Hey, moms. This is Heidi St. John. Good morning. I have been reading this week in Colossians

chapter 4, and there are a lot of things that are standing out to me. And I hope that

as you're reading through chapter 4, it is also encouraging to you. But I want to point

something out today that kind of jumped out at me that maybe you didn't recognize. And

it's the very last verse of chapter 4, verse 18. It says, I, Paul, write this greeting in

my own hand. Remember my chains. Remember my chains. And then he says, grace be with you.

I thought, you know, that's interesting. Hear this guy, this champion for Christ, this

guy who gave it all up for Jesus and followed Jesus to the point of martyrdom. He loved

the Lord. And he was being real with these people. He was saying, remember my chains.

He was asking for prayer. He was asking them. He told the people exactly what he was struggling

with. And he asked that that that Tychus would tell of it too. He was being real. And he

wasn't hiding anything. I think often it's easy for us as moms to hide the things that

are struggling that we are struggling with. I know that for me, it's easier for me to

get on Facebook or get on my blog and talk about the things that are going right. Because

after all, who wants to talk about the things that are going wrong? I mean, that's embarrassing.

But the truth is, no one is encouraged when we have it all together. Years ago, I started

a blog and it was called Confessions of a Homeschool Mom. This was years and years ago.

And I started out by just telling everybody kind of our homeschooling story and the story

of having as many children as we had at the time. And I remembered nobody cared. I wrote

and no one really commented. I said, hey, I have a new crockpot recipe. I did this. I

did that. Well, it was discouraging for me because I felt like, you know, here I was

trying to encourage these moms and no one was being encouraged. Well, one day out of complete

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