Growing Home Together Podcast

Of our five children, the oldest and the youngest are both boys—with a 17-year age gap between them! They’ve shown us that boys are a bit different to raise than girls, since they both seemed to thrive chaos, dirt, and taking big risks along the way.

But time and time again, we’ve recognized that our oldest son’s childhood looked much different from our youngest son’s. Our oldest grew up near dead-end roads and open fields where he ...

The great thing about birthdays is that they encourage us to pause and reflect on everything that has brought us to this point in life. Recently, Joanna celebrated her birthday, but coming soon is an even more important celebration—her spiritual birthday. This is the day that she accepted Christ as her Savior and committed to living for him.

As we remember our new birth in Jesus, we’re reminded of the many ways God uses the people a...

The longer you share life with your spouse, the more you can struggle with frustrations and disappointments that chip away at your love. Through the years, we’ve heard from many couples who sincerely love one another but struggle to like each other or feel satisfied in their marriage anymore.

Every couple goes through seasons of feeling hurt or let down. They begin to pull apart. Joy fades. They lose hope that they’ll ever get what ...

Three and a half years ago, we stepped into a whole new world with the birth of our first grandchild. Everyone told us that this new chapter would be full of joy, laughter, and love for this tiny person. And they weren’t wrong!

Still, we had no idea just how amazing grandparenting would be, and soon we were dropping everything for the chance to see him and make memories together. Today, we are the grandparents of three little ones (...

One of the hardest moments I (Joanna) can remember as a mom is when our six-year-old daughter refused, to the point of tears, to wear her blue pants with a butterfly on the pocket. Thinking she was just being stubborn, I refused to back down—and it wasn’t until two hours later that I finally gave up on trying to convince her.

Well, a few months later, I learned that our daughter has a significant sensory processing disorder. Those p...

Do you have a dog who panics on a trip to the vet or groomer? It can be quite an ordeal! It’s something we experienced recently with our Bernedoodle, Jovy, on grooming day. While the perceived threat wasn’t real, her reaction to it could have put her (and Joanna!) in real danger.

We can sometimes react just like Jovy as we interact with our spouse. Something that seems simple on the surface can trigger instant feelings of stress and...

On this podcast, we usually sit down with guests to talk about marriage and family life. But in this episode, we wanted to get personal and share a piece of our own story—specifically, how depression has impacted our marriage.

We have been married for over 30 years and have five children together, but what we didn’t know until the birth of our third child is that one in seven women experience postpartum depression (PPD) after birth....

For parents, March can often feel like the last calm before the storm. Once April arrives, family calendars are inevitably flooded with school exams, spring sports, band concerts and dance recitals, and a whirlwind of other end-of-school-year obligations. Even if our days are full of good things, this hectic time of the year can make us feel tired, stressed, and disconnected from God and one another.

Our guest—a busy homeschool mom ...

As parents, we do all that we can to love and care for our kids. Our days are often filled with driving them to and from school, packing lunchboxes, helping with homework, doing laundry, and keeping up with everything they need to flourish.

But in spite of all the time we spend doing things with and for our kids, have you found that it can still be a struggle to connect with them in a meaningful way?

We’ve certainly felt this way at ...

As parents, we do everything we can to keep our kids safe, happy, and thriving. We make sure they eat their vegetables, buckle their seatbelts, and do their homework. We are committed to taking them to Sunday School each week, teaching them right from wrong, and nurturing them with love every day to help them grow into the best versions of themselves.

So when we discover that our child has fallen into addiction or some oth...

Welcome to a special episode of the Growing Home Together Podcast—coming to you from the producers!

Hi, my name is Mitch. I support Rob and Joanna in their various creative endeavors by lending a hand with the production of their podcast, social media, blogs, and more.

I also have my good friend, Kelsie, with me to help spread some Christmas joy as we bring you a little bit of a different version of the podcast to...

If you’re like us, your weekly routine is filled with events, chores, doctor’s appointments, and more. Depending on the size of your family and how many obligations each person has to juggle, it can be quite challenging to coordinate all the details of who needs to be where and when.

At our house, we have a big calendar hung on the wall of our kitchen that keeps everyone on track and (hopefully) on time. But amid the press...

When Joanna was in fifth grade, her teacher passed out a pamphlet to everyone in the class. On that pamphlet were all kinds of topics about puberty and sex, and it had a phone number that you could call to listen to pre-recorded information on every subject. In all honesty, there were lots of terms and phrases on that pamphlet that she had never heard of before!

This led to Joanna's mom giving her “The Talk.” If you r...

As our children grow up, they may start to handle some things themselves. This could be chores, getting up on time, or saving up their allowance or earned money whenever they want a new toy.

This is a natural part of getting older, but as a parent, it can be difficult to navigate when to step in and when is it healthy to let your child fail. There are going to be times when “helping” is actually preventing our children fro...

A number of years ago during one of our Michigan winters, our kids had a snow day off of school. What should have been a fun memory for our daughter became really scary since she suffered a sledding accident that put her in the hospital. She went through surgery and weeks at home in a wheelchair. To make matters worse, when she finally returned to school she was pushed out of her friend group by a bully who made the rest of her sch...

This is an exciting podcast for us since it’s our 100th episode! Wow! We are so grateful for every one of our guests who have joined us to encourage us in our faith and in loving our family well. We are also truly grateful for all of you who have tuned in, listened, and supported the ministry of the Growing Home Together podcast. 

We have the honor of welcoming some of our favorite people to the show for this very special ...

In this stage of life with our middle schooler, it is pretty clear what our job description is as his parents. He needs us to provide clean clothes, food in the fridge, some help with his homework, drive him everywhere, and pay for his schooling and extracurriculars. We are his biggest cheerleaders and guides as he is doing this work of growing up.

But things aren’t so clear when it comes to our adult children. We are havi...

If we could use one word to describe Christian parents right now it would probably be “overwhelmed.” Parents feel overwhelmed by their busy schedules, concern of how culture will influence their kids, insecurity in their own ability to teach their kids about Jesus, or even the pressure to get everything right.

Our guest is bringing a word of encouragement and hope to us as moms and dads. Christie Thomas is a mom and best-s...

We got married when we were pretty young after we met at Bible college. Needless to say, we had a lot of lofty ideas about what our Christian marriage would look like. We thought we would never argue, never lose our temper, keep the romance alive all the time, and always put each other first.

While we meant every word of our vows and we have stayed committed for over 30 years, we did not anticipate that we both entered our...