09/03/2026
17 & 20.
That’s how old I was when I had each of these kids. I think we grew up right alongside them more than we actually raised them. 😉
We were far from perfect. Oh, the mistakes we made. 🤦🏼♀️ We were learning how to be an adults while also trying to teach them how to become adults themselves.
They’ll jokingly tell you that I carried a wooden spoon 🥄 in my 👜. For the record, I did NOT. 🤦🏼♀️
But underneath their awesome humor is something I hope they recognize now that they’re adults: they were raised with expectations, boundaries, accountability, and consequences.
I was never called to be their friend first. I was called to be their mom.
There were days they didn’t like me. There were decisions I made that they didn’t understand. And there were times I had to let them be uncomfortable or experience the consequences of their own choices instead of rescuing them.
Yes, that hurt my ❤️ and it’s still true today.
Kiel and I can love them fiercely without fixing everything for them. We can be there to listen, encourage, pray, and offer counsel while still allowing them to navigate the hard parts of adulthood and now marriage for Ivy.
Our goal was never to raise children who needed us to make life easy for them. It was to raise loving, independent, hardworking, productive adults who knew how to get back up when life knocked them down.
And somehow, despite having two very young and very imperfect parents, they became exactly that.
My faith, my marriage, and my children are three of God’s greatest blessings in my life.
I may look back at my 20s and 30s and see plenty of things I would do differently now. But then I look at these two and think…
By the grace of God, we must have gotten a few things right. 🤷🏼♀️
