Hello my friends, happy week! It's a for you as probably a Sunday night or Monday again and for me it's Sunday late afternoon.

And oh my goodness, I have had a whirlwind week and a whirlwind weekend and yet so so so much fun.

If you are anywhere near my Instagram or Facebook or blog today you can see that I am checking on the queen

at Buckingham Palace where she often lives with Nathan, Kelia and Joy. Anyway I'm just gonna give you a quick little podcast tonight because I hate to miss my Monday podcast but I have been running like a crazy person.

What a whirlwind it has been the past few days I spoke yesterday at a small private retreat. I get away of mums here in Oxford and it was very challenging.

Very encouraging for me but it was so much fun. We were at this estate that was on this beautiful ground that had a small leg and a stream and trees and it was just a great getaway and I had the privilege of speaking to encourage women there.

And then literally I found myself in a situation because of traffic. Friend let me out and I literally ran for about 15 minutes with my suitcase behind me, my computer bag.

Running to catch a train to London and then I ran all over London with Joy, Nathan and Kelia who just flew over yesterday to London from the United States.

And we were so happy to be together and we were walking, talking, drinking, eating and we walked miles and miles over all of our favorite places in London.

And it passed so quickly and finally we took a train back home to Oxford and we had a tea time together which is as you know the Clarkson's do on Sunday afternoons.

Clay and Joel had prepared a tea time for us. We're hoping that Sarah is going to be able to come but some planes have been canceled. It's a long story.

You know life is never easy as you want it to be.

And we're just going to celebrate the next 10 days as Clarkson's and and Joy being with our precious Nathan and Kelia.

But I've kind of pondered a couple of things in the past few days and I wanted to kind of mention them because I think it is so important.

Our children Sarah Joel Nathan and Joy they're very different than each other. They're very the same. We are part of a family.

We love one another. We are part of each other's group. But they're also extremely different. The boys are very different. The girls are very different. We have two introverts, two extroverts.

They have owned their own lives, their own calling, their own decisions. And I was realizing this week that I just kind of want to emphasize something again that I think all of us need.

Klay and I are very different but we've learned over years how to look at the context of our hearts, how to affirm each other's weaknesses and strengths and set each other free to live with the limitations and the blessings of each of our personalities.

And I think it's so important for each of us in our relationship with people, especially people who are close to us to champion them to affirm their uniqueness, to give them space to fully live out their own adult decisions.

And to continue as Christ is to us affirming and loving them as they are. Now that's not always easy.

You know my children in the growing pains and in clay and me, sometimes they think differently about things or they want to do things that maybe I wouldn't think that that's the typical thing they would have done.

But we raise them, we love them, we taught them and we want to champion them and as well as the fact that we really believe that to help our children have agency to live by faith, to live into their capacity is something that they need to do as adults and they still need us as their parents and best friends to be for them, to be that support system for them.

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