May 5, 2025 • 18 mins
Life is messy because life is about relationships and relationships are messy!
Yet, life is better when shared with the ones you love. And as Christ followers, we are called to be messengers of reconciliation. So, it’s important that we learn to repair our relationships.
Justin Whitmel Earley is a lawyer, speaker and author. He joins us to talk about his newest book The Big Mess - a heartwarming and relatable story about two siblings who must learn to get along.
Justin and Shawna talk about the connection between our physical and spiritual lives and the role that plays in reconciling our relationships.
Justin reminds us that the people in our households are not a problem to be solved but a person to be loved.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:03):
It's the Perry and Shawna podcast on the real life
journey with you, reminding you that you are ABBA's beloved
child and that Jesus has called you into his massive
mission to heal the world.
S2 (00:17):
Life is messy because life is all about relationships, and
relationships are messy. But can we learn to love in
the midst of the mess? So, Justin, you're a corporate
lawyer and you've written this. So, Justin, you're a corporate
lawyer and you've written this rhyming picture book about exploding deserts.
(00:41):
Do tell. Where did this? Where did this? How did
you end up doing this?
S3 (00:45):
That's such a good, uh, introduction. Because it is totally true.
I just got done with my morning stand up with
my employees, and walked into the office to call and
talk about a book where deserts are exploding. So. Yeah. Well,
I am bi vocational, so I write Christian non-fiction about
habits mostly. And this book came because one of my
books is called habits of the household, and it's for parents.
(01:08):
And it's a lot about how the ordinary habits of
your daily life are actually extraordinary moments for spiritual impact.
And a key theme in that book is just how
messy our actual daily lives are. So when we have
moments of discipline with our children, or when we're putting
them to bed, or waking them up or making them meals,
I mean, I have four boys, so all of this
is exactly as chaotic as you would expect. It would
(01:30):
be like, you know, put four boys to bed and everything.
So a lot of my attention to spiritual formation has
been in the mess. And this book is kind of
zooming in on that and saying in a fun way,
but also a deeply meaningful way. We learn to be
people who can love in the midst of the mess,
and a lot of that is about learning to reconcile
(01:52):
and forgive and love each other despite the mess.
S2 (01:55):
So the writing children's books that came from just being
a dad and putting in words what you were experiencing
at home?
S3 (02:03):
Yeah. I mean, I love, love reading to children and
I love seeing children smile. So I have actually always
wanted to write fiction and non-fiction. This was just one
idea of many, but it was one idea. I was
early on, many years ago, telling my children a story
about two little brothers who were animals, and one would
(02:25):
make huge deserts, and the other one would accidentally stumble
into them and explode them. And it was just a
place of delight. Because I love telling kids stories, you know,
it's just one way to capture their attention. It's also
one way to recover moments, often like somebody's hurt or
sad and you pull them aside and say, hey, let
me tell you a funny story, you know? And I
kept telling this story about a big brother mouse who
(02:47):
would make deserts taller than the house. And, you know,
they'd get their attention, like, well, how big was the cake?
I was like, oh, it's huge, you know, it's like,
reach to the whole ceiling. And then his younger brother
accidentally knocks it over and there's a huge splatter. And then, well,
what did he make next? And that became The Big Mess,
which is about two siblings, one who makes giant dessert creations,
(03:08):
and the younger one who accidentally every single time ends
up smashing them. And so this is a story of
conflict and mess in the house, but resolved. So it's
a the turn of the book and the opportunity for
parents to ask questions through the author's note at the
end of the book, hopefully creates a combination of a
really fun story with really meaningful conversation opportunities.
S2 (03:31):
I love it so much. I tell you what, life
is messy and relationships are messy, and I think one
of the greatest gifts that we can give our children
or our grandchildren, or the kids that we get to
have influence with anybody that we be able to sit
down and read a book with, is the ability to
know how to reconcile relationships. Just think about what a
gift that is. I love how the mess is a
(03:58):
physical mess the cake is, but the relational mess is
a mess as well. I mean, there's two things going
on there at the same time. And I'm the youngest
of four girls, and usually when we were fighting as
the baby of four, it was because I, you know,
colored on somebody's baby doll face or something, or like,
cut somebody's Barbie hair and they're like, ah, the little sister.
(04:20):
So this is this is a part of being a
part of a family. If you're a parent and you're
not dealing with sibling rivalry, you probably only have one child.
S3 (04:29):
Exactly. That is so well put. I mean, to be
in a family means to live in a house with
other sinners, right? So. And it means to live in
close proximity to other sinners. And so you watch your
kids wrestle with this, right? You watch your children, you know,
they're finally learning to happily play with Legos. And then
the baby comes along and destroys their precious creation. And
(04:51):
this is like, you know, every day in a house
with four boys. And one of the things that you
yearn for, right, is for your children to learn that
he didn't mean it. Or maybe he did, but we
need to forgive. You know, you you long to see
them reconcile. And so this book is a little story
about that. But of course, for me, I'm talking to
(05:14):
the parents as much as I'm talking to the children.
Because here's the other thing. We parents have our image
of how life is supposed to go. And we we
have our image of how the morning is supposed to
go and how our kitchen is supposed to look and everything.
And then children come into our lives and none of
that works, right? They make a big mess of our lives.
And so a lot of what I'm doing is hoping
(05:35):
that parents reading over the shoulder of their children will
actually start to see that in some ways, they're the
big brother in this story. In some ways, they're the
one who needs to learn. How do I not just
make peace with the mess that's happening in the house,
but actually say, wait a minute, maybe the mess is
the opportunity for deeper love? And that's so the character
in the book, you know, finally has an epiphany when
(05:58):
he says in rhyme, he says, if all my desserts
will get bashed, then let's make something made to be smashed.
And then he says he turns to his brother and
he's like, let's do this together. All right. I'm going
to build something huge that you're going to smash on purpose,
and it ends up being a giant tower of ice
cream that explodes into ice cream sundaes for the whole neighborhood. Oh, wow.
And and that's just fun. You know, kids, as it
(06:19):
turns out, are delighted to see ice cream raining from
the sky. But obviously, the deeper idea here is to
see the mess as something that we can actually enter
into and say, deeper relationship can happen here and with
friends and with children, with spouses. All of our deepest, best,
most loving relationships are on the other side of navigating
(06:40):
conflict and reconciliation. And so learning how to be people
who reconcile means to learn how to be people in relationship.
And that is the deeper waters of this book.
S2 (06:54):
When my kids were little, one of my nemesis's if
that's a word.
S3 (06:59):
I like that word. If it's not, I'm going with it.
S2 (07:01):
Was she like people would walk in the house and
they would kick off their shoes. And there was just,
I've got four kids. There was just this mound of shoes,
and it's like, I don't even think all you people
own this many pair of shoes. How do we get
this mound this huge? And it drove me crazy to
tell my kids over and over again, please, just take
your shoes, put them in the boot room, or take
(07:22):
them and put them in your room. Put them on
the shoe rack. But there was always this pile of shoes.
Fast forward. My kids are all grown up and they
live all over the world. Thanksgiving, when they came home
and there was a pile of shoes by my front door.
I took a picture. I took a picture of the
pile of shoes because I was like, all my birdies
(07:44):
are home in the nest, like my people are home.
And the time that our kids are little, it just
goes by so, so, so fast. What you're left with
when you do your job well and you launch them
into the world, is the relationships that were built in,
the moments when they were making the messes. And so
I love that you have gone after the building of
(08:07):
relationship and reconciliation.
S3 (08:10):
Mhm. So good. And that picture is a beautiful reminder
that the mess itself is often a sign that we
are here together working on relationship, which is why I
want to draw attention to the fact that don't try
to avoid this, just realize that this is what it
looks like for us to come together and learn to love.
(08:31):
And you know, this is like the themes in a
lot of my other books, that it's those ordinary places
of messiness where extraordinary spiritual formation is happening. And so
to see, you know, the pile of shoes as an
opportunity to say, oh, there are people I love in
my house, and there's ways that I have to learn
to love them, even in the mess. I mean, that
doesn't mean you don't tell them not to pick up
(08:52):
their shoes, but it does hopefully help you do it
in a way that recognizes they're not a problem to
be solved in the House. They're a person to be loved.
S2 (09:01):
That's so good. I know that you value how physical
habits are more spiritual than we think, and how spiritual
habits are more physical than you think. I want to
dive into this because coming into 2025, I kept seeing
and hearing the word like declutter. It was all over
(09:23):
the place, like in my face. Declutter, declutter, declutter. And
I sensed that God was saying, this is your word
for 2025. And I was like, could you give me
something a little bit more holy? Could you give me
something a little bit more meaningful than declutter? That just
makes me feel like I'm, you know, a mess. And
I got about the business of doing what God was
(09:44):
telling me to do. And it started with decluttering my
boot room. And the Holy Spirit was like, in there
in my boot room with me. And as I started
cleaning out physical objects, the Lord was talking to me
about spiritual things in my life and declutter that needed
to happen. So when you say physical habits are more
spiritual than we think, and spiritual habits are more physical
(10:06):
than we think. I am right in the midst of
learning this real time.
S3 (10:12):
Oh, Shawna. Okay. We could we could go deep here. Um,
I'll give you two things. One, I'm thinking about this
a lot because this is actually the next adult nonfiction
book that I'm working on that's coming out this fall
is called The Body Teaches the Soul. And it's all
about this idea of how the physical habits of our lives,
of health and of spirituality matter to everything. I mean, C.S. Lewis,
(10:36):
he always does. He put it so well. He said,
you know, God made us with bodies. Let's not try
to be more spiritual than he is. Apparently he likes them, right?
You know, that's a paraphrase. But so I am thinking
a lot about how the habits of our health, our
habits of holiness, and how the habits of holiness are
habits of our health and vice versa. Now, what does
that mean in terms of a kid's book and life
(10:57):
in the household? Well, a lot as it turns out.
So one of the things you can be thinking about
all the time in the house is how do we reconcile,
how do we navigate conflict? And one of the things
we do with our boys that we've done for a
long time is called the Brothers Hug, where after they
make eye contact and say I'm sorry, and then also
continue to hold eye contact and say, I forgive you.
(11:17):
And these are things we're stewarding them through as parents,
you know, like, even if we don't feel like it yet,
we need to practice apologizing, practice forgiving. But often you
get to that point and everybody's still mad. Everybody's still
just wants to be out of the moment. And so
we have this thing called the Brothers Hug, where they
have to hug each other and hold on. They both
have to hold on until not one, but both of
them smile. And what's amazing to me, Shauna, is so
(11:41):
many times we go through the I'm sorry, I forgive
you and nobody means it yet. Nobody's happy again. But
once they grab each other and hold on and then
start wiggling a bit and wrestling a bit, and then
they giggle a bit and through an embodied liturgy, if
you will, like an embodied way of moving towards reconciliation,
(12:02):
their hearts, their minds, their spirits are also moved. And
this is not, you know, foolproof. It doesn't work every time.
It's not always appropriate, but it's one great example of
something we do often that allows the bodies to lead
the soul, their body to teach the soul. And so
I'm really all about what God is all about, and
that is that he made a material world with bodies
and called them spiritual. So we should too.
S2 (12:27):
There are often times in my life when I'm maybe
I'm it's a Sunday morning and I'm, I'm standing in
the worship center and I just sense the presence of
God in such a powerful way that I feel compelled
to kneel before him. Right? Right. And there are times
when I don't have any of those feelings. And I
kneel because he is Lord.
S3 (12:47):
Yes. Yes. That's it. Because it works both ways, right?
I mean, sometimes we're so moved that our body responds,
and sometimes we move our body because we feel we
must respond, right? Like, we want to be responsive. And
so the body teaches the soul is the way of
talking about that direction. The big mess is written on
(13:08):
a very children's level, right? Like, I'm reading it to
kids all week because I finally got my early copies
in the mail, and I am delighted that they are delighted.
Like it's just fun. But if you pay attention, for example,
there's a part right in the middle where, you know,
mouse starts to cry because his brother keeps messing up
his desserts. And when you turn the page, the next
(13:29):
line is. But then moose sat down and gave mouse
a big hug, and together they started to smile. And
you know, you'll pass over that and it just goes
on to the next moment. But for the adults in
the room signaling, when you sit down with somebody and
you put your arm around them, you are physically making
way for the space of spiritual reconciliation. These are the
(13:51):
breadcrumbs that we want to give our children, right? We
can't just teach them that God forgave us and is
reconciling the world to us without showing them how that changes,
how we interact with each other and how little things
in the house. Ordinary habits of saying, let me sit
next to you on your bed because I realize I
offended you. Let me sit with you and talk to you.
Let me take a walk with you. Let me hug
(14:12):
you again. Those are the places where we enact the
goodness of what God has done to us. Come to
us in a body and say, I want to be
in relationship with you.
S2 (14:19):
Yeah, and still does, because he's still right here, right now.
S3 (14:24):
Yes, yes.
S2 (14:25):
With us. I mean, I wouldn't literally wouldn't be here
today if it was not for the witness of God.
There was a time when I just thought, this life's
too hard, I can't do this. And I'm insignificant anyway.
And so I had made a plan to take my life,
and it was sensing God's presence in that moment in
such a powerful way that I thought, okay, if you
(14:47):
will be with me, if you promise you'll be with
me every day, every moment from here on out, the
way that you're with me right now. I can do this.
I can keep going. What you're doing in the in
the book the big mess is teaching how to be with.
Even when things are hard, you can still be with.
You can reconcile. It's all about relationship and our God
(15:10):
is all about relationship. It's a beautiful, beautiful, fun, bright
story that teaches us the ways of Jesus.
S3 (15:20):
That is exactly it. And a lot of my hope
is to teach parents how to have these kinds of
moments with their children. Now we're having, you know, relatively deep,
even very deep, actually. I really like where this has gone,
you know, conversation about, you know, the themes of reconciliation
and God's with us. And we need to be with
each other and our bodies, too. And one of the
I think the challenges of parenthood in a good way
(15:43):
is to learn how to you, over the course of childhood,
invite your kids into deeper and deeper conversation. And part
of this book is to get parents to learn how
to do that. Because on the one hand, it's just
a fun story for kids that rhymes. And it's about
exploding desserts. But on the other hand, there's an author's
note in the back that helps a parent so the
parent can read it in like, 60s, you know, with
(16:05):
the kids still on their lap. And it's got some
questions they could try asking their child. And I like
this because one of the things that is true about
parenting is that you and your kids witness stories in
the world all the time. Right? You watch movies or
you or you see an advertisement, or you read a book.
And the vast majority of these are not, you know,
quote unquote, Christian stories. The vast majority of these are
(16:27):
just stories that are in the world. Some are better
than others, some are wonderful, some are terrible. But our
job as parents is to learn how to say to
our children, what did you think of that? Was that
a good story or was that a bad story or what?
What did the hero do? Was that a good decision
or a bad one? Was that good character or bad character?
You know, and there's so much to learn through stories.
So one of the things I'm trying to equip parents with,
(16:49):
with this author's note in the back, is to say,
learn how to ask your kids questions and engage in
talking about a story. And there's, you know, a sliding scale.
I think with little kids, they're just going to read
the book, be delighted and say, like, show me more desserts.
And that's wonderful. You're just spending time with them. That's great.
But with an older child, you might say, so are
you more like Big Brother mouse or Little Brother moose like,
(17:11):
you know. And this is one of my favorite questions.
Somebody sent me a video last night of their kids
reading the book for the first time. And, um, you know,
the kids knew they were like, oh, I'm mouse. Like,
I make stuff. And the other one was like, yeah, I'm,
I'm I'm little brother moose.
S2 (17:24):
Oh, wow.
S3 (17:24):
That's funny. And they were just, you know, sort of
naming their, their roles. And then they're like, well, could
we make something together that, you know, is made to
be smashed? And they were sort of reenacting the book
and that idea of like, how do we get kids
to learn from a story is an art to be practiced.
And so one hope of the book is just to
be one little book in your house that can help
you cultivate. Practice practicing talking to your kids about stories.
S1 (17:49):
Thanks for letting Barry and Shauna walk their real life
journey with you. The content from the Ferry and Shauna
podcast comes from their live show Barry and Shauna Mornings
on 89.3 Moody Radio, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reach out to
us by texting 800 968 8930 and please subscribe.
It's the Perry and Shawna podcast on the real life
journey with you, reminding you that you are ABBA's beloved
child and that Jesus has called you into his massive
mission to heal the world.
S2 (00:17):
Life is messy because life is all about relationships, and
relationships are messy. But can we learn to love in
the midst of the mess? So, Justin, you're a corporate
lawyer and you've written this. So, Justin, you're a corporate
lawyer and you've written this rhyming picture book about exploding deserts.
(00:41):
Do tell. Where did this? Where did this? How did
you end up doing this?
S3 (00:45):
That's such a good, uh, introduction. Because it is totally true.
I just got done with my morning stand up with
my employees, and walked into the office to call and
talk about a book where deserts are exploding. So. Yeah. Well,
I am bi vocational, so I write Christian non-fiction about
habits mostly. And this book came because one of my
books is called habits of the household, and it's for parents.
(01:08):
And it's a lot about how the ordinary habits of
your daily life are actually extraordinary moments for spiritual impact.
And a key theme in that book is just how
messy our actual daily lives are. So when we have
moments of discipline with our children, or when we're putting
them to bed, or waking them up or making them meals,
I mean, I have four boys, so all of this
is exactly as chaotic as you would expect. It would
(01:30):
be like, you know, put four boys to bed and everything.
So a lot of my attention to spiritual formation has
been in the mess. And this book is kind of
zooming in on that and saying in a fun way,
but also a deeply meaningful way. We learn to be
people who can love in the midst of the mess,
and a lot of that is about learning to reconcile
(01:52):
and forgive and love each other despite the mess.
S2 (01:55):
So the writing children's books that came from just being
a dad and putting in words what you were experiencing
at home?
S3 (02:03):
Yeah. I mean, I love, love reading to children and
I love seeing children smile. So I have actually always
wanted to write fiction and non-fiction. This was just one
idea of many, but it was one idea. I was
early on, many years ago, telling my children a story
about two little brothers who were animals, and one would
(02:25):
make huge deserts, and the other one would accidentally stumble
into them and explode them. And it was just a
place of delight. Because I love telling kids stories, you know,
it's just one way to capture their attention. It's also
one way to recover moments, often like somebody's hurt or
sad and you pull them aside and say, hey, let
me tell you a funny story, you know? And I
kept telling this story about a big brother mouse who
(02:47):
would make deserts taller than the house. And, you know,
they'd get their attention, like, well, how big was the cake?
I was like, oh, it's huge, you know, it's like,
reach to the whole ceiling. And then his younger brother
accidentally knocks it over and there's a huge splatter. And then, well,
what did he make next? And that became The Big Mess,
which is about two siblings, one who makes giant dessert creations,
(03:08):
and the younger one who accidentally every single time ends
up smashing them. And so this is a story of
conflict and mess in the house, but resolved. So it's
a the turn of the book and the opportunity for
parents to ask questions through the author's note at the
end of the book, hopefully creates a combination of a
really fun story with really meaningful conversation opportunities.
S2 (03:31):
I love it so much. I tell you what, life
is messy and relationships are messy, and I think one
of the greatest gifts that we can give our children
or our grandchildren, or the kids that we get to
have influence with anybody that we be able to sit
down and read a book with, is the ability to
know how to reconcile relationships. Just think about what a
gift that is. I love how the mess is a
(03:58):
physical mess the cake is, but the relational mess is
a mess as well. I mean, there's two things going
on there at the same time. And I'm the youngest
of four girls, and usually when we were fighting as
the baby of four, it was because I, you know,
colored on somebody's baby doll face or something, or like,
cut somebody's Barbie hair and they're like, ah, the little sister.
(04:20):
So this is this is a part of being a
part of a family. If you're a parent and you're
not dealing with sibling rivalry, you probably only have one child.
S3 (04:29):
Exactly. That is so well put. I mean, to be
in a family means to live in a house with
other sinners, right? So. And it means to live in
close proximity to other sinners. And so you watch your
kids wrestle with this, right? You watch your children, you know,
they're finally learning to happily play with Legos. And then
the baby comes along and destroys their precious creation. And
(04:51):
this is like, you know, every day in a house
with four boys. And one of the things that you
yearn for, right, is for your children to learn that
he didn't mean it. Or maybe he did, but we
need to forgive. You know, you you long to see
them reconcile. And so this book is a little story
about that. But of course, for me, I'm talking to
(05:14):
the parents as much as I'm talking to the children.
Because here's the other thing. We parents have our image
of how life is supposed to go. And we we
have our image of how the morning is supposed to
go and how our kitchen is supposed to look and everything.
And then children come into our lives and none of
that works, right? They make a big mess of our lives.
And so a lot of what I'm doing is hoping
(05:35):
that parents reading over the shoulder of their children will
actually start to see that in some ways, they're the
big brother in this story. In some ways, they're the
one who needs to learn. How do I not just
make peace with the mess that's happening in the house,
but actually say, wait a minute, maybe the mess is
the opportunity for deeper love? And that's so the character
in the book, you know, finally has an epiphany when
(05:58):
he says in rhyme, he says, if all my desserts
will get bashed, then let's make something made to be smashed.
And then he says he turns to his brother and
he's like, let's do this together. All right. I'm going
to build something huge that you're going to smash on purpose,
and it ends up being a giant tower of ice
cream that explodes into ice cream sundaes for the whole neighborhood. Oh, wow.
And and that's just fun. You know, kids, as it
(06:19):
turns out, are delighted to see ice cream raining from
the sky. But obviously, the deeper idea here is to
see the mess as something that we can actually enter
into and say, deeper relationship can happen here and with
friends and with children, with spouses. All of our deepest, best,
most loving relationships are on the other side of navigating
(06:40):
conflict and reconciliation. And so learning how to be people
who reconcile means to learn how to be people in relationship.
And that is the deeper waters of this book.
S2 (06:54):
When my kids were little, one of my nemesis's if
that's a word.
S3 (06:59):
I like that word. If it's not, I'm going with it.
S2 (07:01):
Was she like people would walk in the house and
they would kick off their shoes. And there was just,
I've got four kids. There was just this mound of shoes,
and it's like, I don't even think all you people
own this many pair of shoes. How do we get
this mound this huge? And it drove me crazy to
tell my kids over and over again, please, just take
your shoes, put them in the boot room, or take
(07:22):
them and put them in your room. Put them on
the shoe rack. But there was always this pile of shoes.
Fast forward. My kids are all grown up and they
live all over the world. Thanksgiving, when they came home
and there was a pile of shoes by my front door.
I took a picture. I took a picture of the
pile of shoes because I was like, all my birdies
(07:44):
are home in the nest, like my people are home.
And the time that our kids are little, it just
goes by so, so, so fast. What you're left with
when you do your job well and you launch them
into the world, is the relationships that were built in,
the moments when they were making the messes. And so
I love that you have gone after the building of
(08:07):
relationship and reconciliation.
S3 (08:10):
Mhm. So good. And that picture is a beautiful reminder
that the mess itself is often a sign that we
are here together working on relationship, which is why I
want to draw attention to the fact that don't try
to avoid this, just realize that this is what it
looks like for us to come together and learn to love.
(08:31):
And you know, this is like the themes in a
lot of my other books, that it's those ordinary places
of messiness where extraordinary spiritual formation is happening. And so
to see, you know, the pile of shoes as an
opportunity to say, oh, there are people I love in
my house, and there's ways that I have to learn
to love them, even in the mess. I mean, that
doesn't mean you don't tell them not to pick up
(08:52):
their shoes, but it does hopefully help you do it
in a way that recognizes they're not a problem to
be solved in the House. They're a person to be loved.
S2 (09:01):
That's so good. I know that you value how physical
habits are more spiritual than we think, and how spiritual
habits are more physical than you think. I want to
dive into this because coming into 2025, I kept seeing
and hearing the word like declutter. It was all over
(09:23):
the place, like in my face. Declutter, declutter, declutter. And
I sensed that God was saying, this is your word
for 2025. And I was like, could you give me
something a little bit more holy? Could you give me
something a little bit more meaningful than declutter? That just
makes me feel like I'm, you know, a mess. And
I got about the business of doing what God was
(09:44):
telling me to do. And it started with decluttering my
boot room. And the Holy Spirit was like, in there
in my boot room with me. And as I started
cleaning out physical objects, the Lord was talking to me
about spiritual things in my life and declutter that needed
to happen. So when you say physical habits are more
spiritual than we think, and spiritual habits are more physical
(10:06):
than we think. I am right in the midst of
learning this real time.
S3 (10:12):
Oh, Shawna. Okay. We could we could go deep here. Um,
I'll give you two things. One, I'm thinking about this
a lot because this is actually the next adult nonfiction
book that I'm working on that's coming out this fall
is called The Body Teaches the Soul. And it's all
about this idea of how the physical habits of our lives,
of health and of spirituality matter to everything. I mean, C.S. Lewis,
(10:36):
he always does. He put it so well. He said,
you know, God made us with bodies. Let's not try
to be more spiritual than he is. Apparently he likes them, right?
You know, that's a paraphrase. But so I am thinking
a lot about how the habits of our health, our
habits of holiness, and how the habits of holiness are
habits of our health and vice versa. Now, what does
that mean in terms of a kid's book and life
(10:57):
in the household? Well, a lot as it turns out.
So one of the things you can be thinking about
all the time in the house is how do we reconcile,
how do we navigate conflict? And one of the things
we do with our boys that we've done for a
long time is called the Brothers Hug, where after they
make eye contact and say I'm sorry, and then also
continue to hold eye contact and say, I forgive you.
(11:17):
And these are things we're stewarding them through as parents,
you know, like, even if we don't feel like it yet,
we need to practice apologizing, practice forgiving. But often you
get to that point and everybody's still mad. Everybody's still
just wants to be out of the moment. And so
we have this thing called the Brothers Hug, where they
have to hug each other and hold on. They both
have to hold on until not one, but both of
them smile. And what's amazing to me, Shauna, is so
(11:41):
many times we go through the I'm sorry, I forgive
you and nobody means it yet. Nobody's happy again. But
once they grab each other and hold on and then
start wiggling a bit and wrestling a bit, and then
they giggle a bit and through an embodied liturgy, if
you will, like an embodied way of moving towards reconciliation,
(12:02):
their hearts, their minds, their spirits are also moved. And
this is not, you know, foolproof. It doesn't work every time.
It's not always appropriate, but it's one great example of
something we do often that allows the bodies to lead
the soul, their body to teach the soul. And so
I'm really all about what God is all about, and
that is that he made a material world with bodies
and called them spiritual. So we should too.
S2 (12:27):
There are often times in my life when I'm maybe
I'm it's a Sunday morning and I'm, I'm standing in
the worship center and I just sense the presence of
God in such a powerful way that I feel compelled
to kneel before him. Right? Right. And there are times
when I don't have any of those feelings. And I
kneel because he is Lord.
S3 (12:47):
Yes. Yes. That's it. Because it works both ways, right?
I mean, sometimes we're so moved that our body responds,
and sometimes we move our body because we feel we
must respond, right? Like, we want to be responsive. And
so the body teaches the soul is the way of
talking about that direction. The big mess is written on
(13:08):
a very children's level, right? Like, I'm reading it to
kids all week because I finally got my early copies
in the mail, and I am delighted that they are delighted.
Like it's just fun. But if you pay attention, for example,
there's a part right in the middle where, you know,
mouse starts to cry because his brother keeps messing up
his desserts. And when you turn the page, the next
(13:29):
line is. But then moose sat down and gave mouse
a big hug, and together they started to smile. And
you know, you'll pass over that and it just goes
on to the next moment. But for the adults in
the room signaling, when you sit down with somebody and
you put your arm around them, you are physically making
way for the space of spiritual reconciliation. These are the
(13:51):
breadcrumbs that we want to give our children, right? We
can't just teach them that God forgave us and is
reconciling the world to us without showing them how that changes,
how we interact with each other and how little things
in the house. Ordinary habits of saying, let me sit
next to you on your bed because I realize I
offended you. Let me sit with you and talk to you.
Let me take a walk with you. Let me hug
(14:12):
you again. Those are the places where we enact the
goodness of what God has done to us. Come to
us in a body and say, I want to be
in relationship with you.
S2 (14:19):
Yeah, and still does, because he's still right here, right now.
S3 (14:24):
Yes, yes.
S2 (14:25):
With us. I mean, I wouldn't literally wouldn't be here
today if it was not for the witness of God.
There was a time when I just thought, this life's
too hard, I can't do this. And I'm insignificant anyway.
And so I had made a plan to take my life,
and it was sensing God's presence in that moment in
such a powerful way that I thought, okay, if you
(14:47):
will be with me, if you promise you'll be with
me every day, every moment from here on out, the
way that you're with me right now. I can do this.
I can keep going. What you're doing in the in
the book the big mess is teaching how to be with.
Even when things are hard, you can still be with.
You can reconcile. It's all about relationship and our God
(15:10):
is all about relationship. It's a beautiful, beautiful, fun, bright
story that teaches us the ways of Jesus.
S3 (15:20):
That is exactly it. And a lot of my hope
is to teach parents how to have these kinds of
moments with their children. Now we're having, you know, relatively deep,
even very deep, actually. I really like where this has gone,
you know, conversation about, you know, the themes of reconciliation
and God's with us. And we need to be with
each other and our bodies, too. And one of the
I think the challenges of parenthood in a good way
(15:43):
is to learn how to you, over the course of childhood,
invite your kids into deeper and deeper conversation. And part
of this book is to get parents to learn how
to do that. Because on the one hand, it's just
a fun story for kids that rhymes. And it's about
exploding desserts. But on the other hand, there's an author's
note in the back that helps a parent so the
parent can read it in like, 60s, you know, with
(16:05):
the kids still on their lap. And it's got some
questions they could try asking their child. And I like
this because one of the things that is true about
parenting is that you and your kids witness stories in
the world all the time. Right? You watch movies or
you or you see an advertisement, or you read a book.
And the vast majority of these are not, you know,
quote unquote, Christian stories. The vast majority of these are
(16:27):
just stories that are in the world. Some are better
than others, some are wonderful, some are terrible. But our
job as parents is to learn how to say to
our children, what did you think of that? Was that
a good story or was that a bad story or what?
What did the hero do? Was that a good decision
or a bad one? Was that good character or bad character?
You know, and there's so much to learn through stories.
So one of the things I'm trying to equip parents with,
(16:49):
with this author's note in the back, is to say,
learn how to ask your kids questions and engage in
talking about a story. And there's, you know, a sliding scale.
I think with little kids, they're just going to read
the book, be delighted and say, like, show me more desserts.
And that's wonderful. You're just spending time with them. That's great.
But with an older child, you might say, so are
you more like Big Brother mouse or Little Brother moose like,
(17:11):
you know. And this is one of my favorite questions.
Somebody sent me a video last night of their kids
reading the book for the first time. And, um, you know,
the kids knew they were like, oh, I'm mouse. Like,
I make stuff. And the other one was like, yeah, I'm,
I'm I'm little brother moose.
S2 (17:24):
Oh, wow.
S3 (17:24):
That's funny. And they were just, you know, sort of
naming their, their roles. And then they're like, well, could
we make something together that, you know, is made to
be smashed? And they were sort of reenacting the book
and that idea of like, how do we get kids
to learn from a story is an art to be practiced.
And so one hope of the book is just to
be one little book in your house that can help
you cultivate. Practice practicing talking to your kids about stories.
S1 (17:49):
Thanks for letting Barry and Shauna walk their real life
journey with you. The content from the Ferry and Shauna
podcast comes from their live show Barry and Shauna Mornings
on 89.3 Moody Radio, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reach out to
us by texting 800 968 8930 and please subscribe.
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