Welcome to the Gospel Coalition podcast, equipping the next generation of believers,

pastors, and church leaders to shape life and ministry around the gospel.

On today's episode, you'll hear a breakout message from Jen Oshman from TTC's 2024 Women's Conference.

I grew up probably like many of you in a single parent household. When I was eight, my mom and dad got

divorced, and the judge asked me, who do you want to live with? And of course,

what I said was, well, I want to live with my mom and I want to live with my dad. And so I lived

for a week with my mom and a week with my dad for 10 years going back and forth like that.

So what that meant then was I was part of two different

single parent households. And what that meant is both of my homes were really tight on the

budget. And so probably like many women in this room, whenever I asked, can I get that?

Maybe it was new shoes for the school year, like the nice, the nice new name brand ones,

or perhaps just the nice juice boxes for my sacked lunch the next day or summer camp,

these kinds of things.

What I frequently heard far more than I wanted to was,

no, we can't afford that. And I grew to hate that phrase. I grew to just have disdain for,

no, we can't afford that. So I set out for college with one goal in mind.

I wanted to get a degree that would allow me to get a career, that would allow me to make

enough money so that I would never have to say to my children or to my future self,

no, we can't afford that. I wanted to have the freedom to us always say, sure, get more.

How about one in every color? Let's get a backup. Let's get a few backups. Let's get one for the car.

What else do you need?

I wanted to be the parent who just said, no, we can get you whatever it is, your little heart

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