Tag Archives: Family

Inside Out – Managing Holiday Conflict – 11/15/23

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Inside Out:  Managing Family Conflict During the Holidays 

                • Ways to prepare
                • What we can do, and what to avoid
                • Who can offer you comfort?

Do upcoming holiday gatherings already have your stomach in knots? A veteran counselor with Focus on the Family suggests thinking ahead of time about how both historic family dynamics and differing personal opinions will play into how the day unfolds.       

 “I think it’s also constructive to look at what is our attitude towards the person or the people that we’re going to be spending time with?” says Glenn Lutjens, a licensed family therapist with 28 years of experience. “Are there things that we can appreciate about them? And if I’m appreciative of someone, I’m probably going to be more understanding of them. I’m probably going to accept maybe a little bit of their quirks.”  

 Lutjens points out that it’s really okay for people to disagree, in a respectful way.  “I think probably one of the best sentences in the English language is this: ‘You and I see this differently.’ What is there to say after that? The person has their opinion, you have yours.”

 If you are anxious, Lutjens encourages you with the truth that God accompanies you. “I would say probably the most important thing is to realize God is going to be with you. You’re not there on your own. The Spirit of God—if you’ve received God’s free gift of salvation through faith in Christ—He’s going to be with you. And realize that that presence is going to be important.”  

 Learn more about Glenn Lutjens and Focus here. 

A Special Family Life Interview – Riley Gaines & Protection of Women’s Sports – 10/31/23

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Riley Gaines has been one of the prominent speakers on issues of trans-gender inclusion in women’s sports. The University of Kentucky graduate put her grad school and future dental career on hold, and now travels the country to advocate for women’s sports. She tells Family Life’s Greg Gillispie that her message is not about personal attacks on people who transition to the opposite gender. Rather, she is standing up for safety, dignity and fairness among women and girls — be that in single-sex locker rooms, athletic competition, and dangers when stronger trans athletes share the arena with women. Her advocacy extended beyond sports. She is concerned about men who swap genders going into women’s prisons, safety and decorum in public restrooms, and the lack of truth expressed as this debate roars along.

In this Family Life interview, she also previews her upcoming presentation at Hershey, Pennsylvania, on November 6 (well over 1,000 people are expected to attend). She talks about how her Christian faith has strengthened her calling. She tells how her identity from the Lord helped her face the opposition, cancellations and even a few confrontations she has experienced from those who hold other views.

 

Riley Gaines Barker won five SEC swimming titles and has been named an All-American 12 times. At a 2022 NCAA Championship, she tied (down to the exact 1/100th of a second) with swimmer Lia Thomas who was born male, and who shared a locker room with born-female athletes.  Thomas was awarded that trophy, despite the tie, because a meet official saw the occasion as an opportunity to support trans athletes succeeding in women’s competitions.

She has testified at the U.S. House and Senate, speaks to college audiences and state legislatures, and is a frequent guest on national and local media outlets. She also started a podcast on women’s rights, sports, and faith. Riley Gaines commends to her supporters this report on Single-Sex Competition in American Sports in our time.

For information (and tickets availability) for her keynote speech at the Pennsylvania Family Institute’s Annual Banquet on Monday, November 6, go to PAFamily.org

Feature – Beyond Mother’s Day – Jenny Coffey – 05/16/23

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Mother’s Day was Sunday.

We talked with family counselor — and mom of four preteens — Jenny Coffey about what most moms might really like for Mother’s Day.  Her answer for the weekend was “rest” and balance.

Those are still gifts which can bless mothers the other 364 days of the year.

Coffey gives us advice for families, including stories from what is working for her own household. She also has encouragement for moms themselves — how to avoid the internal and external pressures and stereotypes can improperly focus women on unattainable accomplishments and unrealistic status.

Also in this extended version of the feature we aired at noon, she shares additional insights for women who are parenting alone (either as single moms or without good support from others), as well as ways congregations can adapt their families to be better supportive of mothers (and fathers). Coffey sees this as an important evangelistic tool too, because older church leaders may not realize how parenting styles and family patterns have changed for today’s young adult generations.

Inside Out – All Will Be Well – Lacy Finn Borgo – 01/11/23

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From the loss of school connections during the pandemic to the death of a grandparent, sometimes well-meaning adults misstep as they try to help grieving children.   

“I think we can get a little clouded around making ourselves feel more comfortable rather than kind of accompanying the child where they are,” says Lacy Finn Borgo. Her 2022 children’s picture book “All Will Be Well: Learning to Trust God’s Love” is written to help children face loss and grief. “So we might say things that make us, as adults, feel better, but it might not meet the child where they actually are.” 

Borgo emphasizes that, with God, we can know that all will be well even when someone we love dies. But how do we help children see that “all will be well” does not mean that “everything will be the same as it was”? “Children and even adults, we can’t sort of get our minds logically around that. We learn it and we live it a little bit every day.” Borgo says. “We can know it in our heads, but learning it in our souls and our bodies are something else.”  

What we can do for children—and this helps with adults as well—is to help them feel secure right now as they express their emotions, long before it feels like “all will be well.”  

“So making space for them to have a place to talk about how they feel, and accepting the emotions, and giving them a place and a way to process them, helps them to know that all will be well,” she says.   

Learn more about Lacy Finn Borgo’s book “All Will Be Well: Learning to Trust God’s Love.”  

Kids Corner: One Big Family

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Have you ever moved? It’s always so hard to leave a place you are familiar with and go to a new house, a new school, a new environment. You feel so uprooted and unsettled. It doesn’t matter if it’s across the street or across the state. It’s hard. But imagine moving to a completely new country! Mr. Jacobs, Destin, Sam, and Laura get ready to help some new neighbors move in to the neighborhood. (Scripture: Leviticus 19:34, Matthew 25, Luke 6:27, Romans 12:20, 1st Peter 3:9, Leviticus 19, and Luke 6:31)