The Gospel for real-life parenting messes with Scarlet Hiltibidal

You're our third host, host.

We are so, so, so excited to have you jumping in.

Tell us, just so we can get super real here, tell us like a parenting mess that you're currently navigating in your home with your all ages of kids, 'cause you are in every single season of parenting.

Yes.

Maybe it's an actual physical mess.

I don't know.

Well, it's always that.

[laughs]

No, this is a very timely question, and I'm grateful.

I mean, this is what I'm doing on the podcast, so it's all very fresh in my mind [laughs] as I'm thinking through all these things.

I would say the biggest, like, real time thing that I'm wrestling with and seeking wisdom on and going to the Lord about is loving each of my children well with all their differences.

Hmm.

So I've got, you know, the huge age gap, I've got the boy-girl dynamic, and then I've also got our, one of our daughters we adopted from China, and she's got special needs, and she's the one who's turning 13.

So a lot of adoptive parents and foster parents in my life have told me, "Well, that is the most difficult age," 'cause not only are they-

Oh

... becoming a teenager, but it's like, you know, noticing, not only struggling with extra things that the everyday person doesn't have to struggle with, but just the awareness of it, so walking with her through that.

Yeah.

And so I'd say my biggest parenting struggle right now is I so deeply wanna love all my children well and love them where they're at, and I feel stretched very thin, and the baby takes up so much of my time [laughs] so it's like-

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that's what I'm, that's the mess I'm constantly juggling is like, you know, Lord, please help me to love each of these wonderful people that I get to raise well when there's o- I only have two hands, and I only have [laughs] so much time in the day.

And a lot of parenting stuff is like, you know, like we have the guidebook of, of scripture, but there's a lot of things every day where I'm like, "I have no idea [laughs] what to do with this particular thing I'm looking at." So-

Yeah

... yeah, that's, that's mine.

Well, I just feel like that's so relatable, 'cause we all, no matter what our age gaps are or your gender or adopted or not, like every kid is so different.

Yeah.