Submit your questions to MailBox Monday: podcast@thebusymom.com

Steve Lambert has worn many hats in his 68 years: Pastor, author, speaker, stockbroker and more. Together, he and his wife Jane Claire Lambert created and publish “Five in a Row” homeschool curriculum which has been a homeschool mainstay for nearly 25 years. They began homeschooling their children in 1981 and today their seven grandchildren are being homeschooled as well and range in age from 18 months to 18 years.

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Hey everybody, this is Heidi St John, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me today in my little corner of the Internet. Today is Friday, May 17th. And as always, I like to have people on my show on Friday who will encourage you in your walk with the Lord and bring it down to where we can really understand it and parse it out. Today is no different. My friend Steve Lambert is on the show with me today and we’re going to be talking about the power of education.

Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

All right, so today is Friday. I can’t even believe it. Episode number 767. We are just cruising our way through the month of May. Wanted to let you guys know where I’m going to be because I’ve got a lot of you asking. I’ve got about a week and a half off right now, and then I will be in Columbus for the Teach Them Diligently Convention. And actually, my friend Steve—who you’ll hear from in a minute—he’s going to be there with me. Teach Them Diligently is a wonderful opportunity for you to come, bring your family, get encouraged, meet some of these people that you might hear on the radio or otherwise who really have come there to encourage you and answer your questions and pray with you. So come on out. I’ll be there the 30th through June 1st—so May 30th through the 1st of June.

Also right, about that time. It’s a great time for you to jump into the new Bible study at MomStrong International.com. So right now we’re finishing up our study on the tongue, Deep Waters. And we’ve been talking about the power of our words. Really, what it means to honor the Lord with the things that we say, with the things that we write. And really this idea of our ambassadorship, we represent a kingdom, right? We represent the Kingdom of the Lord. And so for the month of June, we’re going to take it a step farther and we’re going to start studying the fruit of the Spirit. So this is the fruit of the Spirit, which should be evidenced in all of our lives. Won’t be perfectly done right?—but God wants us to walk in right relationship with Him. So now’s a great time to join us—MomStrongInternational.com.

Speaking of MomStrong International—if you’re not doing the Scripture Writing Challenge with me, I’m going to encourage you to do that. I’ve been doing it for many years here at the podcast and over at my blog and today’s verse is found in Romans 5:1-2. I will read it to you. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. I love that passage because it reminds me that my hope is in the Lord and my boasting should also be in Him. I think as homeschoolers, and even sometimes as parents—we can, especially if things are going well, if they’re not going well, then forget about it—but when it is going well, we tend to want to boast about how we found this amazing curriculum or because somebody us this amazing parenting tool. But really the Bible saying we shouldn’t boast in anything but the hope that we have in the glory of God.

That’s one of the things I love about my friend Steve Lambert. Steve and I have been friends for many years now. We have a long and, and funny history really. And sometimes we like to tell the story of how our families met. But one of the things I love about him is he’s raised children and is now watching his daughters shepherding their children. And his hope and his boasting is always in God and what God has done in his life. So I’m going to be talking to Steve today about education and how we can put our hope in the Lord even in education. So, Steve, my friend, welcome to the podcast.

[Steve] Thank you Heidi, great to be with you today.

[Heidi] It’s so nice to have you here. And, you and I have been, you know, batting around this idea of education. And what it means and why it’s important for many years. And when people ask you this out on the road—and your teaching, right? You’re teaching on this subject at Teach Them Diligently this season, right?

[Steve] Right, yeah. One of the workshops I’ve been doing is about teaching in the 21st century, and how that looks different than any time in the past, and how the culture is changing around us, and how that ought to be influencing the way we’re teaching.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s right. And Education, and particularly we see this in homeschool circles, but, it’s become more and more important to talk about it wherever our kids are in school. But education is not neutral, right? There is always an eternal purpose behind the education of our children and the education of the next generation. When you talk about this, what’s the thing that you like to hit the most? Like when, when you, when parents come to listen to this particular talk that you give, what’s like the top three things that you really want them to walk away with?

[Steve] Well, you know, when we began homeschooling, gosh, what’s it been? 1981—however long ago that was, 38 years ago, I guess it would have been. As I began to pray about it, I felt like the Lord said, Steve, you and your wife are accountable for how you raise your children for the things that they’re taught. And I thought, man, if I’m, if I’m going to be accountable for that, I’d be a part of the process and not delegate all of that responsibility to other people. And, you know, as a footnote, it wasn’t until several years later, I felt like he spoke to me and he said, your kids are accountable for how they turn out. So, not every great parent turns out great kids and not every terrible parent turns out terrible kids. But you can tilt the odds drastically in your favor if you’re a participant in the process because your kids are going to be discipled.

It’s just a question of who’s going to disciple them and towards what end and what goal. And so with that in mind, I think it’s important for parents, whether you’re homeschooling or not, to be aware of what your kids are being taught, to be aware of who’s teaching your kids and the agenda behind that curriculum that’s been chosen by your public or private school—or the curriculum that you’ve chosen for your homeschool. Because, in the 21st century, things are different. We’ve never seen like what’s happening in our culture today. Education has been taken over, largely with an agenda—it disciples your children not towards righteousness, not towards godliness, not towards heavenly things, but towards an entirely contradictory worldview, that’s probably at odds with everything that you believe is a parent. And so if you’re just naively allowing that to take place without any active participation on your part, woe be unto you because your children are on a battleground and there’s a war being fought over your children, and your children’s children every single day.

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I read an article over at Life Site News a couple of days ago, May 13th. I’ll link back to it in the show notes today. But, it’s garnering quite a bit of attention because they so boldly said what is behind the LGBTQ agenda? And I’ve heard people say to me, Oh, there is no agenda. They’re not trying to indoctrinate your kids. But that’s actually not true. And they started off the article by saying what is behind the LGBTQ agenda. The goal of these enforcers is to forcibly normalize their lifestyle in the minds of the 97% of the population that does not identify with their lifestyle. And this is why we’re bombarded with the lifestyle. It’s been inserted into everything. You and I were just talking about this the other day, that Converse has now launched a new line of shoes that celebrates the lifestyle.

And they’re using this kid, this little kid named Desmond, as their sort of poster child. And I thought, man, we’re encouraging our children to live in a lie rather than embrace who they really are. And this is what is happening in our schools. And someone said to me, uh, it’s because you’re looking at people who are in rebellion against God, but in particular the God of Christianity. Have you noticed the same things, the sort of slant toward not, we’re not talking about just nebulous god, not the god of Islam, right? The war right now is against the god of Christianity. What say you, my friend?

[Steve] That’s exactly right. Even bigger, I think that the LGBTQ agenda, is just an antichrist agenda. And that’s kind of what you’re referring to. I mean, the agenda is to, undermine anything or anyone that would suggest that we’re not, that is human beings, are not the ultimate power. That there is any higher power than us. That the Bible could possibly be truth. That Scripture is, in fact, the indelible Word of God. So the goal is to undermine that into elevating man to the highest position. I mean, it’s no different than the story of the rebellion in heaven, found back in the very beginning of Genesis. That Lucifer who had sat in the very presence of God, beheld His glory, managed somehow to persuade a third of all the angels—that this story to be about me, this ought to be about you. This shouldn’t be about God. He shouldn’t be the center of our story. And in the midst of that, somehow, you know, it’s almost incomprehensible.

It’s no wonder that men and women today are being persuaded by that same agenda, coming from that same source—when a third of all the angels who had stood in God’s very presence, were persuaded by the enemy that, you know, that God’s not the final authority and that we should determine our own fate and our own future. And that agenda has grown to the point today where it’s being mobilized and organized by social media, by education, by universities, colleges, high schools, grade schools, preschools, by the media—the mainstream media. We’re being bombarded with all of modern 21st century technology. But towards that very same ancient goal of Lucifer, that is to say—you deserve a bigger part in this thing, mankind should be the center of the story and not the eternal Creator God.

[Heidi] Yeah, and he’s always been, he’s in the business of stealing identities and certainly that’s what’s happening now in the culture and education plays a huge part of that. One of the things I love about you and your message to parents is it really is a message of freedom. And I heard you say it a few minutes ago—just talking about parents, you know, remember that ultimately your kids, one of these days, your kids are going to make a choice but, and we’re not responsible for the choice they make. What we are responsible for is to steward a message of God’s faithfulness and his love and mercy in their lives. And one of the ways we help steward that is through education. It’s through education. And so if a parent comes to you and they say, oh Steve, you know, who cares? It’s just school. You know, it’s just reading, writing, and arithmetic. What is your encouragement? What’s your exhortation to the parent who doesn’t understand the value and the importance of education wherever their kids are being educated?

[Steve] I think that, you know, reading, writing, and arithmetic are probably the same from age to age. And those are areas where children can exercise self discipline and the rigorous discipline of simply sitting in memorizing facts and learning skills through repetition. But so much of the rest of our education in the humanities, and literature, and history, and the revisionist histories that were being taught today is changing—literally by the hour. You know, we live in an information rich age in which what we have is knowledge, but no wisdom. Our favorite place to visit in England is Oxford. And at Oxford University you’ll find the Bodleian Library. And the Bodleian Library attempts to catalog each new book published every day, not ebooks, not digital products, but actual bound books. And every single day they receive, on average 5,000 new books that have been written. Information is coming at us.

If you could read a book a day, we’d take you something like 15 years to read today’s new books. And at that point, you’re nearly 2 million books behind just since the day you started. Information is coming at us in a flood. And so it’s no longer possible to teach our kids “everything”. And so parents are like—well, we just need to go through the textbooks and teach our kids the information. No, we live in an information-rich age. And so now the question becomes selectively. We can’t teach them everything. So what’s important to teach them? And yes, they still need to learn how to read. And of course, they need to learn to do math. But beyond that, we can teach them infinitesimal one 1000th of one 10th of 1% of the information out there.

So the question is—what is it that you’re going to teach them? What’s of eternal value? What will change their lives? What we’ll help them stand firm and a culture that’s at war with everything that we hold dear? And the answer is probably not memorizing state capitals, or memorizing the succession of the presidents of the United States. That’s great to know about the presidents. That’s great to know about our states. In fact, you ought to know a lot about your state, but far more importantly, in this day and age, is for children to be taught true history. And by the way—there are no perfect saints in history. There are good guys, there are bad guys. The bad guys had a few good points. The good guys had a few bad points.

But the reality is that we shouldn’t be changing history. It’s time for us to own up to the fact that our kids need to learn what actually happened. The good and the bad. They learn the good and the bad of science. Science has made tremendous breakthroughs through that have helped our lives immensely and it has made some catastrophic discoveries that are destroying life as God intended it to be.

So we live in an information-rich age and so selectivity becomes critical. And so it’s up to parents to begin to decide and sort through the tidal wave of information coming at us and help shape the message that our children are being taught today more than ever before.

[Heidi] Yeah. And you guys, you made the decision like my husband and I did—to homeschool your kids. And there was a time—and Steve, you and I have talked about this over the years, you know, the four of us, as couples as we’ve traveled around the country together—have talked about how the face of education is changing. And 10 years ago I never, I don’t think I would have said—homeschool your kids. Like really, the barn’s on fire. At what point do we say, hey, let the horses out? The barn’s on fire, it’s not working anymore. But more and more recently I have felt like the attacks against children in the public school system—and I realize not every public school but pretty close to it—are teaching children things that are absolutely antithetical to what their parents want them to teach. Has Your view on a education, like the way that we educate children, has it changed over the years or have you felt like—na, it’s pretty much the same thing?

[Steve] No, it’s changed radically. When we began, for the first, gosh, first 20 years, I would say after we began homeschooling, certainly through the 20th century at least—I felt the default position was probably some sort of public education or Christian education. And if the Lord spoke to you and gave you specific direction, then homeschooling would be a great choice. Somewhere, some years ago I felt like that began to shift and now I feel like it’s reversed 180 degrees and the default position is probably either homeschooling or Christian schooling, and only if the Lord speaks to you directly would I even remotely consider public education. It’s interesting because I hear people all the time say, Oh my child’s teachers at Christian and I appreciate that. Oh, you know, the, the principal at our, our school is a Christian. I appreciate that. But in many cases, they don’t have much say.

In fact, in some cases they have zero say in what’s being taught to your children. They may love the Lord, they may have a personal devotional life and believe the Word of God—but they’re being told what to teach and their jobs and their careers are on the line if they don’t follow through. And so, we live in a world where, there, there are outside forces at work. It’s not just, you know, little house on the prairie where, where your teachers, a lovely person in their teaching your, your children and it’s all fun and games. And so we have to make difficult decisions in the 21st century. And the goal for our kids is not to become great academicians. I mean, I’m not against academics and I know that many of our kids will go onto graduate school, PhDs become great educators and own ride and all that sort of thing. And that’s wonderful.

And so they have to be taught. And, and the argument that, oh well they’re going to be light and salt in the public schools and they’re going to be fighting and little warriors. They are in no way a seven year old, even a 17 year old, honestly, is in no way prepared to become a warrior on the battlefield. Very, very, very few, even teenagers are prepared. And so to throw them out into the middle of a battlefield and, and don’t be mistaken, I mean it is a battlefield. We were born on a battlefield and there’s a war raging around us. And to throw your child onto the battlefield and say—here, go out there and fight the war is this is a fool’s errand. So yeah, my opinion has changed dramatically.

[Heidi] Yeah. And mine has too. And I think because we’re seeing the reality of the, well, the results are playing out now. All you gotta do is look at every college campus in the United States right now and see the results of an education system that has abandoned the moral compass that our nation was founded on. And the Bible teaches us in Luke 6:40 that when a student is fully trained, he’ll be like his teacher. So is it any wonder that these kids out of an education system that teaches them that they’ve evolved from animals, that they can be, you know, 15+ genders at their parents really aren’t the final authority, that we put them through this education system for at least 12 years of their lives and they come out with a worldview, that’s the antithesis of what we hoped for them—and we are responsible. Right? I mean we, we bear the, the responsibility for those decisions. Right?

[Steve] Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly right. And that’s what I felt like, you know, as I said, I felt like the Lord spoke to me, not in an audible voice, but in a clear impression, in 1981 when I was asking him about homeschooling and he said—you’re accountable for how your children are raised and taught. And I thought, you know, that’s, I mean, if I’ve got to sit for the final exam and stand before the King of kings, someday, I ought to at least have my, you know, hand in the pie some, at least to some degree. I mean, I may choose to delegate some of that responsibility to other people, but the excuse, well, I didn’t really have anything to do with their education and so it’s not my fault. I don’t think it’s going to hold water. And so I’m accountable. I need to be a participant in the process, at the very least actively involved in local school politics, choosing a top quality Christian school for my child, or homeschooling—so that I can then at least say I did my part, you know, my, my kid, you know, for their own choices.

But I did the best that I knew how to do because you told me, God, that I was going to stand before you and give an accounting. And you know, some of us hold all of that responsibility and some of us delegate a portion, and I’m not sure that’s quite as critical, is the fact that you’re at least involved in, you know, to whom you’re delegating authority and what they’re goals are in education. So if you found a great Christian school or you’re in a homeschool co op and you know the quality of the people who are teaching classes, the administrators that are running that co op one or two days a week, if your kids are there—I think that’s a whole different proposition than public schools where as I said, I mean you may have a personal relationship. Oh, I’ve known the teacher, we went to high school together, we’re friends, I know her, she’s a Christian. Well, if her hands are tied and she’s being told at risk of losing her job, this is what you will teach or you will be fired, then all bets are off.

[Heidi] Yeah. And that’s exactly what’s happening. I mean that is 100% what’s happening is that even the good teachers, which I thank God for Christian teachers in the public school systems, I hope that there are more and more and more and more of them, but I would advocate for parents—take your kids out and let’s put the good teachers in. But let’s not sacrifice our kids to the public school system so that they can go. I love what you said about salt and light. So true. In the few minutes that we have left, I know there’s going to be people who are listening to this who are going to be bummed out, right? They’re listening to us and they’ve thought, I’m going to put my kid in public school. It doesn’t matter. A couple of things I want to address with you really quickly in the few minutes we have left.

First is, I want to talk to those parents who feel like this is an attack against as parents who feel, you know, kind of like when we did the yoga ball podcast a couple of months ago—I talked about it from a position of hey, this is the biblical reality. And then the next question I want to address is to the parent who’s really falling under conviction right now and they’re going—I need to pull my kids out next year, I can’t, I can’t send them back to the public school system and have my conscience be the clear anymore. But I’m worried, I don’t know if I can do it. I’m afraid. I want to encourage those parents. So let’s tackle those last two issues in the few minutes we have left.

[Steve] Those are great questions, Heidi. And I get that, you know, and I think there are probably also parents out there who, who didn’t make that choice and whose children are now grown and who are having deep regrets about their choices. And you know, you’re not accountable for what you didn’t know then, you’re accountable of for what you do know now and you know. It’s never too late for your kids. I mean the Lord is the Lord, but He’s a god of Miracles. I mean, he’s the one who said Lazarus come forth and dead bones began to walk. And so you continue to pray for your kids. If that season past of education, your adult kids are going the wrong direction—keep praying for him because God’s got a miracle. If your conviction today is about what to do and whether or not you could possibly do it—if God’s calling you to do it, God will make a way for you to do it.

We’ve seen that over and over in our lives, and questions that we had, and fears, and anxieties, and uncertainties. We can now look back on every one of those issues—we can look back and say, you know what, we didn’t have a clue how we were going to go about doing that, but God did. And it was His faithfulness the got us to the end of that line. Because when God calls you to do something, you can count on the fact that he’s going to get you successfully to the end. So finances, yeah, those are tough issues. You know, maybe you didn’t even graduate from high school, maybe you don’t feel equipped. But we live in a world where there are tremendous resources available.

You, yourself, are doing amazing work there in the Pacific Northwest there at the Homeschool Resource Center. There are homeschooled cooperatives, there are online opportunities, there are tutors available. There’s all kinds of resources available to help parents at least get their feet on the ground in that first year or two. And I would also say, you know, we say this is so hard. We can’t do it. We’re not sure. You know, sometimes we overestimate, especially in those early years. I mean, if you were stuck on a desert island with nothing but coconuts and a stick, and sand—could you teach your kids to, to be math? I’m sure you can. You just start coconuts and piles. There’s two in this pile. There’s three in that pile. We put the piles together. There’s five. This isn’t A, you take the stick and you draw two lines and a crossbar in the sand. This is an A, this is a B, you know—it doesn’t take much in the way of money or resources to begin teaching children, especially in those early years. And if you’ve got a library card and the comfortable sofa, you’ve got all the tools you need to provide a great education. Open your Bible, sit down with the Lord, gather your children around you, get your library card— get to the business of teaching your children the things that matter in the world in which we live today.

[Heidi] Well, yes, that’s it. I was just sitting over here looking at Jay across the studio and I’m just like, yeah! We’re high-fiving each other over here. I love what you’re saying. I love the boldness with which you’re saying it and the truth. And I think a lot of people don’t want to say it, right? We don’t want to wade into that deep water and say, this is the hard truth. The truth is the education system in the United States, whether you like this truth or not, this is the truth—the education system in the United States is geared and is actively pushing children away from truth—and not toward it. And if we don’t start talking about that in the culture, if we can’t be bold enough to say this is what’s happening—then we’re being foolish. And we are becoming increasingly pressured to stop speaking truth and instead be forced to embrace a destructive lie.

And one of the things I love about you, my friend, is that you stand strong on the truth of the fact that God is both on our side and in control. And we know because the Bible teaches us that the roots of evil are shallow. And as Christians, we stand on the rock-solid foundation of righteousness and truth. And the other thing I love that you pointed out is—our job is simply to continue spreading the truth and to fight the good fight for what is right. And then to rest in the fact that God has equipped us. If he’s called you to homeschool, then he’s also equipped you to do that. And then we can rest and trust that all is well.

Steve Lambert, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. I know you’ve encouraged me today and I didn’t even know I needed it and I feel so much better already.

[Steve] Well, it’s always a joy to talk with you whether it’s in person or on your podcasts. Thanks for the opportunity and the privilege to join you and your listeners today. I just know that God has something special in store for them and those who are willing to follow. And, and you know, we live in a world where speaking the truth is risky business and it’s labeled as hate-speech and none of us—we all want to be polite, we don’t want to offend anybody. I mean, that’s never been in my heart to offend anybody. I want to be polite, but in the end I’m not going to sacrifice my children on the altar of political correctness. There are final ultimate decisions that we cannot allow anyone else to make for us. Thanks for the opportunity to be with you today. God bless.

[Heidi] Yeah, thank you, Steve. I so appreciate you being here. For more information on Steve Lambert, I will link back to his information in the show notes today and also want to let you know that Steve travels frequently with Teach Them Diligently. He will also be in Columbus for the Teach Them Diligently convention. I’ll link back to that in the show notes today as well.

If you’re interested in coming to hear Steve or myself , or many of the other speakers that are there, you can save $12 on your registration by typing the code Heidi12 at the checkout and you’ll 12 bucks on your registration.

Also want to encourage you, if you haven’t joined us at MomStrong International, this is a great time of the month to do it. Head on over to MomStrongInternationa.com. Thanks for listening everybody. We appreciate it and we’ll see you back here on Monday.

Write to Heidi:
c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Support this ministry by donating through E-giving. You can also send donations to: 1100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

Submit your questions to MailBox Monday: podcast@thebusymom.com

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John—welcome to the podcast. Today is Monday, May 13th. This is Mailbox Monday, episode number 765. I’m going to jump right into it today. We’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about. Stick around, I think you’re going to be encouraged.

So we’ve had a great weekend. Thanks to everybody who came out to Mobile, Alabama for the Teach Them Diligently conference and also to Abundant Life Church in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. You guys have a fantastic thing going on there in Lee’s Summit. I just want to encourage you like we did on Sunday, that what we’re facing in the culture right now—particularly as it relates to parenting, and the attacks that you’re seeing leveled against the family through the public school system, and many other places—are really just a reminder that we are in a spiritual battle. And spiritual battles require spiritual weapons. And so, keep those weapons to the forefront your primary weapons, Mom and Dad—which are prayer and a knowledge, a working knowledge of the Word of God—meaning we study God’s Word to know it so that we know how God wants us to respond to any given thing that’s happening in the culture right now.

It’s Mailbox Monday, and so today as always—I want to get to as many of your questions as I possibly can. Last week we left off talking about the topic of ectopic pregnancy and I said I would come back again and so I’m going to pick that up today.

So this question comes from a listener who asked to remain anonymous and she was asking what is the biblical position, the pro-life position, on treating an ectopic pregnancy. This is a really good question. It’s also a tender topic and I want to just start off by saying—and this is what I always say on my Facebook page, this is what say to people who ask me this when I’m at conferences—is that this is about intent. And the intent of a pro-life person whether you’re a physician, or a mother, or a father—should never be to intentionally kill an unborn child but to preserve the life of the mother and the child.

So we always come from a position of wanting to save them both. We want to treat them both if we possibly can, and sometimes that’s not possible. So the abortion movement—they’re going to come to us with all of these hard cases. What what happens in the case of incest? What happens with the case of rape? And especially hardcore cases for the life of the mother. And so, this is a really interesting topic because I don’t believe that an ectopic pregnancy falls under the abortion argument. I don’t see it as an abortion because ectopic pregnancy is not an issue in the abortion debate. So the removal of an ectopic pregnancy is not an abortion and has never been considered an abortion by most people in the pro-life movement—simply by virtue of the fact that this is not a mother or a father who are intentionally taking the life of a child that they just don’t want, or that child has a birth defect, or that child was unplanned.

This is a case where the mother’s life is threatened—and we do everything we can to save the life of the mother and save the life of the child. And though doctors will try to save the child, sometimes they can’t. Right? I’ve had many friends who have had ectopic pregnancies. If you’re not familiar, an ectopic pregnancy refers to any pregnancy that’s implanted outside the uterus. And the most common place for this to happen is in the fallopian tubes.

And most of my friends who have had an ectopic pregnancy—end up losing not only the baby but also part of their fallopian tubes. And usually, by the time that we discover ectopic pregnancies it’s about 7-8 weeks of gestation, and by that time—more often than not—the baby has already died. The embryo has already died. And so—if that’s not the case, which was the case for one of my friends, I want to say this was 15 or 20 years ago I got a phone call from my friend and she said—oh my goodness, I just had an ultrasound she was having excruciating abdominal pain, went in and they discovered—yes she had an ectopic pregnancy.

So this just means that your baby, that the pregnancy, is developing outside the uterus. And sometimes they occur in multiple places, but most often you’re going to hear about an ectopic pregnancy that’s inside the fallopian tubes. I had Abby Johnson on the podcast on Friday with me, and actually looked up to see if she had something to say about this and she did. And I’ll link back to it in the show notes today. And I want to read to a little bit about what she said because I think she said it best. She said: “there have been a few ectopic pregnancies that have survived when they have implanted outside the uterus. However, there have never been any babies survive an ectopic pregnancy while implanted inside a fallopian tube.”

And you guys can look up articles on this. There has never been a case where a baby survived that was implanted directly in the fallopian tube. And so, when the baby is implanted directly in the tube—the pregnancy has to be removed. There isn’t another option. And Abby points out that how the pregnancy is removed is key, and I would also like to say to me this is all about intent. This is about intent. The intent is therefore to save the life of the mother—not to kill the baby. And sometimes, this is how it goes.

I’ve heard the Catholic Church talk about this as the principle of double effect. And so, they say that moral actions produce two effects and they evaluate them under the under the principle of double effect. So here’s what they say:

1. The action must be either morally good or neutral.
2. The bad effect must not be the means by which the good effect is achieved.
3. The intention must be achieving of only the good effect or the bad effect can in no way be intended, and must be avoided if possible.
4. The good effect must at least be equivalent in proportion to the bad effects.

So in ectopic pregnancy, a mother who’s facing this tubal pregnancy risks an imminent rupture of her fallopian tube—and so there exists a danger to both the life of the mother and the child. And usually the course of action is to remove the fallopian tube which results unfortunately in the loss of life for the child.

Pro-life does not mean that we elevate the life of the baby over the mother, sometimes there are situations that cannot be avoided. Ectopic pregnancy is one of them. This has never been, as far as I’m concerned—and I used to teach childbirth education classes for many years. This is never a situation where a woman wishes to terminate her child because she just doesn’t want the baby anymore.

Here you’ve got a baby that is going to die by virtue of the fact that it’s not implanted in the uterus of the mother. And these kinds of pregnancies can severely injure or damage the mother. And so, sometimes the baby at times, and even the fallopian tubes must be removed. And so these are situations that are very difficult, but again we’re talking about intent—and death is not the purpose. The purpose is to save the life of the mother.

When we talk about abortion. Abortions not only kill children, but they do so through brutal means. And so, when we’re talking about ectopic pregnancies—we’re talking about emergency treatments that are not done to kill the child, but rather to save the life of the mother. And the loss of life which does occur, is both unintended and tragic. We try to save the child, though sometimes we cannot. And so to me this is an issue of intent, and an emergency situation—such as the one that we’ve been talking about with ectopic pregnancy—falls under that category. So I hope that helps answer your question.

The next question comes from a listener. Her name is Michelle. She says: “Heidi, thanks for your encouragement and your wisdom I listen regularly.” Thank you, Michelle. Thank you for that. She says: “How do you handle children who do not have a good attitude during devotional time or during Bible time? We struggle with this on a regular basis and there are times when they moan and groan, they start arguments, or they just have bad attitudes —and no consequence has seemed to help. We just keep plugging away and try not to let it deter us. Most of the time, we the parents, end up with bad attitudes.”

Man, Michelle—moment of silence. Girl, I feel you. This is so normal. You saying that you feel like it’s an attack from the Devil—and I’m sure that he absolutely has a part to play in it, but also can I just say this is children, in general. So your next question that goes on to, with the first question is—“how do you handle attitudes during Bible time and then also after dinner conversation.” Michelle says “we always have a conversation or devotion after dinner and our kids cannot wait to get up and get it over with. They are itching to get done with it moaning running etc..”

Your kids are old enough to sit. They are 8, and 11, and 13. So let’s talk about this for just a second—because I think sometimes we can get caught up in the at the actions of our children and miss the heart. And so, I love that you have noticed that you’re struggling with heart issues with your kids—because really that’s what we’re after.

So it’s less about doing devotions at the dinner table, or after dinner, or whether or not your kids are moaning and groaning, acting like children—and it’s more about—are you after the heart of your children? And something that occurred to me many years ago—when our children were very young—was that we had the opportunity as parents to make their time in the Word as joyful and as desirable as possible.

So let me unpack that a little bit. What I mean is—you know, you’ve heard the saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Right? And so, we can have devotions with our kids but they may not want to be there. They may not enjoy it. And what happens, more often than not, and this certainly was the case in my home—was that we would do devotions and the kids would roll their eyes. They would hang upside down on the on the chair—and then pretty soon, you know, I’m upset with the kids. I’ve gotten short with them, you know—Let’s read the Bible and enjoy it! You know? Nobody wants that. And so your job, Mom and Dad, is to learn. And we do this through, basically—I think—just through trial and error. Right?

We want to make the cool drink of water that we offer our children from the Word of God. We can’t make them drink, but we can sure offer them a cool drink of water—that Living Water. And sometimes what we miss—in our efforts to train our children and righteousness in our efforts to implement a devotion time, of Bible time—is that once it gets not-very-fun anymore for the kids, once the kids aren’t enjoying it anymore—then as parents, we sort of dig our heels in and we say: well, we’re gonna do this no matter what.

Can I just encourage you—if you’re in that place, what would it look like to make that Bible time with your children desirable? So over the years we’ve tried many different things, and the reason we try different things is because what we’re doing is now no longer working—right? So that wonderful thing that you started in September, by the time we get to May, oftentimes it’s kind of old and we’re sort of bored of it. We want to do something different. There’s nothing wrong with changing it up.

So for many many years I tried different things with our kids when I noticed that we were kind of going sideways with things. Sometimes I would put out milk and cookies, sometimes we would go outside and we would have our devotions outside. The point was that I wanted to be in tune with the heart of my children. I don’t want them to leave my home and think about our quiet time, or our devotion time, or Bible time as a family as something that they resented and hated. I want them to look back and say this was a good thing and we loved it.

That doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect, but I do think that often times, it becomes all about—sit still, and be quiet, and listen. And that’s important, those are important skills, but especially when we’re talking about God’s Word as it relates to our family life and knowing His Word and passing that onto our children—I don’t know about you, but I want my kids to leave our home and have good memories of that. And like I said before—they won’t always be good memories, but I think the majority of them can be. And so if you’re struggling with that with your kids, sit down with the kids—or even with your husband or your wife—and say: hey, how can we make devotion time something that the kids actually really look forward to soon as a hey kids route into devotions? They come running instead of—here we go, blah blah blah.

And over the years we’ve changed a many many times and I can tell you that the the most wonderful times we’ve had with our kids have been the times where that water that we were offering them, that drink of water from the Word of God, was cool and refreshing and desirable for your kids so something for you to think about. There’s some ways that, you can off the top of my head, that come to me like—I told you before—I love to set out milk and cookies for the kids. I remember one time in particular though—I will say it doesn’t always work. One time in particular I set out, I think tea, I got out my specialty tea, sat it out, and I you know I put some half and half out and some some biscuits. And I thought this is going to be so sweet. And for whatever reason, we called the kids down for devotions, and they were already two of them were already fighting before they even made it into my beautifully set living room where I had lit candles and put out. And by the time that particular day was over, which is why I remember it—the kids were fighting, I was crying. I think I said something like—I’m never doing this with you again. Of course it wasn’t true. But we say those things, right?

So I just want to say even when you do everything right it can still go wrong. And I think the main thing is—don’t give up. Get back to it. Enjoy your kids, remember that the time is fleeting, and make the most of it. All right? So don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t work. All right?

Next question. “Good morning. In the midst of your busy speaking season I wanted to ask you about rest. I know that you’ve touched on this topic recently, however my question is more specifically geared toward a Sabbath day rest.” So this mom is saying she’s tried to rest on Sundays but she finds herself sort of restless and waiting for Monday. And I totally understand that. And so I want to just define rest for you right now—because I think sometimes we have a wrong idea of what rest looks like.

To me, and this is how our family has looked at it over the years—rest is anything that brings you joy. So if you recharge—because the whole point of resting is that you recharge, it’s not that you get legalistic about it and everybody has to sit on the couch, everybody has to take a nap. If taking a nap is what brings you joy and what you need to do to recharge then absolutely take a nap. But if recharging for you is taking a walk, if recharging for you is reorganizing your bedroom, or rearranging the furniture, or even cleaning your kitchen—if that’s what’s going to help you rest, then I’m all for doing it. So the point is to have it be a joyful thing. So like last week, for example, we came home from church and we had had a really busy weekend—lots of things happening in our family, various events that we were going to.

And I came home from church and literally—I looked at my bed and I was like oh happy day. I just crawled under the covers. I think I would sleep for like three hours, which I normally don’t do. But on Sunday, we give ourselves permission to do what is restful and what recharges our batteries. Sometimes that means I’m reading a book. Sometimes it means I’m going through pictures and organizing pictures—because I wouldn’t do it any other day because I’m busy and it’s something that brings us joy.

And so, I think that’s what you need to look at. Don’t let it be a legalistic thing. I think that legalism sucks the life right out of us, right? And we can even be legalistic about rest, and so I would encourage you away from that.

All right, one other thing I want to talk about really quickly—and that is Comprehensive Sex Education which is making a huge move into the state of California right now. It’s all over the nation. If you’re not familiar with it you definitely need to be. And the Christian Christian Broadcasting Network wrote an article about this the other day and they called it down right sickening—California graphic sex-ed with bondage. I’m not even gonna say the words here because I know some of you have kids that are listening, but I’ll link back to this article in the show notes today. And I want to encourage you to to get involved. If you’re in California especially—get involved —because the state of California is poised to adopt this, right?—and it is a no holds barred Comprehensive Sex Curriculum that teaches children as young as kindergarten about gender identity issues and talks explicitly. When I say explicitly linked to the article you guys are going to be horrified at what they’re telling your high school students is OK. We’re talking about teaching them about every imaginable sex act—heterosexual, homosexual, makes no difference. And the State Board of Education has been, as many of you know already, taking public comment on the curriculum for months—and despite protests from various parent and conservative groups, it appears that it’s poised to adopt it. So Greg Burt, who’s a spokesperson for the California Family Council, says that protesters are running out of time. And so I want to encourage you to get involved, look up the California Family Council—I’ll link back to them the shown notes today.

Also there’s a new group which is over 18,000 parents strong now called Informed Parents of California or EPOCH and they are going to be joining the council to protest this curriculum during a May 8th rally at the Capitol. I want encourage you a new 18,000 member parent group called Informed Parents of California has been formed to to fight this. The founder, Stephanie Yates, said that this curriculum was “downright sickening and dangerous. It’s reckless and will destroy your children’s physical emotional and mental health.”

And I’m telling you what, you guys—I have looked at curriculum like this and it is awful. You need to be able to get off of the bench and onto the battlefield. I’ve been telling parents for years, you know, I never used to be one of those people who who said—get your kids out of public school. But honestly, I mean, the barn’s on fire. At what point do we get the horses out? At what point do we say—okay, this is no longer acceptable.

And some of the biggest concerns about this particular curriculum is that in kindergarten through third grade. So the books that are given to kindergarten—they’re going to teach kids that they can be a boy or a girl, neither, gender queer, or gender fluid. And to me this is equally as damaging. Then they’re going to tell your children that the adults in their life might not understand their gender identity. Well of course they’re going to tell your kids that because the adults in your life are going to say—no, that’s garbage. It’s absolute garbage. In fourth and fifth and sixth grade—so now they’re turning parents against their children—in fourth, and fifth, and sixth grade—they’re using slang words for genitals, they’re explaining masturbation, sexual fantasies to sixth grade kids—fourth, fifth, and sixth grade—and in high school it gets even worse. I would say just flat out acts of debauchery being taught to children.

And so I want to encourage you—get off the bench get onto the battlefield. Speak up. And parents, if your school won’t listen to you—pull your children out of school. Pull your children out of school. Why are we allowing our children to swim through a cesspool in order to get basic education about reading, writing, and arithmetic? I would argue that the time has come to say—no more, not on my watch. Pull your children out of these immoral schools where the teachers and the administrators think that they know better than parents do. And in fact one of the worst things about this curriculum is that they’re not allowing parents to opt their children out of it.

And we talked about this a couple of years ago and parents said—oh, this will never happen. But actually, it’s true! Senator Mike Morrell, who is a Republican from Rancho, Cucamonga, is seeking to remedy this with a new bill that allows K through 6 parents to opt into the sex curriculum for their children rather than having them opt out. But right now—parents can not opt out of the whole curriculum. They are actually forced to have their children listen to instruction related to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and discrimination. This is an affront against parents everywhere and we should be concerned. So if you want more information on these groups I’ve reference to you please link. Please go up to the show notes today and you will see them there.

Also I will be speaking in California. I’m really excited to be down there this year for your homeschool conference at CHEA and I’ll link back to that also in the show notes today.

I want to say thanks for everybody who’s listening to the podcast and leaving reviews at iTunes. Thank you. Thank you, thank you—I can’t thank you enough. Please keep those reviews coming, please keep them coming for the books I’ve written over at Amazon or any place that books are being reviewed. It helps us get a message of whole-hearted parenting out to families and it is needed now more than ever. I appreciate you listening. I hope you guys have a fantastic day and I’m going to see you back here for the second week of our study at MomStrong International on Wednesday.

Write to Heidi:

c/o Firmly Planted Family
11100 NE 34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682

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