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• Author of  “Are You Enough? Encouragement for the Overwhelmed and Exhausted Homeschool Mom”
• Advanced Certificate in Christian Life Coaching from American Association of Christian Counselors
• Degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. Production Engineer for 10 years.
• President and Founder of Winter Summit Ministries, Inc hosting women’s conferences for 9 years/ 13 events.
• International marketing business leader for 12 years speaking to over 100,000 people in various countries.
• Speaker for small and large women’s events, church events, homeschool conventions etc
• As a lifelong cheerleader, Roxanne’s greatest joy is to build, encourage and speak life-giving truths into the hearts of women

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the podcast. It’s Meet-My-Friend-Friday and my friend Roxanne Parks is here today and we are going to spend some time today encouraging parents and talking about the lie of not enough.

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

Thanks for tuning in today everybody. I want to say thank you to everybody who’s been leaving reviews for the podcast over at iTunes. Everything you guys are doing is making such a big difference in allowing us to get the podcast out to people. We really want to hear from you. We’d love to hear your show ideas and people who you would like to hear from and if you want to reach out to me about the podcast, go here and fill out the form— and keep those reviews coming on iTunes. We really appreciate it. 

Coming up, I will be in Virginia on the 14th of September for the Heidi St John Conference, and then if you’re planning a little bit ahead, my women’s conference comes one time a year to the Pacific Northwest here in Vancouver, Washington on the 12th of October. Then on the 19th, I’ll be bringing my women’s event to Lincoln, Nebraska. So encourage your friends, come on out. Bring your neighbor, bring your daughter. If she’s about 14 years of age or older, it’s a great opportunity. We’re going to spend a day and an evening in the Word of God, and I promise you, your lives will never be the same. The gospel changes us. It doesn’t leave us where it finds us. It changes us. 

That is one of the reasons I’m so excited about my guest today. Roxanne Parks is here with me today and she’s got some experience—she knows a few things about motherhood. She and her husband have been married for 33 years. They have four adult children ranging age from about 25 to 30, and she’s a brand new grandma. So we’re going to be talking about all things on motherhood today. Roxanne, welcome to the podcast.

[Roxanne] I am super excited to be here with you, Heidi.

[Heidi] Finally! So you have traveled to the studios from the great state of Oklahoma. 

[Heidi] Exactly. 

[Heidi] So what’s it like in Oklahoma? What’s your favorite thing about Oklahoma? 

[Roxanne] Oh, I just love Oklahoma. It’s so green and so full of, what I think is just great, all-american kind of people. 

[Heidi] Yeah. Yeah. 

[Roxanne] The kind that are friendly in the Walmart line. 

[Heidi] You’ve been in my neck of the woods for a few for a few days. How does it compare? The Oklahoma folks are the sit on the front porch folks. 

[Roxanne] Yes, rocking chairs on the front porch.

[Heidi] One of the things I love is rocking chairs on the front porch. What has been your impression of my neck of the woods? 

[Roxanne] I have fallen in love with Oregon and the Columbia River Valley. 

[Heidi] And the people aren’t as scary as you hear about on the news. Well ANTIFA is, but you didn’t go to like an ANTIFA rally. 

[Roxanne] No, but I will tell you this. I told my husband just this morning— I have fallen in love with Oregon. It’s an Oregon I never even knew existed. Your coastal beauty is incredible. The mountains and then the Columbia River— gorgeous! Just stunning. I actually am shocked by what I didn’t know about this area.

[Heidi] Now you’re at the studio at Firmly Planted and we are just across the road from Oregon in Southwest Washington state. It has been a thrill to have you here to my house. A fun couple of days. But I am so excited because I’ve known you for a long time. I love your ministry to women. I love your heart for mothers in particular, women in general but mothers in particular, and to be able to see what God’s done with you these many years. You’re a speaker and an author. If I’m going to describe Roxanne Parks in a sentence and I’m introducing you to my listeners who have never heard of you before— how would you describe what God’s put on your heart in terms of ministry? 

[Roxanne] Women and Christians live so far below our calling and our privilege. Oftentimes we just are overwhelmed. We’re running on a performance treadmill and we’re exhausted with all the things to do. I spend my life trying to believe I’m a soul that speaks life, giving truth into the hearts of women. The life giving truth is found in the Scripture. It’s her only solid ground in a shaky world. When you don’t know what’s coming and going in your house, or with your kids, or with your schedule—where’s your solid ground? I just gotta have some solid ground. I gotta have some peace. I’ve willingly exchanged sanity days when I felt like— do I have any choice in the peace equation? Is there any solid ground that I can stand upon and live a sane, peaceful life? I have found that to be true. You are right.  It is in the word of God and it is His promises, they are life giving. 

[Heidi] And they don’t change. So much of why we see moms and women, well men too, there are a lot of men who listen to this podcast, so shout out. Sorry guys. I have met a guy not too long ago and he was like— you really need to like give a little more love to the guys. The principles apply. So whether you’re a woman or a man, we’re living in a stressful world right now and it’s changing rapidly. What I hear from listeners is—we’re so frustrated at the changes that are happening and we lose our peace in the middle of it. We forget that God doesn’t change. He’s not surprised by what’s happening. He’s not sitting up in heaven going— well, I didn’t see that coming. He’s not doing that. He offers the same piece and the same joy to us now as He offered in the days of Moses, as He offered in the beginning of creation, at the beginning of our nation. He’s the same.

[Roxanne] Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

[Heidi] Yeah, it’s true. But still, we struggle.You wrote a book a few years back called Are You Enough?  I love it because today we’re going to talk about the lie of not enough, and men believe it too: I’m not enough to be what my wife and my children need to be, so I’m going to emotionally check out. I’m going to stay at the office. I’m not enough. The mom is thinking: I’m not enough to homeschool. I could never do that. I don’t have the patience for that. Or the mom who just thinks she’s not gonna make it through the teenage years. Moment of silence. We’re all asking the same question. 

[Roxanne] It’s the same battle. There’s a battlefield here. 

[Heidi] Yes, oh my goodness. 

[Roxanne] The war is on for our minds in this whole equation of not enough. Yeah. Who says we’re not enough? Who said that? Where’d that assignment come from?

[Heidi] Right? It started in the garden of Eden when the snake whispered to the woman saying— are you sure? 

[Roxanne] Did God really say that? Are you sure you can make it till death do you part? Are you sure you can homeschool? Are you sure you can do this life? Even Heidi and Roxanne, don’t we have to remind ourselves? It doesn’t matter that we know the truth. We have to remind ourselves of the truth all the time. 

[Heidi] We just did it before we started recording. We’re just praying together like— Lord, we can do it. People really need to hear that that’s real life. I don’t care if you’re a president Trump, I don’t care if you’re Heidi St. John, or Roxanne Parks. We are people at the end of the day. We are created in the image of God. God said each one of us has been created on purpose with a purpose. This is who God is. The enemy, which we read in John 4, wants to come kill, steal, and destroy. The first thing he steals is our identity. He lies to us and that steals your joy. Then will you wind up with these mopey moms, and frustrated fathers who have believed this lie that they are not enough.

So let’s talk about this for a minute because you wrote this book. I’m going to go through a little bit of it with you. I know you guys are going to be encouraged and you’re gonna want to get her a book. I will link back to her book in the show notes today. 

Let’s talk at the beginning when you have a title— Chapter One: It’s all Patty’s fault. In my mind I’m like— it’s not Patty’s fault, it’s so-and-so’s fault. We all have our Patty, what’s up with that?

[Roxanne]  We’re blamers, I cannot believe how much, it’s that shame thing that started in the Garden of Eden. God never intended there to be shame but it started in the gardening. We want to blame someone. “It’s all Pattys fault” She gave me this dream that homeschooling would be this: do a little bit of school, have lunch, and go to the golf course. 

[Heidi] She lied to you. 

[Roxanne] She totally did. Was it Patty that was lying? Who was lying?

[Heidi] So in all your years of homeschooling, nobody ever came down the stairs in the morning and said— hey mom, we got up an hour and a half early, we finished our math, we dove into prepositions because we knew that you’d be stoked. Then the laundry folded itself and the bird saying? Did that never happen? 

[Roxanne] No. 

[Heidi] Get Out. 

[Roxanne] Yeah. Yeah. 

[Heidi] Instead, it was just hard and humbling and amazing. 

[Roxanne] Hard and humbling and amazing. I love that Heidi. But you know what? I went into marriage the same way. So we could talk about anything. I remember thinking of marriage—Oh absolutely! Yes, til death do you part. Better or worse. Rich or poor. 

That was the illusion of perfection there. Then the illusion of being a perfect parent too. All these levels, and I think they are as beautiful as God intended them to be. When He said— I created you to be a masterpiece and I signed you to good works,  that woman comes into the equation and every one of these things. There’s an enemy of our soul that’s really trying to rob kill and destroy our joy and take our families and take our homes and take our territory. As we have discussed, it’s actually making me mad. 

[Heidi] I think it’s okay to say this isn’t right.

[Roxanne] What makes me mad is that he comes to rob kill and destroy our joy. What makes me even madder is that we let him. We’re asleep at the wheel. We’re not not finding our truth. We are not getting into our solid ground every morning. We are not getting into the truth. If we don’t put ourselves in truth and in solid ground every day, over and over, then the subtlety of the liar creeps in because he’s all over the game. There is a battlefield out there. I’m a writing Bible Study right now called The Voices and the Choices— and I’m telling you, there are voices in our head every day, ladies and gentlemen, there are voices in your head. The voice of the Lord, the voice of the enemy, the voice of yourself, and the voice of the other. 

Then we make the choices on these. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the battlefield of the liar, and the battlefield of the truth, and that these voices I hear all the time and then I’m making choices—and what in the world are we doing?Is there a choice to be made that can bring you sanity?

[Heidi] Yeah. Well, and I think we think too, that the answer to that is to get off the battlefield. The answer to that is just a wave of the white flag and say— Hey, this is too hard. It’s too frustrating. I see this all the time. That’s why I started the podcast out by saying— the husband who just feels like, you know what? This is way too hard. These wife and these kids, this estrogen, this estrogen riddled woman, I cannot figure her out. One minute, she’s one place. The next minute she’s in another place. I remember long time ago, my husband asked me— he was just like, dude, I don’t actually get you. I was like—get in line. I don’t get me either. I’m trying real hard to be the woman that I want to be… the one I know God wants me to be. And shoot, if it’s not challenging and frustrating and difficult, I know that there are men who are listening to this right now and they’re thinking— I’m not enough. 

Roxanne’s you’ve been married for 33 years. That’s gotta be grace. I’m coming up on my 30th anniversary and I know that you and I have observed the same thing. A generation of young men and women who were never mentored. They didn’t see a good example, or their parent’s marriage wasn’t good. So they went into it with the lie in the back of their head. The lie is— well you know, if this doesn’t work out then we can do something different. We go into it with, like you said, with a very unrealistic idea of what it actually is. Then those lies are whole lot easier to listen to because it seems like we didn’t understand and we didn’t and that’s okay. Because God does.

[Roxanne] That’s exactly right. I love the whole idea of the lean not on your own understanding and acknowledge Him in always because he’ll make the paths straight. Because there’s a lot of things I don’t understand. I don’t understand how I could have picked to marry this guy and then I could have been so confused about some things. It’s not like you know everything the day you get married, nor did he. 

I tell Brian all the time— you’re married to me and you have to handle me, but I never get away from me. I sit in my own chair. At least you can get away from me. Sometimes I love the admission that says —sometimes I’m confused about myself. We need to give ourselves more grace because I can not give other people grace if I don’t get myself some. The Lord came to give us this grace to be the beautiful mess that we are. I called it #beautifulbutmessy because I think the beautiful aspect is that God created us, He knit us on purpose with purpose, for purpose. He knows us. He numbered our days. The messy equation is that sin was knit in the human condition. If we can remember that every single soul is beautiful and every single soul is messy—we’re not going to have a human in our life that isn’t, we’re not going to have a marriage that isn’t.

And instead of saying this is not enough of and copping coping out on everything—you just go get stronger by navigating through it and you navigate it through it based on the principles of truth that are the only thing give you any kind of strength. Your strength is His strength, not yours because— I don’t know about you, but every now and then I’m done. In ne of my chapters, I talk about the letting and the end of my rope. One of the very best place you can be is at the very end of yourself or at the very end of your rope. So if you’re a listener today and you feel like—oh my gosh, I cannot do my own life, I feel like I’m at the end of my rope, I feel like I’m hanging on by thin thread— I just want you to know, I believe that’s a very best place you can be if it will let you die unto yourself and let go and let the Lord come in and fill you with His truth, his promises, my gosh mama—you’ve got to know His promises. They are your hope for freedom. That’s happened to me over and over in life where I felt like I can’t even do my own life now. And I can just hear the voice of the Lord beckoning me: My yoke is light, come unto me, lay down your heavy yoke and join into me and pick up my yoke for it. Let me carry it for it is light.

One of the greatest things I’ve been doing in the last few years is I feel like I just spend my life living in a slow dance of intimacy. I’m telling you, if you could imagine slow dancing in an intimate place with the greatest love of your life, the greatest knitter, the greatest knower, the never disappointing—and you’re just in a slow dance of love…and you can get in that slow dance every day of intimate love, relationship with the Lord, the savior, the redeemer, the restore of your soul—that just changes everything else. It changes my people. It changes my schedule, it changes everything. Intimacy with the Lord has changed everything and it makes me realize that I am enough because of who He designed me to be, not because of my agenda. 

[Heidi] Yeah, it’s right. You’re pointing out something that Jesus said in His word over and over again. He said— my grace is sufficient because my power is made perfect in weakness. 

[Roxanne] Yes. Yes. 

[Heidi] It’s actually found there. And so for the mom or the dad is listening and they’re like— no, I’m not enough.One of the things you talk about is this idea of surrendering, really letting go. This life is all about surrender. That’s what I wrote in The Guide to Daylight that if we don’t learn surrender, we’re never going to find peace because peace is found in surrender. If you can take a minute and just talk to that mom or dad is at the end of their rope. Talk to those people right now who are really at the end of their rope.

[Roxanne] Okay. Well, one of the things when I write about the voices and the choices— the battlefield of what’s going on in our mind is just huge. I want to turn down all the voices, but the voice of the one is the voice of the One that knows me. He numbered the hairs on my head. He numbers the days of my life. I just want to encourage women to turn out, tune out all the other voices and listen to the voice of the one and the promises that He offers us. One of the challenge I think we all have is that we have a control freak inside of us. The control freak wants to manage our husband and our children just like we think that we want to manage. This is a problem. 

[Heidi] She’s watching me and I’m like— that might or might not be me. I might have a little control freak in me.

[Roxanne] I know it’s a pride thing. So it’s common to man and we all have a little control freak in us. I will tell you, the sooner I identify that I do have a control freak and that I just basically asked that control freak to stand down. Do I really want my will my way or do I want his will his way? If my will, my way, is not yielding me a life of peace and harmony and provision— I don’t want my will my way. I loved years ago when I came to the beautiful surrender of…..I read a book called The Grace of Yielding. The challenge was to have the spirit of Christ within us where it says— Lord, if you could take this cup from me, great. But if you can’t, then, however, not mine but thine. I know that God assigned me in my marriage, with my tribe, my people that were knit in my heart or my wound, either one, they’re called children. I just decided to ask the Lord to have his will his way in my every day. So every morning when I get up, I literally speak or think the mantra: not mine, but thine today. I open my hands up in my bed asking God that I live open-handed with my day and that he be in the driver’s seat of the day. 

Two other things that really changed everything for me was—obedience has everything to do with our peace. When he said to focus on that which is praiseworthy, he wasn’t kidding around. I find that in marriages it doesn’t really matter if your husband isn’t doing this or that—you are asked as a woman who loves Jesus to focus on that which is praiseworthy and that’s life-giving. That not only works in your marriage, it works in your homeschool, it works with your family, it works with your job. 

[Heidi] So, flesh it out. When you say focus on the thing that’s praiseworthy, let’s say that you’re frustrated with your child. Or let’s say you’re frustrated with your husband or husband with his wife, and there’s that thing that they’re doing that’s just driving you nuts. You’re waking up in the morning and you’re thinking about it and he’s coming home from work and you’re still pretty mad cause it hasn’t been addressed. Maybe it’s practical, maybe you’ve said, hey, please don’t put your underwear on the floor next to the bed. It’s the little things that add up over time. How does that person who’s stuck in that negative shift out of that by the power of the Holy Spirit? What does it look like to actively take a step to do something different? 

[Roxanne]I have found that as I have focused on that which is praiseworthy and as I have had a grateful heart—I don’t think an anxious heart and a grateful heart can abide in that same heart. You make a choice— you live in anxiety or you live in gratitude as one or the other. I have chosen to be grateful and to focus on that, which is praiseworthy, it seems like it expands people around me. Say you have a husband that’s got a long list of things and there’s only a few things that he does that are praiseworthy and you start focusing on praiseworthy. We know Heidi, that men need respect more than they need love. I take those things that are praiseworthy and I start speaking them out to him and it just puffs his chest up a little bit when I’m speaking that which is praiseworthy versus nagging like a dripping faucet of all the things that aren’t praise worthy. I don’t care that they’re all true. 

[Heidi] Because that’s not the point.

[Roxanne] Exactly. Obedience is the point. God rewards obedience and when we focus on that which is praiseworthy and we speak that which is praiseworthy and in all of our children and all of our marriages— it expands because it puffs up our: oh my gosh, you like me for that? Well then let me do this. It expands the person. If you focus on those things that bring death, which are those things that are not life giving, which those things are not praiseworthy, that disobedience brings the reward of a death feeling in your heart. With my husband and with my children, if I make a list of everything that’s great about my husband—you would think I’m married to a rock star of the university! I know that if I focused on and told you everything I didn’t like about him, it doesn’t really matter that they’re true— it just robs my joy and brings death. 

There’s an obedience equation that’s into all this lying and all this going on that we need to be in the Word, we need to know the promises. We need to know the solid ground and then we need to obey. When God says to trust me, we need to obey that. When God says, and lean not on your own understanding, and when God says to focus on that which is praiseworthy, and when he says in all things to give thanks. 

[Heidi] Wait, so are you saying that there’s an element of personal responsibility here? 

[Roxanne] We want to blame everybody for our life. I was listening to one pastor, he just like—we’re like Delbert dumb: We crawl up the ladder, we fall off the ladder and then we blame God. There’s so many things that we go around blaming. I love when you said —so is there an element of personal responsibility? Yes. Read Your Bible. Yes, find truth, find peace, find sanity, but don’t go around living a stressed out life and then blaming everybody. 

[Heidi] Yeah, that’s exactly right. You are. You are enough to do everything you have been assigned to do. You’re actually more than enough. That’s a mindblower for those of us who don’t even feel enough. I closed this book in the story of More Than Enough and it was about these hungry people and they said feed 5,000 people and all they had was this lunch —it had two fish and some loaves of bread and they’re like, well this isn’t enough. Well, I don’t know about moms who are listening. I feel like, oh my God, it’s two fish and a loaf of bread and I’ve got to feed all these people for all the rest of my life. I’ve got to feed this marriage to this people, this life, this thing —I just don’t have enough. All I have in my little lunchbox is all I have in my lunchbox. But you know what that story teaches us?— is that when we give our lunch and everything we have to the giver. When we give everything we have back to the giver of all of it—he multiplies it.

[Heidi] He’s not an adder, He’s a multiplier. 

[Roxanne] It ended up not only being enough, it was more than enough. There’s 12 baskets leftover. So I find that when I’m in my control freak and I’m managing my two fish and my five loaves, and I’m trying to feed the people, it’s never enough. But when I surrender and I give everything I have unto greater glory — he just multiplies it. Like, you and I were talking about you’re getting ready to have a multiplied schedule because right now you’re thinking there’s not enough time in your life to do all the things you have to do. 

[Heidi] Yeah. You right. Yeah. 

[Roxanne] And we’ve asked God to multiply your time. You and I know he can. He is the multiplier—but he’s not a multiplier when were blamers, when our grip of control is around everything. He’s a multiplier when we’re obedient and listening to the voice of the One and when we’re focusing on that which is praiseworthy, and when we’re giving thanks. So we get down to the scriptures and we actually obey and trust and let him do the work. We don’t own the glory and we don’t own the blame.

[Heidi] Yeah. And God wants it. God wants the glory. You’re sitting here in the studio at Firmly Planted. You’ve seen what God has done, which is a miraculous story of provision. But it also is a reminder that God is the one who, who gives the increase. And he’s the one who gives us the strength to homeschool, the strength, to stay married, the strength to encourage our spouse when we just feel like we don’t have any encouragement left in us to give to anyone. It comes from Him. It all comes from Him. And Jesus said, I didn’t come so that you could just have life. I came so you could have it to the full.

[Roxanne] More abundantly.

[Heidi] So you can have an abundant life. That’s what He promises and that’s what He delivers.

[Roxanne] I know you are a strong woman and I probably would consider myself a strong woman, but I strive every day to bow down and let go and let God— and choose His peace and walk in His peace. The woman that wants to do it and own it and manage it is gone. She’s exhausted years ago. I say to women very often when I speak to them — Hey Mama, are you tired yet? Are you tired enough yet? Are you tired of your anxiety? Are you tired of not liking your people? Are you tired of the performance treadmill? Are you exhausted yet? Well, if you think you can keep managing it, just keep going girl. I just got so beautifully exhausted that I surrendered and said: Lord, you have got to do my life through me. I just knew he would do a better job than me doing it through me. 

The peace that is on the other side of surrender— I just want to say wake up women.

[Heidi] It passes understanding. 

[Roxanne] Yes, wake up women, wake up. There is a solution. He is a knower and a knitter and a lover of your soul. He wants to be in the intimate, slow dance with you because he wants to answer all your questions of the why that you aren’t enough and that you don’t have enough to stay married, to stay the mom, to stay the homeschooler, and to stay the course— you have everything you need to do, everything he has you to do and he will complete the good work within you. 

[Heidi] Yeah, and that’s, that is the message. That’s the gospel. That’s the gospel in a nutshell. Roxanne Parks , you are a treasure. You are a national treasure right here in Vancouver, Washington. 

[Roxanne] Thank you.

[Heidi] For those of you who want more information about Roxanne and her ministry to women, you can find her at roxanneparks.com. She’s available for speaking and I have heard this woman speak and I’m telling you—you gotta snip it today— you will be blessed. She also does something called four day intensives. You can find more information out about those on her website—for those of you just want to get away and hit the reset button and get back to relationship with the Lord. Roxanne, thank you so much for coming on the show. 

[Roxanne]Super excited to be with you, Heidi. Love you, love you, love you. 

[Heidi] I love you too. Hey you guys, if you haven’t joined us at this, at moms strong international, if you’re not a part of the Scripture Writing Community, this is a great time of year to get into it. We are going to be bringing life to you through the Word of God all year long. September is a fantastic time to make a commitment to study the word of God with us. See you back here on Monday.

Write to Heidi:
Heidi St. John
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 NE34th Cir, Vancouver, WA 98682