Lisa Bevere talks motherhood with daughters-in-law Julianna and Christian Bevere
A candid multi-generational conversation about the realities, challenges, and joys of motherhood.
Summary
Lisa Bevere hosts her two daughters-in-law, Julianna Bevere (mother of four, navigating pre-teen and teenage years) and Christian Bevere (mother of two toddlers), for an honest conversation about motherhood across different seasons of life. The episode centres on the gap between expectations and reality in motherhood — the isolation, perfectionism, self-neglect, and the pressure to appear capable while feeling lost. Lisa shares her own turning point: a car accident during pregnancy that forced her to confront her compulsive self-sufficiency and her inability to receive care or set limits. The conversation also addresses the breakdown of intergenerational mentorship between older and younger women, the importance of fathers in the formation of sons, and the anchoring power of family meals and multi-generational connection.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Opening: What surprised you about becoming a mother?
Lisa Bevere: Welcome to the Lisa Bevere podcast. We're going to be talking today about all things motherhood, and I am so excited because joining me today are two of my beautiful, magnificent daughters-in-law — Julianna Bevere, mother of four, and Christian Bevere, mother of two. Julianna is doing pre-teens and teens, and Christian is doing toddlers, so I feel like we can run the gamut when we talk about motherhood. First of all, I just want to say this at the very beginning: we celebrate motherhood, and there is no such thing as "I'm just a mother." We all know that mothers do way more than people even see or can imagine. So we're going to dive right into the conversation.
Julianna, since you've done mothering the longest between the two of you — what is something that surprised you that you learned about yourself by being a mother?
Julianna Bevere: Oh man. There are so, so many things.
Lisa: The teenage years is revelation.
Julianna: They're shocking every single day, in some of the best possible ways. I think what surprised me though was so much of myself that came alive and grew through motherhood. I became a mother when I was really 19 — that's when my son was growing inside of me — and 20 when I birthed him.
Lisa: I remember I kept saying, "Don't give birth yet. I don't want a teen pregnancy in our family." Just joking.
Julianna: Technically, we had it anyway. And I was surprised by how hard it was, honestly.
Lisa: Motherhood was hard, or pregnancy?
Julianna: Motherhood. I had babysat, so I thought I was ready. I was ready to be a mom. I had played with dolls. I had played with Barbies. I had met the man of my dreams. I was like, "Okay, I'm ready for this." And so I was surprised by how much of the time I felt like I had no idea what I was doing.
Lisa: Which is such a relief to everyone watching. You know, somebody said to me when I was pregnant with your husband — "Relax. Your baby has no idea you don't know what you're doing." And that was such a big comfort to me, because you are making it up as you go along. And what works with the first baby doesn't work with the next one.
Julianna: Yeah. Because I remember Asher — you'd lay him down and he'd go to sleep. And then Sophia — screaming, blood-curdling, throwing everything out of the little bed area, paci gone, blanket gone. I remember I babysat her once and I had to set a timer because the blood-curdling scream was so intense that I wanted to rescue her right away. She'd be sweating. I was like, "Oh my gosh." Totally different personalities. We were cutthroat baby-wise parents, which if I were parenting now I'd probably do a bit differently. But I think that part too is surprising — you do what you know to be best, and inevitably you make mistakes, and somehow it's still okay. You bring the humility, the surrender.
You and I were in a church service recently, and the pastor said, "Pastor is not a title, it's a task." And I've thought about that so many times.
Lisa: Well, it reverberated in my mind as: mother is not a title, it's a task.
Julianna: And it's a task that even from the moment you discover you are a mother, your body is already doing it without you signing up for anything. There were things that happened that created this life within you, but that reality — mother is not a title, it's a task — and a task that before you even knew you were doing it, your body was already doing. There's something within that, Lisa, that unforced rhythm of grace. I've lost sight of it so many times through my seventeen years of making a baby and mothering children. I feel the Lord afresh welcoming me to this place — like, "Hey, you're already doing it. It doesn't require you being cognitive of every single decision for it to be happening. I'm in this. You said yes. Here we go."
Lisa: Well, first and foremost, I just want you to know that I watch both you and Christian, and from the outside it looks like you are doing it superbly. I just remember my own motherhood journey as like a blur. They all survived, I fed them, but I feel like there was a blur of me yelling, me feeling bad for yelling, me not yelling, me not sleeping. It just feels like there was this blessed blur. They're obviously all grown up and married now, but from the outside I always see you do it very graciously. And sometimes John and I, when we come over and watch your teens interacting with you both, I'm like, "Oh, I remember this. This feels fair."
One of the funniest moments for me was when you told me you were having a conversation with Asher and you looked at Addison and said, "Go down the street right now and apologize to your mother." I was like, "It might fix some things."
All right. Christian, what about motherhood has surprised you? First of all, everyone needs to know that Christian has come into the motherhood of boys world. Julianna grew up with brothers. You came from female infinity.
Christian Bevere: Azarai is still the first boy in fifty-plus years. I think there are like thirteen granddaughters, and they're like, "When did you — how did you do that?"
Lisa: Yeah. It's like, go to Italy. I don't know.
Christian: Come from an all-boy family. On the positive side, I've just been so delighted. My son is three going on thirty — he just has this old soul, sweet tender heart. That was a surprise in and of itself. Like Julie said, you go in thinking you know, but then there's so much you don't discover until you're in it. The kindness of little boys mixed with the testosterone rises and the car love has been really sweet — yelling "backhoe," "back digger," "excavator" — and how quickly your brain can autotune to that, where you're driving solo and you go, "School bus!" and then wait — no one's in the car.
But I think I was surprised first off by how much isolation has grown within motherhood. There is this expectation — and I know you said that as a very kind gesture, that from the outside it looks great — but a lot of people, if they don't have close-knit family or community, they don't know how to have anything past that. It's like: how do I show up and look like the perfect mom? How do I bake all the school treats, have the hair bows in? There is this beautiful, tender, kind part of motherhood, but then there's also this struggle for so many moms who are doing it alone. Maybe that's why someone even clicked on this video — because they're like, "I need the secret tips because I feel like I'm failing."
Even just hearing you both admit that is something. There are days where you lose your temper. There are times when even the way that women are driven to motherhood is so different from fatherhood. The way we have estrogen in women is protective of a lot of things, but we're more susceptible to mental health anomalies. And some of that I think is beautiful because our brains are wired to hear our children in the middle of the night.
Lisa: It's called sleep deprivation.
Christian: It's called craziness. But there's just so much that God created in us to be protective — yet we're not necessarily protecting ourselves as mothers by being vulnerable with the right community. There's not a torch being passed for many people. I'm so thankful for the way that I have you and Julie and my family around me. Every mom needs another mom to text, especially with their first baby. Don't Google everything. Don't think you're failing. Just have a confidant. Julie was that for me in a lot of ways, and I've been able to be that for other people. I hope there is a new shift coming in motherhood, because with social media and your own thoughts, it's so easy to get trapped in the motions and feel like you're failing rather than realise you are becoming and you are learning.
The most challenging parts of motherhood
Lisa: Christian, what have you found to be the most challenging? Is it feeling like you're making it up as you go along, or something else?
Christian: To be really raw — probably the most challenging has been the inevitable balance that I first realised with my first child: how do I coexist with the woman I've been becoming for the last twenty-some years and this mother? And then when I welcomed my second, I started having inconsistencies with my health, and that played into emotional areas — my patience, all these things. I used to think I was lighthearted and kind. And then recently I've just felt like my patience is off, my health is off. I can't control how I feel every single day. And that's scary — how do I be there for everyone when I don't know how I'm going to show up each day? How do I be a rock for them while wondering how to take care of me?
I think every mother's fear — whether you feel incredible or whether you are struggling — is: these people rely on me. What if I let them down? What if I let my husband down? So that's been my struggle. You see all these beautiful chips in front of you, and it really is this daily surrender of: what can I do today? And for me — call it a firstborn daughter, call it a perfectionist, call it southern passive-aggressive, whatever it may be — it's realising there are some ships that might fall, and that's okay. That's kind of my dance right now.
Lisa: I went to bed every single night with a list when I was a young mother. I was really good at taking care of everybody but myself. That was for sure — I was the last person to be taken care of. It even played out with the laundry. I would wash all the clothes, but I would put away everybody's clothes except mine. Mine would be in the hamper. I was like, "What is wrong with me?" I would trifold John's underwear and put it away, and mine was wadded up in a laundry basket. And I had to really realise there's a big difference between taking care of yourself and being careless with your health, because I was like, "I'm denying myself. I'm a martyr. I'm taking care of my family, my husband. I'm self-sacrificing."
And there's this moment I specifically remember — we had blue carpet, so I remember the carpet. I've just dumped a load of laundry out on the floor, I'm sorting through it, I've got children running around, and John looks at me and says, "Do you want to go golfing?" And I'm like, "What?" I mean, I'm folding laundry, possibly hygiene-challenged. What made you think? And then he said, "Well, we could get a babysitter." And I was like, "Do you see this laundry?" What I wanted him to do was get down on the floor and fold it with me — not for me, with me — and arrange for a babysitter. But instead he looked at me and said, "Oh, yeah. Okay, bye." And I just remember thinking: he's not a mind reader. I'm furious with him, but I didn't even tell him what I wanted. I wanted him to carry the load with me, and yet he was like, "I need a break." And I wanted him to make that break possible for me. When he didn't do it, I was mad at him — but I never even said, "That sounds amazing. I'm not sure how I could do that."
I remember after that thinking: I am not enjoying my children or my marriage. I'm just surviving it. I'm not flourishing. I'm just surviving. And then every night I went to bed thinking, "You didn't get enough done." I was editing John's books, taking care of the kids, and he was gone so much. It was just this rhythm of every single day feeling like I failed.
And I feel like the moms out there may not have a husband who travels or a book to edit or four children, but they have Instagram constantly telling them, "Look at their house. What does your house look like?" My house was a Lego explosion. Constant laundry in the hamper because if they were all clean, I had no place to put them away.
I feel like mothers are incredibly hard on themselves. And when you're hard on yourself long enough, you take it out on other people. I took it out on my husband because I didn't want to take it out on my children. And looking back — you want to be there for everybody, but if you're not getting it from God, you have nothing to give.
There was a book where someone said, "Who mothers the mothers?" And unfortunately we don't have older women mothering the younger women. There's been some generational breach. I knew the kind of mother I didn't want to be, but I didn't know how to become the mother I wanted to be. And I look at both of you with such admiration. But I would say to both of you: you're probably both doing better than you know. And even with all of our mistakes — even the things I can look back and regret — they became God-gaps for my children to seek God, seek their Father, and He filled those gaps.
What shifted — the turning point
Christian: Can I interject and ask what shifted from the season that you just described? What illuminated the way forward from that?
Lisa: I wish it was just an immediate shift. I started to take some steps. One of the things was I had to give myself permission to take care of myself. I listened to a woman saying exactly what I brought up earlier — there's a difference between denying yourself and neglecting yourself. She said: when you neglect yourself, you actually bring your worst version of self to the people who need you at your best.
And I thought: I am not denying myself. I'm not being godly. I'm not being a martyr. I'm neglecting myself.
It was when I was pregnant with Ardan. I had a car wreck — John wasn't with me. Addison was in the back seat, and I was picking up Alec or Austin from somebody's house. I was turning right and a Dodge Ram pickup hydroplaned and hit my Honda Civic. I took the whole impact as the driver — pregnant, hit the steering wheel with my pregnant body, whiplashed. Horrible. When people used to say "I have whiplash," I was like, "You're a wimp." And then the next day I woke up and was like, "What is this excruciating headache?" I broke a tooth off — my jaw clenched up and one of my bottom teeth broke. It was terrible.
What happened was the insurance paid for a housekeeper. I would never have had a housekeeper before — I was like, "They don't do a good job. I do it better." After the accident I was like, "Come in, my friends. Come. I don't care what you miss. Just come in." I went from being the mom who would bleach the grout on my tile floors with a toothbrush — scrubbing it, combing it, bleaching it, thinking, "No one gets this grout as clean as I get it. I can't believe John would ever want to hire a cleaner" — to that.
I remember I was putting my three boys to bed. It was Austin. I would pray over the boys and have them put their fingers up — it was called three fingers — and I'd pray for them and have them put their fingers down when they were done being prayed for, because they'd always say, "You forgot to pray for me." So I was like, "No, we're doing the fist pump. We're done." And Austin said, "I want to pray for you." He had me put my fingers up and he said, "Jesus, let mommy be fresh in the morning. Let mommy be fresh in the morning. Let mommy be fresh in the morning."
And I was like — my son is picking up that I'm doing things for hours after they go to bed, and I am exhausted, and I get up more tired. What is going on?
When I had the car accident, that was the turning point. I was in the bathtub, crying, in a lot of pain, trying to calm my muscles down while pregnant. And I really felt like I heard the Holy Spirit say, "I'm sorry it took you being incapacitated for you to realise that you have limits and you cannot control everything." And I just started crying.
So I started saying, "Okay. I'm going to say no to certain things. I'm going to have a cleaning lady every other week. I'm going to take care of myself." After I had Ardan, I slept on the floor for a year because of sciatica and pinched nerves. And one day — people would say, "I'm believing God that you'll be healed," and I'd get mad because I felt pressure to be healed while still in pain. And God was like, "So I can't heal you because it was a car accident?" And it was like I realised: wait. I deserve to be a child right now. I deserve to go to God. I don't have to earn this healing. I can receive it.
I remember it was during a worship song — I just got totally healed. I used to be the kind of person where if I slept on the wrong bed or picked up a child wrong, I'd have a pinched nerve and be on my back. My boys remember that. And I've never had any problems since. It was just a turnover.
I think there are a lot of women carrying things they're not meant to carry, and because they're not meant to carry them, they make everything in your life awkward. So that was the turning point — the bleaching-the-grout, car-wreck, wake-up, you-can't-do-it-all thing.
Anxious toil and the sustenance of striving
Lisa: It makes me think of Psalm 127 — "eating the bread of anxious toil." That would have been me. There is a sustenance to anxious toil where you do feel like you're doing something.
Julianna: You're striving. It can be motivating. It can get you to go places or do things that other motivations didn't work for. But it always falls short at some point. Whatever you start out with, the motivation being the anxious toil — I think of Jesus at the well with the woman, where he says, "This will leave you thirsty. You're going to have to keep coming back. Wouldn't you love something that keeps you satisfied?"
Lisa: That's an accurate description. It made me feel necessary. It made me feel needed. It made me feel valued. Who else is going to bleach this grout?
Julianna: Exactly. Those cleaning ladies, they miss stuff all the time.
Lisa: But yeah, it was just ridiculous. I exhausted myself and I thought God was so pleased with me. I also remember — and some people might think this is crazy — when I was thinking in my mind, "No one gets this as clean as me," I remember hearing: "Lisa, when you stand before me, I'm not going to reward you because you had the cleanest grout. I'm going to ask you what you did with my entrustment on your life." And I thought, "Well, I'll just get up earlier. I'll just work harder." Car accident.
I'm not saying God gave me the car accident, but He certainly used it.
Christian: I'm just getting preached to over here. This is resonating. Because I think what's hard for women especially is: well, what is that entrustment I'm called to, and what is just the motions? Because there is so much interweaving — steward your children well, steward your home, steward your marriage — but to what extent is that, as you said, our limits and our control?
Discerning your season — what only you can do
Lisa: I think this is important for every person to reassess in every season. There are certain things that only I can do for my family, and then there are certain things that somebody else can help with. For me, I tried to homeschool Austin and I realised that was a huge mistake. Somebody else needed to educate Austin. John said, "Why are you doing this?" And I said, "Because he wanted to be home with me. I had a baby right after him." But really Austin wanted to homeschool because he didn't want to go to school — he wanted it to be easy. And John said, "Did God tell you to do this?" Well, no. It was fear-counselled, not Holy Spirit-led. I'm not saying every person who homeschools their child is fear-counselled — I'm just saying at that given time, I was not being a responsible educator for Austin, and I wasn't being a responsible mother for my other kids.
God had actually given me certain things to steward — my marriage, my family. And then I was writing, but I very much limited my travel. I would go out Fridays and come back Saturdays, only two times a month. John was always home with the boys on Friday night. So he'd be with them on Friday, and sometimes there'd be a babysitter for a couple of hours while he flew out and I flew home on Saturday, because I always took my children to church on Sunday.
So many women don't understand that the right thing in the wrong season is the wrong thing. You can do it all, but you can't do it all at once. You have to ask: what is my season? Because there's strength when you understand your season. Too many people are looking into the next season and missing the lessons and the strength of the one they're in.
We thankfully have a farmers market here where you want to eat the fruit and vegetables that are in season, because in season is where you're going to get the nutrients you need. Too many people are eating things out of season — partaking of things out of season — and they don't get strength from it.
Raising connected teenagers — family dinners and the role of fathers
Lisa: I know people are asking: how do you survive these years? How do you be a good mom? How do you keep them close? Because I think that's every mom's fear with school and social media — I don't want to lose them to something else.
I know that I've made, and I know you both have made, meal time a priority. For us, having a family dinner is one of the most powerful things you can do for your children's connection to your family and their social adjustment to the world. Being able to have a dinner as a family is a form of communion — it's conversation, it's family, it's realising your needs are going to be taken care of, and you do it as a group. So many moms don't let the kids help. I watched Asher at Maddie's birthday — he got up and started washing all the dishes, and I came in and he was like, "No, G-mama, no. This is my job." I was super impressed.
My boys would get frustrated with me because I didn't keep my messes in one area, so they'd always be cleaning up after me as I went. But it is healthy for children to actually be part of either preparation or cleanup when you do dinner. Dinner is a huge thing for teenagers.
Julianna: It's very big. So much of Asher's formation has been his dad. I remember he turned thirteen and because Addison made it very ceremonial — like he was crossing a threshold — I had the sweetest moment with the Lord where I just cried and cried and was like, "Okay, my baby boy is in a way being given to his father." I do not take it for granted. I hope to take it for granted less. I have a husband who is so trustworthy, such an incredible father, and takes the formation of his son so seriously. But I have fought him so much — on school decisions, disciplinary things, so many areas where there has been this tension between us unnecessarily.
So I guess this is more of a word to the mom of a teen or pre-teen son: if you have a trustworthy husband, trust him. Just trust him. You're not going to understand, because you are not a man. Sons need their fathers, and they need their mothers to give them to their fathers.
There's a little bit of backtracking even in Asher and my relationship now — an unnecessary friction where I fought his dad or felt like I needed to protect him, or felt like his dad wasn't being hard enough. This constant dance. But Asher is incredible and so close-knit with our family. He would choose to be at a family dinner over hanging out with friends any day. Some of that is his introverted nature, but he's so good with the little kids.
And it reminds me of your husband, Ardan. I have this one photo of Ardan — he's got all three of the kids cuddled up, two are asleep on him, and he's on the sofa with these kids. There's something about having teenagers anchored with toddlers, with babies. It's almost like Asher and Sophie kept Ardan attached to the family in a way he would not have been if he had just been the lone young teenager running with his friends. My friends who have had their little bonus babies — a teenager and then a surprise pregnancy — have said the same thing. It anchors the older children to the family in a way that nothing else does.
Lisa: I agree with that completely. And just so you can feel comforted — I wanted John to discipline Addison, Austin, Alec, and Ardan, but I wanted him to discipline them the way I wanted him to discipline them. I'd be like, "This is what they're doing. You've got to deal with it. No, don't deal with it like that. This is how I want—" I wanted him to be a father, but I was really asking him to be a mother.
You do need to ask the dad to be the dad — even with the daughters. And when we're talking about sons specifically, we need to realise there's the voice of the father, which would really be like God the Father, and then there's even a Holy Spirit voice which would be a little more nurturing — like a mother. Both are necessary. But when you miss that voice of a father, I think that's why we have a whole generation that doesn't understand consequence. They don't understand respect. They don't understand authority. And we all know those things can be misused, but an understanding of having a father as the protector and provider of the household — it's not that he's the only one, but he's the major one. He carries the weight of that. And then the mother being the nurturer and the responder to that — it's gotten really flipped in our culture, and it's really confusing.
Julianna: And that goes back to what Christian was saying earlier about younger women needing the generation ahead of them to lead them in loving their husbands and loving their families. There is this disconnect that has happened where we just want to look to our peers, and our peers don't have any fruit there — they're along the same lines we are. When you're looking for wisdom, you want to look to people who have fruit.
The breakdown of intergenerational wisdom
Lisa: You know, it's interesting that you talk about that, because we all know that David laboured hard to build a kingdom and then Solomon established it. David laid up the wealth, took the land, Solomon established it — and then Rehoboam refused to go to his father's counsellors. He counselled with his peers and split the kingdom. When we were young, we're like, "We know more than our moms. We know more than our dads." But then you find out you know what you don't want to do — you don't know what you do want to do. And we have a generation that's very educated on how to dismantle, deconstruct, and destruct, but not how to build. So they're critics, not constructors.
We become an echo chamber — we only talk to people who think like us, look like us, live like us. And then all of a sudden we find out: no, life has a lot more complexities than this, and I'm not getting what I need. And going back to teenagers — teenagers very quickly are like, "The world is larger than what you've presented me with." And then all types of doubt can creep in, unless you're getting ahead of that: "Hey, here is a large world. Let me guide you through this, because that's the season we're still in. You're not a full-grown adult out there discovering things you never knew existed."
Christian: I have a question here. As we're talking about this multi-generational family approach, I think one of the biggest inhibitors of this is the search for identity — which should be equally beautiful and selfless, but I'm seeing moms get caught up on the opposite side: "I need to live for myself. I need to get my needs met." I'll just be transparent — my feed is inundated with mommy makeovers and "do this" and "I just went on a trip with my girlfriends." There's nothing wrong with taking care of yourself or having friend groups, but sometimes there is an overtness to it. And we were chatting around this beautiful woman in her sixties who is almost unrecognisable because of how much the self-focus has shaped her.
So I'm curious — as someone who has done motherhood, who's done grandmotherhood, if that's a word—
Lisa: It needs to be. Add it to Webster right now.
Christian: You still have so much that you are putting your hands to, but you also have your family. How do we tend well to those things without getting so caught up that women in their fifties and sixties are saying, "I have to go do this for my career, I have to go do this for my image, I don't have time for my grandchildren" — while at the same time there are mothers saying, "I have no one to help me. I don't know what to do"? There's this cycle. How do we find that balance? How does a mother cry out for help? How does an older woman who still has her own life help in other ways? A lot of families are confused on what that looks like.
Lisa: Well, I think we're making up the answer to your question with our lives right now. There were things I could come to my mom for, and there were things I couldn't — because of brokenness. And your mother can't always be that answer. So I think one generation finally has to say: I'm willing to be what I didn't have. I'm willing to give what wasn't given to me. I'm willing to create some pathways when all I met was obstacles.
But I also think your generation has to say: I'm going to honour that. Even if I want to do it differently, I'm still going to honour the things you've been through and I want to learn from it. For me, I would rather go on vacation with my family than with anyone else, even with all the complexities. I think we're all in Florida together next month. John was like, "You're going to love it, aren't you? Because you love the chaos." I said, "I do love the chaos." And John has learned — he used to be like, "They're touching the walls. They're touching the walls." And I'd be like, "Put yourself in your room if you're going to act like this. I can handle the stress of grandchildren. I cannot handle your stress about the grandchildren."
I think we're all committed to growing and hearing and understanding that as we know better, we do better. But there has been a disconnect and a lie. My whole thing with the Godmothers book was that older women think the younger women don't want any of their valuable lessons or treasures — they think they're despised because they're older. And then there are younger women thinking that older women are all retired playing golf. So they're not connecting. And yet we know that's actually incredibly crucial — scripturally, and also Barna just did this big study showing that the only way to bring healing to millennials and Gen Z's is if older women begin to help younger women, because younger women right now are more disenfranchised than young men when it comes to spiritual things.
So we're seeing this breakdown of mothering where women want to be sex symbols or self-actualize and say, "I won't be a mother anymore." Or they're going to go do whatever — and they're going to have to deal with that at the end of their life. All these people they're playing for aren't going to be bedside. It's your family. It's who you invest in.
We have some friends going through some really hard stuff right now, and it does punctuate your life. You want to have a connection with your family. There are certain portions of my family I'm very connected to, and then there are parts that are very fragmented. And that's your story as well, Julie. There's that brokenness where you want connection, but sometimes — how can two walk together unless they're in agreement? There are certain people you have to let go their own way. But if somebody says, "I want to walk with you" — we have a virtue of fierce unity. We fight for unity. That is something our family is committed to.
But I feel like we just barely touched on all of this. I've got a list of questions, and I'm so excited that we have an entire second session to talk about these things. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you've learned from our crazy, stressful things — at least mine. Do not use a toothbrush on your floor. It's just never efficient. But I do hope you hear our heart: we want you to have permission to rest. We want you to have permission to edit your life so that you can not just survive your husband and children, but enjoy them — so that you can flourish in your marriage, understand the season that you're in, and stop beating yourself up for any mistakes you've made in your past.