Christian Parenting.

Christian Parenting.

Hey, friends.

Welcome back to Pardon in the Mess.

I'm your host, Courtney Defeo.

And before we pray and talk about Abraham,

we've got to talk about

furniture and home goes. Y'all go with that. So this has nothing to do with the lesson or the prayer today. But I need y'all to know. In my ways of coping with having my first child at college, I thought it would be a great idea. Actually, Larson asked. She's like, hey, mom, when Ella goes to college, can I move in the bonus room? So for those of you that don't know, it used to be a

playroom, it used to be, it was Ron's band room, there's all kinds of junk in there. And that sounded like a no big thing. We're like, sure, we're not going to touch Ella's room because she hates change. And it's like a shrine. We don't even touch it or go buy it. but I was like, yeah, we'll flip it. We'll put your stuff in the bonus room and clean out all the junk and the toys

and Ron's drums and put him in Larson's old room, which sounded like an easy thing. But here's what I discovered this weekend. It took forever and I'm still sweating and it's amazing. But I was reminded about a simple principle, again, that's not biblical, but a friend of mine years ago

said when you're buying things like clothes or furniture, he said, pay twice as much, half as often.

And as I was loading, like, the third broken dresser that I bought from home goods and no knock-on-home

goods, but I keep buying things that Ron won't get mad at or that I can afford, and then they

never hold up. So I literally had to put Larson's dresser on the curb, hoping somebody will take it, because the drawers are all broken. And we bought her a really nice one this weekend. And I thought, huh, if I had done that when she was like in first grade, we'd probably still be using the same dresser. Imagine that. Okay, life lessons about home goods from court. Now,

let's move into this prayer episode. I don't have a neat transition there, but can I be honest about

another thing? Y'all, I'm having great angst, and I'm praying about it, but I need you to pray

for me too, about teaching this and leading this this year. I don't know why I am nervous about it. I think because I

dropped out of seminary. I only took one class. I'm not a pastor. I'm not a biblical scholar.

I'm more street smart that I am book smart. And so I think as we look through the next 38 weeks,

37 weeks, and I see all these people and the Bible and Abraham and Ruth and Noah that I'm like,

I don't have what it takes to teach this. And so as I was praying about it and thinking about it,

I really just felt like God was like, keep it simple. And y'all, we're just going to keep it simple.

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