TLP 490: Control Girl | Shannon Popkin Interview

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And I'm kind of seeing it everywhere, and I would say, do you have any controlling women in your family?

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And they'd kind of lean in and say, how did you know? Parenting isn't about us.

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In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids. Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship

00:18

God. So welcome to the Truth, Love, Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give

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God the preeminence in their parenting. I'm your host, AM Brewster, and today Shannon Popkin and I are having a super important discussion about the overwhelming temptation to try to control our spouses and kids.

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As a biblical counselor, I have regularly seen this tendency absolutely destroy homes. And one of the scariest things about the sinister temptation is that the most controlling people are often completely unaware that they are so controlling.

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So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I love it, and we all need it. We want your parenting to glorify

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God, and that's why Evermind Ministries started Truth, Love, Family, so we can equip dads and moms to be the intentional, premeditated, disciple -making, ambassador parents

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God called and created you to be. So be sure to check out truthloveparent .com for biblical parenting resources to help you better glorify

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God in your parenting. And now let's talk about being control girls and guys. I have an author with me who has written a wonderful resource about a very real and very difficult topic.

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Her name is Shannon Popkin. She's a writer, speaker, and Bible teacher who loves to blend her gifts for storytelling and humor with her passion for Jesus.

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Shannon regularly speaks at Christian women's events and retreats, inviting women to live like God's Word is, you know, actually true.

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It's crazy, but it's a great, you know, great focus for her to have. She and her husband, Ken, have been married for 25 years, and they have three adult children.

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So welcome, Shannon, to the show. Thanks so much, Aaron. It's so great to be with you.

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I've been looking forward to this as well. But before we talk about your book, I just wanted to tell the audience just a little bit about how cool you are.

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I know, you know, it's weird, but just wait, sit back, relax. This is good. They need to know this.

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Here's the story of how I met Shannon, okay? Normally authors and publishing houses send books to the

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TLP review team, but this time Kara, a friend of TLP, sent me this book and suggested

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I read it. Well, honestly, I fell in love with the book. So when Team TLP reached out to Shannon about coming on the show, they mentioned to her that an admirer of her book had sent us a copy.

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And Shannon's first response was whether or not there were any particular person that she needed to thank.

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She was so gracious and kind that she and I planned a surprise for Kara. I connected with Kara via Zoom, and then a few minutes later,

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Shannon joined the meeting, and it was all squeals and excitement and edification and glorification from there on out.

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In fact, here's a picture of their get -together. So again, thank you, Shannon, for doing that. It was so sweet. It was so wonderful.

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Kara connected with me again later to say how the encouragement from that conversation carried her through the next couple days.

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It was super fun, Aaron. Definitely a first for me. And thanks to Kara, you know, so it was so fun to surprise you that day, but it was also just such an honor that you would recommend my book to Aaron, and I'm so excited to continue the conversation.

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Well, you think about it, I mean, being able, like, you read a book, it works in your heart by God's grace and through the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And to be able to have a chance just to kind of pick the brain of the person who wrote it was so cool. I mean,

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I enjoyed it. I didn't really say it so much, but you know, everything Kara loved about it, I loved about it. So it was a double whammy for us.

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But as we transition now to talk about the actual book, there is this big, uncomfortable elephant in the room we kind of have to discuss, okay?

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You wrote a book called Control Girl. Now, it's got this great, fantastic,

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I just forgot the word I was looking for, a subtitle. There it is. Lessons on...

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Subtitle. Yeah, subtitle, because that's a hard word. Control Girl, Lessons on Surrendering Your Burden of Control from Seven Women in the

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Bible. And, you know, if we remove that subtitle, boom, Control Girl, it kind of has a little bit of an issue because, from what

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I believe, what I've seen, you kind of just, by naming it that, made yourself the enemy of this massive cultural phenomenon in this world.

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I'll give an example of what I mean, and I'm not sure if you've ever noticed this, but I've heard a lot of people wonder why on Father's Day, the pastor will often kind of rip into the men, guys, you got to be more godly, you got to lead your families, come on, you know?

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But on Mother's Day, all we hear about is how wonderful moms are, how sweet and wonderful and beautiful they are.

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And that's been this cultural phenomenon for as long as I can remember. It's kind of like people are not allowed to say anything even remotely disparaging or critical about women.

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Now, I'm not saying that we should be tearing people down and being pejorative, but it's just like the idea that you would even be like constructively critical is just completely not allowed.

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So, for this reason, and many more, when it comes to books, whether it's written by a man or by a woman, it seems as if so much of the content for women is affirming and edifying and upbeat, as if it were absolutely heretical to suggest that women have struggles and temptations, or that women actually, you know, would give in to those temptations.

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And yet you go and write a book about control girls, women who are controlling. What on earth made you want to paint that target on yourself?

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Well, you know, I have said before, I don't think it was marketing genius to write my very first book on a topic that nobody sees as their problem, right?

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And second of all, like if they do see it in other people, they, oh, they don't feel comfortable calling that out.

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And so I definitely, from what you're saying, I guess I was just glad I was naive enough to try.

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And I'm so glad you did, so glad you did. But you're right though. It's like, it's like, here, you really need this book.

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I can see how that would be just as difficult as, yeah, yeah. I didn't even know to even think about that stuff when it was my first book, so.

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And the publishing house went for it too. Was there, was there nobody there who was like, it's an interesting topic for your book?

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You know what? I'm just glad they believed in me. I'm so glad they did because if, you know, if it had been overthought in any way and people decided maybe not to go,

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I mean, it just, we would have a treasured resource would not be available to us. But seriously though.

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Okay. So as we, as we move from the painted target on your back, what really was convinced you that this was the topic about what you needed to write?

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Well, you know, I was really looking for answers for myself, Aaron, you know, God was opening my eyes to this problem that I had with control.

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And I felt like it was even helpful just to put language to the problem, you know, to say,

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I am a control girl or I am simply controlling. I want to control things that are not mine to control.

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Just, you know, getting over that hurdle of actually admitting and calling out the problem was kind of half the battle.

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And I, you know, I started seeing this problem, not just in myself, but everywhere.

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I was noticing it just, you know, I would go out for coffee with a friend and say, you know,

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God's really been convicting me of this control thing. And I'm kind of seeing it everywhere. And I would say, do you have any controlling women in your family?

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And they'd kind of lean in and say, how did you know? How did you know?

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And there's just this irony because nobody talks about it. Nobody, like, I don't think

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I've ever been in a Bible study where someone said, Hey, please pray for me. I'm a very controlling woman.

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You know, we don't, we don't usually put that language to this problem. And we certainly don't hear it out in the world.

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I have a Google alert set for the phrase controlling woman.

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So I get these, you know, updates every time that there is a new release of a magazine article or a news, you know, something in the news about a controlling woman.

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And I find it so ironic, Erin, that I hardly ever get one of those where it's talking about a real life person.

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They're always like movie reviews or a play review, you know, so we're very happy to talk about these controlling women who are fictional, but in real life, please don't ever call a real woman controlling.

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And, you know, I just think that is not serving us well to never talk about the topic, to never put language to it, especially as Christians.

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You know, we need to really, I think, lean in on this because it is far more prevalent than we might recognize.

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I wonder what you think about this. I would imagine that a controlling person could oftentimes be a bully.

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Maybe not every controlling person is a bully, but I imagine that's kind of a character trait you'd find among them. And perhaps maybe that's why we have such a hard time pointing out, regardless of whether it's male or female, because to point out to someone that they're controlling would be almost to invite the bully wrath to come down.

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Mm hmm. Yeah. And so we want to tiptoe around the most controlling person in the room.

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We don't want to upset her. But, you know, a lot of times our controlling natures aren't as overt.

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They're a little bit more subvertive. They're manipulative. They're kind of flying under the radar and, you know, all under the name of good intentions.

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You know, the most invested women in their families or in their careers or communities. And I think, you know, we don't want to we only want to call out what's good, especially in women, because ours is a culture that wants to celebrate the liberated woman, right?

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We want to celebrate our freedoms and our, you know, wide open doors for opportunities.

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And yet there is a restraint. There is, you know, there are boundaries that we need to hold ourselves accountable for, especially as Christians.

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I think our problem with control is acting like we're God, you know, like we're actually the ones who are in control and nobody who steps in for God does a very good job of it.

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Oh, so true. So true. And I promise you, we're going to get canceled for this video. It's just going to happen. Now, I often have to remind my male listeners that I share the books

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I do because I believe there's value for the moms and for the dads. As a dad myself, Control Girl was so insightful for me.

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And honestly, I really wasn't super excited at first of reading it, discovering whether or not I was a control girl.

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But I read it because Kara had sent it. So and I'm so glad that I did. And that's the whole point.

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I want the guys out there to realize that this was really very valuable because it's just as easy for me to want to manipulate and control my family into doing and being what

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I want them to do and to be. So it may be novel to hear someone suggest that women struggle with these control issues.

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But honestly, women or men, it's inherent in the human condition, regardless of your sex.

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But I think control issues are even harder for parents. All right. And really, I guess I should say anyone in authority, because the idea is that it's our job to be in control.

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So Shannon, let me ask you this question. I've received it numerous times as a biblical counselor. Doesn't good parenting require us to be in control of our kids?

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I mean, don't we look at parents and we say, oh, man, their kids are out of control. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, yes, good parents maintain control of their kids as as good parents.

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We need to invest in having self -control because, you know, if our kids are completely wild and out of control, that means probably we aren't doing our job.

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But I like to to kind of use the principle. I call it the hold and fold principle.

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So if you can kind of picture your hands holding or like cupping responsibility for yourself.

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So we need to as parents hold responsibility, but then fold our hands and surrender to God with all of the things that are not ours to control.

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So how does that work with parenting? Well, I think when we get our little newborn baby, we are as parents completely holding, you know, we're completely responsible for this child.

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And then as parents of adult children, we're pretty much doing just folding.

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Like it's not our job to pick out their clothes anymore or their food or any of those things.

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Yes, exactly. And so but but how do we move from completely holding to completely folding?

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It's you know, I think it's different with every child and with every situation.

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There are hundreds and hundreds of things that we move from holding responsibility as parents to folding and, you know, surrendering our child to God.

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And a good rule of thumb is is if your child is little enough to climb into your lap, you know, where you can hold them in your lap, you're still mostly holding.

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You know, you're still mostly as a responsible parent. You're choosing. You're making lots of choices for them.

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You're instructing them. You're you're taking control. But then when they get too big to sit in your lap, well, then you're it's you know, you're starting to work on this idea of folding and surrender to God's authority where God is their father and you're directing them more to him.

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And, you know, I think I now am a mom of adult kids. And when I look back and think of how short a time that I had where I was the one completely in control, it's pretty minimal,

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Erin. Like it really flew by so quickly. And I did I did I was a good young mom or a mom of littles.

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I mean, because I liked to be in control. And that was my sweet spot, you know, controlling all of the options.

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I was really good at that. What I've struggled far more with is the letting go and surrendering and giving

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God control, trusting him with their safety and their choices and, you know, his work in their lives versus my work in their life.

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And, you know, I think it's kind of funny. I think God could have created it so that our kids grew up a lot slower.

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You know, maybe they were babies for their first 10 years or whatever. I think he made them grow up as quickly as they do because he knew that we needed far more work as parents in releasing control of our kids than we did in trying to take control.

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That's been far more of a challenge to me. Well, I think that's a fantastic answer, and I love how you're focusing primarily on the positive aspects of control, the things that we as parents do have control over, you know, making the putting the correct amount of jelly on that peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

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We do have a level of control over that, and I think that that's wise and valuable. But in my counseling, what I found, too, is that there's this there's this misunderstanding about what parents do control.

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Yeah, we control the diapers we purchase. We control oftentimes what our little kids watch on the television. But there's one thing that no parent in the history of the world has ever controlled, and that is the other person's heart.

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We can't control our kids. And yet so many parents desperately want to. We do what we do.

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We parent in the way that we parent because we're trying to control their reactions, control their heart posture toward God and toward ourselves.

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And that's just something that I think we all need to recognize, that there will never be a time when God has given us the ability to control that.

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That is his to control. The only thing that we can control in that regard is our own hearts and our own responses to God.

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And we need to fit in there. But like you said, in those areas that we can control, even then we lose the control in those areas over time.

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That was beautifully put. Yeah, I completely agree, Aaron. I think we have this happy ending in our minds, and it involves our kids loving

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God. We know that that's what's going to be best for them. And when they're so little, it's almost like this facade.

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We have such influence over them, and we feel like we know them so well, and we're just going to be able to create this happy union between them and God.

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And we sometimes forget, yeah, our hearts or their heart is not held by our hand.

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It's really God's sovereignty over their life, and our job is to entrust them, lead them to him, but entrust their hearts to God.

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Now, one of the things I want to mention about Control Girl is that it is not specifically a parenting book. All right.

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It deals with, obviously, there's application to parenting and children, but it's not necessarily just for parenting.

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If you are married but you don't have children or you're not married at all, this book would be an awesome book for you.

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Most of the books we deal with are on parenting and marriage and things like that. This is not, but oh man, oh man, are the applications there.

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And as you can see from what Shannon and I were just talking about, it's important understanding the control that God's given us and the control he hasn't given us.

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Now, specifically about the format of the book, it's formatted in such a way that you use multiple examples from the scripture about women who themselves had control issues.

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You use their stories and you help us to learn really valuable lessons about the consequences of believing that we have to be in control by teaching us the lessons that God taught them.

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And I really saw your storytelling ability to come out through that. It was, it was fantastic, but I need to ask you, which is your favorite control girl account from the

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Bible? You know, which one is the most relevant and practical for you? I love the story of Sarah Aaron.

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She just, I so relate to Sarah because she had this promise from God, right?

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God was going to make her family of two into a nation and she, she had the promise, but then she felt this urgency to take control and make the promise come true.

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Right. And the Bible talks negatively about the way that Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah.

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And in the same way that Adam had listened to the voice of his wife, God, you know, said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and then spoke the curse over his creation.

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And, and I, you know, I see that in myself too. I want my husband to listen to the voice of Shannon and what

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I have in mind rather than, you know, deferring for my husband to defer to God and listen to his voice.

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So, you know, we as women, we want for these, these promises to come true for our families in the same way that Sarah wanted the promise of God to come true for her family.

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And there's this little scene where I feel like Sarah is just coming to the realization of what she's done.

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And Isaac, baby Isaac is three years old now, and they're having a party.

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And he, you know, he is being teased by his teenage half -brother

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Ishmael. And Sarah's in her nineties at this point. And I just get the sense that she is looking on as her, you know, as the half -brother is now mocking the true son of Israel.

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And she's getting this sense, OK, this isn't going to end. She, you know, she's picturing maybe

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I will be dead and gone soon. And this is, this is always going to be in play.

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This half -brother is always going to be mocking. And this inheritance entrusted to Isaac is always going to be threatened.

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And that's when Sarah says, get them out, get the slave woman and her son out of out of my home.

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And the irony is this was Sarah's idea in the first place. She's the one who introduced

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Hagar into the situation. It was her idea. Abraham listened to Sarah as she's trying to make this promise come true.

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She has no children. She has no way to produce a child anymore. So she does what she has or she uses what she has, which is this slave woman.

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And she gives Hagar to her husband as another wife. She started out with this noble goal of wanting to make

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God's promise come true. She wants to turn her family into God's chosen people.

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But Ishmael is what she could do on her own. Isaac represented what only

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God can do. And that's where the rub is for me. As a parent, I want to turn my little family into God's people also.

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And it feels like I can do it. It feels like, oh, I think I can. I think I can put enough restrictions in place and I can teach them

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Bible stories and I can get access to their little hearts and I can produce these children of God.

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But the reality is, no, I can't. You know, I can produce an Ishmael. I can produce a slave child.

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But those are not the ones who stick around in the family of God. Yeah, so true.

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I see this so true. Yeah, I see this just this problem. Some of the godliest family, godliest looking families,

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I'll say, are those with a mom who's really trying to control it all.

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But really, that's that's a facade. We can't ultimately create sons of God.

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This is ultimately God's work in our families. And when we do insert ourselves in these different ways, you know, when we make

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God's work into our work, sometimes we're producing slaves, not sons.

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You know, we're producing Ishmael's, not Isaac's. And I think God wants us to recognize that this is his work.

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Even as we do our work, he is the one who ultimately produces true sons of God.

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No, and that is something that we just need to really grasp. And my brain is going so many different directions because you said so many fantastic things just then.

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One of those is that if we're controlling people and we're trying to push our own agenda, then we're probably going to find ourselves later on having to be controlling people to undo the consequences of our first controlling, you know, attempts.

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That's one really powerful thing that we think I see. Number two, as a biblical counselor, and please listen, everyone, if you've been listening to TLP for long enough, you've heard me say this before, but I still need to say, you know, you need to hear me out on this one.

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I understand that all human beings have a temptation to be controlling. OK, that's I'm not throwing anyone under the bus right here and right now.

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But I will say that in the marriage counseling that I do, 80 to 90 percent of the time we have a woman who is desperately trying to control the issue, who sees her husband as the problem and who doesn't see herself as the problem at all.

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And again, generally speaking, the husband does have an issue. He's a sinner. All right. Just like I'm a sinner. But it's interesting that the women so often come into it from the perspective of he needs fixing.

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He's the issue. If we just get him on board, everything will be OK. Completely missing the fact that even that approach to the difficulty is revealing the fact that she's got a control girl problem.

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And then the other thing I was thinking is that speaking of throwing people under the bus, you don't just throw all these biblical characters under the bus and you don't.

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You actually do a great job of revealing the choices that they made. And I love how Hagar herself ends up being a control girl that needs to be revealed as well, even though she was the victim in this moment.

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It's so great how you handle all of it. But you also deal a lot with yourself. And as you were talking about, Sarah, my brain actually,

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I remember I was really proud of myself. I read so many books, but I was proud of myself because I'm like, I'm pretty sure that's where she talked about herself and the kitchen addition.

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It was a kitchen addition, right? Or was it an addition to something? Yeah. Yes. Tell us, give us a little glimpse into that, because I think it was in that chapter where you talked about that.

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And that's kind of a story from your own life. Give us a glimpse into what happened with the kitchen addition. Yeah, absolutely.

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So I just had this vision in my head. I wanted a bigger kitchen. And I felt like, you know, my husband, like, oh,

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Erin, I'm so relating to what you're saying. I really thought he was the problem in so many of our early years of marriage and just really did not see that my desire for control was really injecting so much hurt and strife into my family.

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And you are exactly right. I am still, as a mom of adult kids, I am still having to lay down, you know, just surrender to God and ask him to help undo so much of the damage that I've created.

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And, you know, so many of the tensions in my relationships are due to trying to be in control completely and trying to be perfect in so many ways.

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So if I can just appeal to younger women, like just to take a look in the mirror and look at what this control issue is doing.

25:12

So, yeah. So, you know, our house was I called it our dream house when we moved in.

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But then I started realizing, well, the kitchen really isn't as big as I'd like it to be. And so I was asking my husband, you know, come on, please.

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Could we could we save up for an addition? Could we, you know, could we add on?

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And he was just quietly saying, well, if we saved enough money and then there was this time where I don't know,

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I think we got an inheritance check and a tax return or whatever. We got all the money that I thought we needed to put on this addition.

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And he took me out to dinner to talk about how we were going to spend this extra money.

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We play this little game with extra money where we I won't go into all the details, but we kind of collaborate on how

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God might want for us to move forward. And my husband's idea at this little dinner celebration was completely different than mine.

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I was thinking, well, of course, he's going to he's brought me out to dinner to tell me we're going to put on this new addition.

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And he instead has this he's all giddy. He's excited. He's got a spreadsheet and he's got all these different things in place.

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And he wants to give away a whole bunch of money to missionaries. And I was how dare

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I was so mad at him. I'm like, do you know that it's not wrong for us to spend our own money?

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You know, and Aaron, I'm the kind of wife who I really want for my my husband to hear from the

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Lord. I want for him to follow God. I really do. But in this moment,

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I wanted him following me. I wanted him listening to my voice, not God's voice.

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And, you know, so as I recall, we left the restaurant and there were stormed doors slamming and stormy silence.

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And it was a rough few days and eventually

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God just melted my heart. And I just said, OK, come on, let's talk about this.

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And my husband said, could we look for a house that would solve the problem that you are wanting with the kitchen?

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And so we don't have to go. He really just didn't want to have the disruption of an addition being put on our house.

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And it's just it's not who we are. We're not good at making those sorts of decisions. I think he could foresee this was going to create a whole bunch of tension for everybody.

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And so that's that's ultimately what we did. And we moved into a different house and God provided.

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And but I think I just look back on me in that restaurant and being so angry because I wanted him to listen to me.

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And I see that also with my kids. I want them to listen to me. I want them to do what

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I say. I insert myself. But the more I insert myself, I'm trying to create this happy ending, whether it's the dream home that I have in my in my head or it's the family situation that I have in worked out the details in my head.

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And the more that I insert myself, the more that I come in and try to take control out of the hands of other people, the more miserable, you know, we just all become.

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So true, so true. And I just want to say this because I know that there are women who are listening who have husbands who aren't listening to the voice of God.

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They are not submitting to his word. They're not submitting to other spiritual authorities who are trying to guide them.

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And these women are afraid. They're afraid because they are in a position that they've told as a wife they need to submit to their husbands, but their husbands are not leading the way

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God would have them to lead. And I think that's also a really big temptation on a woman. And, you know, it's easy sometimes for a woman in that position to look at someone like you or someone else like, well, at least your husband loves the

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Lord, you know. But I want everyone to understand that this temptation to controlling is not, it's not different regardless of what category you're in.

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Things can, you can have a godly spouse or you can have an ungodly spouse and the temptation to control is still going to be there if it's all about me.

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And to the woman who right now has a husband who does not love the Lord and who's torn about whether or not she should submit and let go of control or whether or not she needs to try to, you know, do everything she can to wrangle him back in.

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I just want to say that first and foremost, you never have to sin, OK? If anyone's ever telling you you need to sin, you don't ever have to give in to that.

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It's better to obey God rather than man. Second of all, if the situation is a really extreme situation and it involves abuse and whatnot, you need to get help.

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You absolutely must do that. For most women listening, though, the situation isn't quite that extreme.

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Your husband is potentially just apathetic about Scripture or they're not a believer and they're fine with that.

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I still want to encourage you to let God do his job.

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You can't change your husband, OK? And God didn't give you the authority in many situations to dictate to him what he is to do and what he is not to do.

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And one of the sweetest things and most beautiful things that I've been told by many women, I think, Shannon, you'd agree with this, is that relinquishing that control back to God is so incredibly freeing.

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It doesn't automatically change the situation. It doesn't always automatically result in a wash of happy, confetti, sparkles and rainbows.

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But it is an incredibly freeing experience when we say, OK, God, I'm done doing your job.

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I'm just going to focus on what you want me to do, and I'm going to trust you with my husband. Absolutely.

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And Aaron, I love that 1 Peter 3 is written to women in that situation.

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Can I just read these verses? Oh, definitely. That was the passage I was thinking about. Please, yes. Please read it. Yes.

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So, likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

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So I love the fact that there is no condition on this admonition that we be subject or we submit to our husbands, even if they don't obey the word.

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And I love also that Peter calls out that they may be won over without a word, because often as women, it's our temptation to use our words.

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We're so good at communication. And I might not be able to beat my husband in arm wrestling, but good arguments.

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I have a good chance. You should put your bets on me. And so, you know, but that is not given to me as leverage to take control.

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You know, my gifts for communication and using my aptitude for relationships.

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God didn't give me these gifts so that I might take control of various situations with my husband.

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And I think it's so good as wives to invite our husbands to lead in the way that God designed for the marriage.

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You know, I remember coming home from a night out with my with my mom and my aunts, just a girls night out in the family.

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And we came home. My my cousin was visiting from out of town and I had said, hey, come over to my house and you can play with my little boys.

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They were both preschoolers at the time. And when we got there, I you know, my husband was there to greet us.

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And I said, where are the boys? And he said, oh, they're in bed. He said, I put them in bed. He said,

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I think they broke almost all of the Ten Commandments tonight. Maybe not adultery, but they broke them all and they're in bed and they're singing.

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And I could hear them. They were crying up in their beds. And I was like, oh, honey, come on. They want to see their grandma and their aunties.

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You know, can't they come down just for a couple of minutes? And he said, no. So I said to him, can

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I talk to you for a minute? And, you know, if if you're a woman, you know what I had in mind when we step into this private room for me to talk to my husband.

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And right off the bat, Aaron, he says to me, OK, before you say a word, I just have to ask, are you going to take control here?

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Are you going to overrule me on this thing with the boys staying in bed? And I'm like, oh, man, when you put it like that, right.

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And so I had to make and ultimately I walked out of that room and I I looked into the faces of the disappointed women and said, sorry, the boys are going to stay in bed.

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And that was so hard for me to do at that point. You know, I just love for my little kids to see their grandma and, you know, to to see my cousin who was out of town.

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But now looking back on that situation, I see how good it was for little boys to see that their mom respected their dad, you know, enough to invite his leadership and support his leadership.

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And, you know, that that my boys didn't see me as the one, the ultimate authority, because a lot of times moms are the ones who are with their kids more than the dad is.

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And so it's good for for kids to see the mom respecting the dad. And it's also good just in family dynamics for the others in the family to see a wife supporting her husband and for the husband to see his wife, you know, deferring and supporting his decisions.

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These have been such good things for my family in the long term. And so I think, you know, just for the women listening, just to catch if we are always the ones who are overruling and taking control and doing what seems right in our eyes, we're really inviting our husbands to be passive and to not take that leadership role that God designs for them.

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And then we complain about the passivity, but we in part are the ones inviting it.

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So we just have to take, you know, take a step back and look at how can we invite our husbands to lead and then how can we treat them as the leader when they do step out and make choices to lead?

35:27

That's fantastic advice. And I want a little bit more practical advice from you as we start wrapping up here.

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What advice would you have for a dad or for a mom listening today who wants to stop being what

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I'm going to call a control parent? They recognize that they are trying to do

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God's job in way too many areas. They're realizing that they have these little control freak tendencies. They're humble enough to recognize that and they're thinking to themselves, what can

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I do? What are some practical steps I can take right here, right now, today to stop being this control parent?

35:59

Right. Well, look, as you've said, Aaron, control is an issue both for husbands and wives. But moms are particularly controlling in the mix of family relationships.

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We tend to want to, like we've said, control our husbands. But especially in the parenting role,

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I remember just being far more interested in my kids' safety than my husband was when they were little.

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And my wife would agree with you on that. Yes. And that's often often the case. But as an adult or I'm sorry, as our kids have gotten older,

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I see myself far more invested in pushing spirituality on my kids.

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I want to respond to every little thing. And my husband just tends to be a little bit more patient, more open to the process, seeing parenting as a long term objective, not just an in the moment thing.

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And I'd love to give another example. You know, we talked about how Sarah, on her own, wanted to make

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God's promises come true. But Isaac, she couldn't create a child on her own.

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She had to trust this was an act of God. This was a supernatural thing that God did to create this little baby,

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Isaac. And it's so true in our parenting. It's a supernatural act of God.

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And I recall one time driving in the car when my son, my youngest son, was about 13 years old.

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And I had just thrown out this question, a family question like, hey, where do you guys see yourselves in five years?

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And the older two had answered and both of them had said, well, I think, you know, I'll be real involved in my church in this way or that way.

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And the 13 year old said, I don't think I'll be going to church then because I'll be 18. And I'll you know,

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I just don't know if I believe in that stuff. And this was like, oh, my goodness. This is like bait for a control girl, mom.

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You know, after that conversation, I said to my husband, did you hear that? Like, we've got to do this, this and this.

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You know, we've got to have these conversations with him. And my husband's response was, well, OK. OK, maybe we could go back and read the

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Gospel of John or something like this. But mostly what we need to do is pray. That was his advice.

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You know, we just need to pray for him and trust that God is working in his heart. And I just love that sometimes the husband can have a more patient, more long term objective.

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That's what we did. We prayed for him. We read the Gospel of John with him. So there is a holding responsibilities like as parents we are.

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It is our job to mentor our kids. But he my son is now 17 and he just told us last week that he wants to be baptized.

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He is a small group leader for sixth graders at our church. He loves Jesus. And so it's just as my husband said, you know, we've been patient.

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We've waited for God to work and we've seen this as God's work. And I think as as wives, if we can support our husbands as the spiritual leaders and invite their involvement rather than our tendency is just to put all of the weight of parenting on our shoulders, right?

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And carry it around like this burden. And as the spiritual leader, I think our husbands are in tune of seeing sometimes, not always, but but sometimes as seeing that long term objective of, you know, our job is to lead our kids to God.

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But God wants to be the one God ultimately wants to be the God of our kid, not the you know, he doesn't want our child saying, well,

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I follow my mom's God. You know, no, I follow my my God. So, yeah, so I see it.

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I see control really interrupting parenting where a wife is trying to step in both for God and for her husband.

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And I see that playing out also like in a husband feeling disrespected.

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So especially when my kids were little, I would argue like you're not cutting up the food correctly.

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I think you said something about the not enough jelly to go with the peanut butter, all of those little, you know, all these little bitty details.

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And what my husband was hearing was you're not doing it right. I can't trust you.

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You'll never measure up. So when we as wives take control, our husbands hear that as disrespect.

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We don't see ourselves as being disrespectful. You know, we see ourselves as just invested.

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And, you know, well, we have to, you know. And then the natural response when a husband feels disrespected is passivity, which, again, it's a cycle.

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So we take control. He takes the passive role and then we complain because we have a passive husband.

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So as as women, I think it's really important just to gauge how much am

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I taking control when it's really just not necessary. It's fine if he, you know, does the peanut jelly different than I do, or the kids probably will survive, you know, even if he doesn't put on the bug spray or put the hat on the baby or whatever, they probably are going to be

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OK. And in fact, there's a lot more detriment for a controlling mom and a disrespectful wife in the family than a lack of bug spray or a hat on the baby.

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So I think just really, yeah, just really gauging that. And I'll say this, too.

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As a mom of teens, I am really glad to have an invested dad in our family.

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I think as as they were little, I was the primary parent. And as they've moved into these teenage years, my husband is the primary parent, especially with our boys.

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We're just in that time where a boy it's there is tension between a teenage boy and his mom and I need to have an invested dad.

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And so having that long view of your parenting, I think is so important. Keeping the dad welcome and investing as a wife.

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There are ways that you can, like I've said earlier, invite his leadership and just celebrate his leadership in the home and just really saying, hey, what do you think about this?

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Can we pray about this? What do you think we should do? And then supporting him in the choices that he makes.

42:28

So good. So good. And I guess I would add to that this idea for a parent who say,

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OK, I'm realizing that I'm trying I'm taking control that's not mine. What do I do? One of our very first episodes was called

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Stop Being the Leader. And the whole concept was that if I am the boss, if I'm in charge, then it's all about me.

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You're doing what I want you to do. You know, if I'm God, then you and you defy me. I have the right to throw a lightning bolt at you.

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But the reality is that I, as the parent, even as the husband, right,

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I am supposed to be following God and he's the leader. I'm just following him.

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And like children in a game of follow the leader, I'm inviting my wife to follow me as I follow Christ.

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We're inviting our children to follow us as we follow Christ. And I think just even getting that in our heads that this is not about me, the mom or the dad or the husband or the wife.

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This is about God. I'm following him. It's where he's going, how he's leading. That's so incredibly important.

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And then the other thing I would say is this. Control freaks. Yes, they have an eye. I should say we have an idolatry problem.

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OK, we've made ourselves a leader. However, when we start to give that back to God, when we say,

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Lord, I recognize your sovereignty, I recognize your control in this universe. I want you to be God and I want to be the follower.

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The next thing that comes in and tempts us is this is fear. It's sometimes sadness or grief.

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Sometimes it's all of these negative emotions associated with the fact that things are still not going the way we'd like them to go.

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And I would just direct people to James chapter one. And I'd say God designs these difficulties and these struggles in our lives to be a tool by which he matures us.

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He grows us. We're supposed to count these difficulties in our lives as joy because they are testing our faith.

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And when our faith and when we exercise that in Christ, it builds endurance and that endurance produces perfection and completion in our lives as we are conformed to the image of Christ.

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And so I tell parents all the time, the struggle that you're having with your children right now, you know, it's a parenting struggle, but it's more than just your parenting struggle with your children.

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God is using that struggle to parent you. And when we see it the way God outlines it in Scripture, that relieves so much of that, like you said, a burden, but also that emotional burden that,

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God, I can trust you. This difficulty with my child, you're trying to mature me through this. I can have joy.

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So I'd say the first thing is recognize that you're not in control, recognize who is and start following him. And then when you're tempted to not be at peace, when you don't have contentment, when you don't have gratitude, when you're not being joyful, focusing on the truth of what

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God's trying to do with the fact that you don't have the kitchen addition you want. What God's trying to do with the fact that your husband or your wife didn't put the diaper, put the diaper on the baby backwards, you know, or that, you know, your parent, your husband's saying that it's okay.

45:28

Today, when I left to come over here, my daughter was mowing. My daughter's 11 and a half and she was out there mowing, you know, mowing the lawn.

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She doesn't do all of it. She shares it with her brother. But, you know, you say, I don't want my daughter mowing the lawn.

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My husband's having her mow the lawn. Can, do you believe Romans 8, 28, that God wants this situation to be for his greatest glory and your greatest good?

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I mean, those are just some of the, some great ways that we can stop our controlling tendencies by letting

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God do his job and just trusting him in it all. Well, Shannon, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us here today.

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I want to thank you for writing this book. It is so powerful and it's necessary. I know that you've written other books that I'm really looking forward to reading.

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So please tell us about your resources and your ministries and where our audience members can find you if they want to send you hate mail for, you know, suggesting that they have control issues.

46:20

Well, I, yeah, I would love to connect with listeners at, you can come to controlgirl .com.

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We have a site dedicated to this book and there are some freebies you can download, some meditation cards and some prayers for the control girl mom.

46:36

So I think I would love for you to connect with those. I do have a recent book that just came out called comparison girl, and this book is focused on the one

46:45

I'm looking forward to. Yeah. So, um, the new Testament teachings of Jesus. So the upside down ways of Jesus.

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And so lessons, uh, uh, from Jesus on living me free in this measure up world.

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And so, yeah, you can find those at my site, shannonpopkin .com. Awesome.

47:04

Well, I want to encourage everyone to do that. In fact, actually, here's a challenge for each woman listening to my voice today. First of all, recognize that your inherent sinful tendency is to want to control things in your life.

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And I can say that because that is in fact, mankind's root problem. Okay. Just listen to our biggest parenting challenges you will ever face series.

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All of your children's sinful choices will find their root in the fact that your child believes they need to control things in their life in order to feel safe and satisfied.

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So yes, because you're human, you have control issues. Once you've done that though, you need to then purchase a copy of this book for you and maybe even a copy for a friend.

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Seriously. The most loving thing you can do is help a friend recognize their own propensity to give into the temptation to try to manipulate the people in their lives.

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And because you're their friend, they may accept the admonishment from you more easily than they would someone else. Now, men, since I haven't found a good example of a book for control guys, you probably should get a copy of this and recognize that your temptation is to control it just as much as your wife's is.

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I was convicted by this book. I learned a lot from the biblical principles Shannon shared, and I believe you can too.

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Like I said at the outset, this conversation is so important. I hope you listened. I hope you're searching your heart.

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I hope that you're willing to stop and consider how your controlling tendencies are a sin against God and causing pain in your home.

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And whether you recognize your controlling attitudes or you're uncertain if you're controlling or not, I invite you to reach out to counselor at truthloveparent .com.

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We'd love to help you identify and address your struggle. Please reach out. We want to serve you and your family.

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And please share this episode on your favorite social media outlets so we can help more parents surrender their control to God, and I hope you'll join us next time as we once again open

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God's word to discover how to best worship God with our parenting. To that end, we'll be starting a new season with all new content, so be sure to subscribe and join us as we all grow in our worship of God by parenting in a biblical way.

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Truth Love Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship

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God through your parenting. So join us next time as we study God's word to learn how to parent our children for life and godliness.

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And remember that TLP is a listener supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.