396 | Non-Reactive Parenting, The Five Life Spheres, and Lightening Your Child's Backpack (Glenn Packiam)
Episode Description
Parenting doesn't have to be about survival mode. In this episode, Glenn Packiam shares how intentional rhythms and a focus on resilience can transform your family life. From learning to be non-reactive when hormones hit to using your calendar as a tool for what you truly value, Glenn offers practical wisdom for dads navigating everything from toddlers to young adults getting married. Plus, discover why the healthiest gift you can give your kids might be your own emotional well-being.
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Glenn Packiam is the author of The Intentional Year and several other books focused on spiritual formation and resilience. He's a pastor, speaker, and father of four children ranging from teenagers to young adults. Glenn lives in Southern California with his wife Holly, and his oldest daughter recently got engaged. He's passionate about helping parents move from survival mode to intentional, rhythmic family life that builds resilience in both parents and children.
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You're going to hand your kids a "backpack" whether you like it or not—the goal is to make it as light as possible by dealing with your own emotional health first.
Non-reactive parenting starts with slowing your breath and asking "what else is going on here?" instead of jumping to conclusions.
Resilience isn't about avoiding hard emotions—it's about how quickly you recover and what you learn from difficult seasons.
Your calendar reveals your true values; intentional rhythms like family dinners and Sabbath don't happen by accident.
One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is your own repentance when you mess up.
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It's the gift of paying attention to their life. The irony is that we pay so much attention to our business, to our stock portfolio, to our investments. You're like, okay, okay, this is your greatest investment.
What's up, Dad Awesome? Episode 396 coming at you. Excited today to welcome Glenn Pacquiam. Glenn is the author of The Intentional Gear. He has teenage and young adult kids. He lives in Southern California. He's written another handful of books and has just done a lot of thinking, deep work around resilience, and so excited for today's conversation. Hey, why not shout out and remind you guys we're five weeks away.
from our fall Dad Awesome accelerator. And this is taking everything in nearly eight years of Dad Awesome and bringing it into a six week sprint, a six week experience, only with 10 dads at a time, and wanna invite you to prayerfully apply to join us. Likely this cohort is going to fill up here in the next week or two. This first early fall cohort, we're kicking off this cohort on September 24th. It will be on Wednesdays, noon central time. So it's just one hour.
of Zoom-based team coaching a week. And then there's a whole bunch of guided homework, guided learning, guided mutual encouragement. We've done five. We've graduated five groups of the accelerator and just want to encourage you guys, check out this opportunity, prayerfully apply. I'm so excited to meet you guys who join us. The deadline to apply though is in just the next couple of weeks, because we anticipate it will fill up. Go to dadawesome.org slash coaching, dadawesome.org slash coaching.
Okay, let's dive in. is episode 396 with Glenn Paquiam.
Speaker 2 (02:30.424)
Coast to coast we got the Atlantic Coast in Florida where I'm at to the Pacific Coast Southern California or Glen you're at welcome to Dad Awesome
Thank you, Jeff. Looking forward to talking to you today.
I heard a rumor that you're at the, did your oldest just get engaged? Is that closer? Yeah.
You nailed it. Yeah, our oldest Sophia, she got engaged in January. We love her fiance, Caleb. They're getting married in October. yeah, man, so that's, we have four kids, so she's our oldest. And that's the first of that milestone. And man, here we are.
Truly, as much as I alluded to that we're approaching 400 episodes, like that's a celebration, but me thinking about my oldest daughter being engaged and approaching marriage, that's a much more significant, I'm like, yes, I have four girls, the oldest is 11, down to the youngest is four. So we're in that chapter. But I love to like reach to just asking questions, seeking wisdom from dads in that kind of launching kids into college or launching into, in this case.
Speaker 2 (03:31.904)
entering a marriage. What are you discovering? We'll probably lace through lots of discoveries, but are there any recent dad discoveries that you're like, I'm learning this in this phase?
mean, yeah, we could fill the hour with this, I mean, I think for starters, our older daughter's getting married, she graduated from college. Our second daughter's headed into college. And I think when you're parenting young adults, that's a whole nother beast. We've been making this shift for years now in terms of your voice doesn't carry the of weight of authority and it becomes more in the advice and that sort of thing. But I also, there's this added layer of recognizing
that I don't need to spare them from the many mistakes. You know, it's funny, we were having a dinner the other night with some friends and we're like, hey, let's go around the table and to our daughter that's headed off to college, let's play this little game. What's one thing you need to put in the backpack, the metaphorical backpack, take with you in this, and then what's something to not put in the backpack, you know? And one of the things someone said was, don't be afraid to take some risks. And one of the things I added was,
Yeah, and don't be afraid to fail, you know? And I think for a lot of young people, there is a sense of if I was properly prepared, I would never make any mistakes. I'd never make any wrong choices. And so even as a dad, I want to spare them from this stuff, but actually within limits, you kind of want to take some chances. We talked about it afterwards and I was like, you know, I wonder if this is true. If you never fail at something, maybe you're never swinging. Maybe you're never taking a shot at something, you know?
applicable to all of us at every stage. Can you think of if you had to rewind back to my phase, oldest being 11, things you wish maybe you would have a little less leash, a little more like, hey, go for it. Can you think of any examples in that phase?
Speaker 1 (05:23.818)
One of the things in our, so we have three girls, one boy, and our youngest is now 13, our daughter. It goes girl, girl, boy, girl. And when they hit that 11 year, 10, 11, 12, hormones start to become part of the story. And I think very early on, we were still parenting with the lens of character formation and didn't take sufficient account into the fact of, there's actually some, and I'm gonna use the word non-technically, chemical dynamics.
I'm not a doctor, someone else needs to speak into this with more precision, but I'm a preacher, so I like the alliteration of chemical versus character, you know? And I think as a dad, there's too many things when you go, no, does this mean something about their future or what kind of person they're gonna be? And you go, no, like this just means there's a flood of emotion here. They don't know how to navigate. And I think about my son, when he was that age, it would sometimes come with some angst or some moodiness.
And I would think, man, is he turning into a rude person or is he turning, you know, no, it's like a giant swell of testosterone just hit him. And I realized, what I need to do is help him learn. This is what it looks like to not have a shipwreck when those swells but it doesn't mean you're bad or you're making a terrible mistake for experiencing or feeling those things.
Yeah, the panning out to the bigger perspective. There's a phrase, non-reactive living, that just as I was thinking about today's conversation, I accidentally can be reactive because I think it's a huge deal what's happening right here versus entering and having a posture of, I'm just going to be non-reactive and more prayerful and intentional versus just in the moment. How would you coach me in that area?
First of all, I love that phrase and I love that you're thinking that way too. And my growth as a dad has been in Lord help me to slow my own breath down, slow my own conclusions and the conclusions I'm coming to and to go, okay, what else is going on here? What are some other dynamics? What are some other factors? And it's funny because when I think about as a pastor, there are people on our team
Speaker 1 (07:34.638)
that if they were to do something, I'd go, oh, hey, come in here, help me understand what's going on. And I can be non-reactive as a leader and then highly reactive as a dad. And I think part of the challenge for me anyway is I think of my kids as like, oh, they're just, they're little and I need to teach them everything. And what starts to shift as they hit that 11, 12, and it only gets more is I need to start thinking of them as little adults, little humans where...
They deserve the same kind of dignity and curiosity and humility. So that's a great phrase.
Yeah, and it's a, I know it takes us even into a few pan out further. We can use our calendar to expose or shine a light on maybe some of the things that we really value. And we do that, like your example in the workplace, you take time, intentionality, even the place you have certain conversations for coaching. But yet it's just like, we can ping pong, I can, with my girls in the living room here, one room over.
How would you advise dads, how would you coach me around using the calendar as a tool to help show, are things off or am I living the way I want to be living as far as values?
That's so good. Some years ago, my wife and I wrote a book called The Intentional Year, and we were trying to put to paper, really, this retreat, it began as a retreat. I think the first thing you could do on your calendar, if, you for those who are listening, your dad is listening, and if you're married and, you know, you're parenting with a spouse, I think for your wife and you to go away on a retreat, that's the first thing. I think so many of my mistakes, missteps continue to be and have been.
Speaker 1 (09:13.55)
because I haven't actually taken the time to get on the same page with my wife about what are we seeing, what are we discerning together. And my wife, she's trained as a counselor, she's much more attentive to their life and to the dynamics of different stages of their growth. So for about 12, 13, maybe 14 years now, we've done this retreat where we go away once a year. Typically it's that week or two weeks between Christmas, New Year's, beginning of January.
And we exhale, we kind of catch our breath the first night, see one another, dads out there. It's been a while maybe since you and your wife were just like, you're not putting together the target order or the carpool schedule, know, but you're just seeing one and it's real, right? So catch up on seeing one another on that first night. And then the next morning, have this reflection time of, okay, Lord, what season have we just come out of? Name the gifts of it, name the struggles in it.
We actually take this part of it, of our retreat, we do it separately. And then we come together over lunch or brunch or whatever and go, hey, what'd you write down? Here's what I wrote down, you know? And then there's more to the retreat that I could say, but let me just say this. That's the first thing to put on the calendar is the time with you and your wife. And then secondly, start to build in some rhythms with your kids. It doesn't happen accidentally, you know?
I do think what you begin intentionally will then begin to happen organically. But if you don't have any intentional sort of almost like waypoints or checkpoints that you've built into your calendar and your schedule to go, oh, every Saturday morning we go, when our girls were little, I'd take them to Barnes and Noble story hour. I don't even know if that's still running, but that was a thing in the mid 2000s. And that was our Saturday morning. And so you have those little checkpoints as they get older.
I think what happens, Jeff, is that the heart habit of coming to you as a dad to talk to you about those things, they've done it in the scheduled way. Now they can begin to do it in the unscheduled way.
Speaker 2 (11:13.846)
Yeah, so the intentional year, and we'll make sure we link in the show notes that project, that book, the yearly cadence of time away, even separate time to journal out, come together. If you click into monthly or weekly level, just top of mind, what are some other examples of bringing like dinner on so many nights a week or like Sabbath or like what are some other examples that you would say we should be exploring or praying into for our intentionality?
Do you think dinner, when they're younger, you get to really kind of shape the dinner every night of the week? Youth sports, youth activities are a tremendous challenge. And I do think every family, every father, you need to take an honest look at this. Again, maybe some of you dads out there, you're business owners. If you were to do a business strategy plan, do you actually want the path that this is building towards? To what end? I think we get our kids into these activities and we don't always ask ourselves, to what end? Like, what's the end goal here? Is it a scholarship?
So we made some decisions about, we will do this, but we won't do this. We'll stop short here. And that allowed us to go, all right, if we can get three nights a week, four nights a week of dinner together. So that's one. I do think the Sabbath thing is the other piece of it that's really, really important in the rhythm. Again, I'm not saying we do this perfectly or consistently over the years even as, but if you don't set a chart of course,
You're just gonna, you you talk about we're both living by the ocean. You see boats out there. If you don't set, put in some coordinates, you're just gonna drift. You're just gonna drift, you know? So I think Sabbath is a big one. When our kids were younger, some family devotional times were really easier to do. gets a little bit different. Nightly reading, that was another one. Bedtimes. Actually, our 13-year-old still, you know, like we pray for her every night. And we're not in a hurry to end that. You know what I mean? Like we know at some point that'll end, but.
As long as they still want it, there's something beautiful about that rhythm of, yes, we will read to or pray with and or pray with our kids as we put them to bed. That's the sweetest time. Love.
Speaker 2 (13:17.902)
that that's my domain. think I've shared it a few times on our podcast that I, bedtime's mine with my four girls. Now, of course, my wife's in and out whenever she wants to, but I get that moment that is often the moments about an hour of bedtime around it, reading, prayer, singing, and yeah, what a gift, what a gift. I was gonna go back to your backpack example that you were having of like, I'm gonna put these things in, let's take these things out. And you mentioned courage or take it risk taking. What are some other examples as we,
into our current season with our kids and things we want to put in their backpack versus out. And then can you also talk about how the day we, the backpack that we have gets passed on.
man. Okay, so one of the things that Holly and I, my wife and I try to do every year even at this retreat is in addition to all the planning and habit setting and all that stuff, there's also a moment where we'll write in a journal for our kids. So each of our kids have their own journal and when they're, we started it when they were born and then we try to write a bit more in it when they're younger. As they get a little bit older, it's a minimum of like once a year we're writing in it. And then when they...
turn 13, we let them begin to read it for the first time, but we continue to add to it. It's a gift to them for sure, but it's a gift to us because it forces us to slow down and go, God, what do you see in them macro level, but then specific to this season, what is this season about for them? And I'm telling you, dad's like, again, it's
It's just the gift of paying attention to their life. The irony is that we pay so much attention to our business, to our stock portfolio, to our investments. Okay, okay, this is your greatest investment. So what if we could just stop, just again, carve it out, carve out the day and the year where you go, I'm just gonna write down some things that I see in their life. then you go back to them and say, hey, honey, I just think this is a year where, you know, maybe this is a year where the Lord wants you to step into this.
Speaker 1 (15:22.476)
That allows us, when it comes time to speaking those words into them on a birthday or at a milestone moment like graduations, you're not drawing a blank. You've already been populating it, you know?
Yeah, yeah. So that's powerful. Words, that's things you're putting in their backpack with your words and a gift they can look back to forever. When you think about what was upstream for you that you're carrying today, still, man, this month, man, something got added. I don't want it in there. I want to bring this to the Lord. like the natural cascading from us to our kids from things we're carrying. Could you just kind of expound a little more on
the visual of a backpack that us dads are carrying.
That's a great visual too and some friends of ours were about 10 years ahead of us in life and in parenting. When one of their kids was going through a bit of an issue, they ended up as a family, going through some counseling together and they shared some beautiful insight about it. They said, you know, you are going to hand your kid a backpack whether you like it or not. And the goal is to have it be as light as possible. And so in a way, the best thing you can do is deal with your own stuff, like work out your own stuff.
It took me too long to realize that, Jeff. I mean, I'm grateful for the moment. I would say it's probably 10, 12 years ago. Around the same time we started doing these retreats, I started to pay attention to my own inner health, internal health, emotional well-being. You know, I grew up in a church environment where there's a lot of like prayer, worship, spiritual practices, but not a lot of like look inside yourself, look upstream, as you said, to your story, family of origin.
Speaker 1 (17:00.492)
And so we've been helped by a lot of wonderful material, Pete's Gazaro stuff, emotionally healthy, spiritual, all of that. And I've become fully persuaded that my greatest gift to the church that we shepherd, to my wife and to my kids, my greatest gift is a healthy me. And like men, we don't like the word emotionally healthy. Like, I don't want to talk about this. But just skip the word emotional and just say, how about healthy? How about a healthy you?
How about you name some, so I had to name some of the scripts that I internalized, not by necessarily any fault of my upbringing, just my own particular, the way that the enemy kind of pulls things, distorts things, puts me, I've internalized certain go, go, go, you gotta be, and I parented out of that kind of stress level of like, come on guys, you gotta get, to the point where I've had to have some really tearful.
conversations with our kids have said, I'm so sorry, I've added like the pressure of proving or performing. If you'd asked me, did I want to impart that? I didn't mean to impart that, but I was carrying that. I was living out of that, you know? So you talk about the backpack, just one quick thing there, like, you know, unpack your own, your own work. But the good, here's the good news dads, you're one of the best gifts you can give your kids is the gift of your own repentance. Because you're going to get it wrong.
I got it wrong. I get it wrong, you know? But to be able to go to your kids, even in their upper teen or young adult years, and say, I'm so sorry, ever, you experienced me in this way, or I ever communicated this, I didn't mean to, you that gift of repentance and grace alone, it preaches the gospel to them. And that's such a beautiful gift.
Yeah, every time I'm in a conversation about the gift of repair, repentance, like coming to and saying, I missed it. Like every time I talk with somebody about it, I'm like, like this is such a gift. Like, because we get closer to our kids, they get seen modeled, they understand that dad needs Jesus. Like there's all these layers, but then all of sudden I find myself being like so, like just.
Speaker 2 (19:12.824)
forcing things forward and then, no, wait a second, this is the greatest gift is to come and say I missed it. yeah, thanks for kind of reminding us of that gift. The backpack I think overlaps with, I believe this is from your book, The Intentional Year, there's these five life spheres, prayer, rest, renewal, relationships and work. I get them right? Could you maybe just a fly over of why thinking about
You got him, you nailed him.
Speaker 2 (19:41.708)
these fears and bringing intentionality is such a big deal for dads.
So some people may be familiar with the phrase rule of life. For others that may still feel kind of foreign, like what is that? The idea is to name formational rhythms or habits in a few areas of life. After sitting with it and trying out different versions of it, we came up with these five spheres because we felt like they named the key aspects of life. Prayer is your life with God. Rest is your time in your week against Sabbath where you cease from certain work.
It's not just Sabbath. It's also when you put your phones down, when you, you know, and that, listen, brother, that's an ongoing challenge. Okay. So if anyone's listening to this, man, and I just want you to know, I'm right there with you, dad. It's like, this is an ongoing thing. is a lot of research that statistically men, as we get older, we get poorer at friendships and relationships. Women tend to do better at this than men do statistically. And so
just even for me, learning that I needed to write down the men or the friends that I wanted to invest in individually and then us as a couple. And then we needed to say, okay, so when does this exist on the calendar? It's not just an idea, it's not just a desire. We're not talking about desires, these aren't aspirations. Intentions need to be turned into events in a calendar or as they don't happen. And so...
Yes, so prayer rest, renewal is kind of that, where's that space that brings you life? The other thing that happens to us as dads is life is so serious, it's so stressful. And renewal is like, where does God meet you with joy? What's life giving and renewing? Is it a bike ride? Is it a walk on the beach? Is it watching a ball game? There's a difference between vegging out and recharging the batteries, actually being renewed. And I think too many of us in our culture today,
Speaker 1 (21:32.32)
we zone out in front of our phones or a screen without even stopping to think, is this the thing that's actually gonna put juice back in the batteries or not? And then finally work, just thinking about where we work. So as we've worked through this, it's been really, really transformative for us as parents, as a couple. But you know what's really fun is our daughters, when they got into their 16, 17, they started doing this on their own. They like, I'm doing my intentional year.
a day away today, you know, like what? So that was kind of the coolest piece of this. Yeah.
actually I read about that in preparing for this chat that they were like journal and they were sitting there with the journal at the coffee shop, the two daughters. The framework is simple. You hardly mentioned work because most of us get that sphere, we're getting that sphere. The how we use it at a year glance, look back, look forward, man, even the framing of renewal.
And I think about like the word play, but it's not always play. It's just like what brings that like joy, that life and the difference between multiple shows on a Netflix series versus like a great movie that like story. yeah, it's, is really helpful.
Or even like working out. You wouldn't classify that as play, but it is renewing or can be. If you're like, this is the thing that resets my body and whatever and it helps me, for me, like disentangles my mind from all of the problems I've been thinking about in the week. Find places of renewal and then building them into your weekly daily rhythms is so massive.
Speaker 2 (23:07.054)
The, this is kind of jumping back, I'm ping ponging all over the place, but the idea of our kids and them being shown a model, in this case, they followed your lead, they're using the same framework to journal through and to pray through for the year ahead. With our faith, I'm showing my girls based on my pursuit of the Lord, my heart and seeking him in prayer, my reading.
But there's a little bit of like, well, this is how we do it in our family. So they just do it. It's passed on versus really comes alive in their heart. It can be just passed on. This is just what we do. It's almost duty. How would you encourage us or encourage me to fan a flame, but not like force a like, this is how it's done in our family.
Man, that is the art, isn't it? I I think that's what we're all trying to find. That's so well articulated. I think, you know, as our experience, and this may not be everybody's experience, but in our experience, as they got older, our touch had to get lighter, you know? And almost like, you know, when you're building a fire, you don't just need the wood to be packed together. You need to let some space in there for the flames to ignite. And so in a similar way, when you're parenting,
Sometimes it's not about, I need more proximity and I need to really impress this upon them. Sometimes you just need a little bit, let it breathe and then it comes, there it goes. So we have been aware that for some personalities in our kids, what we think or what with one child was like intentional with another child is pressure. And this is what makes parenting so difficult is you can't fall asleep at the wheel, man. There's no cruise control here. Like this is not autopilot. And this is what I'm still learning.
with our younger two kids is, okay, these are not the same. It's not rinse and repeat.
Speaker 2 (24:52.974)
haven't brought up a word that I thought would come up earlier in the conversation. The word is resilience. And resilient dads raising resilient kids. I want to just react to that word and why bringing, ushering, training, modeling resilience is such a big deal.
Well, I love that word a lot. I get to do a lot of work with pastors, the Resilient Pastor initiatives and all of that stuff. And I think let's talk about dads for a second. And let me give you two lenses to use to think about the word resilience. The first lens is resilience is a form of recovery. One aspect of it is recovery. So, you know, if you go to the doctor and you're trying to do a stress test, they're gonna get you on a treadmill, they're gonna put all these sensors on you and they're gonna...
make it difficult, they're gonna try to get your heart in a state of duress, right? They're not worried about that. What they're gonna look for is, but how quickly do you return to your resting heart rate, right? So resilience does not mean you don't get dysregulated. Resilience does not mean you don't get upset or afraid or stressed or anxious or depressed. Resilience is about how well do you recover from that state? And I think it's the same thing, earlier we used the example of like, man, you get upset or reactive.
All right, you feel it. How well are you able to recover instead of speaking out of that moment of emotional heat or in a similar way? Like you feel a little bit of sadness or fear. So how do I recover? So resilience tells us that health is not a flat line. In fact, we know this in the hospital, flat line's actually not good. You want these ups and downs, right? The second lens for resilience is recalibration.
And that means is when you go through something difficult, you have to ask yourself, what lesson am I going to take away from this? What can I change about my life, my habits, my decision making, my processes, my friendships? And so this is actually the callback to the intentional year five spheres kind of thing. For a dad, you go, well, we just went through a really rough season of parenting. OK, great. What did you learn about that? Is there anything in those five spheres that you now want to recalibrate? Because
Speaker 1 (27:05.358)
Steel is a picture of this lens of resilience where when it goes through the fire, it actually gets stronger. So to the dads who are listening, the two things that I want you to hear is there is no shame in experiencing the ups and downs of life. There's no shame in being up, down, afraid. There's no shame in that. But what the Lord wants for you is to teach you how to recover a little bit better so that you recover before you speak, before you lash out, before you, you know.
And then secondly, take the time to say, okay, God, how can I recalibrate these areas of my life so that I can now become a better dad today than I was yesterday? And then apply that now to your kids. You know, we're not trying to spare them hardship. We're trying to teach them how to recover well and how to learn from, grow from, become stronger because of the hard things they go through.
so helpful. Here's confession right now is the second side of that, the calibration and the reflection and asking where did I learn here? I would rather in that moment put a podcast in my ears or an audible book and go for a run and fill with as much noise after something goes a little sideways or after and just kind of like move. It's really, it is a form of numbing. I would rather fill the space than sit in the silence with a journal saying what did I learn here?
It's just like, that's my default is I would rather that every time, but I know what you're saying is an area I want to grow in. I want to grow in that because it's a gift to the next chapter to take that strength.
That's super vulnerable, man. And I resonate with that. I relate to that a lot. Sitting with myself is sometimes unpleasant, you know, but again, that's the Psalm, you know, 139 thing, search me, God, you know, see if there be any wicked way in me. And Lord, what do I need to change here? How do I need it? You know, I'll give you small example of this. This is, you we've talked about kind of bigger habits and Sabbath and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:05.274)
If you're a dad, you work outside the home and you work outside the home and you get back in and you know that your re-entry, quote unquote, into the house is always turbulent. I've learned it's better for me to sit in my car in the garage, five minutes longer, tidy up any loose ends I need to, take a deep breath and walk in ready to set my phone down than it is to storm in. And I'm in a state, I'm not ready to be aware of them.
I'm just only just aware of the own cloud that I'm carrying into the house.
Yeah, yeah, I think this would be a fun spot to kind of land our conversations back to where we started. Your daughter is getting married in a couple months and there's seeds planted. They're her entire childhood. They're growing something that's gonna help inform this.
hopefully prayer-filled decision of who, the who, she's gonna marry. That gets added to your family. I'm planting those seeds every day. My oldest is nowhere near even dating. So we're in that area. But I'm planting seeds. What would you just encourage me and the other dads with as far as like seeds to plant that are gonna help inform the kind of future spouses our kids are gonna choose?
I think one of the great gifts a father can give their daughter in particular is the gift of their sense of self-worth, the sense of their life being valuable. think in our, well, mean, in human, in the story of human civilization, women have been devalued in a number of ways for their status, for their contribution level. But today, objectification for their, you know, it's like their, for their appearance. And I think
Speaker 1 (30:44.546)
For us as dads to be able to look at our daughters and go, you are beautiful and you are smart and man, you're fierce and you're strong and to praise those things and to our sons confidence in a different level, like to say, you have the ability to figure this out. You can navigate this. So those are the seeds and the things that we water and we plant. But again, just as a healthy self is a good, great gift to the people we love.
a healthy self-worth that's grounded in God's love. You know, this is where it's different than just like empty self-help stuff. Empty self-help stuff is, it's almost like a mantra or it's mind over matter. No, no, no. As a Christian, there's, your value is tethered to an objective reality that you are a beloved daughter, a beloved son of God. And ultimately, I guess, you know, it's not just us giving them then the gift of self-worth. Ultimately, the best seeds you can plant is giving them that lifeline to God Himself.
to their heavenly father. I mean, that's our prayer, isn't it? Like one day they'll be outside our home, but they'll never be outside God's presence. And where can I run from your presence? Where can I flee? know, Psalm 139, again. And I think that's the gift I want all of our kids to take with them is the gift of a grounded relationship, living relationship with a loving God. If I those seeds, I think we're going to be okay.
Yeah, I'm really grateful for this conversation. Would you just take a moment to pray over all the dads listening?
Father, thank you for the men who are taking the time to listen to this wherever they are, in the car, on a run, on a walk, at the gym, wherever they are. Thank you for the men who are choosing to say, you know what, I want to grow as a father. And Lord, I know that you love that. I know that you delight in them. And so my first prayer is that they would experience in this moment the delight of the father in them. That they would just know that they are a dearly loved son, child of God.
Speaker 1 (32:43.214)
And Lord, I pray that that love would overflow, not with like, oh my gosh, I got to do this, I got to do this, I got to do this, you know, but it would overflow into a beautiful delight in their wives, in their kids, in the people around them. And so Lord, thank you for the good work that Jeff is doing. Thank you for the beautiful work of this show, of this ministry. Let it abound and let it bear much fruit to your glory in Jesus' name. Amen.
Speaker 2 (33:15.8)
Thank you so much for joining us for episode 396 with Glenn Pacquiam. All the conversation links, links to Glenn's books and other resources, his podcast kind of focused deep around resilience. That's all gonna be listed at dadawesome.org slash podcast. Wanna encourage you guys one more time to prayerfully take a look at dadawesome.org slash coaching and prayerfully consider joining us for one of our fall accelerator cohorts. You're gonna wanna apply in the next
couple weeks here because we're kicking off on Wednesday, September 24th is when we're kicking off the next accelerator cohort. I'm praying for you guys. I'm praying that today's conversation, this leads us to action that we are in being dad awesome. We are dads who have a bias towards action. So I'm praying that would be the case this week. Praying for you to be filled with joy as you pursue the hearts of your kids. Have a great week, guys.
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"The irony is that we pay so much attention to our business, to our stock portfolio, to our investments. You're like, okay, okay, this is your greatest investment."
"You are going to hand your kid a backpack whether you like it or not. And the goal is to have it be as light as possible."
"My greatest gift to the church that we shepherd, to my wife and to my kids, my greatest gift is a healthy me."
"One of the best gifts you can give your kids is the gift of your own repentance. Because you're going to get it wrong."
"Resilience does not mean you don't get dysregulated. Resilience is about how well do you recover from that state."
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