Focus on the Family Broadcast

Opening:

Excerpt:

Alli Worthington: When the what ifs happen, we have to go, OK, this is – this is the thought that I’m having. I need to step back and really examine it and go, is this real or perceived? Again, is it likely? What can I do about it? And give it over to the Lord.

End of Excerpt

John Fuller: That’s Alli Worthington, and you’ll be hearing more from her today on Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly, and I’m John Fuller.

Jim Daly: Today, we’re going to help you learn how to identify and overcome fear, anxiety and worry. That’s quite a promise (laughter).

John: Probably…

Jim: Sure.

John: …Three easy steps, right?

Jim: That’s true. But I read something the other day where 30 percent of children are experiencing anxiety. And, uh, it’s up substantially. And I just wonder why. What is happening where kids are having that kind of stress, but not just children, adults, too, and particularly moms. You know, Jesus talked a lot about this very topic of anxiety and fear while he walked the Earth. In fact, there are 121 references in the New Testament on fear and worry and how when faced with things outside of our control, we need to put God first and trust Him. I mean, that is the Christian life, right? In fact, we’re reminded in second Timothy 1:7 that “God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” And that’s a wonderful place to be. Today, we want to help you. Uh, we want to help you get over those fears and those anxieties and trust even more deeply in our Lord and savior. Uh, that’s our goal here at Focus on the Family, so stick with us.

John: Yeah, we have a lot of resources, by the way, to help you in your spiritual life, uh, and some specific resources addressing this topic, including the book by our guest Fierce Faith: A Woman’s Guide To Fighting Fear, Wrestling Worry, And Overcoming Anxiety. Uh, let me just note that Alli Worthington is an author and a podcaster now. And, um, she has five boys, and, uh, their family…

Jim: (Laughter).

John: …Lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Body:

Jim: Five boys. Welcome back to Focus.

Alli: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Jim: How…

Alli: Yes…

Jim: How’s…

Alli: …Every day is…

Jim: …Your sanity?

Alli: …An adventure.

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: Is your sanity good? Hey, one of your, uh, goals – seriously – is to charge women with a call to arms when it comes to how they approach fear. Now, I just want to say I’ve noticed that, too, um, for some reason moms particularly do have to battle this fear factor. It comes with marriage. It comes with parenting. First of all, why? And what is at the core of a woman that the enemy of her soul can trigger this fear pretty much all day long?

Alli: Well, I think as women and as mothers, as soon as that first little baby is put into our arms, we – we realize, oh, this is – this is on us to keep this little soul alive. And it’s such a great blessing, but it’s intimidating, too. And then as kids get older, we enter this marathon of fear. You know, it goes from trying to keep them from eating dog food to not jumping off the couch to not, you know, taking their coaster car on the roof…

Jim: Is dog food…

Alli: …And driving it off.

Jim: …Actually bad for you? I just want to know.

Alli: You know what? Probably not.

Jim: (Laughter).

Alli: But I would say it’s a choking hazard.

Jim: OK, there you go.

Alli: (Laughter).

John: Oh, (unintelligible).

Jim: I think my older sisters used to feed me those Milk-Bones on occasion.

John: (Laughter).

Alli: I believe it.

Jim: That’s what older sisters do to their…

Alli: Of course.

Jim: …Little brothers. Yeah, it’s terrible.

Alli: And I read this really interesting statistic when I was researching for the book that men and women go about, um, handling their feelings of fear in a different way, where women tend to internalize and men turn to – tend to externalize.

Jim: Uh-Huh.

Alli: So a woman is more likely to kind of, um, pull back from friendships, get a little more depressed, where a man is more likely to, um, have anger or to – you know, um…

Jim: So it’s outward-facing.

Alli: Outward-Facing.

Jim: Let me read a…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …A quote from your book – page 15.

Alli: Sure.

Jim: I thought this – and I don’t do this very often, but I just thought for women listening, moms particularly, this is it. You said that “The reality is that for most of my life I avoided what made me feel uncomfortable and ran away from what made me worry. I lived my life frozen in fear, weighed down by worry and absorbed in my anxiety.”

Alli: Exactly. It’s that pulling back from relationships and – and kind of holding it all into myself and trying to manage it. I wasn’t willing to – to take steps to live the life that God wanted me to live and to live as a brave mom and a confident mom because I was so worried all the time.

John: You know, Alli, Jim asked about the call to arms as you were describing the difference between men and women. That – that feels kind of aggressive, and – and I wouldn’t think of most women wanting to run to the battle. But what do you mean by that?

Alli: Well, one of my good friends, she – when this book came out, she said, “It’s so funny because you’re this sweet Southern woman that wears polka dots, but you wrote a battle plan.”

Jim: (Laughter).

Alli: She said, “I love it. It’s such a – it’s such a strange mixture.” For me, I realized I had a call from a good friend who – and I was going through a really stormy season of life. My husband was battling a chronic illness. And she called me out and said, “I know what all you’re going through, but the way you’re living your life – trying to manage this fear – it’s as if you’re trying to make safety your God.” And she said, “You have to learn how to fight this. Yes, you’re in a storm of life. Yes, things are scary. But the enemy is coming in and trying to take you out using fear. You’ve got to learn how to fight back.”

Jim: Wow.

Alli: And that was a huge wake up call for me because I knew things were difficult. I knew things were scary, but I never thought of the idea that the enemy is gonna come in in these storms of life and use fear as a weapon against us.

Jim: What a good friend. What was your reaction to that after the conversation ended, you walked away? What – how did you say, OK, what’s the first step?

Alli: Well, I remember I sat on the edge of my bed, stared out my bedroom window into my backyard and thought I don’t even know what fighting looks like. You know, I’m not a fighter. And as I started studying, I realized just like we live on two levels – we live in the physical and the spiritual – to fight fear and anxiety, we also have to fight on two levels. We take the truth of Scripture, but then we just need practical step by steps of what to actually do. You know, when you wake up in the morning and your stomach is tight with anxiety, yes, we know to pray. But what – what else do we do to overcome it? So I went on this journey of going, OK, for each individual fear, what do we actually do, right?

Jim: Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, let’s get to the practical nuts and bolts. You talk about the five bad B’s. I think it’s busy, blame, binge, bury and brood. Let’s uncover some of those, starting with busy. So a woman that’s feeling fearful or anxious, how does that play out?

Alli: We all have a habit to – when we’re – when we’re feeling worried, we want to fix things. We go into, like, control mode. I’m gonna take care of this and this and this, and I’m gonna keep myself so busy that I don’t have to worry. We look at Scripture – Martha’s the perfect example of this. I mean, I don’t blame Martha because Jesus was coming over, Mary wasn’t helping, and that chicken wasn’t gonna fry itself.

(LAUGHTER)

Alli: So somebody had to get it done. But Martha’s worry that Jesus was gonna be disappointed kept her away from really enjoying Jesus.

Jim: Huh.

Alli: So busyness is something that we use often.

Jim: Wow, that’s – yeah, that’s a great example, really. Uh, the blame game.

Alli: Well, with blame, if you spend any time around small children, you see it. You know, one of my boys could stub his toe on the Lego table and yell that it’s his brother’s fault…

Jim: Yes.

Alli: …From across the room. And I caught myself doing this with my husband. So if I was anxious about something, and there was anything I was feeling stressful about, immediately, I would decide that it was Mark’s fault. But it’s not Mark’s fault. Mark’s just living his life, you know, doing his thing. It’s not his fault that the kids are stressing me out, or I’m worried about something, and he’s in the garage working on something, right? So, I had to really go, OK, I am nervous, I’m anxious right now. I’m not gonna blame anyone else for this. Let’s get down to the root of the matter…

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: …of what I’m scared about.

:Jim: To pull that trigger off, though, to hold back from doing that – because I think a lot of couples – and this really undermines the marriage and your parenting effort together…

Alli: Oh, yeah.

Jim: …When you say things like, “It’s your fault, you know you don’t, you should have,” all those kind of comments. How do you do that more productively? I mean, it’s fair to say, you know, constructive criticism. But, what’s a healthy way to go about doing it?

Alli: Well, Mark and I do this thing, where if one of us says something to the other that, you know, kind of triggers you – because you’ve been married 20 years, you know your triggers – one of us will look at the other and go, “Oh, is this the game we’re playing today?

(LAUGHTER)

Alli: Because, if this is the game we’re playing, we can play by those rules. But do we really want to go there?” And that kind of is a light-hearted way for us to bring it all back in line.

John: But it feels to me like some couples, it’s – it perhaps goes kind of serious pretty fast, if we do that.

Alli: It could, yeah.

John: I mean, what kind of a script do you offer a husband who’s seeing his wife busy and blaming to deal with fears that she can’t quite identify or doesn’t want to?

Alli: Um, that is 100 percent Holy Spirit. Because when – when I’ve been in a situation, or when I’ve talked to other people who’ve been in this situation, it always comes down to praying and going, “Lord, you’re going to need to guide this before things spiral out of control,” because things do spiral so easily.

John: Yeah.

Alli: Yeah.

John: Yeah, yeah. So – so a husband just needs to pray…

Alli: And be quiet.

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: OK, we got that instruction.

John: Thanks…

Alli: Well…

John: …For listening to Focus on the Family.

Jim: Yeah.

John: We’ll be, uh, back tomorrow. (laughter)

Alli: OK.

Jim: Yeah, it’s all over.

Alli: Whether it’s a husband or wife.

Jim: OK. Oh…

Alli: Like, when things – when things are tense, when things could escalate, the best thing to do is, I think, just be quiet until things…

John: Space.

Alli: …Calm down a little bit. Yeah.

Jim: I think I’m learning that more and more, but I’ll have to ask Jean about that. So we got busy, blame. We’re not gonna go through the others binge, bury or brood. I think they’re self-explanatory. But you have a funny story that kind of bundles these all together. You call it the great beaver tea incident.

Alli: (Laughter).

Jim: Now, any title like that’s got to catch everybody’s…

John: I like that.

Jim: The great beaver tea incident – what happened?

Alli: Well, in our house, we have this second story area with spindles – cast iron spindles. And my boys will take a thread – a spool of thread – and tie it through the top and connect it down to the first-story doorknob, and they’re making a zip line. So they take their stuffed animals, and they do zip lining Luvvies, where they zip line them down. We were about to go out of town. We could finally go on vacation with five boys. We never go on vacation, because there’s just so many of us. We’re going to Disney the next day. And I’m trying to get everything ready. I have a cup of tea, because I’m trying to calm down…

Jim: Wow, how nice.

Alli: …Because I’m tense. I’m a mom, right? I’m doing everything. And I put this basket of claim laundry in the living room, where they’re playing zip lining Luvvies. It’s a fine game, nothing wrong with it. No one gets hurt. It’s safe for all those boys. And I put my tea on the table, and they managed to knock my tea into the clean laundry.

Jim: Which was gonna be packed for the trip.

Alli: Correct.

John: Ohhhh.

Jim: (Laughter) That makes it worse, I’m telling you.

John: (Laughter).

Alli: And I just – I’m livid. I – I, you know, yell at everyone. I do the thing that all moms do – “Do you know – I’m trying to get us ready for the trip! Do you not want to get on the trip? Well, that’s fine. You don’t have to go on the trip.” And I march to my room, and I slam the door. And, of course, being the sure woman that I am, I lay down on my bed and cry.

Jim: (Laughter).

Alli: Yeah. Mark – Mark’s in the living room, just trying to avoid me. The teenage boys are kind of hiding out in the room, and nobody knows what’s going on. And the thing is, I was angry, because I was scared that I was gonna fail everybody, that I was gonna forget something.

Jim: Wow. And I’m telling you, husbands do not connect those dots.

John: Yeah, we don’t get that.

Jim: They’re not thinking that way. They really aren’t. There’s a newsflash for everybody. They’d be saying, “What? What are you thinking?”

Alli: What is going on with her? And…

Jim: Yeah, right (laughter).

Alli: …luckily, Mark knows me well enough not to go into the bedroom and try to rationalize with me because I just – I wouldn’t have heard it. But I was so stressed that we would forget something on the trip or that I wouldn’t do a good enough job, and I would forget to pack something. All of that reaction just came from me being worried and anxious about the trip.

Jim: Yeah. And I so appreciate that openness. It’s so true. This is life, isn’t it?

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: Uh, in your book Fierce Faith, you go through the most common fears, and I think for moms, again, not just physical fear but developmental fears for their children, spiritual development, emotional development. Moms can be really grabbed by those developmental shortcomings, you know, especially with boys. I mean, the science now – the brain scientists says their brains aren’t fully formed until about 25 in the frontal lobe, which is the area of judgment. You – that’s why kids do what they do, especially boys, because they just don’t have the mental capacity to say this is dangerous. (laughter) How does a mom try to pull back on those fears where they’re helicopter parenting, they’re protecting the – wrapping them in bubble wrap, metaphorically, and not letting them experience some valleys?

Alli: Well, I was that mom with my first son 19 years ago that cut the grapes into 16 different pieces…

Jim: Oh, my.

Alli: …because, he could possibly choke. I was totally that mom. For me, I’ve had to learn to step back and examine my fears. So, I’ve had to go, OK, this one thing that I’m afraid of right here, is this real fear that I – that could happen or is this something that I’m just perceiving? Because if it’s likely to happen, then I can continue thinking about it. But if I’m just perceiving something, if I’m making something up in my head, I need to let it go.

Jim: Huh, that’s good.

Alli: And then the second part of that is if I find that I’m afraid of this thing, that it is real, is it likely or not? And if it’s not likely, then, again, I need to let it go. But if it’s likely, I can continue examining the fear.

Jim: Do you have a real-life example to help us get our hands around that?

Alli: Oh, yes. So, for me, my – my 17-year-old wanted to go on a car trip with a friend – a friend from school, from youth group – fine boy, nothing wrong with it. But, I was afraid to let him go. He just wanted to drive to his parents’ house a couple hours away. And I had to go, OK, is this – is this a real fear that something bad could happen, or am I just perceiving a fear? Well, a few hours in a car with a 16-year-old boy at the wheel, no, I think that’s real. So again, I went for it – is it likely that something bad could happen? A couple of teenage boys behind the wheel – yes. And then the third step, if you have a fear, is do you have any control over it? So, if something is likely bad to happen, can you affect it, or is there no control? Well, with my 17-year-old we had to go, you know what? We’re happy to help you get there. But we’re just not ready to let y’all take the road.

Now, on the other side of it I have an 11-year-old who’s about to go to a church camp for the first time. Now, could something bad happen? Yes. Do I have any control over it? No. You know, am I afraid that the world’s just gonna open up and swallow him in if I let him go to church camp? Maybe. And can I control it? No. So, then I’ve got to give it to Jesus.

Jim: And it’s so important to know your child…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …To know the maturity level of your child. Some 17-year-olds would be OK. You’d probably have a greater comfort.

Alli: Mmhmm.

Jim: Maybe. I mean, I’m not trying…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …To say…

Alli: No.

Jim: …That your child’s…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …Not mature, but – but…

Alli: Oh, we said no for a reason.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: (Laughter).

Jim: And they’re – they’re – you know, and we would say no, as well. So…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …I mean, but that’s part of it is knowing your child well enough. But, um, there is that tension between letting go…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …At that moment – there will be that moment, whether it’s 18 or whenever it happens. And it – it – I guess the question is how do you know when it’s time to actually let go?

Alli: I think, for – for me – so the 17-year-old is a no. The 19-year-old, who’s going to do his sophomore year in college, is a yes.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: Because it’s just time and maturity. And there’s something – there’s something in us where, after we pray about it, we’ll know. We’ll have peace about decisions, if it’s the right thing to do.

Jim: Yeah.

John: Alli Worthington is our guest on Focus on the Family, with Jim Daly. I’m John Fuller. And you can get Alli’s book, Fierce Faith: A Woman’s Guide To Fighting Fear, Wrestling Worry, And Overcoming Anxiety at our website, and while you’re there, get the free download or order a CD. It’s at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast or call us, and we can tell you more – 800-232-6459. That’s 800, the letter A and the word Family.

Jim: Alli, many of us fear the future. It’s kind of natural as human beings. I think that’s just part of our sin nature – not to trust fully – even though the scriptures remind us over and over again not to fear. You had a story of losing everything financially. I mean, that – that is a weight for many people, many couples. How did you have hope for the future? And what happened? And how did God pull you out of that?

Alli: Oh, that’s a great question. For us, we – I like to joke that we lost everything before losing everything was cool. It was right at the beginning of the – of the recession.

Jim: Is losing everything cool? I never…

Alli: Well, I feel like…

Jim: (Laughter).

Alli: …With the recession…

Jim: OK.

Alli: …Um, it happened so…

Jim: Yeah, that’s true.

Alli: …often to people. But in 2007, it was relatively shocking. Now, because of real estate and everything else, it can be very difficult. God, with my husband and I, He took us on a journey of learning how to put Him first and really put Him first in our finances and follow great biblical teaching with our money. And we were able to climb back out of it. And I still – I wouldn’t be honest if I said I still don’t sometimes go, is everything gonna fall apart again?

Jim: So you have that little…

Alli: Because I’ve been through it – yeah.

Jim: …Little bit of anxiety. Sure.

Alli: Just because we know how to battle fear, anxiety and worry doesn’t mean that it won’t continually come up. But once we have a plan, we can squash it.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: That’s – that’s the key part.

Jim: You know, let me ask you this, when it comes to the valley experiences in life – because you said it so well right there that God had some things to teach us. He usually doesn’t have our attention on the mountaintops.

Alli: Nope.

Jim: But He does have our attention in the valleys. Why don’t we run to the valley, then? We scramble up the wall of the canyon, because we don’t want to be down there.

Alli: The valley’s hard.

Jim: It’s painful.

Alli: Yeah. It’s so hard.

Jim: But that’s where God teaches us, isn’t it?

Alli: Every time. And when I am afraid of something bad that can happen in the future, what I do is I think about my stones of remembrance. You know, in the Bible, the Israelites were told to stack up their stones of remembrance. And I think, for me, I even have stones in my garden that I use. I…

John: So you have…

Alli: …Have…

John: …A physical…

Alli: Physical…

John: …Stones of remembrance…

Alli: …Stones of remembrance.

John: …area.

Alli: Or I have photos in my house that remind me of God’s faithfulness. I have jewelry with words on it that I wear that reminds me of specific stories. And I’m constantly surrounding myself with little triggers that will remind me of how God has come through for me every single time, even when I thought things were falling apart.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: So, when I’m scared something’s gonna fall apart in the future, I just look at my stones of remembrance and remember how faithful He’s been in the past and know that He’s gonna be faithful in the future.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, that’s a creative way of doing a journal, right?

Alli: Mmhmm.

Jim: It’s a different way of doing it. What are some of the practical ways, though, for the woman caught in the what ifs? I mean, and, again, this is not condemnation. I think all of us human beings have what-if issues. How do you deconstruct those what ifs and live in a healthier place, saying, OK, God, whatever is is?

Alli: It’s – it’s simple, but it’s difficult. Ready? And it goes to examining your thoughts. When the what ifs happen, we have to go, OK, this is – this is the thought that I’m having. I need to step back and really examine it and go, is this real or perceived? Again, is it likely? What can I do about it? And give it over to the Lord. Every single time we have one of these thoughts that gets stuck on a loop – when you were talking about the five bad B’s before, the last one is brooding. And brooding is another word for rumination. And that comes from how a cow eats. Not to be gross, but they chew the grass, and they throw it up in their mouths over and over again. That…

Jim: That’s gross, by the way.

Alli: It’s so gross.

Jim: (Laughter).

Alli: And I’m a mom of boys…

John: She has boys…

Alli: …So, you can’t gross me out.

John: …So, it’s no big deal.

Alli: And…

Jim: John, where you going? Come back here.

Alli: And that’s what we do with our thoughts. So we throw up these bad thoughts in our head over and over and over again. And researchers said that for people who are depressed, they have a lot of their thoughts that are focused on brooding. And even if we’re not depressed, if we get stuck in a cycle of just thinking about the what ifs, we can get depressed. So we have to take each thought we have and examine it and replace it with truth talk – that, yes, I may be afraid that something bad is gonna happen to my child, but I know, in Scripture, that my child is fearfully and wonderfully made and that God has designated all the steps of his life.

Jim: Yeah. It’s a – it’s a healthy place to be, where you can let life, to a degree, happen because you cannot control it.

Alli: You can’t.

:Jim: But – but there is that overdrive. I – you know, it’s almost like the thyroid that’s overactive, right? It causes harm. When you have that worry gland overactive, it causes you to create circumstances that are very difficult for yourself and for people around you, especially in marriage, where you’re worried about everything, your spouse will start to be concerned about how do we live as a couple?

Alli: And when we do that, we – we catastrophize everything…

Alli: …At least I do.

Jim: …Catastrophize.

Alli: And what happens is we become the false prophets of our own bad future. And if we’re not careful, we can create bad situations in our life, just because we’re worried about them potentially.

Jim: So true. Turning a little bit of a corner, what does that feeling of not being adequate, not being enough – what does that feel like?

Alli: It feels heavy and lonely and painful, I think, for most moms – that – that feeling of I’m – I’m failing my children. I’m failing my husband. I’m failing everyone. I’m not doing a good enough job. But I believe that that feeling is something that the enemy comes in to try to keep us depressed, discouraged and derailed. That’s not the way the Lord wants us to view ourselves. We need to look at ourselves the way Jesus looks at us. I think that there is this idea that if we’re hard on ourselves we’re gonna do better.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: But Jesus never tells us we need to do better. Jesus says we need to love Him, we need to love other people. I think that self-criticism can actually be sinful, and that what the Lord would want us to do is have a more healthy self-compassion.

Jim: Yeah. No, I so appreciate that. I think that that yoke that He says He gives us is light. And sometimes, I think we put it on ourselves, and it makes it feel heavy, especially in that area of recognizing that you will fall short as a mom…

Alli: Every day.

Jim: …You will fall short as a – a wife, as a…

Alli: Yeah.

Jim: …husband, too, but – because we’re not capable of perfection.

Alli: Right. And God gave us those children for a reason.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: God gave Mark and I our five boys, knowing where our strengths were, where our weaknesses were. And God is enough to make up for all the ways that we fail our children, because we’re going to.

Jim: Yeah. You know, to end on the best of all notes, um, as our heavenly Father looks at us through the lens of Jesus, what does He see in His children? How does God see us?

Alli: God sees us as perfect in Him. We are – we are made perfect in Him. all of our – our human failings and difficulties are wiped away by His grace. He has redeemed us. And when we learn to really accept how He sees us and how we are in His eyes, we have no choice but to accept ourselves. We have no choice but to go this is how Jesus sees me, and if Jesus says this about me, I’m gonna be good to myself.

Jim: Yeah, and that is beautiful. I would like to end with that practical advice. I’m gonna end twice, John (laughter). But the – the four good A’s – we talked about the bad B’s. Let’s just hit the four good A’s, so people can walk away. Obviously, your book Fierce Faith has all this enumerated. But, what are the four good A’s?

Alli: The first one is aware. We need to be aware of what we’re feeling. We need to be aware of when we’re dealing with fear because what we don’t reveal to ourselves, we can’t take to Jesus and be healed. We’ve got to reveal it to be healed. The second one is to avoid the five bad B’s. We keep our five bad B’s up on our refrigerator at home, because there’s nothing more humbling than going to get milk and realizing, oh, I’ve been blaming someone else because I’m afraid. And then the third is the most important, and that’s ask Jesus for help. We need to go to Him and say, “This is what I’m struggling with. Lord, take this over and help me – help me manage this well.” And then the fourth one is attack which, again, sounds funny coming from a southern woman wearing polka dots.

Jim: (Laughter).

Alli: But we need to learn how to, um, attack our fears. And my – my favorites are through Scripture, through prayer and then through worship.

Jim: Yeah.

Alli: I will turn on worship music every morning and attack my fear that way and just remind myself that God is good, He does good, He’s gonna take care of me, and He’s gonna take care of my children.

Jim: Alli, there’s got to be a little room there for blame, when there’s no milk in the fridge. Doesn’t that work? I mean…

John: You had to bring that up, huh?

Jim: (Laughter). It just caught my attention. You know, when you’re going for milk, you don’t want to play the blame game – that really cut me, because I…

(LAUGHTER)

Jim: …Actually do want to play the blame game right there. You know, who forgot milk? (Laughter).

Alli: That’s just personal responsibility.

Closing:

Jim: OK, good. I’m feeling better already. Alli, this has been so good. Your book, Fierce Faith – so practical for moms to – and it’s geared toward women and toward moms – to really get a handle on your fears. And this is a debilitating thing. I know. And we at Focus, we hear from you often about this area of your life. This is a wonderful resource that we want to put into your hands to help you, to equip you, to have a better relationship in Christ. And I’m telling you, if you can apply these great insights that Alli has provided – the bad B’s, the good A’s – it will give you a sense of peace. His yoke will become light. And that is a wonderful place to be, and, we believe in it so much. I mean, if you can make a gift of any amount, we’ll put the – the resource into your hand – Alli’s book – as our way of saying thank you. It’s one of those resources you really need.

John: And our number, if you’d like to get Alli’s book, or some follow-up resources, or just to make a donation to this ministry, is 800, the letter A and the word family – 800-232-6459. Of course, we’re online at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast.

Jim: Alli, one other area – you mentioned truth talk. What does that mean, and how do we apply it?

Alli: Well, it comes from just renewing our minds, examining our thoughts. And when we find that we are believing something that’s untrue, or we find that we are especially afraid about something, we need to step back and examine it and go, is this true, or is this not true?

Jim: Huh.

Alli: Is this something that I’m – that I’m making up, that I’m perceiving, or is this real? And then we need to go to Scripture and replace it with truth.

Jim: Yeah, so the stuffed beaver, its true – knocked over the tea into your clean laundry.

Alli: That’s right.

Jim: That’s all true.

Alli: That’s right.

Jim: But you had to say, OK, it’s OK, we’ll make our way. This doesn’t finish me as a mom.

Alli: That’s right.

Jim: (Laughter) Great to have you with us.

Alli: Thank you. It’s been great to be here.

John: Well, once again, we’ve got help for you. If this has addressed a fear of yours, in an area of life that you’re struggling in, and our number is 800-A-FAMILY.

John: And then, online, we’re gonna talk a little bit more with Alli about FOMO and

Jim: LAUGHTER

John: And there are lots of people that get that and if you don’t, swing on by focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, I’m John Fuller. Thank you for listening to Focus on the Family. Join us next time, won’t you? As we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.