Christian Parenting.

Welcome back to Part of the Mess.

It's Cynthia Yanoff.

Hello, friend.

Well, hello, Courtney Defeo.

I'm so like this warms my heart to be back on the prayer podcast.

I know.

For guys, if you don't know, Cynthia was the original creator and host of Part of the Mess.

She handled it for about three years and then passed the torch to me, but it was her baby.

And tell us how the Prayer Journal came about and why it was important for you to add that to the me, but it was her baby. And tell us how the prayer

journal came about and why it was important for you to add that to the mex for a part of the mess. Yeah, I always say this because I get so many people that stop me and talked to me about the prayer journal from all those years ago. And like, what a gift you had for praying over your children. I'm like, no, nobody was worse praying for their children, the Cynthia Ganov. And so that's what, like, people would come up to me and they'd be like, I've prayed for my daughter's husband since she was in the womb. I'm like, well, what a schmuck I am. I've prayed like once in fourth grade. Maybe last year I prayed once for him. But so I just wanted something that would help me to really pray God's word over my children and to have some sort of structure to it, which is why the parenting journal started. And Christian parenting was like, okay, we can try it. And never, ever did I think, I don't know how many versions there have been since there. I did the first three or four of them. But man, it's just kept going. It's been awesome.

And then one of my good friends, Stephanie, shout out. Stephanie, she's like, you need to do a Monday morning quick podcast to help parents do this and pray with them. And I was like, ain't nobody got time for that. But thank goodness I did. Like that's the thing that I think really was, It's really been meaningful and you've kept up.

So thanks for me.

Well, it's the thing I didn't want to do because I felt inadequate.

I felt inadequate.

I felt like, what am I going to have to do these like little mini sermons. I'm not strong enough bivocally. And it's the thing that I'll look back and say, I'm so grateful that I did. And I think we have as much as even more listeners on the Monday baby episodes than we do the Thursday episodes, which is

so telling of what moms need and just a little flash and moment in their lives. So this week,

we're talking about purpose with Esther, the story of Esther. And I'm going to read Esther 414.

It says, if you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will

arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you

were made queen for such a time as this? And so it's a moment in the Old Testament. It's actually

one of two books that are named after a woman. So Esther is somebody we like, likely if you grew up in the church you know about. But Cynthia, tell us what you kind of pull from the story of Esther and your life and why you like it as we think about parenting. Yeah. It is literally, and it's funny that you asked me to do this. We did not talk about this much before. This is one of my very favorite books of the Bible, and that's, that verse is actually on a huge sign in my entryway for such a time as this. And so I love it. But you know what? I think we overlook. Yes, like, let's step into the main purposes, from the beginning of time until the end of time. At any point that continuum. You could have been born. The Lord could have chosen you for any time,

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