easy Ways to Disciple Your Teens a Little More
Spiritual Life Skills for Kids: Courage (with Book List & Printables!)
Reading Time: 4 minutes
I was chatting on the phone with my oldest this week about purity culture–which deserves a post on its own. (I have feelings. Big feelings.)
I expressed to him how tough it is as parents, when some of the less-healthy methods of purity culture are subtracted from parenting –I’m looking at you, shame-parenting–to find something as powerful to direct our kids toward good and keep them from what’s truly bad.
“I mean,” he said, “I pretty much always know you loved us no matter what.”
I’m fairly open with all of you that though my blog and book are a lot about parenting–there have been a lot of failure and tears on this end. But that–that felt like a holy moment.
Cut to a conversation my husband and I had this morning. Verbally, I realized aloud that for at least our three older kids, God has handed us some significant life moments that ended up being opportunities for unconditional, all-the-way-in, no-way-out love.
Some of those have looked like big confessions from my kids–and inside me, moments my insides felt ripped from top to bottom. Some of those have been moments like my son’s cancer scare, or learning to cope with learning disorders.
Some were no-contest the lowest moments of my parenting.
But in the rearview mirror, they were openings to speak hesed love to my kids.
I’ve written about hesed before.
The Bible Project’s podcast episode The Loyal Love of God describes God’s hesed love–this steadfast, loyal, generous, merciful love characteristic of God throughout Scripture (think of his love as told through the story of Hosea). It takes literally about 13 English words to describe this one Hebrew word.
Now that I know it’s about 250 times in the Old Testament, I see it everywhere. It’s in the last verse of Psalm 23, translated as mercy: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…
It also means “covenant love.” Paul Miller describes it as “love without an exit strategy.”
But in the podcast, it was news to me that Scripture tells of people who had this brand of love. And when is that steadfast, God-like love most tested?
In pain, in suffering.
When those we’re loving are being unlovable.
Or as loving gets hard and long.
And when people disappoint us or need forgiveness or patience.
But–and you can tell I listen to podcasts when I’m working out, trying to ignore the fact I would rather be somewhere else–in my newest favorite podcast, Neuro Faith, I heard neurotheologian Dr. Jim Wilder describe hesed as God’s attachment love.
Wilder described a facility where he worked for those who’d undergone mental and emotional trauma. And those most likely to heal were those with healthy attachments and bonding. It’s the kind of connection of a mother or father to a child, gained through trust, and the child gaining trust that the parent will respond, will fulfill what the child needs.
Weary parents of infants: No, your child will never remember this phase of their lives. And if your kids were like mine, lacking even the positive feedback of a smile for the first months (other than gas, I mean).
But take heart: that attachment lays the cement foundation for their attachments and ability to trust throughout life. Those 3 AM feedings and seven-per-day diaper changes and “conversation” with a preverbal infant matter.
And when Dr. Wilder looked for this kind of love in Scripture, he found it in hesed love.
The implications for this are huge. But let me boil down a few.
I’m largely uneducated about attachment disorders. But it’s possible you know your child has an attachment disorder, and this post stabs at your heart. (This post from Christian parents with children with attachment disorders is painful to read, but eye-opening.)
Though your alienation is not at all my intent: Please know that as a parent who longs to find your child, you demonstrating the gospel to your kids in real-life does matter.
Right now. For their lives, their relationships, their faith.
Whether they ever respond or not. (Some of God’s kids did. Some did not.)
(Though I haven’t had time to hear it, this breakout session, Adopting for Life–Attachment Disorders and the Gospel: Building the Right Adoption DNA in Your Family may be helpful…? Use your own discernment.)
And God is stronger than any attachment disorder. No child is beyond his reach. Salvation belongs to him alone–and thankfully, not to us parents.
I’ll find you: What we long to hear
When Change in Your Child is S-l-o-w
Reading Time: < 1 minute
This morning my teenagers are peeling themselves out of bed for that oh-so-exciting first school day after Spring Break. And for all us types with less liturgy in our lives, it might actually be easy to let Holy Week slide into that sludgy pile of Great Things I Really Meant to Focus On.
So I’m tossing both of us a low ball here.
For FamilyLife.com, I’ve created a list of Prayers for Holy Week and Easter for Families, complete with a short Scripture passage for each day. Mine’s printed off and tucked beside the kitchen lamp so I actually remember to pray them.
They’re totally doable for reading as your kids pour milk over the Honey Nut Cheerios, while you peck them with goodnight kisses, or while all of you hope for a few more minutes after dinner before loading the dishwasher.
May your very real family, and mine, too, keep first things first in such a meaningful week.
Holiday Rerun: 14 Great Paradoxes of Jesus’ Death [printable INFOGRAPHIC]
Reading Time: 2 minutes
We were driving my 13-year-old to an MRI screening for cancer.
Lymphoma is a primary consideration, the radiologist had said, goading us toward the test that day.
Those of you who’ve followed this site may remember this post, where I attempted to sort through six weeks of horror, where we’d wondered just how withering my son’s future might be.
That day at the children’s hospital, my hands shook on behalf of my son, from his angst over drinking the chalky oral contrast, to the needles he dreaded. In fact, I comprehended far more than he did of what lay at stake.
My husband and I had of course taken off work. For our son to go it alone was never, ever an option.
I recalled Abraham with Isaac as we climbed the stairs to the test together, waiting for the rustling of a ram. And God, I believe, climbed with us.
This begs the question. In ordaining our suffering, could God be ordaining his own?
See, like the rest of humanity from David to Job to Jesus, I tend to experience suffering as forsakenness. Separation. My God, My God…
But is that reality?
I’m exploring this theme in my first article for Fathom magazine, a publication “with an eye for intellect, wonder, and story and a conviction that our beliefs have consequences for ourselves, our communities, and the world.”
Hop over and check it out–and maybe, with me, chew on this new-to-me angle of God’s faithfulness.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
Valentine’s Day for kids: I 100% get the dilemma.
How can you make it special, make them feel loved–when you’re just trying to get kids to eat mashed potatoes with a fork, or get their shoes on the right feet?
I’m piling in here a few easy ideas to make Valentine’s Day for kids pop–without a lot of extra effort.
Remember: Moments like these are about communicating your affection to kids, and creating memories together that say, I see you. You’re special to me.
When you look at it that way, the rose-colored glasses from every Pinterest activity can slide off.
That priority helps me sift out the activities that could steal my joy or expend energy I don’t have, leading to the kind of Valentine’s Day I hope they don’t remember. (Yikes.)
Take a page from Romans 12:3, and look at yourself, and your schedule, with sober judgment. What can you really do, and still be able to “love sincerely” (Romans 12:9)?
Don’t look on Insta at what your friends are doing for their kids. Lay down your heart-shaped super-parent cape. And feel free to order absolutely nothing pink last-minute from Target.
And just be the parent your kids need, who shows them God’s smile.
Hopefully, this can hand your kids a few ideas to love on other people.
Milkshakes, cake pops at Starbucks, bowling, mini-golf if you live in a place warmer than I do. Don’t overthink it or overspend it; I’m not saying you need to blow your wad at Build-A-Bear.
The goal here is memories together, feeling loved.
…or a coupon for the date above. Grab an easy fill-in-the blank/circle-all-that-apply printable template here to keep it fun, easy, and hopefully meaningful.
You could
You see where I’m going here. Think, Hey, I could do this.
Don’t miss this: My kids don’t need more. They need just a few gestures of kindness.
And it’s great if they can be the givers of those gestures, too.
Spring Break Kids’ Activity: The Newlywed Game (FREE PRINTABLE)
Ideas for Kids on Holiday Break (& Teens, Too)
The “Fun Parent”: Why (& How) to Get Weird with Your Kids
Reading Time: 6 minutes
As I’ve mentioned, oh, 76 or so times, I have four teenagers in the house. Which means we have very little of some things (leftovers, tranquility, time, clean laundry), and a lot of other things (drama, chips and salsa, deodorant, hormones).
And as the culture around them accelerates to 5G-speed–despite my kids’ lack of a fully-developed frontal lobe–my husband and I are working hard to keep communication open.
One person likened the teenage years to a space shuttle losing contact with the control center as it re-enters the atmosphere. You try to have the whole thing aligned before radio silence. But man, everyone’s biting the ends of their pencils until that next transmission.
That said, for teens, the stakes of their decisions skyrocket. At the risk of sounding disparaging to teens–who have so much to offer the world–these kids were eight years old five years ago. And they now possess the capability to hamstring their lives with a single decision.
(You might like this article I penned for FamilyLife.com on Parenting and Control: How Not to Hold On Too Tight.)
Sex is one of those areas where as a parent, you feel like your kids have been given the keys to a Camaro, but they’ve only learned driving techniques online. And they’re still sitting on a phone book to reach the steering wheel.
So maybe you’re wondering when to tell kids about sex. When’s it too early? When’s it too late?
I’m snagging excerpts for this one from my book, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts.
I remember one Christian mom laughing, telling me her elementary-aged kids saw a commercial mentioning sex, and asked her what it was.
She insisted the commercial was about grocery sacks.
But really–when’s a “good” time for kids to ask? Do we want them to figure out we didn’t tell them the truth when they asked about sex?
Pause. Where do we want our kids to get this information?
Parenting kids toward holy sexuality involves a series of conversations to shape their worldview and create open, truthful, shame-free communication.
On my African back porch one afternoon, a friend’s and my own fingers curled around toasty warm mugs of ginger tea that exhaled ribbons of steam. She sort of asked the air around us if it was called rape if a boyfriend forced you. My grip on my mug tightened as her anecdote continued.
But I never talked to my parents about it. They left sex ed to my fifth-grade teacher, and my boyfriend was the one who showed me the rest. My family doesn’t talk about that kind of stuff.
I grieved with my friend, recognizing the gravity of what was taken from her.
Later, the situation begged the question: Is there anything on my parental “off-limits conversations” list?
So this influences how I respond when my kids ask questions. I try to wring the freak-out from my face, and review my mental list of How to Deal: What I Believe About Awkward, Hairy Topics with Children.
• I want to be the go-to gal (just as my hubby wants to be the go-to guy) for this stuff with my kids. How I deal with it now affects whether they ask later. It will only get funkier as they get older.
• I want to help them construct their own biblical worldview, assembled not once but piece by piece as we apply each issue to real life, with Scripture informing them. As in, not Google or the kids at the back of the bus autofilling the blanks in their minds. Do I really want my kids to wing it in this area?
• Evil is not only outside our kids. It’s within us because sin is part of us. Therefore, protecting my kids isn’t enough. Working with the Holy Spirit, I must shape their consciences.
Of course, we should have these conversations privately so our kids aren’t perpetually wishing they could burrow beneath the carpet. But questions are an open door to talk about Scripture as we “walk by the way” (Deuteronomy 6:7) to the maximum level of what’s age appropriate.
Some of the best parents I know aren’t necessarily those who withhold information in an attempt to protect their kids. They don’t glance around for a fire escape from the awkwardness. They take their child’s hand and show them how to navigate difficulty. These conversations secure trust and honesty. They communicate, I will always tell you the truth. We’ve got a good thing going here, so come to me with anything.
Talking to our kids gives them vocabulary to talk maturely about emotions, sticky situations, money, sex, and real life. They’re then less likely to be swayed by peers or lies in the midst of their decisions and more likely to know how the Word applies to every situation.
So watch your tone like a hawk.
Will kids get the idea sex is “the Dirty” (as one friend’s parents called it), or shameful? Or that God made our genitals and desires on purpose, for deeply rich marriage relationships? Will we honor marriage and sex (Hebrews 13:4)?
But this is another area where even the most careful, wholehearted, wisely informative training still involves leaving the results up to God. Our kids may make painful sexual decisions—or fall victim to someone else’s. Over and over, sexuality is an opportunity to trust and reiterate the power of God’s mercy and undeserved kindness to humanity. Sexuality can acknowledge he is always greater than human failure and frailty, a God drawing beauty from ashes.
From Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts (Harvest House). (C) 2021 Janel Breitenstein.
As parents, we aim to uphold 100 percent of God’s holiness and 100 percent of our and his approachability and acceptance amid failure and tsunami levels of shame.
If our children experience homosexual temptation or transgender thoughts or get snagged in porn, will they distance themselves and go to elaborate lengths to make sure we never find out?
A pastor struggling with same-sex attraction writes, “Christians struggling with SSA often feel especially ashamed and embarrassed…We often feel too dirty to be in community with others, or to be in communion
with God.”
So with your tone and body language, throughout your kids’ lives and countless open, unshocked-face conversations, communicate essential truths:
Read: “When to tell your kids about sex” is now. And it’s an ongoing conversation.
Grab the whole chapter, plus resource lists and practical ideas, in the book! If you’d like a free first chapter, enter your information in the upper-right corner of this website’s sidebar.
Fences, Sex, & Not-so-bad Boundaries
Guest post: The Hole Truth: Peer Pressure, Sex, and the Connection to Our Kids’ Identity
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Today, my oldest is headed for continued training with the Marines; the 1987 Nissan Z he’s been flipping–the one the still needs the muffler?–sits resignedly outside. My youngest, a delight and a straight-up handful, is with extended family. And thanks to this past year’s new puppy, I’m up early.
(This morning’s tea choice: Stash’s Licorice Spice. But since we’re talking New Year’s, my favorite of 2022 has definitely been Tazo’s Glazed Lemon Loaf.)
So I’ve printed out my yearly prayer of Examen–my third year of a new personal tradition. Like the Israelites standing at the Jordan and choosing stones of remembrance (Joshua 4), I’m looking back at how I’ve seen God writing His story in and around me. And how his presence has met me there.
I’m peering ahead, too, choosing how I want to–in trust of him–walk forward.
Since holding my daughter on New Year’s Eve with her own emotions about the New Year, I’ve been chewing on the final verse of Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
The Hebrew word for “goodness” here is tov–the word God proclaims seven times over creation in Genesis 1. And the word translated “mercy” is actually hesed, a word I’ve explored on the blog before. It means “steadfast love” or “covenant love.” Paul Miller describes it as “love without an exit strategy.”
Author and therapist KJ Ramsey reports in The Lord is My Courage: Stepping Through the Shadows of Fear Toward the Voice of Love that Jim Wilder describes hesed as God’s “attachment love”–a bit like the unconditional, unearned attachment love for my kids they can never shake.
Ramsey writes of these words in Psalm 23,
Like a radial line connecting across the circle of the psalm, the first and seventh cameos form a pair. When David names God as his shepherd, in whom he lacks nothing because of God’s protection (cameo 1), he is saying that God’s tov and hesed are why and how his deepest needs have been met (cameo 7).
When Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd in John 10, he deliberately traces himself into the literary circle of Psalm 23, with poetic prose in the same ring composition as the psalm.
But wait! There’s more.
Tov and hesed meet in Christ’s bones, breath, heart, and hands. Jesus speaks in concert with the deliberate parallelism rooted in David’s ancient song. Just as in Psalm 23, the first and seventh cameos in this scene form a pair, but here the literary climax comes when Christ says that the good shepherd gives his own life for the sheep.
….Our truest selves—the selves not bound by time and space or any scarcity—are seated with Christ where tov and hesed are already ours (Ephesians 2:6). And it is as witnesses of Christ’s costly love that we become witnesses of his life filling ours, bringing tov where there is chaos and offering hesed where there has been harm.*
But even more, in the word translated “follow,” “Radaph is the Hebrew word here, and it means to pursue, chase, and persecute…the goodness and love of God hound us.”
As your family flips the page to the unknowns of 2023, I hope you’re able to sift out God’s goodness, his attachment love hounding you. I hope you can intentionally choose the peace Jesus has already bought for us and our families.
And even if there’s a lot of fear for the next year?
May God’s presence meet you at every curve.
(You may like these posts with journal prompts, ways to reflect on how God’s working in your kids, and ideas to help kids set holistic New Year’s goals.)
Here, the best posts of 2022, according to reader traffic (that’s you!). Feel free to share!
Sometimes in darkness, in a tsunami of loss and doubt, you’re wondering “Is this where I’m supposed to be?” Keep this in mind.
(This is the post where I also talk about my son’s graduation from the U.S. Marines’ boot camp, at long last.)
Most people who walk away from the Church do so because of emotional or personal trauma. How can we help kids navigate church hurt?
Though I’m a little surprised this one made it in the best posts of 2022–it’s been awhile since I’ve underwhelmed you with an update on my family. Pull up a chair, and let’s share a cup o’ joe.
Maybe the prevailing message of your life right now isn’t “You’re killin’ it!” What do you do when you’re not enough?
Permanent Markers PrintablesTo dovetail with my first solo book, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write On Your Kids’ Hearts (Harvest House), I created a boatload of printables to help kids learn to love Jesus. Though this wasn’t technically one of the best posts of 2022, sounds like it’s still a hit.
(Shameless plug: Though the Amazon reviews are holding strong, there’s not many. If you’ve read this book already, I would be tremendously grateful more reviews. …Especially good ones?!)
Do you remember the first time you experienced grief as a parent–the power of raising a child now held over your wellbeing and happiness?
I do.
(And now, for the post my teenagers may pretend they don’t know about, but that none of you might be surprised made the best posts of 2022.)
Sex restates over and over our connectedness, in ways that cling to us. Is it possible your marriage needs sex more than you think?
Parenting can feel…powerless. Rather than rallying your resources, you should first know what’s outside of your capability.
Few people tell you about parenthood, “This is going to gut you like a fish.” But it blessed & gutted Mary–and she wasn’t the first one.
Looking for gifts to give your kids that stick for a lifetime? Start with these two–which are increasingly rare.
Happy New Year, friends. May you continue to lean into the awkward.
*Ramsey, K.J. The Lord Is My Courage (p. 232, 233, 234). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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