SPEAKER 06 : 0:00

welcome to the good news with angie austin now with the good news here’s angie hello there friend angie austin here with the good news the good news is i’m being joined by my good friends beatrice bruno and michelle ron as i am weekly and it’s been years you guys we’ve been doing this off and on for years welcome to both of you

SPEAKER 01 : 0:22

Hey, it’s great to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER 06 : 0:26

I love it. Every morning, Michelle and I get a text from Beatrice, and it’s a prayer and some words of wisdom. And then Michelle will join in sometimes and, you know, say something encouraging or ask for a prayer for someone else. That’s a really neat, like, way to wake up and nice support network. You know, Beatrice gets up so early. Yeah, right. She doesn’t. And I, oddly enough, get up when she does, but I go back to sleep because all those years of getting up at like 2.45 or 3 for the morning show, I still wake up that early, but then I go back to sleep. And so, you know, in the morning at like 7.30 this morning, I was like dead out. So I’m not up for the day. I’m just up temporarily. But it’s a great way to wake up with both of you offering encouragement.

SPEAKER 01 : 1:10

Absolutely. Amen. And you got to figure, Angie, the way the world is right now, we need encouragement early in the day because we never know what we’re going to encounter as we go through the day.

SPEAKER 06 : 1:24

So true. And for me, it’s just a great reminder. I really appreciate it. I feel like sometimes you guys spend more time in the word and quiet time. And, you know, I was this morning, I had to juggle five interviews and two practices drop off and drop off and pick up at basketball practice, swim team practice. And then speaking of needing encouragement, Beatrice, you know, you lost your husband to a heart attack in his very early 60s. And Not going to mention any names, but close family friends of ours, their sibling, we’ve gotten to know them over the years of like swim team and sports and softball. We’ve played a lot of sports with both of these families, and they’re related, these two families. So we got word that the father had a heart attack. And I looked at my husband and I said, you know, the last time we played in a team with them, their kids were pretty young. They’ve got four kids. And I said, he can’t be more than about 40, 42, you know, now, because I knew they were younger than we are, you know. And come to find out, he was 42. And it just was heartbreaking to me that these four kids, you know, seeing what Beatrice went through with her kids, her four kids fully grown, and then what she went through, I just, my heart was just breaking for the mom and for the kids and… I just thought, boy, you just never know what the world’s going to bring you. We just saw them last week at volleyball, and we’re so excited because we’re swimming with them again this summer with both of the families. And they’re the kind of families that you know. They have big volleyball parties, and one of the grandparents has a pool, and they have that little 7-Eleven hot dog turner that twirls the hot dogs. It’s the family you always want to party with, and they always invite you. And so there’s a lot of family support, but you just never know what the day is going to bring you.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:18

No, you don’t. And see, that’s why we can’t be so frivolous about life, you know, and take life so lightly, because we don’t know today nor tomorrow, Angie, whether we’re going to see another day or not. We really don’t. And the way times are right now, we’ve got to encourage each other. We’ve got to keep lifting each other up because we never know. We really don’t. Time is just time is so precious and we need to look at it like that. We really do.

SPEAKER 06 : 3:44

Yeah, and spending it, how you spend that time, and if you’re valuing it and spending it wisely. Now, every week, Michelle comes up with a word of the week for us because she’s still got that teacher mind. I know you write something up, don’t you?

SPEAKER 07 : 3:59

I do, but that’s for my help. But my prayer is always, if this isn’t the word that you want, Father, put something else in. And if this is the word, then please, this is your message and not mine. And you have given a perfect inter… What do I want to say? Introduction to the word for what I have, Angie. And so the word this week is anniversary.

SPEAKER 06 : 4:27

Oh, I love it. Yesterday was my 19th anniversary.

SPEAKER 07 : 4:31

Wait, you’re interrupting my thoughts.

SPEAKER 06 : 4:34

Oh, goodness. Sorry, teacher.

SPEAKER 07 : 4:36

Because my first sentence is happy day after anniversary, dear Angie. And 19 years, right?

SPEAKER 06 : 4:44

19 years. And thank you. So how far along are you? 55. And Beatrice, where did you get to? What would this be for you?

SPEAKER 01 : 4:52

This would be 33. 33 this year. Yeah, it would be 33.

SPEAKER 06 : 4:58

I’m aiming for both of those. Amen.

SPEAKER 07 : 5:01

Well, you know, and our thought when we hear the word anniversary is of joy and celebration. And each one of us, I bet, can probably bring to mind a joyous anniversary. But then on the other side, there are many of us who are able to pull up an anniversary that is written forever in our heart. And that’s one of sorrow and one of pain. And Ms. B, I know that you could share the going home to Jesus date of your precious husband. And my point is, can each of us pull up the anniversary of when we accepted Jesus? We may take that rather lightly, or we may say, well, no, I can do that. No, I really can’t pull up a date. But I do. I have given my life to Jesus. But have we? Have we really done that with him personally? And I read an article or heard an article sometime soon before that. It said there are a lot of people who have religion issues. But there are not that many of us who have a relationship with Christ. And that’s all the difference in the world for when we will be going home to Jesus. So my prayer is, and talking to that listener out there that has not made that decision, but know that it is a decision that will affect your life starting right now. So maybe today… Maybe today, the anniversary date of a relationship now, be made with Jesus. And what a glorious day this will be. And Ms. B and Angie and I will pray over this date for any of you that want to take that step today. And all it means is, Lord Jesus, I ask you into my heart. I know that I want to surrender my life to you. I don’t know what that means. I’m a little fearful of what that means because I can’t do a lot of things, but God knows. And Jesus knows that he can hold you by the hand. He can take you and you will be ready to enter into heaven. And for Angie, when you’re talking about the father who is so young, we don’t know what, what five minutes from now is. And, It is the time now to take Jesus into our heart. So I pray that.

SPEAKER 06 : 7:37

Amen.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:38

Amen, Beatrice. Wow. You know, and Michelle, or Mimi, as I call you, I do remember the day and the hour that I received Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. It was May the 15th, 1991. I was stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey. I was at home at 3 Shreve Street, Wrightstown, New Jersey, and it had been a rough week. It was just, it was a horrible week and God had given me a person. We were best friends. We were drill sergeants together at Fort Dix. And at lunchtime every day, Monday through Friday, we would go out and we would. have our lunch outside in the park area on Fort Dix, New Jersey. And God started having her to minister to me. She would bring me these little booklets by Kenneth Hagan and John Osteen. And, you know, these little books and just little short books. And she would have me to read these books. And I read the books. And she asked me one time, I think it was a couple of days before I received my salvation. She said to me, she said, if you were to die today, Where would you go? And, you know, being very flippant, I said I’d go straight to hell because I knew I wasn’t living for God. And so but that evening when I got home, God had just he had weighed on my heart. And I went into my bedroom. I told my daughter it was just my oldest girl and I at the time. And I said, I said, look, I’m going into my bedroom. I don’t want to be disturbed. I got to do something. And I went in my bedroom and I walked around. I was walking around in circles in my bedroom for a minute. And it was about 630 that evening, 630 or seven o’clock that evening. And as I walked around and I said, I don’t know what this is. I don’t know this Jesus. I’ve heard you a long time in my life. I don’t know you. And finally, I got down on my knees beside my bed. And then I heard this voice and it was an audible voice that said to me, no, you need to lay flat out prostate on the on the floor. And I laid prostate on the floor and everything just came up out of me. I started confessing everything, every sin I could think of, y’all, because I knew that I had done stuff in my life that I needed to. If this Jesus was real, if this God was real, I was going to give them everything because I couldn’t take it anymore. And I laid on that floor and I said, Lord, I said, God, if you’re really real, I don’t know what you want with me, but I’m willing to try you to give you my life. And I said, Lord Jesus, I’ve been hearing about you for a long time. I said, but I don’t know if you want me. I don’t even know why you want me, what you could ever possibly do with me. I’m a bad person, but I confess all my sins to you today. Now, Lord Jesus, come into my heart and be the Lord of my life. And when I said that, I started crying. And I mean, everything just just came up out of me through those tears. And I tell people today that there’s probably still a wet spot there at three streets in that bedroom on the bedroom floor because I just cried it all out. But when I came up and that’s the most important part, when I got up off of that floor, I felt free. And I have never turned around from it because I knew at that point that God was real and that Jesus was here for a reason. He came and died for me. He knew I was going to do all that stuff that I did in my previous life. He knew I was going to do all that stuff. And yet he died for me to give me a chance to give me a new perspective on my life. And so we’re talking to somebody that’s listening today. God is waiting for you to turn your life around. And yes, he is real. And yes, Jesus is real. And he died for you specifically. OK, he knew you were going to do all that stuff. He did. He did. But he God made a way with his only begotten son. that whosoever would believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. And that’s what I got that day. And I have not my life has not been the same since then. And I have not gone back to any of that stuff because I just didn’t want to. Because if Jesus, this man who he was divinity, he was deity and he came down in the form of flesh to die for me. Oh, baby, I got to live for him.

SPEAKER 06 : 12:16

I love your story. I just have to add that when I was, you know, in my, like, 12, 13, 12 all the way to, you know, 18, I either lived on my own or in foster care or in low-income housing with my mom or I had a brother who was mentally ill who physically assaulted me, so I went to other places because he’d gotten out of the Marines. He was… crazy, kicked me in the face with his combat boots. And I just couldn’t be around him anymore. Like legally, even he wasn’t supposed to be in my home. So I lived in these other places. And when I was in like a foster care situation, when I was 12 to 13, I was going to church. And I remember that at the in our was like a Bible study class I was taking with other kids my age. I think I was about seventh grade. The pastor said, who here thinks they’re going to go to heaven? And everybody raised their hands except for me and the fat bully boy who was super mean. And I’m like, well, you’re not going to heaven because you’re a big fat bully, you know. And so I raised my hand because I thought I wasn’t good enough to go, you know. And so I became a Christian at that church. I was saved there when I was 13. And that was life-changing for me because I had so many hard years in front of me. And I told you both yesterday, because I’ve been married 19 years, I’m the only one married in my family. There were six of us in my immediate family. And just the fact that I have a happy marriage, 19 years, it’s a miracle. And I know it’s all because of the fact that I was saved and that I was remolded by the Lord. Ladies, we’re out of time. Beatrice and Michelle, you can find them both by going to my website, EmailMeets, AngieAustin.org. They’re both speakers, and I love you both.

SPEAKER 01 : 13:51

Love you, Angie. I love you, too. Thank you.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:59

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SPEAKER 03 : 14:56

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SPEAKER 06 : 15:05

Hey there, friend. Angie Austin here with The Good News. Real excited to have Jeff Schott on the show with us. His book is The One Rule Home, Destroy the World’s Influence in Your Kid’s Life. He is also the founder of Revive Family and One Rule Home. He has a bachelor’s in marketing and a master’s in biblical leadership and theology. And he’s been called, I love this, the adolescent whisperer by parents and ministry leaders. And after talking with more than 3,000 kids… He has concluded that much of what he believed and read relating to parenting was causing problems within families. Can’t wait to talk about that. Welcome, Jeff. It’s great to be with you. All right, let’s start with just, you know, you’ve interviewed all these kids. What have you learned? What are they telling you?

SPEAKER 05 : 15:47

Oh, my goodness. I learned so much. That’s such a global question. But I learned everything from why kids were struggling when they left their homes to the why kids were actually hiding things from and lying to their parents. And that was probably the most dark thing for me as a parent to realize is that our kids, by the time they were about age six, seven and eight, began to realize that if they could hide something they did wrong from their parents, they wouldn’t face the music, they wouldn’t face a consequence, they wouldn’t lose their phone or whatever, you know, timeout or whatever was implemented. And so what we found from talking to kids of all different ages, especially in adolescents and teens, was they were highly motivated to lie to us so that they didn’t face the music, which was so opposite of the way I had been trained to parent and the way I was actually parenting my kids when I started this research.

SPEAKER 06 : 16:48

It’s interesting, too, because not only do they not face the music, but their parents, they believe, will not be let down, that they won’t think less of them if they lie and don’t fess up to what they’ve done. Then their parents’ opinion of them won’t decrease.

SPEAKER 05 : 17:06

Right. That was so true. What we saw was one of the things they hated most, especially with parents that weren’t as harsh with the consequences. was they hated disappointing their parents. They hated it when their parents, if their parents were fight or flight, if they were flight and they would kind of flee or withdraw when their kids did something wrong, that seemed to actually hurt them in some ways more than the other side of the equation. disappointing their parents really seem to weigh heavily on many of the kids’ hearts.

SPEAKER 06 : 17:41

I can totally see that. With our kids, maybe I use a little white lie to get them to tell the truth, but I’ve got three teens now, but when they were little, I would say, you know, I’m going to check the cameras, so I’m going to find out the truth, so you might as well tell me now, and then you won’t get in as much trouble. And then the other one that I distinctly remember is one of them had a bite mark on their arm, and I told them, you know, before I check the cameras, I want to let you know that I’m sure you’ve seen those crime shows where they can look at the bite marks and determine whose teeth they are, and those are not anyone else’s teeth. I believe you bit yourself. And come to find out, he had bit himself in order to get his sister in trouble, and he fessed up to me, but I would always use the, I’m going to check the cameras, but then we didn’t have any.

SPEAKER 05 : 18:28

Well, what was really funny for me was as I changed my approach, you know, really studied Jesus and how Jesus led and how he got the woman at the well to open up and how he handled the adulterous woman. The fact that he loved and handled things very kindly and gently changed the culture of our home such that my kids would come to me and voluntarily open up. I didn’t have to use threats. I didn’t have to use coercion. They would come to me. I remember my oldest daughter, who was nine, who By age nine, with the traditional approach to parenting, she was defensive. She would deny things. She was trying to avoid the consequence because I started as a growing kid’s God’s way parent. And so, you know, we had effectively shut down her heart. What was cool is as we did the research and began to change everything in our homes, I’ll never forget the day right before my very first sermon. I’m scared to death because seminary has assigned me to a church of 2,000 for my first sermon, and everything ends on time. And I’m trying to get my sermon to end on time practicing, and this huge ruckus breaks out upstairs, and I just want to scream through the ceiling, shut up, to my kids, because I’m under so much pressure. Jesus taps me on the shoulder, the Spirit convicts me and says, Hey, you know, you’re speaking on shepherding kids tomorrow. So I had to go upstairs and I walked in and there’s water everywhere and there’s this mess. And instead of reacting and saying who did what, I just started cleaning everything up. I served. And they went deathly silent. They went deathly silent watching this whole mess. OK, as I cleaned it up and got the soap out of Paul’s eyes because they were screaming and yelling at each other. And I turned around and walked out, didn’t say a thing, and went back downstairs and started firing up the projector and setting the timer to try and get this thing on time. And my now 11 and a half year old daughter, who would never admit she was wrong, followed me down the stairs and said, Dad, I think I set a bad example for Paul.

SPEAKER 08 : 20:32

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER 05 : 20:33

And so we sat down on the sofa and I said, so how did you do that? And she said, well, we were washing our horses and we didn’t use soap. Still afraid of the old bad, right?

SPEAKER 08 : 20:42

Right.

SPEAKER 05 : 20:43

And then she said, and then Paul, we finished and Paul wanted to wash his horses. And then we came in and saw the huge mess he was making. And then he got soap in his eyes. And, you know, then we started fighting. And I said, you know, Heather, I don’t think you did anything wrong. She goes, what? Really? I said, you know. What happened was you responded to Paul the way we used to respond to you when you did things wrong. And so we taught you to do that. And I apologize for that. We’re doing it differently now. And it’s a lot more enjoyable around our house. The conflicts decreased a ton. But, you know, maybe you need to learn from what we’re doing now related to how you handle things with your brother. And she looked at me and goes, yeah, I think I do. And then I said, you know, and you could do me a huge favor. And she says, really? I’m like, yeah. Next time Paul wants to wash his horses, show him how to do it without the soap and how to make without making that huge mess. That would be a huge help. And she walked out of there feeling like a million bucks and very close to me. And I had to rewrite the opening to my sermon.

SPEAKER 06 : 21:48

So I bet you did. So you’re telling me that Jesus wouldn’t fib about having the woman at the well, wouldn’t fib about having surveillance cameras on her?

SPEAKER 05 : 21:57

It would be really tough back then. I don’t think they had that technology.

SPEAKER 06 : 22:02

Woman at the well, I’ve got cameras. I’m going to check them. All right. So what is the biggest complaint that kids have about dynamics within the family? Because I definitely would say that there’s a fair amount of arguing and reacting with anger. And I know we’re supposed to lead with love. So we definitely yell too much in our family, for sure. And we have taught the kids that. So what are kids complaining about within the dynamics of their family? I think that’s what my kids would complain about with ours.

SPEAKER 05 : 22:27

Yeah, I think they complain about a number of things. They complain about the expectations, especially as they get older, that they feel so many unspoken but acted out expectations or spoken expectations. They feel like they have to be perfect around their parents. And what we found in the research is this is why they’re hiding in their rooms. they hate the conflict as much as we do. It’s why they’re hiding on their phones, too, by the way, or on video games, is they are trying to avoid interaction with us that will lead to disappointment, yelling, anger, reactions, consequences. So they are actually intentionally making the decision to hide from us and hide in their rooms. And then what they tell us is then they’re bored out of their gourds, because when I grew up, at least I could get on a bike at age 10 and ride across You know, Palatine, Illinois, and go to the mall by myself. But today, the fear in parents won’t let that happen. So they’re trapped in the house. They’re trying to avoid us. They’re hiding in their room and they get bored out of their gourds. And then they turn to the social media and they turn to the video games. And then we believe that’s the problem. And we attack that. That’s not the problem. It’s the breakdown in the relationship between us and our kids and their sense of safety with us.

SPEAKER 08 : 23:47

Interesting.

SPEAKER 05 : 23:47

And their sense of needing to be perfect for us that’s causing them to turn to these social media devices, their phones, as they get bored out of their gourds because they no longer want to hang out and do stuff with us.

SPEAKER 06 : 24:00

They don’t want to let us down or get in trouble or get yelled at. What do you think kids value most in today’s world?

SPEAKER 05 : 24:08

Well, that’s the interesting part is, you know, in my generation, it was all about truth, knowledge, information. You know, information was power, you know, evidence that demands a verdict, a great title for my generation of people. But this generation of kids values truth, authenticity, community. They basically value relationships far more than truth, knowledge, and information. And it’s why they’re so much more easily hurt in our family cultures than when we were when I was a kid. And so this fact that they’re much more sensitive to the community and authenticity means that the way we’ve been parenting breaks that even more so in them and hurts them more. And parents are so frustrated. What I’m doing with my kid is so much better than what my parents did, but they still are avoiding me. They’re still saying they’re hurt by me. They’re still telling me I’m a mean parent or a bad parent. You know, whatever the message is they’re sending, and it’s because of this fundamental change in what they value, which is why leading like Jesus is so important today with kids if we don’t want them to be taken away by the world.

SPEAKER 06 : 25:19

Okay, so if we lead like Jesus, if we show only love, don’t people kind of misread that as not setting boundaries and not being tough enough on the kids? Like you didn’t go up and yell at the kids for making the mess, and you showed your daughter love, and she walked away feeling pretty good about herself and was going to react differently, and they’re not as afraid to come to you now because they’re not going to get screamed at. But people think if they’re not tough on the kids and they show only love, that they’re not setting boundaries and not being hard enough on them.

SPEAKER 05 : 25:46

Right. I totally agree. And that was my fear when I was doing the research and then realized Jesus’ only command was to love one another. And I’m like, wait a minute, that’s way too simple. If I do that, my kids will go crazy, you know? And my nine-year-old was already going crazy. So I had that same fear. What I discovered as I studied love is love has a lot of different dimensions that we’ve lost in our culture. And we don’t realize how love actually serves as the most effective boundaries. So when we changed to a one-rule home and started loving each other and listening to each other and seeking to understand each other and understand what was going on underneath the bad behavior, because only 5% of thoughts and emotions are conscious, 95% are unconscious. So when repeated behavior patterns are happening with our kids, it’s almost always coming from their unconscious. So they need a safe place for us to help dig in and help them come to realize what’s driving that bad behavior. As we made those changes, what was cool, and we taught them about love and how love always protects, this is what happened. One day my son, who was 13 and had really only one friend in this new town we’d moved into and who had encountered a lot of social challenges due to being way behind in his reading because he’s dyslexic and some other things, he comes to me and says, Dad, actually calls from school and says, Dad, what do I do? Max, my one friend. has asked me to pee in a cup so he can pass his parents’ drug test. He had just been grounded for three months until marijuana cleared his system. And 10 days later, the grounding didn’t change the marijuana. There was roots going on underneath that in the unconscious that no one helped Max deal with. And so Max was back to the drugs within 10 days. And he came to my son and said, you’re the only person I know that can pass the drug test. My siblings can’t pass it. My other friends can’t pass it. Um, and so will you pee in a cup for me? And, and, and he calls me and says, dad, if I don’t pee in a cup for him, I’ll probably lose my one friend. And I said, you know, you’re going to have to determine what love looks like for max. And since he understood love and understood the dimensions of love, he said, okay, I’ll think about it and I’ll get back to you. He called me at the end of the day and he said, dad, I said, what are you going to do? And he goes, well, you know, if Max keeps doing drugs, he’s already talking about crossing over to harder drugs. That’s not what’s best for him. That’s not protecting him. So that’s not loving him because it’s not doing what’s best for him. So, Dad, I’m going to tell him no. But I’m really scared I’m going to lose him as a friend, and he was in tears.

SPEAKER 06 : 28:27

I’m really proud of him. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to have you come back, okay? So, Jeff Schott, give us your website for the One Rule Home. Yes, it’s onerulehome.com. Well, that’s easy enough. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you.

SPEAKER 04 : 28:40

Thank you for listening to The Good News with Angie Austin on AM670 KLTT.