Your listening to 3 in 30 takeaways for moms Episode 177.

Love centered parenting.

Welcome to 3 in 30, a podcast for moms who want to create more meaning in motherhood.

Each 30-minute episode will feature three doable takeaways for you to try at home with your family

this week. I'm your host Rachel Nielsen. Thank you so much for being here.

At the beginning of today's episode, I want to ask you a question and I invite you to think

seriously about it. Maybe pause the podcast and give yourself a few moments to think or to even jot

down some thoughts before you listen. The question is this, what do you believe your job is as a mother?

I'm going to give you a second to formulate your answer to that. What do you believe your job is

as a mother? Do you have an answer in mind? This is the question that today's guest Crystal

Payne asked the community of women who follow along with her popular blog and Instagram account,

the money-saving mom. And the answer she received didn't surprise her because she herself

had spent years defining her role as a mom in the same ways that her community of readers

were now defining themselves. Crystal says that the majority of the responses were along the lines

of, my job as a parent is to raise responsible independent adults. My job as a parent is to raise

godly children who love Jesus with all their hearts. My job as a parent is to raise kids who

make good choices and are people with good morals and character. These are all very valid and good

aspirations for parenting, but are any of those outcomes truly within a parent's control? Can we

really control how our kids turn out? And if so, how can that actually be our job as parents?

And does this focus on trying to make sure our kids turn out a certain way really lead us to

parenting from a place of fear and control rather than parenting from a place of love and trust?

These are the questions that Crystal has grappled with for the past 16 years as she's

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