Starting a School, Weight Loss Vanity, & Other Listener Questions

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[Music] Well, Bright Arthur's, as we've come to the end of our current series on Being Human, we've covered a huge array of topics related to life in the world that God made, both the earthly and the physical, the social, the vocational we've talked about, making money, we've talked about masculinity, about femininity, keeping the home, raising children, making friends, engaging in hospitality, losing weight, body composition, strength training, a million other things. And as a result, we have had literally hundreds of questions sent in from around the world, from listeners like you. And so every four or five episodes, we've tried to stop and take up a half a dozen of those questions or so and work our way through them and give our response. So that's what we're going to be doing in this episode. We've got great questions related to everything from like weight loss and vanity, to pregnancy, to training children in church services, to dressing well in church, starting Christian schools, just a bunch of really good questions in this episode that we think will be helpful to not just the people that sent them in, but to all of our listeners. As always, you can use the Send Us a Text to Button in the podcast description to send us your questions. And we look through all of those and we try to pick ones that come up again and again. And the ones we think will be most helpful to everybody listening in and answer those from time to time. So with that said, on with the show, we hope it's helpful. Welcome back to Brightheart, everybody. How are you, Brian? Well, it's not about me today. It's about you because you're you're basically bargaining with me to try to keep keep your not try to like say, forearm has gone numb this morning. And we were trying to figure out what it was. Started last night, which is why I'm a little more like what's going on? We were like, what is this is this from, you know, like pinch to nerve or something like that. And I'm like, well, maybe it's from weightlifting and she could be from knitting. And I was like, yeah, you should probably maybe just take a day or two off of knitting and working out and she's she's like, well, I think it was probably working out. Couldn't have been knitting when there's a logic. It's gotten worse over the last hour. Then when I woke up several hours ago, the only thing I've done today, aside from breakfast time is workout. So I happen to it today, though, and it's gotten worse. Basically, Lexi would rather lose the use of both of her arms than stop it than stop knitting. Well, we're glad that you're here, bright, hard. There's we've got some great questions to take up by the Lexi's. I'm extremely don't go completely numb and I have to rush her to the doctor. But yeah, we're going to be taking those up and opening the mail bag and taking up your questions. As always, if you like what we do here on bright hearth send us in your question. And you can jump in and support the show on our Patreon channel and get access to our weekly in the kitchen episodes and a lot more over there early and add free episodes of all of the main shows. But I wanted to start with this note from a listener in Austin who wrote in. They said, and quite frankly, this is not for me. They said, Hi guys, this is mostly to Lexi. Just wanted to say thank you so much for the progesterone tip. We've been trying since June for baby number two. Finally found out in February that I had literally zero progesterone in my body, which my provider prescribed thyroid meds for. And they were praying about whether or not to take researching about it. And then a week later, she wrote, I heard your episode with forever healthy hair recommendation. And now we're pregnant. It's another bright hearth baby. So grateful for you. It's not really a question. I just wanted to read that so you can I think thyroid and hormones are unique in that if you genuinely need it because your body's not producing it, there's nothing you can do to like, you need to just supplement with it. So go for it. That's awesome. Yeah. Very, very happy to hear about bright hearth babies. Whether they're health advice related bright hearth babies or marriage bed advice related bright hearth babies, I'm convinced that there is a small army of little people totalling around the world right now. They are we meet them often that exists because we're sure. And so thank you for sending that in that was encouraging. Take your progesterone if you need it. There you go. Thyroid. I don't even know what any. I don't need thyroid. I'm too psycho already. No. Okay. Well, we got a question here from a listener in Vermont. And she wrote in, I'm a single woman in my early 20s. I listened to your recent episode on losing weight and body composition and I'm a little bit torn. I know that you're probably right that losing weight would help me find a quality husband. But at the same time, I feel like this is vain and externally focused. Am I off in my thinking here? Thank you. What do you think? I think as a culture, we have lost the understanding that beauty is a service to others. We don't see it in our homes. We don't see it in our bodies. We don't see inter clothing. But you can, I mean, I'm looking at a book right now, Beauty, a duty. You read old books and it is something women and men understood that it was a comfort to others. Yeah. And I do believe there is a measure of beauty that God has given every person when they lean into their their sex, their good works, it does naturally just come. We're not all going to be equally the same kind of beautiful glory. Sure. But it is natural that the Lord would beautify us more and more as we become more and more ourselves in Christ. So in that sense, if you look at it like that, you want to be a comfort to people around you. You don't want to you don't want to be the person in a room. I mean, we're just not used to this anymore because this is how everyone looks. But typically if you were the randomly dressed eccentric person in a room, you stood out and you put everyone else around you in a place of dis ease and discomfort because you were actually trying to draw attention to yourself. So in a way, beauty, like a uniformity of beauty is actually falling into line with humility and the place where God has put you within the hierarchy. I know that sounds really weird because it's actually the opposite today where you stand out. If you take a little more care of yourself, but you can read something like Roger Scretton's book on beauty and what he talks in there about good taste and bad taste and fashion and how that played into things and that really helped me kind of see that of like, no, we used to even understand what a beautiful uniform looked like. And the reason we adhered to what today, if I were like a nurse uniform, think of it right now, an old fashioned nurses uniform, very clean, very tidy, very beautiful and feminine. If I would walk into a Walmart dress like that, I could potentially be the dress best dress person there. But in olden days, if you will, that was just how you dress. You were falling into line. It wasn't trying to stand out. It was trying to fall into line with the hierarchy and order in the world. And that's and we don't understand beauty's place in hierarchy anymore. So I don't I get that there is a vanity to it. There can be, but don't just automatically assume that's what it is. That's what yeah. Marxist socialism wants you to think it is. Yeah, those are great points. And it is when we think about beauty, we're thinking about something that is objective that is originated in God's character. And good order, God is concerned with all of these things. It's why he made a world that is so full of beauty. And even think about the world before the fall and also maybe the world in its glorified state. It will be beautiful. Beautiful and not just relatively beautiful, like according to the tastes of some individual. But a properly ordered soul will find certain things beautiful. And that will align across creation because you're agreeing with something that's true about God's nature himself. Truth, goodness and beauty are things are true and they are good and they are beautiful because they actually are in alignment with and ringing in harmony with God's nature. So when you think about this very practical question then and you come all the way down from those big lofty principles to the ground floor and you're you're literally talking about like body composition and weight. And on the one hand you have these commands in scripture especially for women that they shouldn't make their their primary focus the external adornment of the body or the braiding of hair or all these things, costly attire. That That's certainly true. There is such thing as vanity where people can become obsessed with themselves. And then even if there's a form of external beauty, that form of external beauty ends up lying about the inward person. - Yeah. - And that basically, it's a pretty lie. You know, it's like a man who is extremely vain and he's using his body, you know, my body's my temple, but it's a temple to a pagan god and that pagan god is himself. You know, so he's just, he's not aiming to have strength to give to others or to have a virtue expressed in self-control that serves his wife and his children and his people. And the same could happen for a young woman. And we have certainly many examples. Probably many of us in our personal lives, also in great literature of vain and shallow women who are just, you know, they are of no substance. And you certainly don't want to be that and you also don't want a husband who is, that is like the thing he values above all else. - Yeah. Resistance candles is a family-owned candle company that wants to inspire the spirit of 1776. They make candles with scents that are full of depth and warmth and they're made with clean ingredients which means no soy and no GMOs. Resistance candles offer experiences that harken back to the time of the American Revolution, like they're sent titled Liberty or Death, which has notes of cinnamon and spices, deep amber and weathered wood. Go to resistancekandals.com and if you buy one or more candle, you get a free candle on us. Just use code "HARTH" in all caps. Why is it that most soaps in cleaning products ironically don't contain clean ingredients? Indigo sundry soap company is helping families stay clean and healthy by starting with the most important step in cleanliness. Soap, their cold-press soap bars, including clay bars and talo bars, are made from all natural ingredients that don't have any harmful chemicals. And they smell great. Visit indigo sundrys soap.com in order today. And hey, subscribe for regular shipments and get 10% off every time. When you have a busy house, the immediate demands of activities, events, and never-ending to-do lists can overshadow critical long-term decisions. Life insurance, financial planning, education savings, and retirement are continually backburnered. Joe Garracy and his team from backwards planning financial will help you maximize financial tools, management, and strategies. So you can focus on your home and have confidence for your financial future. Visit backwardsplanningfinancial.com that is backwardsplanningfinancial.com or call 615-767-2555 to speak with Joe to develop a plan for the future. However, on the other side, when we think about something even as practical as body composition is weight and weight, these things reflect character to a degree. They reflect that inward person. And so the goal should be that we have harmony between the high character and virtue of the inner man or woman and the external estate of the man or woman, where because they love others, they're thinking about presenting themselves in a fitting way. They're thinking about the reputation of their family and what their presentation of themselves says about their family name and their children and their spouse in the household or their father if you're still in your father's household. And a slavvantly overweight, unkempt woman says something about her father. So she should not want to speak an ill word of her father through her appearance. She should not want to speak an ill word about her husband. So all these things, there is a way in which you can stop at the external that is sinful. But there's also a way in which you can think about the whole person. And then it becomes much more understandable why something like a young man looking for a wife and then simply ruling out women who are overweight. And a good man can do that, not because he's vain, but because he's looking at the way that that reflects the inward character of the woman, her concern for that reputation. And also, yes, because God made a world where attraction, sexual attraction is a lawful and good part of marriage. I would never tell somebody to marry somebody they were not sexually attracted to. That's just putting yourself up for like decades of temptation. Absolutely. And a man should want, therefore, a woman that he is attracted to. Now, that doesn't mean that we should go to the extremes that our culture often does in like these bikini competition bodybuilding women world where they're like all on testosterone and they've got breast implants. And they're aiming for 12% body fat as a woman. Like that's insane, that's unhealthy, you shouldn't desire that. But a healthy body fat range is a good discipline to maintain. And so I wouldn't, rather than writing off a good quality men who would be more interested in you if you were within a healthy body fat range, because genuinely that makes almost all of us look maximally attractive at a certain body fat range. It's just the way it is. And we're much more healthy at that body fat range. And it probably reflects inward character and virtue. I would say don't get hung up on so quickly dismissing. All of this as mere vanity and external focus actually can be very much harmonious. So try not to fall in either ditch. Don't become neurotic and all of a sudden become, you know, like don't go out and get yourself an eating disorder. Develop, we talked about it in that episode. So let's go back and listen to get if you need to. Healthy habits, healthy eating, just so that the body can serve its duties before God. And then you'll find that beauty and virtue and all of these things can absolutely ring in harmony with one another. And a godly man can look at that and say, wow, that's a quality woman. She is beautiful inward and outward. And that's the woman I want to marry. I just, there's kind of a few quotes in here that I'll just read some different sections. What book are you looking at? This is called Beauty, A Duty, the art of keeping young. Who wrote it? This is Susanna wrote it. No last name. That's it. Susanna. So my trial, oh Susanna, Cockroft. Okay. Crystal and Kim recommended this to me. And I believe I haven't gotten super far in it. I got it not that long ago. It's like my treadmill book. Yeah. I think it's written to young girls. I think it's supposed to be written to young girls. But let's see. It is a woman's privilege and should afford her pleasure that she can be the object of her husband's admiration. She can be the realization of art in his home in his life. As a mother, a sister, a wife, a sweetheart, you may not surround your husband. Child, sister, brother, father, or friend with the best art pictures, which help to lift the mental and spiritual tone of your home. You may not be able to provide a Diana, a Venus, a Madonna, painted or chiseled by one of the best masters. But you can be yourself a more beautiful picture because you are the work of the master artist. I mean, just quote after quote after quote in here about how your beauty is a tool God gave you as a woman, any woman, not just a supermodel woman, to serve those around you, to refresh them. It's really good. Not as a sexual object, but as a means of truth, goodness, and beauty naturally refreshes the soul. Yeah. Just like your well-ordered beautifully painted, thoughtfully eclectic, room is beautiful and restful. So are you as a woman. Yeah. And along with that, I think one of the most powerful things along the way, let's say you're just starting in the end, you have some habits that need to change around eating or exercise or things like that. Begin with the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. Begin with the duty of a joyful countenance, of a cheerful heart, and then yes, pursue those things along the way. But there are things you can put on today. Your body composition takes a while to change, asking how I know. But you can put on a joyful countenance that is a beautiful thing today. Yeah. So that's a really good question. I think it's a thoughtful question. And one, probably a lot of young women in particular are dealing with because they see the sexualization of the culture and they don't want to just give into that. And so I guess I just have to become a sex object to everybody in order to win. Well, no. So let's be thoughtful about it. Let's make sure that we actually understand the principles and it's not merely pursuing sexual attractiveness. That is a lawful part of it for a husband. Yeah. But there's something deeper going on when we talk about beauty. Yeah. Okay. We have another question here from a listener in South Carolina turning a corner. And now we're going to talk about some child discipline and things like that. Said, my husband is a pastor in our church. And over the last year, we've grown in our conviction of wanting our children to be in the church service with us. We were in a church that has a large children's ministry. Having children in the service is not the norm and is not always appreciated. I'm working to teach our two year old son how to be respectful during the service while I'm also holding our seven month old son. This can be a challenge on my own if my husband is tending to his pastoral duties during the service. Do you have any advice or helpful tips on teaching children to sit and be respectful during the church service? Thank you both. I love this question because we've been there for sure. Lexi obviously has definitely been in this situation. But I like both sides of this where it's family integrated as the way to go. I'm 100% convinced of that. The kids should be in the service. They're part of the body of Christ. They should be there. I'm not a big children's ministry fan. I want them there. At the same time in our church, one thing we work hard to do because literally over 50% sometimes of the people in the pews are children under 12. Can you imagine the chaos? basically we would not be able to proceed with the the ordinary Lord's service, if the children were not disciplined enough and the parents weren't working hard, which they do in our church, but it's also constant maintenance. We have to have this standard where we're not getting lacks in this. We encourage and exhort one another and help one another to keep the line here so that the Lord's service is reverent and beautiful and also literally you can participate in it 'cause you can actually hear something. So it's important that we have both. I want the kids there, I also want us to be focused on discipline. Let me turn it to Lexi because you have direct experience with this. You're with all seven of our children. 98% of Sundays, I am not next to Lexi for even one minute of the service. 98% of them. So not because I don't want to be, but because I am both the music minister and the senior minister, the teaching pastor of the church. So just I have duties and that is what I do. It's been our, this way our whole marriage, both aspects of that ministry. And Lexi knew what she was signing up for in marrying me, but she does a great job of this and has developed gained a lot of practical wisdom in this area. So Lexi, what would you say to this young lady? - So my parents have been members for about two years now. So, but I go to different services. - Yeah. - From them now. So I'm like back in the doing this on my own sort of situation. I would say the two biggest things, well, here's some encouragement for doing this, even though nobody else seems to be super okay with it. Just do it anyways. Like you guys see what's going on at NCP now. And I think a lot of people can just take it for granted and assume that that's always been the way it is. But the only reason it is what it is now is because we were doing all of this with no outside eyes on us forever, just because we valued it. So do it whether or not other people praise you for doing it and do it even harder when they're discouraging you from doing it. - Yeah. - It is genuinely really hard when you just have just littles and you have two hands. So it wasn't until my sixth was born that I felt like the other kids were old enough to actually help with some of the kids. So just know that takes a while. I think the best things you can do though is be very quick to discipline once you get to church. Like if you're walking in the door and your little toddler is already running off and having a bad attitude at you, you immediately take them somewhere and spank them. - Absolutely. - Don't wait until halfway through the service when everyone can hear what's going on and now you're embarrassed, the second you walk in the doors. I would also say whatever you notice is consistently an issue at church. You need to practice that at home. - Totally. - Even recently I've noticed with our two-year-old, he just is all of the spankings at church surround him not wanting to stand for worship. So I thought I think what we need to do then is during family worship, we need to stand at the portion of singing. - Yeah. - Not be snuggled by daddy, which is he sits with Brian and Brian helps him to sit still, but he doesn't, he needs to be standing because he doesn't have daddy to help him on Sundays. So that's what we've been working on. And I even had a friend recently she said, she saw him sitting with, he was on struggle bus Sunday, but he was sitting with my oldest and I was in the nursing mother's room and she said he's doing so well out there with your oldest son. And I told her this because I didn't want her to just think Ari's the answer, like an older kid is the answer. I said the reason he's doing well is because he's literally probably had 25 spankings this morning. - Yeah, he's been disciplined a lot. - Because Ari, the other kids don't discipline him. They can't. - They can't. - They can't, they give me the eye, they say it's time for a spank and I'll take him downstairs for a spank. So I just, I want people to not assume that the older kids are the answer to it because they're not. You still have to have a mom and a dad who are authoritative and there's good structure there so that they can enjoy and participate in the worship experience as well. - Yeah, yeah. The discipline's really the cornerstone of everything. It's gotta be swift and that does mean that for a period of time with every kid, you will be distracted from the service quite a bit. - Oh yeah. - Inescapable. It's easier when it's mom and dad and you don't have the pastor had. - And potty training on top of it as a mom that's doing it on her own. - So there's a lot of, most Sundays like she listens to the sermon again, like through the week or because she doesn't always get to participate and hear it the full way through. And that's a gift that you're giving your children that is so important in such a blessing to them that you have to really put on a cheerful, like a cheerful attitude to stiff upper lip and say, this isn't about me. This isn't about me comfortably participating in the worship service. This isn't about me starting to fuss and saying, well, like what's even the point of me being here? No, that what a huge blessing that you are training. It really is a short period of time in the overall scheme of things that you're gonna be in the trenches in this way. Kids are gonna get older. They are gonna start being helpful even if they're not disciplining. They, you know, Ari, Pastor Khan's always joking, like he'll look over and you know, a cyro or someone will be trying to wild a little bit and Ari will be like, hey, you pay attention. Like giving them the quiet, like stern look and then the like turn and like politely look forward again. And it cracks Eric up. But you're gonna get through this season. This is a gift you're giving in the foundations. The family worship thing is really important too because especially you're not gonna just all of a sudden enforce a brand new standard for an hour on Sunday in a public setting. If you're not enforcing that diligently all through the week. So people think that they're disciplining and they're not. They'll be like, yeah, we discipline. Well, they're, turns out they're disciplining on the seventh infraction after five warnings with a light spanking and no conversation and no instruction, no restoration. It's like they need to get really clear on the basics of discipline, which is right away first infraction, at least a significant amount of the time with a spanking that is a physical, basically a spanking is a small simulated experience of the pain of sin that is telling the child, if you keep sinning like this and this becomes fully grown as an adult, the pain and discipline of your sin is not just gonna be this simulation from your father, but it's going to be the world spanking you by you not being able to hold a job, get a good wife, be a functional member of society, et cetera. In family worship, I am quite stern with the children and that's on purpose because I'm thinking about Lexi on Sundays in family worship, without me there. So I am like little, it's not a time for gigglingness, it's not a time for flopping around, it's a time to sit up and listen and participate. And you can be like, well, I want it to be joyful and whimsical, it's like, well, I get it, you don't wanna crush their souls in family worship and we don't. But I, it like the lie that people can tend to believe it's an implicit premise in the argument that is wrong is that a time of stoner discipline for a focused aim is soul crushing. It's actually not, it's soul in livening to be able to have the discipline even as a young lad or a young lass of sitting still and engaging in important things, very, very important discipline. - So in that time, if somebody is being not in disobeying, Brian says, okay, time for a spank pretty quick. And so even during, and it's not actually super, super often, but even during family worship, I will get up and I will take them out, discipline one or two, if and if. - Just last night we had two of them didn't make it through the prayer. We also go through every like standing with something new because they needed to work on that, but we kneel during prayer and family worship because we do that in the service. So we kind of do all the things of the service, just in a short time window. And yeah, like two of them at the end of the prayer it was like, amen, okay, you and you go with mama, you need to spank him. 'Cause they were not being reverent, they were not praying, they were being silly. And that's not a time to be silly. So great question. Hope the Lord blesses you in that endeavor and just keep at it. Okay, this is a great question. It's actually our first ever call in question or at least that I noticed. - Call in? - Yeah, this is a feature I had no idea existed, but apparently this end of the text link now has some way to upload like a voicemail. - Oh. - I'm not gonna play the audio for the sake of there in an emity. We did get a really cute one I played, Lexi. - Yeah, that was some little kid. - Oh, that's what it was, okay. - And he was like, I like your dragon song. I like the things that you make. Thank you. - Can I listen to this? - It was a classic like kid takes a picture. He's like, can I see it? And it said like from this kid. - It was really cute. - Sent by mom. Anyway, thank you for that made my day. So this is just the transcript. I'm gonna read it, but they said, Hi, Brian and Lexi, thanks so much for Bright Heart and all you guys do. I just found out I'm pregnant with baby number three. My first two were 19 months apart. These two will be two years apart and I'm feeling just a little bit scared. I know my capacity will continue to expand and then our family definitely wanted to grow, but just practically and realistically, I'm feeling it. a bit overwhelmed. So I'm curious, Lexi, if you've ever felt like this, and if you have any guidance for how to prepare my heart and my body and mind for our family to keep growing, thanks again, feeling blessed by you guys and blessed by baby number three. What do you think? You've never felt like that. No, Lexi never felt like that. No. Well, I think at the beginning of pretty much every pregnancy, most moms kind of feel that way. They're like, "Oh shoot. What did I get myself into?" Especially the more you have, because you do understand more and more the weight of discipling a child through their whole childhood into adulthood, and everything that requires. So I think it's a proper response. I think sometimes actually Christians can overlook that and fall into like a, there I say, "equiverful type movement," where it's just as many as possible without actually considering the weight of what's going on, and have I counted the cost of discipling another child towards heaven and not hell. So I think it's a good thing, but I also, I am always comforted by remembering like, "This is a nine-month process. The Lord didn't tell me, like, be ready tomorrow for a baby." Can you imagine? No, that's a different situation. Yeah. So I think there's actually a lot of kindness in the nine to ten-month process of growing a child, preparing for a child, preparing your home, your, the siblings, your family, your lifestyle, everything. So just take comfort in that and just know there's wisdom in that period of time. Yeah. Wives, you know your husband would fight for your family without hesitation, but every night needs armor. And in today's world, that means ballistic protection made for the modern defender. Armored Republic makes real armor for real men, law-abiding citizens, fathers, husbands, protectors. Visit armoredrepublic.com. That's armoredrepublic.com or text, join, all caps, join, to 88027 and help your husband stand strong. 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That's why Rebecca at Live Oak Integrative Health takes a functional medicine approach, combining nurse-driven coaching, personalized testing, and practical, database care to help women restore balance in hormones, gut health, fertility, and weight. Plus, she can do all of that remotely via telemedicine. Visit liveoakintegrativehealth.com/harth to book your discovery call today. Listeners of the show will receive a special rate. I think other than that, it was after our fourth that I really felt this way, where you kind of had to tell me to almost evaluate my standards, I guess. You said that you're going to have to level up, but the way you level up is by lowering standards in other areas. And so some of it may not be that you really can't do it. You really can. You just might not be able to maintain at the same level you can right now. Whatever that is, I don't know what it is for you. Every woman has different things that they have to learn to be more flex on. And I think every woman meets that at a different point in her motherhood. So for me, that was number four, but just know you can do it. The Lord is on your side. He gave you the baby, and all he's requiring you to do is be hospitable towards the child. So yeah, you can do it. Yeah, go into this with the fundamental conviction that what you have received is a huge blessing from God. Yes, exactly. And then it's a heavy blessing. It's a hard blessing, a lot of the time. As with many of God's good gifts, marriage is difficult. It's harder than just in some ways, floating alone and kind of having fewer obligations and fewer things tying you down. But the things tying us down are like roots that you put them down and they hold the tree still. But they bring up the nutrients and the water and they bring the fruit forth. I mean, this is why I wrote that song. Fruit is heavy, which you guys might not know about. I don't know if that if he opens out that section at the end of a CD that I read to you about the good gifts pinning us down to the earth. Yeah, they pin us to the earth. It's such a good concept. So your goal is that you're becoming rooted and stable and you're being trained to carry even I keep bringing up songs. Long day, short years, the title track of the album. The chorus is aimed to remind you that all of these things are always preparing you for glory. Like that's what they're doing. These long child, young kid years, the long days, they're training you for glory. God appointed them to do that. So it's okay to just admit, like I'm feeling a little bit of overwhelmed, but turn that. Cast your cares upon the Lord because he cares for you. Yes, prepare your your body as much as you can. Eat well, rest well. When Lexi's talking about lowering your standards, what we're talking about is like, maybe you were able to cleanse this much or maybe you were able to get all of the kids out to the park every day for this many hours. And now there's multiple nap schedules and that's not quite as possible. And you have to kind of lower the standard and kids plan to back yard a little bit more. Or you're not able to do as much hospitality for a season. And that's okay. Like still stretch yourself. Don't let it be an excuse to do nothing. But it's okay. I often try to remind Lexi, hey, let's not schedule anything for this period of time because God's probably going to put something on our schedule that we didn't predict. And I can tell that we're at capacity with these seven little people that we're being hospitable to every day. So let's let's work on that. Be honest with your husband, ask for his help and he will, I'm sure be, you know, happy to comfort and encourage and help you. But in all that, I think if you can maintain that real focus on this is a blessing. And I'm going to just be cheerful. I'm going to be militantly cheerful. Cheerful heart is a good medicine. It really will help you to not get into the endless cycle of self pity. The things that will only hurt you if that makes sense. I think you really, really, really helped me with that early on. It was when we had two boys and they were 19 months apart. Right? No, I guess they're not. They're 23 months apart. Just kidding. Yeah. Yeah, 23 months apart. You had told me I was kind of like panicky at the end of the day. Like I couldn't keep the house like all of the house picked up anymore and have dinner on the table with the two rambunctious boys. It was kind of like either or and I was in this self pity red of like I have to do this. It has to be done. Everyone, we can only survive if I can keep the house copacetic all the time. And you had told me no, the goal of the household is joyful, godly people. And so when I walk in the home, the expectation is that you are cheerful, not that the house is picked up. Right. Yeah. And I mean, for some people, husbands would not. Some people just wouldn't like that. But I know, and it's always been an encouragement to me that I know that's your standard. So no matter what has happened during the day picked up or not, that's the standard when dad gets home. Is it I am in a place where I can be in as good of a mood as possible. Yep. Whether or not my surrounding circumstances are conducive to that. It's going to be a good night, a good day if you have a good attitude. And if you're cheerful, it's going to be a bad day, no matter what other blessings are poured out on you. If you just have a bad attitude, like you can choose to face life and it really is largely a choice, a discipline. You can choose to face life with a self-pitying grumpiness or with a durable and resilient cheerfulness. Yeah. And in those two things will affect everything you do. So I just think any hard thing you go into, you need to work really, really hard to cultivate cheerfulness. Okay. A listener from this might be our, we'll see how much time we have. A listener from Sweet Home Alabama wrote in, hi, Brian and Lexi, I currently homeschool my kids, but a group of my friends have interest in starting a Christian school at our church. Can you walk me through how you all were able to start St. Branden's? Any wisdom is helpful. Let me make a distinction here because there is a, I don't know the situation based on the question of exactly what position you are in in the church and that affects how you what I was going to say. My answer is going to be as the senior minister of the church, which doesn't mean I can do whatever I want. We have a session of elders and I always have my entire 10 years of pastor and we're an elder led church. So that means that I don't just do whatever I want. We vote as an elder team on especially big things like this. And my initial presentation for a school was voted down. And it was like two, at least two years after that before we took it up again and I continued to say I think we should start a school. Kind of throughout that whole thing. I think that was 2017. Yeah, quite a while ago. So I'm going to tell you how we started St. Branden's and I do think it's a great model and that it can work in a particular type of church. But it's a different thing from just a group of Christians in a church starting a school that is separate. Really all female led, that's often what happens in those circumstances. Yes. So the way that we started the school from the beginning was that we wanted the school to function like a ministry of the church. We wanted it to have the explicit approval of the elders of the church and we wanted it to be largely male run. So that means that especially in the upper years we wanted our teachers to be male, we wanted our board to be male, we wanted the elders overseeing it to be male. We didn't want it to be a mother run school. We wanted it to be a father ruled school, including that the fathers in the church, but also, I mean that in terms of the officers of the church, but also the fathers just being involved and having male presence in the school. So we started out, we were looking at it. We quickly realized that private school is one of the hardest aspects of them is that most people in the community can't afford them. This tuition, it's routine for tuition to be anywhere from five to $20,000 per student per year for a good private classical Christian school, depending on your area. I've seen them as low as four a year, but then there's maybe discounts for multiple children from the same family, et cetera. But we were looking at our demographic and just realized 90% of families in the church, including my own, we literally couldn't use this school if it was funded that way. But if we tried one of the downstream effects, I'm almost certain would have been that many women would have gone to work. So lots of the moms would have said, we're now going to go get jobs so that our kids can do this good classical Christian school thing. And yeah, like at first it'll be, we're just, you know, only going to work during the school hours and et cetera, et cetera. But pretty soon your culture is going to be shaped by the tuition of that school. That was a fundamental conviction we had. So he said, what can we do instead? Well, first of all, does school really need to be that expensive per student in terms of the actual cost of it? The answer is no, it doesn't. How are we going to accomplish that? We settled on a forms model, looking at like the little house on the prairie frontier school model, where you have multiple students in the same room or multiple grades in the same room, doing some subjects together and some subjects not together. This limited the number of teachers you need because we didn't just want to establish a new grade each year. We wanted to start with a one through 12, which we did. So we didn't have students in every one of those grades that it was elementary through high school. So what we did is determined that we were going to allocate church budget to this. We run a lean staffing model as a church. And so we have always like we don't have youth pastors and all this other stuff. I'm the music minister and the preaching pastor. We don't have a music. That means we don't pay our music minister. We don't like we don't have a bunch of stuff like frivolously or ex that we don't have that's a big program oriented, nothing like that. So we said, let's aim such that the school can function like this. It's at first it was open to non members, but we quickly realized that was a mistake. It's only open to members of our church. And there's no tuition. You just have to commit to tithe, like give a 10th of your income to the church. Give a 10th of your first forage to the church. And we will make sure that the school is funded as it grows. We've grown from like 10 students the first year. It's looking like about 75 this coming school year roughly. And it's grown at a quick pace. And we've been able to sustain it in our budget with that, keeping our costs low. They've grown, but keeping our costs low and sustainable for the church. The idea being that all of us are always chipping in. So even when my kids are graduated, all of them through the school, I will still be giving to my church obviously from my first fruits and supporting the next generation that's coming up. And we have children. Hopefully, these even families without kids yet are tithing and they're supporting the school. So it's just a part of our, it's a line item in our budget. And we were able to start that way. We, to do that, there's lots of curricular decisions you have to make. There's a million decisions we could go into about how we source our curriculum and how Headmaster love builds the curriculum. And where that comes from, how we move to a four day school, we can set up a five, a boys and girls school split in the junior high and up years. Like there's a lot of decisions as we've optimized along the way to like really lean into our culture. But the big things we were trying to avoid are that tuition need that drives the culture by sending women to work a lot of the time or only serving the wealthiest people in the church. Want it to be accessible to everybody. And then we wanted to rigorously guard the culture of the school. And so we only allow members, children of members and member families to put their children in the school period. We do not accept nonmembers and we have rigorous academic entry requirements and moral entry requirements. So just because you remember, it doesn't mean your child will be in the school. They actually have to qualify to enforce discipline and enforce higher standards of learning and those sorts of things. That's important culturally for us. So that won't work. You couldn't just necessarily drop that in any church in America. You have to have a high degree of like-mindedness. You have to have a very masculine, elder session model that's willing to do hard things and that's willing to hold the line against emotional appeals from a lot of different sides and areas. You have to be frugal. You have to be able to source and train and raise up good teachers. Like there's a lot of things that go into it. But that's how we started St. Branden's. If you're not in that position, our model won't work. Like you couldn't just do that without the church actually doing it. So if you were just a group of adults in a church, just kind of members of a church, you're like, let's start a school. It would almost by necessity have to be different. Yeah, I mean, I've said this. I'll say it to anyone. I've said it to you. I've said it to Kevin. Everyone. I would not put my kids in any other type of school. Yeah, I probably wouldn't either. It would have to be like a very particular, I don't know. I'm sure there are other schools that are out there that are really good. But I just don't know. I love the model that we use. Obviously, that's what we're doing. I don't think it's a good idea when they're not supported by a church, when they're not male led, whether or not elder led. I just don't think it's a good idea. And I'm not willing to experiment on my kid. Right. So. Yeah. So for a lot of people, Christian education by default is homeschooling or co-ops. Yeah. Because most people aren't in that situation that we're in. That took a lot of work. We're doing the same thing. Yeah, co-ops. Not a co-op fan. Any kind of collection of people to the degree that you don't have mechanisms for gatekeeping, the discipline culture, et cetera, of the school or the co-op or the cottage school or whatever it is. To that degree, it is easier for large scale issues to crop up. And by virtue of the way that time works, most of these things are predominated by women. And what that brings along with it are all of the dysfunctions of any organization that is predominated by women. Well, and too, with our model of schooling, we don't have kindergarten. So. Right. Most school parents are also homeschool parents, at least, as some sort of capacity. And because we have, I talk about this a lot in my like young mom's group, I'm not just thinking most minimal type of kindergarten to get by, I'm thinking give them the gift of a very robust childhood. So it actually does require, it should require a lot of your time, which means mom has to be home. Yeah. Without working. Yep, that's right. So I hope that was helpful. I don't know, like it can be hard to translate. So sometimes it's like, I don't know if that actually helped you, but that is how I didn't to that question. I'd always come out and sit through a recitation either. Yeah. Okay. Very last question. I think this was a, it's almost related in some ways to an earlier question in category. But this is a listener, just a few hours away from us here in Utah, it's like down south in Utah. They said, Hey guys, we've attended your church a few times. And one thing that really stuck out, you all have some well dressed leaders. Where do you buy your clothes? Do you in the elder's shop together? Thanks for that. I actually think that this is true. Maybe they noticed it because we're up front, but the men in the church, women too, but one thing that we do here a lot is like the men in your church actually tend to dress really well on the Lord's day. And so what, how did that happen? Where did that come from? all shop together, that'd be kind of weird. I mean, I I can talk about it from the perspective I saw. - Yeah, what do you say? - I mean, I saw you guys, you've always, you've never liked dressing super casually on Sundays, even way back when we were a casual church. - Yeah. - Before I had kids, the ladies, the old ladies gave me a hard time for ironing your shirts on Sundays. - That's such a terrible thing. - When the school started though, was when you guys kind of thought through like, okay, if the kids are gonna be here during the week, we need to also present ourselves as if we're ready and like being thoughtful about our work. So all the staff members that were there during the week started dressing up every day. And I don't know if it was like through like other people in the church coming to see you guys for counseling meetings or what, but I think that started to slowly elevate it a little bit more. And then the SENS got here and put their Western flair on it. (laughing) Which is good. It is actually very Utah- - But we are Western, we're Rocky Mountain. - It genuinely is. And so we've kind of, I love it. I love our churches really taken on a flavor in that way. And I love our church for that. But I think that was part of it is like, the school really helped elevate everything 'cause the kids were learning to dress up every day. And if the kids are being taught to brush their hair and their teeth and have their ties on straight, why would they show up if the elder teaching their chapel is dressed in jeans and a shirt he just pulled out the dryer? Like you guys were all trying to elevate the standard together. And it reflected on down to the rest of the families, I feel like. - Yeah, particularly on Sundays, the expectation for elders, especially like if you're participating in the liturgy, but just kind of all the time, is that we would have a jacket and a tie and a button up shirt tucked in. And it's not hipster, it's like a classic masculine formal attire, not black tie, obviously, but just, and it can be khakis and I wear like formal corduroyes and things like that and nicer boots, but it's like the goal being that we would establish a culture of beauty and excellence that would demonstrate that when we come for worship, we're actually coming for something glorious. We're coming to like before the Lord. And so the old like cliche, if you were gonna go to the president, how would you dress like we're going before God. - Yeah. - First God is no respecter of persons, he's not like God looks on the heart, that's all true. And yet, to the earlier question, the outward can be either a lie or a truth. So best to have a heart that is right before God and be dressed in rags, but best would be to have a heart before God and also reflected in how you present yourself overall that this is a serious, wady thing that we take reverently. So that's the idea. - Yeah, it kind of reminds you of the friend of mine that went to another church, she was like, it was really weird, they had the women or war head coverings, but they were walking around in leggings on Sunday. I mean, any day of the week that would not be acceptable in my mind, but she was like, this is just so weird that the Lord actually gives us a uniform for Sundays because it is again important. So I'm gonna go get my baby up from her now. - Yeah, well guys, this is the end of this episode of Brightheart. So thanks for listening in. I'm trying to remember exactly what day this episode is going to come out. Let's see, let me look. It looks like this will be coming out on the 11th of May. So, hey, happy May. Hope the guys are enjoying your late spring, early summer. I don't know where the line is on that one. I believe that my album fundraiser is still going, which is a great way to preorder my next album in vinyl and get the numbered and signed finals that I'm just doing for that. A huge thank you to you guys for supporting the album fundraiser so much. I really hope that you guys really are blessed by the music and that it makes your home just a little bit more, adds a little bit more beauty and truth and goodness to your home. As always, if you like what we do here on Brightheart, we depend on so many different hands to touch every episode of this before it hits your ears. So we're really appreciative of all of our Christian business sponsors that support the show. Week after week, we'd encourage you to check them out. Of course, Indigo Century soap company for great handmade family business, family Christian business soaps and other grooming products. And you can always support Brightheart at our Patreon channel where we release our episodes early and add free. We have an episode called In the Kitchen every week. It's just a few, like, five, 10 minutes, a lot of times on one really practical thing. And did you have something to add, babe? I was just gonna say, I'm gonna do an In the Kitchen on capsule pieces for men and women. - I don't even know what that is, but I'm looking forward to finding out. - Okay. - So Lexi's gonna be doing an individual or an episode of In the Kitchen on CapsASN. - No. - And how it increases the spice level of any food it's added to, is that right? - You've never heard what a capsule wardrobe is? - A capsule wardrobe. She's gonna be talking about pills that you can take it in capsules your whole wardrobe. If you know what that is, listen in. If you don't know what it is, listen in. And that's on our Patreon channel, which helps us continue to make this show possible so that we can send it freely around the world and bless as many people as possible. So thanks guys. And we hope that this was a helpful episode. 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