Road To Redemption
Road To Redemption
Caroline Hawkins: Modeling Faith at Home and Advice for Christian Mothers.
What if the most powerful parenting tool isn’t a system or schedule, but a life your children can watch up close? We sit down with Caroline Hawkins to talk about raising kids with a calm center—grounded in Scripture, shaped by worship, and honest about the mess. Caroline recommends reading Proverbs 31 and the daily practice of “putting on love,” as we share the moments that change the atmosphere of a home: apologizing when we blow it, praying over our kids by name, and inviting them to join us rather than forcing them to conform.
Our conversation gets real about the modern thorns: screens everywhere, comparison, and the exhaustion that comes from being “on” all the time. We unpack a sane path forward—clear tech boundaries explained as love, not control; delaying devices and social media; collecting phones at night; and training kids to make wise choices when you’re not around. The goal is to move from cop to coach to counselor as they grow, empowering them to own their faith and decisions. For the parent who’s in a dry season, we offer practical ways to meet God on the move: audio Scripture in the car, worship in the background, and five-minute resets that can steady a whole day.
Threaded through everything is a hopeful call: our greatest mission is our children’s salvation. We talk about sowing and watering seeds of faith, trusting God’s timing for prodigals, and finding strength in church and small groups where honest community feels like free therapy. If you’re longing for children or healing from loss, you’ll hear gentle encouragement to hold onto hope and embrace the season you’re in, knowing God works in the unseen.
Listen for simple practices you can try tonight, Scriptures to pray in the morning, and a vision of home that trades chaos for peace without pretending life is tidy. If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review to help more parents find a path toward a quieter, stronger center.
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Welcome to Road to Redemption, a show sharing powerful life testimonies, giving hope to those on their own Road to Redemption.
SPEAKER_03:I'm John Martin, your host, and I'm here today with Valerie Peterson, our co-host, and we have a very special guest in the house today, Caroline Hawkins. How are you?
SPEAKER_02:Thank y'all so much. I'm so excited. I get to talk about motherhood. Um, yeah, I'm just blessed to be here.
SPEAKER_03:And first off, Caroline, we must say we have your mom here. Must tell y'all it's your great mom, Val, and it's so cool to have y'all here together.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, this is gonna be great. This is so I just want to start by saying, like, I'm no um mom guru. I am learning as I go with the help of Jesus every day. So yeah, I just want to put that out there. My kids humble me every day. I do not have it all together, but by the grace of Jesus, he he helps me. And I'm so thankful for that.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Well, I look forward to your advice today because I'm a father of four younger kids and I'm humbled every day. I'm just like, I I want to hear, you know, another godly parent's advice because it it is our biggest challenge, really, over work, over anything else we're doing is trying to bring these kids up, you know, uh godly and under under biblical principles.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, that's so true. It's so good. You know, I'm I'm just honored to be your mom, Caroline. I really am. And I don't mean to embarrass you on air, but I really am, and it's it's just a blessing to watch you and Jake raise your precious kids, and they're young, and um, you know, we have listeners today that have kids, you know, toddlers to tweens to teens, and so we want to be sensitive to that. That um we we just want to welcome our listeners into this conversation. You know, I wanted to ask you, do you have a favorite scripture verse that kind of keeps you grounded? There's power in the word of God, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, amen to that. Um, I go back to time and time again, the Proverbs 31 Woman. I feel like she just, yes, like you said, grounds me. She encourages me. Um, reading that, it just really puts into perspective, like God doesn't ask for perfection of me, but he does ask for my excellence in all I do, like doing everything unto the Lord, right? Um, so I love that verse. Moms, I encourage you to read Proverbs 31, verses 10 through 31 specifically. Um, yeah, it just offers so much encouragement. I want to be like her. That's yeah, she's she's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:She really is. She's, you know, even at my age, she's such like, I want to be like her. And I love how you say, you know, and as you were talking, I was thinking of the word intentional. We need to be intentional about being good moms and good dads. Um, and God does the rest. You know, what I what the Lord this morning really put on my heart was his love. When we try not to go on our on self, on um just the flesh, is when he shows up. When we invite him in. And, you know, he he was sharing with me, reminded me of the verses in 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient, love is kind, love doesn't keep records of wrongs, but keeps records of the right. Um, I just was thinking that's how we need to be with our kids, no matter what age, even adult kids, right? Right. Yeah, that's so good. So good. I love that. What are some ways that you include your kids in your walk with Christ?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's great. Yes. I really try not to like force my faith on my kids. I I try to model it for them. Um, if I'm, you know, trying to pray, I'm like, come come pray with me. I'm just modeling like what that looks like to seek after God, chase after him, um, having worship going on in the house, just inviting them in with me um with my walk. Like I just feel like that's so important for us as mothers to invite them in any opportunity we can. Just yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's so good. I always notice at their home they have a big screen and they have praise and worship going, bands, you know, and the kids know your kids know how to worship God.
SPEAKER_02:And it changes, it shifts the atmosphere. I mean, any chance you can get, worship him, have it going in the background on the on the Alexa, it really can shift the mood in the home. It invites the Holy Spirit in, it invites God's presence, and it just it changes things. It really does.
SPEAKER_01:You know, we go through seasons, and we all have dry seasons. And I wonder what is your strategy, Caroline, when you are going through a difficult season, a dry season, maybe a lot of situational stressors going on in your life. What do you do?
SPEAKER_02:Um, I I feel like there's so many seasons as like moms were first in the newborn phase, and then all of a sudden we're in the toddler phase, and then early childhood, like school years, then teenagers, and there's like we're constantly changing, right? I feel like before kids, I loved to journal. I would sit and just journal all my prayers to God. Like I had more time, right? My my season now, I'm so hands-on that um I don't have time to just journal. I'm being honest, that I'm constantly doing things on the move. You know, moms, like our checklists are so long. Um, so this season now, I'm listening to like the Bible on audio. Um, like I said earlier, always having worship on and listening to podcasts, good Christian, godly people that are gonna fill your cup up. Um, so my season just looks different. And I feel like God meets us where we're at, right? He he just wants us to invite him in to all those moments. And I think that's just so sweet and kind and beautiful of him, just to meet us where we're at, whatever season you're in, switch it up, change it up if you're you know, yeah. That's that's my advice.
SPEAKER_01:You know, I remember um a woman saying to me when when you know you all were just so young, and I was so jealous that she was reading all these books, and you know, I'll never forget her saying, Bring your journal in the car, bring your bring your Bible, and and now we can have it on our phones. But when the kids are at, let's say, soccer practice or football practice, you have you have time for maybe 10 minutes to spend it with the Lord or listen to Destiny Radio, right? Um doing those things even in the car. Right. Just being intentional, I think, is yeah. You know, John, I wanted to ask or say to you, there's so many men that in the work that I do that will say to me in their own words, I just long for peace in my home.
SPEAKER_03:That's me. I mean, that's me, yeah. With four kids and we have twin boys. Um, you know, it's it's a lot of chaos going on in there, and we we try to have praise music too, that helps. Uh the biggest challenge I'm seeing, and I wanted to ask you, Caroline, about this. Uh, we're seeing it a little more with our older kids, which are 10 and 13, is is the battle the battle with technology and you know, not only with iPads and phones, but just any kind of screen. And it's it's it's such a battle because even if you try to put in uh you know boundaries in place in your own house, they're going to their friends, they're going here, they're going there, and just they're everywhere. I mean, there's screens in the restaurants, in the and it just seems to me sometimes like I'm fighting just such an uphill battle. Oh, yeah. In that trying to have our boundaries, and it's it's a spiritual battle. I I see it on a lot of these games. And anyway, so you have any thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I mean, I feel like technology and like just the access that kids have nowadays is I mean, they have smartphones at a young age. I mean, it's just totally different than when I was, you know, growing up and in high school, I had a flip phone, like an extel, beep beep, you know. I'm revealing my age here. But they just have access to so much more. And I just feel like their little minds, like it's just so much for them to process. Those pressures that I had are not the same, meaning like just all the social media and things they're exposed to. Um, yeah, it's just it's such a hard thing. Like what you're saying is, you know, they can't set limits, right? Like, we need to set those limits for them. Um, I'm not at that stage yet. My oldest is seven, but whoo, man.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, I'm praying for you because Well, we we need to pray about that because it's it's it's the biggest battle that I see with kids, and um it's everywhere, you know. So it's like um, you know, so I I don't have the answers on that, but you know, we just need to pray.
SPEAKER_01:You know, if I could say anything too, is is something that I see is there's a difference between setting boundaries and control. Yeah. That's now, you know, in educating your kids as they get older, Caroline, you know, that and and John, that you know, we your mom and I, your dad and I are setting these boundaries because we love you. And we're hoping the boundaries that we set as you head out to go to college or the military, that you're gonna implement them. So at a certain time their phones go up or their, you know, their iPads go up. The things that you're teaching in your home, educate them. It's it's for a lifetime.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_01:You know, when I see parents when their kids are juniors and seniors in high school and they're controlling everything, I have to remind them your son is gonna head out to college next year. He's not gonna have you to control him. Can you empower him to make healthy decisions? That's good.
SPEAKER_02:I recently read um in a book by Kiri Campakas. She's a great just Christian, like mentor, leader, speaker, has so much knowledge. Um, she was saying delay the phone as much as possible. And I can't imagine how hard it is for you because like if friends have it, right? They feel left out, they feel disconnected. But she was saying, like, delay the phone as long as possible and no social media till like 16, which I mean, I would even delay longer if I could. I don't know. I'm not there yet, right? That's not I'm still in the temper tantrum stage. So be praying for me with that because that's my struggle right now. Um, pulling out my hair, yeah. Anyways, so I'll I'll definitely be praying just for wisdom and discernment with that.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, Caroline, what advice do you have for listeners that are feeling somewhat hopeless? I mean, we're we're in a tough world right now. There's a lot of people, especially with moms, with kids, that are just struggling. You know, they're they're they're depressed, they're anxious, they're they're feel like their life's out of control.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And they're trying to seek God. But what what advice do you have for those?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, draw close to God, draw close to him, and he'll be near to you. Um, cast all your cares upon him. There's just so much power in scripture, right? Praying that over yourself, telling it to yourself. Um, yeah, I know there's so much heaviness. There really is, with all that's going on lately. Um, things we're seeing, talking to moms, they're just like terrified of what we're raising our kids, you know, and this girl that was killed on the train, the Charlie Kirk murder. I mean, there's just so much heaviness lately that I prayed to God, I was like, what is one thing that I can share with these mothers? Just one, Lord, give me something. And of course, he's so gracious and kind to to deliver. And he told me, moms, our biggest calling, our biggest responsibility is our kids' salvation, um, bringing them to Christ. So, yes, you know, we're gonna fall short, we're gonna make mistakes, but if we can, I'm speaking to you too as parents, like that is just our biggest responsibility for our kids. God has really convicted me lately. Like, we can't bring our homes into heaven, we can't bring our cars, none of our possessions. The only thing on this earth that we can bring is our children. Um, so just sowing the seeds, planting the seeds, moms, sowing them, watering them for our kids' salvation, it will take off at God's appointed time, right? His word does not return void. Um, but yes, if I can encourage moms and anything, you know, there's so much knowledge out there in parenting and it can be overwhelming. But my biggest takeaway for today is to sow those seeds for your children's salvation.
SPEAKER_01:That's so good. I do want to ask at this point, what is the power for you in community and church and small group?
SPEAKER_02:Be surrounded by like-minded mothers that are gonna encourage you in the word. Iron sharpens ironed, right? Um, I am in a small group here at Destiny that I do Thursday mornings with other moms, and it's just uh the highlight of my week. I look so forward to it. Um, it takes a village. I feel like there's seasons in motherhood where we can get a little bit isolated, you know, like those newborn stages, even taller stages when they're napping so much, like it can be a little bit isolating, but the cure to loneliness and isolation is vulnerability, being vulnerable. And I'm not saying go and bear your soul out to everybody, but have your inner circle, have Christian women and mothers that are gonna encourage you, uplift you, speak life over you. I think that is just so important.
SPEAKER_01:That's so good. You know, I'm thinking of the listeners that are tuning in today that maybe long to have children and haven't yet, or have had a miscarriage. What would you say to them?
SPEAKER_02:Don't lose hope. Um, God's timing is perfect. It is, and I'll have to come back and share all the little testimonies of my children's life, but I can tell you, I tried to control, I tried to do it on my timing, my way. And like God is He's so patient. He is so patient, but His ways are so much higher than our own. So don't lose hope. He will redeem the situation, he will restore it. And if I can encourage you, mom or listeners, if you are struggling, just in this season enjoy it. Enjoy there's just beauty in it. Um, you can be a spiritual mother to somebody. Um, yeah, just enjoy the season you're in. I feel like we're always looking for the next thing, right? The next stage of life, the next season. But like what God has showed me and told me through my life is like there is beauty in each and every season. So just enjoy where you're at. He's a good God. He has plans to prosper you and not to harm you. So be patient in the waiting and he will redeem your situation.
SPEAKER_01:That's good. I do want to shift and ask what is one thing that you pray over your children regularly?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I feel like that goes back that to the salvation, like just praying that they would have a relationship with God. Um and yeah, I just feel like that's so important. That's probably my number one prayer that my kids would know God, that they would seek after him and have that relationship with him. That's my number one prayer. Yeah, as a mom.
SPEAKER_01:You know, as you were just talking, I was thinking of the verse, you know, in Matthew 6, 33, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and everything else will be added to you as well. It's kind of like everything falls into place as we seek him first. And I'm looking at you, and what are the benefits, Caroline, and just seeking him like first thing in the morning? Yeah. What how does that help you?
SPEAKER_02:Right. I feel like it just grounds me, right? It being grounded in his word. Um I feel like it's such a spiritual battle, right? The world we're living in that we have to put on the full armor of God, right? Um yeah, and back to like the one thing praying over your children, like that scripture verse in Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Like that, that's a money-back guarantee, that last part. Um, but we our job is to train them up in the way they should go, right? And they can stray, mom. You can probably kind of talk on that. Yeah, but that foundation is there. Um reminds me of like the house that's built on a rock, right? We we as parents, as moms and fathers, John, we need to lay that foundation for them. Right.
SPEAKER_01:I sense for a lease listener that their child child has gone astray, but they were brought up in the foundation of Christ. Don't look at the natural. You keep praying and believe. If you have faith, a grain of a mustard seed. You can say to this mountain in Matthew 17, 20, it says this you can move from here to there and have to move in God's timing. Remember, your child's journey may be different than your journey. Allow them if they're adults and have fallen away, keep praying, keep believing. God is working in the unseen, right? All right, that's good. That's powerful.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:One thing that you said, uh, Caroline, that that spoke to me is is you know, letting your children find their faith in Jesus on their own, not forcing it on 'em. Like, you know, and I I know I've seen that happen where parents can force their faith on their kids and they're not finding it on their own. So that really speaks to me. Uh and I think that that speaks to other parents that you know we need to teach them and introduce them, but let them find their faith on their own.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yes. The the book, The Power of the Praying Parent by Stormy O'Martin, was life-changing for me. And it had creative ideas of like literally prayer journeying journaling with your kids. And then writing by the you know, margin, you know, when the prayer was answered. So, yes, that's a great book for the for listeners if you're looking for ways to um not only pray for your kids, but creative strategies to to encourage their faith, not control them. The power of the praying parent is just a classic. Yeah, that's good. So good.
SPEAKER_03:So, Caroline, as we're we're coming to the end of our show. I know there's so much to cover. Is there any one thing that you you'd like to share?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, like one last thing. I feel like again, living out our faith for our kids um with like in specific like discipline, I feel like can be kind of like a hot topic. One thing I try to do with my kids is speaking to their heart, right? It's the matter of the heart, pointing out sin. And I'll do this in myself. I'll say, hey, mommy did not have self-control. Like, I am so sorry. Can you forgive me? Like, I confess that I was wrong. Just showing them like what confession looks like, what bringing it to the Lord looks like, um, you know, repentance, like turning away from right, saying, just apologizing and asking them for forgiveness and like, hey, can we pray for one another? Um, I just think there's so much power in that. We're modeling right what that looks like with our Heavenly Father. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's good. That's so good. That's really good. We are, we're, you know, I'm looking at in Colossians 3. I read it this morning, it says, put on love. I mean, think about, you know, you get ready to go to work or do whatever, take care of the kids and more. Put on love, and it says, be quick to forgive. And that I believe even means our children. Can we forgive our children maybe for the temper tantrum that I had yesterday?
SPEAKER_02:I'm still kind of in cop mode with some of my kids, right? I feel like you're like in cop mode, like toddler years and you know, early childhood years. And then it goes to like you're a coach in the middle school years and then high school life beyond, you're kind of like a counselor to them. Like again, there's so many different stages, and really the Lord has told me just find beauty in every stage, just embrace it. Um, enjoy your kids, delight in them, look at them as blessings, not burdens. Yes, is just what he's been speaking to me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you kind of you go from physically intensive when they're toddlers to more when they get, and you can testify the problem. More emotionally intensive as they become tweens and teenagers. Yeah, it's so true. And adults. Yeah, yeah, you still are a parent, even when your kids are in their 20s and 30s and 40s. It's so cool. There's beauty in all of it. There is.
SPEAKER_03:Well, this has been great. It's been such a blessing. So fun having the two of y'all on. I think we need to do this more often. I know.
SPEAKER_01:We gotta bring you back on. Definitely. Definitely. This has been such a treat. Anything you want to say concerning um small group?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we just always like to end our show with the three key pillars of road to redemption is first, we want you to know the importance of the word of God. It is so important for you and me and all of us to read our Bible. That is the way that our Father speaks to us primarily is through his word. So we just encourage you if you're listening to open your Bible, start reading it today. If you don't have a hardback Bible, just open. There's so many Bible apps and just start reading it. We promise that God will start speaking to you. And then get into a Christ-centered church, a Bible teaching, Bible-believing church, and just go. Go to church and just it will bless you. And then last, get into a small group within that church that you can make yourself vulnerable and just it's it's free counseling vow.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's great. I love that. That's so good.
SPEAKER_03:It is, you know, so uh anyway, no, I'm I'm what you do is great. I'm just saying it's it's counseling, it's therapy, right?
SPEAKER_01:It is, it's so therapeutic.
SPEAKER_03:Um, and just go to the group. You know, I kind of sense when Caroline was talking, people thought about getting into a group and are like, oh, you know, I'm not, you know, maybe it might have already started. You know, I say, just go, just show up, you know, at the mom's group, you know, just go, and you're gonna be so welcomed.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, do it. That's what we say. Just do it.
SPEAKER_03:We just know, moms, you're gonna be blessed. This was such a great um just sharing, Caroline. It would I know it would bless me and and and dads too, you know, but particularly moms, we really believe y'all are gonna be blessed from this show.