The Families of Character Show
We serve parents who want more for their family. Our show offers research-based parenting solutions to the most common family problems, real-life parenting stories, and authentic support. The host, Jordan Langdon, is a wife, mother, and Licensed Clinical Social Worker who validates what parents go through and offers practical actionable steps parents can implement today to transform their families in joy and unity. Guests are experts in their field of work and provide high-value material for parents and families.
The Families of Character Show
Ep. #175: Breaking the Cycle of Parent–Child Estrangement with Catherine Hickem, LCSW
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One in four adults are distant or estranged from a parent. We dig into why that happens and how to reverse the pattern by making home the safest place for truth. With licensed psychotherapist, Catherine Hickem, we unpack the habits that build lifelong closeness and the ones that quietly push kids away.
We discuss:
• the cost of fear driven parenting and hidden expectations
• modeling conflict resolution that heals, not harms
• treating adult kids with respect, curiosity and privacy
• owning mistakes and offering sincere apologies
• navigating holidays and time boundaries with clarity
• processing grief to show up present and kind
Be sure to check out Catherine's website where she offers free tools to strengthen your relationship with your adult children, and purchase her book, Heaven in Her Arms: Why God Chose Mary to Raise His Son and What It Means for You.
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Parents, here's a sober reality. One in four adults today are distant or even estranged from their parents. That means when our kids grow up, the odds are high that they also might not want us in their lives if we don't get intentional right now about how we parent. Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Jordan Langdon. And as moms and dads of young kids, it's easy to sort of think about that and go, you know what, Jordan, this is a someday problem, right? Something we'll figure out when they're teenagers or in college. But the truth is, guys, that the foundation for a close lifelong bond with our children is being built in these everyday moments of parenting. That's why I'm so excited for today's guest, Catherine Hickam. For over 40 years, Catherine's been walking parents through the messy and complicated emotions of conflict, change, and growth. And she, like me, is a licensed clinical social worker. She's a psychotherapist and an executive coach who has truly dedicated her life to helping people build healthy and lasting relationships. And today she's bringing her wisdom to a topic almost no one is talking about. How to raise kids who want to stay close to you into adulthood. This is one of those conversations that could change the way you see your role as a parent forever. So if you've ever wondered, am I doing enough to make sure my kids want me in their lives later when they're adults and having kids, stick around. Catherine has answers and you don't want to miss them. Catherine, welcome to our show. Thank you so much for having me. Catherine, you have worked with families for over 40 years. So share with us what first sparked your passion for really helping parents build these lasting bonds with their kids. What was sort of the aha moment that made you realize so many parent-child relationships are at risk of drifting apart?
SPEAKER_00:I was working with uh parents of children under the age of 18. And what I noticed was there so many parents would come and say to me, I am I doing it right? I'm so scared, I'm gonna mess it up. And my first thought to them was the fact that you're even aware that you're asking the question says you have a pretty good shot of not messing it up because you care and you're you're hungry to grow and to learn. But what I also realized at that time, we had a lot of parents that were not knowing how to deal with conflict. And when people don't know how to get deal with conflict, they either go into denial or they go into avoidance or they just cut people off. And then now we have a bigger problem because we are not modeling what healthy conflict resolution looks like. And if you have a family that you really love, like someone in your like your children, the last thing you could ever imagine was not having a connection to them. And so I had come across this family that these parents they came to me and they said, We've not seen our children in six years. They won't talk to us, we have no idea why. And we are brokenhearted. We have a grandchild we've never seen. We're not allowed to be in their lives in any way, shape, or form. We don't know what to do. And the pain that was in their faces and this the weeping just moved me in such a manner that I thought, this is so not right. This was not God's heart. This there's some pain in here that has not been acknowledged. There, there's something going on. And I and I began to pay attention. And as I began to look around, I was like, oh my goodness, this is this isn't just this family. This has become a major, major issue. And so I thought, all right, someone needs to be paying attention to what it's like to parent in the adult years, you know, and I went and looked online, I went and did all this research. Very, very, very little was written on parenting in the adult years. And I'm like, you're a parent in the adult years far longer than you are when they're living in your home. At least if you're healthy, that's you know, that could go on 40, 50 years. Um, my mom's still alive, she's 90 years old. So that, you know, I'm still being parented by somebody. And think of all those years that could have been wasted in families that didn't talk to each other. And so it just, I think it was God's desire to put this burden on my heart to the point where he wouldn't let me not pay attention to it. And so I think he has a love for families that goes be way beyond what most therapists and specialists have looked at. And I think he says, now's the time. Now's the time that we pay attention. We've got to create healing. Our our world needs families to be strong. And if there's brokenness and fractures, it's not gonna happen. And I saw it so magnified during COVID that the the severity, and it I'm not taking sides one way or the other, the severity of what it did to families caused a breakdown. And I see it even today. I I was talking to somebody last week who um whose uncle will not let anybody in the family come to their home still after all these years, if they didn't line up on the same side of his belief system as he did. So the division is deep, and children and young adults are suffering because they don't feel safe to go to talk with their parents, but parents are also kind of oblivious as to the damage that they're creating with good intentions, but they're still creating walls instead of bridges. And I'm here about building bridges. I the walls have got to go because the walls are a hundred feet high in some families, which is really crushing the future generations because this is grandchildren are seeing the disconnect between their parents and their grandparents, and they don't understand. So now's the time for us to really say, okay, what can we do in order to restore and repair the brokenness that's happening in today's family? And that and that was that was where I started. And I'll tell you the story that really, really got my heart. My daughter was home from college between her junior and senior year, and one of her friends came to visit. And we'll call him Jason. And so we were having lunch, and Tiff had left the room. That's my daughter, and Jason said to me, Mrs. Hickam, did you know that Tiffany is the only friend that I have who is the same in front of her parents as she is behind their back? And I said, Really? And he said, Yeah, the only one. And I said, Well, what about you, Jason? Are you the same? He said, Oh no, absolutely not. And I said, Well, why is that? And he said, Miss Sickum, I know what my parents' expectations of me are. And he said, and when I don't live up to them, my mom cries and my dad gets mad. So I've just decided that when I'm with them, I'll be who they want me to be. And when I walk out the door, I'll go back to being myself.
SPEAKER_01:But that gives me the chills, Catherine.
SPEAKER_00:It just broke me. It broke me. And I said, I'm so sorry. And he said, It's okay, Miss Sickum. It's the normal for me and everybody else.
SPEAKER_01:And that's when you realize this is not just him. This is a majority of young adults who leave home and they say, I remember how it was. I know exactly what's going to happen. Mom's going to break down. Then I'm supposed to feel bad that I've hurt her feelings because now it's about her being hurt. And dad is going to be angry that I caused mom to cry. And so we don't go there, shove it under the rug, get back in line into how I'm expected to be. And then all will be well and the boat will not be rocked. That's exactly what's happening. And then, Catherine, what makes me think of something else is that as adults, we're like looking at our kids going, like, oh, it seems like you're wearing a mask. You know, why are you out there at college? Just be yourself. And it's like, well, what are we doing as parents to cause them to put on a mask in the first place, right?
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly right. And there lies a major issue because they learn to live double lives. They learn to live the life that they think we want them to live. So we will be happy. So we won't be upset with them. So they don't have to deal with our disappointment, which just kills them. They don't want to feel rejected. They don't want to take the risk of losing the fact they may not be loved the same way. I can't tell you the number of young adults who've said to me, if I told my mom or dad things that I've done or things that I've participated in, they would never, ever, ever treat me the same. And whether it's true or not, it's the fear that is driving the relationship. It's no longer truth, because it could be true, it could not be true, but it's fear. So fear is now driving these relationships. And so I've never seen a good decision made out of fear, to be honest with you. No. Ever. Right? So now we have these, this generation have learned I can't be who I am because it's not acceptable. So now they'll go find friends where it will be acceptable. Those friends may not be the wisest counsel. So what happens when they really get into trouble? I was reading some research from the Pew Institute, and it said, I think the the statistic was 44% of adult children would tell their parent if they were in trouble with a mental health problem. Okay, only 44%. So that means 56% won't tell. Well, when the stats are 36.2% of adult children between 18 and 25 have a mental illness. Where are these young adults going to go if they're in trouble? Who will they talk to? Who can they trust? So you see, we have to be really clear about our expectations. And what parents don't seem to understand is they've lived with us. They lived with us for 18 years. They know our biases, our prejudices, they've heard us talk about other people, they've heard us be judgmental. They know us probably in some ways better than we know ourselves. So we can't fool them. The only thing we could do is sit down and have a really important conversation and just say, hey, I want to talk about something. And that is, I want to make sure you understand that there is nothing you could ever bring to me that would ever cause me not to stand by you and to not love you with everything that I am. And yeah, I'm gonna own the fact that there have been times you probably heard me be critical of other people and maybe critical of your friends. I own that. And that wasn't right of me. But I also want to make one more thing clear to you. Nothing will ever cause me not to love you well. I may not understand you, I may not even can get my hands around your choices, but nothing ever will cause me not to love you. Do you know how incredibly empowering that would be and healing that would be just to have that simple conversation with adult children? Yeah, that would be the healing, it would restore hope, it would restore a sense of safety, it would restore a sense of they do love me, right? And I think we need that. This country needs this, the world needs this. And so we need to look at ourselves as parents and say, what could they have learned in my home that I really didn't want them to learn?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. And then you're talking about going to them. They're adults right now. You can do this even when they're teenagers or when they're young, right? Is saying, I messed up. You witnessed some things in our home that I wish you wouldn't have, you know, the way we talked to each other or the criticism we had about the the Joneses and when they decided to, you know, move to Kansas in the middle of COVID and we thought that was crazy or whatever. Like, you know, we shouldn't have judged. And a matter of fact, people have free will to do what they want, and that means you do and I do, and and that we are responsible for ourselves and doing the right things. But there is just absolutely nothing that you can do that would separate you from me and my love for you. I mean, where does this message come from? Straight from scripture, right?
SPEAKER_00:Straight from scripture. It is the heart of God, right? And when we can do that with our children, that is the closest manifestation of God Himself living himself out in us to them. Because I grew up in the church. My father was a minister. I was married to a minister for 35 years. I understand the body of Christ really well. And I understand it can also be one of the most harsh, difficult places to be in terms of comparison and judgment. And sometimes the church is not safe. Sometimes it's a fabulous place. But sometimes we learn great things and sometimes we learn not so great things. And our generation of children, until recently, had moved far away from the church. And there are reasons for it. And it started with judgment. It started with not feeling that they belonged, they weren't safe, they couldn't be themselves. They will go look for places to find acceptance. And not all those places are always good places. But they're looking for love and they're looking for acceptance. And if they can't find it at home, they will go wherever they need to go to find it.
SPEAKER_01:That's how strong the need for acceptance really is. Think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, and you got the most basic right front and center. You got to have food and water and shelter and love, right? And love to any human being is someone denying themselves to serve us, to just be open and saying, This is not about me. This relationship is about you coming to me in full vulnerability, you know, at your darkest hour and saying, You're the person that I'm trusting in my life as my mom or my dad to just lay it out here and tell you this is what's going on with me. We had this conversation with our teenage son, right? Where it's like, listen, you've been through some stuff, you've made some decisions that you're not happy about and we're confused about or whatever. And you know what? This is part of life. You're discovering, you know what who you are, what you believe in, you know, how to stand up to people and peer pressure, and you're gonna trip and fall. We have tripped and falled, fell a million times, and we still are today. That's why we continue to apologize to you as parents. We continue to ask you for forgiveness, and we continue to admit our wrongs to you because that is also modeling that it's okay to admit your wrong and to take personal responsibility for some choices that didn't line up real well.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and and what you're giving him is the opportunity for redemption, right? Which is what Jesus gives us every single second of the day. We have an opportunity to be redeemed. Unfortunately, when we're dealing with expectations, there is this thing that if we don't meet expectations, if the young adults don't meet expectations, they can be shamed. And because it's it made the parents look bad, they hurt their reputation, they were a disappointment on a grand scale. And so as a result, that shame has no place to go. Guilt, you can do something about. Shame is a dead end, and it really sours a person's sense of their value. And that's what happens when expectations play a really unhealthy role in a in a family, right? And so if we can get aware of what all our expectations are, we can start to clean them up or we can start to get clear with them, you know. And I'll hear parents say, Oh, I don't really have that many, you know, they have their own lives. And I'll I simply go, well, let's talk about the holidays. And then it gets really quiet because everybody has an opinion about well, aren't you gonna come here for Christmas? Or I th we this what are we gonna do about our tradition? We've always done it this way. Something small doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but guess what? It becomes a big deal, and now we have conflict, and now we have hurt feelings, and now we have mom crying because it's not gonna look like it always has looked. So it can get real dicey really fast, and we don't see it as parents. We don't see all the different ways that we have these expectations. And um I heard a mom say to me last week, she said, yeah, she said, you know, my child just went away um to college for the first time, and she said, I'm already wondering how much time he's gonna spend with me whenever he comes home from college versus seeing all his friends. It's like, good for you that you're thinking about it, but get really clean and really honest about, you know, what do you need? And if you need to spend time with him, communicate that in a respectful, healthy way and just say, hey, I know you're gonna want to see your friends, but I just want to let you know sometime during the weeks at your home, I want to have some time with you too. So can you carve out some time with me? I mean, just something that simple, right? Is respectful, it's honoring, it's communicating value, it's saying I'm not assuming anything. And it's it's it's starting to treat them as the adults that they are that they've not been accustomed to being treated like that before. So it's a great way to practice, you know, this the season of transition because they're learning to put on the adult, you know, role themselves. They're gonna need practice at that. But we also have to have grace and we have to let them show them, you know, we get this is new to you. And so, but I just want you to know you're you're important to me, and I just want to have some time. I mean, they want to please us still. If we have done any decent, any decent job, they want to please us, they don't want to be at odds with us, but we have to also release them to do what they were created to do, which is now fly and learn and grow and fall and make mistakes and pick themselves up. Those are the things that we get a chance to be to have a front row seat to watch, which is such a gift, right? It's such an incredible gift. Uh I have two children. My son is 41, my daughter is 40, and I've been in great conversations with them just this week. Um he lives, my son lives in Singapore, so we have to be a little bit more coordinated with his timing schedule. But I was thinking back about all the lessons that they've taught me, that they have been the greatest teachers of my life, the greatest teachers of what really mattered, the greatest teachers of humility, the greatest teachers of love. I just, I just recall that from the from day one, my son's birthday was on Saturday, and I he was adopted, he's adopted. Um, I didn't get to hold him until the 15th. And I remember when I held him for the first time, that it was really the first time in my life that I felt that I was loved and I hadn't earned it. That it was simply God just loving me and giving me this incredible gift of this child. And I just remember from that moment on how God used him and my daughter to really teach me about what really matters. And I they keep teaching me to this day. I keep learning from them and I keep growing. And if we can look at that as this is an opportunity for our lives to be richer in ways we didn't expect because we're learning from them, not because we're telling them what to do or having them meet our expectations or being an extension of our unmet needs, which is so often the weight we do put on them, then what we're gonna do is really free them to really live in the fullness of the identity which God created them for, instead of trying to live in the identity that we designed for them because we had a need to be special or important and they're gonna do what we couldn't do. So we have a lot of work to do as parents. We got to clean up some stuff and we need to look in the mirror and we need to start with ourselves because the healthier we are, the more we can bring to the table to them in their adult years and really free them to be, like I said, their best version. But if they're if they're doing cleanup duty on our unmet needs, on our dysfunction, we are a burden. We are not a blessing.
SPEAKER_01:And that's not God's heart. That's not God's heart. That is not what he wants for our family. I want to go back to the very beginning of the interview when you said, you know, parenting your adult children beyond 18 years, because so many times we hear as parents who are raising school age kids that you all, you know, you got 18 summers with them, or, you know, that just that like it all ends when they turn 18 and they graduate from high school. Then they fly the nest and our job is done. And I'm not hearing that message from you. I'm hearing you say, foster this relationship, build this relationship on a foundation of trust and safety, that nothing that you do or say, no matter what labels or diagnoses you have, you're not going to separate yourself from our love. It's always safe here. We can talk about things without big blow ups and big reactions, and we can work as a team through these things. That that is so important because you're still continuing to parent your children when they are adults in a different way. But I'm hearing this message like your parenting years of parenting adults are far greater than this, you know, platform from zero to 18. And so talk a little bit about that. Like, how do you think adult kids feel about or think about, you know, being parented still by their parents?
SPEAKER_00:It's all in our howl. If I continue to parent adult children the way I parented them when they were living at home, that relationship will become distant. It will not work because it lacks the respect that comes with being an adult, right? But if I embrace my adult children with honor and respect and curiosity, if I refrain from telling them what to do and being very quick to give my opinions, but I really seek to understand how they're thinking and how I can support them and you know, and create the environment that says, you can come to me when something's tough and I'm not gonna judge you and I'm not gonna talk to other people about it because this is your story to tell, it's not mine. That is the kind of parenting that adults want in their lives from the people who brought them into the world because they have history, there is love, there is trust. If we've, you know, if we continue to fan the flame of what we started, but we're able to make the shifts that go with respect, respecting them for where they are developmentally, then they're gonna come back to us. They're gonna seek out our counsel, they're gonna want to know, hey, mom, can I run this by you? And then that's when we get invited to share our thoughts and to share opinions. But if we are imposing our will or dictating our pleasure or our approval based upon their choices and their decisions, then what's gonna happen is we're gonna, we are gonna create the walls, we're gonna burn the bridge. And so I didn't bring my children into the world to just send them off at 18. I brought them into the world to have a relationship with them to the very last breath of my body because I loved them with a love that I didn't even know was possible. And I don't, and I want them to feel that love to the very last breath of my body. And even long after I'm gone, if I have done my job well, they will walk securely and knowing that they were loved deeply and as well as a human being could have done it. And that will give them something in their essence and in their soul that they can then pass on to their next generation, whatever that may look like. So I think we need to broaden our definition because some of our most impactful days are actually could be ahead of us. And let me I just want to share this quick story. My dad was a great father for the first five years of my life. Um, there was an event that's too long, probably, for me to share, but that changed him. And for the next 20 years, he was a very difficult, demanding father. I knew he loved me, but he expected perfectionism from me, publicly would call me out in front of the congregation for no reason whatsoever, um, was very tough on me. I I can't even begin to put words on how tough it was. And I remember the drastic shift from being five when he changed, and all of a sudden he was no longer that kind of dad. And then I tried, you know, to stay under the radar because I didn't want to be seen because that meant I would be further ashamed. At 15, I got up the courage to go meet him at his office to set up an appointment. And I walked and I said, Dad, I want to have a good relationship with you. And um what I want to talk about that. And he threw me out of his office, and so I didn't um try again until I was 25. At 25, at that point, I was married. I'd had three years of therapy. I was a therapist at that point, and so I made another appointment and I said, Hey dad, I want to talk about a relationship. And in that moment, my dad said to me, I made a lot of mistakes with you. And he said, I can't undo what I did. And he said, Kathy, only thing I can do is give me one my word that I will be the dad that you need moving forward, not the dad that you had. In that moment, I felt seen, I felt heard, I felt known, and I felt loved. And for the next 30 some odd years of my life, I had the most amazing father who could not have been better to me. He redeemed, he restored, he loved well, he he was so respectful, he was still protective, he was kind, he asked my opinion. I mean, I could never have asked for anything more. And the reason I share that is maybe some of us out there have really not done a great job in our first 15 to 20 years. Maybe we blew it, maybe we were a hot mess and we didn't start getting our acts together till now. But I'm gonna tell you that it's never too late to be a great parent. It is never too late to right the wrong, and we can't dictate how quickly our children will receive it, we can't dictate how fast they'll build trust with us again. But we have to give it a shot. We have to know that in the midst of us being maybe the mess that we were, that we took it seriously and we owned our part of that, and we went to them and we humbly said we're sorry, and gave us, give us, and hopefully they'll give us that chance to continue to redeem it and to learn and to grow and and see what God would have in store for the future. I just don't think we can quit. I think we have to keep trying. You know, God never quits on us, ever, no matter how many times we blow it. But I think we also can't quit on our kids, no matter how many times they blow it. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have boundaries. That doesn't mean that we're not healthy. It doesn't mean that sometimes we have to have real clarity on what's acceptable and what's not, because sometimes these circumstances in life are pretty severe and pretty tough. But it doesn't mean that we don't have the right heart. We can always have the right heart. And that's the thing between us and God. We just say, You know, I'm scared. You know, uh, I'm a big believer in truth telling and with Jesus and say, you know, here's what's true, Jesus. Right now, I'm not happy, but I don't want to show up and be punishing and or show up and and be unkind or show up and be reactive. We got to be truthful with him so we can then be honoring with our our children. And it will be a magnet that draws them to us when we are the healthiest versions of ourselves and we can own our stuff. There's safety in that, and there's respect in that, and there's honor in that, and trust can be built. And our generation of adult children have need us more now than ever before to be solid and to be that wall that they can bounce against without us being the reaction and the rejection and the shamer. So we have work to do. And my heart is to quote help every parent out there that wants to know how to make that happen. God's in the business of restoring, and that's that's what I think He wants to do with this generation of parents with adult children.
SPEAKER_01:Amen, Kathy. That was so well said. I love your message of hope. It's never too late, but also a sense of urgency. Our kids need us now. The culture is throwing so much at us that goes against our fundamental beliefs and faith and morals. And we want to raise kids who stand strong in their moral character, who, you know, whose they are and how to keep their faith out there when everything is going crazy. And we have to be that foundation of trust and support for them at home, even when we are navigating these things for the first time, you know, experiencing it along with them. I think this message, what I hear you saying really, is like this is a journey where we are side by side.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:We are partnering together in life. This is your place to come back to to know that everything's on the table, above the table, nothing's under the rug. Like we can have, you know, reasonable conversations where we respect each other's opinions, politely may disagree, but at the end, love each other through it. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:You know, one last thing, Jordan, that's I think really important is for parents to understand. And that is there are going to be times and seasons in our adult children's lives that we're going to grieve. We may grieve the fact that they made choices that have consequences that will be with them the rest of their lives. But we need to grieve. We don't need to share that grief with our adult children, but we need to be able to mourn the loss so that way we can heal and we can release so we can be fully present for where they are now. And when we don't do that, we hold on tightly to what we thought should have been, and that's when we can become punishing, or that's when we can be wounding. And nothing good comes from that. But most of us don't want to do the grief because we don't want to feel the pain. The fact is we're feeling the pain anyway. But let's go ahead and feel it so we can get it behind us and not carry it with us. And that's what I think most people don't appreciate. The purpose of grief is for us to be able to get through it and not to carry it forever. So I just think it's important that we throw that element into our understanding that, yeah, sometimes things happen and we can't fix that. But we can grieve and move forward and heal.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for giving us permission to just be in our grief and to expect to walk through it, that that's the point of grief is for us to acknowledge our feelings, maybe some disappointments or some wrongs on our own part, but that if we feel those things, then what you're saying is we can heal that as well. And so what you feel you can heal so that then you can get back in a place of reconciliation with your adult child and have that relationship. You can close that gap, you can build that bridge back so that there's not that distance or estrangement because you have worked on your stuff separate and apart from your child, so that you have the ability to truly be present for them, not being present while you're managing all your own stuff that keeps bubbling over because it's not dealt with.
SPEAKER_00:Right. It's so true. And I think one other thought with for parents to pay attention to is that when they start to get angry, they start to get upset, to ask the question, what is it that I'm scared of? If you can get to the root cause of your fear, you can de-escalate your anger and then you can really address the real issue. Because behind all the anger is fear, fear of something. We may not know what it is immediately, but if we'll take the time to step back and really sit with it and ask the Lord, show me what is it that I'm scared of here that's that's causing this reaction that's causing, you know, and and for me, I will tell you when I start to have that fear, I always go back, it's a part of my faith where he's saying, You're not trusting me with this. You know, this is I know this is really close to your heart, and you're not trusting me with this. I'll give you a personal example. My daughter has had severe health issues for a very, very long time, and um, she's dealing with infertility. She's 40 and she was born to be a mom. And I get scared that she won't be one. And I have to take that to him and say, I don't understand, but I'm gonna choose to trust you anyway. And and I'm but I'm scared. And I'm scared because I'm scared for her pain. I'm scared because I know how bad she wants one. And so I'm just gonna tell you, Jesus, I I'm scared for her, and I'm scared for for me. And I just hand it to him. So today I'm gonna hand it to you, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pick it up again. It's yours today. And I let him have it. And I walk away and I just then move forward thinking, okay, Catherine, let's talk about what's true. What's true is he's in he's in the business of restoring health, he's in the business of being of being the giver of life. He is not limited by age. He is not limited. So I go off and saying, let's, we're gonna focus on what's true. And then I can then have a great day because I am now focusing on what is true, on who he is, versus my focus being on circumstances that I have no control over. So I just think life's always about practicing, right? Always about learning, always about being, I think for me, it's always about being really honest. I'm I'm a big believer that God prefers real over good. And so therefore, real for me means being really honest. And sometimes my honesty isn't really pretty. You know, it's really blunt and very direct, but he loves me anyway, just like I love mine anyway. So I just think if we can keep it real, keep it honest, and keep our focus on the one who is in charge of it all, you know, that's that's where our power is, and that's where our strength lies.
SPEAKER_01:And amen. Amen. Catherine Hickam, you have just done a beautiful job of giving us a practical way to let go of some of this stuff. It's surrendering, it's surrendering to God. The worries on our hearts, the fears that plague us and keep us from having a close relationship with our kids is just a personal conversation with God, not this crazy religious words and all these special prayers. You don't have to do it that way. It'll be, like you said, he prefers honest over good and just wants to hear from us, wants to know our hearts. If we knock, the door will be opened and he will answer these prayers. And I love how you also encourage us to remind ourselves of the truth. Because when we get in our fears, we start telling ourselves all these lies that absolutely do not line up with what God is or does for us or wants for our lives. And so just getting back to that place, whether you have those written down somewhere or you have a special book or your Bible or whatever it is that helps you remember the truth of your faith to go back to that. And the way you talk about this, Catherine, is so awesome because it reminds me of the book of yours that I just read. I just read your book, Heaven in Her Arms, Why God Chose Mary to Raise His Son and What It Means for You. This is a beautiful book. Could you talk just a minute about this book and your inspiration for writing it, and then tell people where they could find you and this book so that they can continue on this journey with you? Oh, well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00:Um, you know, every little girl when she grows up, if she has been uh a part of the a Christmas pageant, she always wanted to play the role of Mary, right? Because that was like the star of the nativities. And she was the one who scripture so when I started reading it, I started saying, there's so much here. And so I heard Jesus say to me, I want you to read my story about Mary every day for six months. So I did, every day for six months. And what he showed me, there were 17 verses, and in every verse there was a rich truth about why he selected her because I always was curious, how come she got picked? She was 14. How did she get picked? What made her special? And he showed me in every verse what made her special. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is such, this is so rich and so powerful. And I thought, I just need to let other people know what he showed me. So I sat down and I wrote this book on explaining my impression of why he picked her. But the last chapter in chapter 18 was what he did in her, he can do in us, and that all the qualities that were manifested in who she was is his heart for his people. And so we too could have the very qualities in the essence of her being if we dare to trust him the way she dared to trust him. And so that was my that was my heart for writing that book. You can reach me at parentingadultchildren today.com. I'm I'm also on TikTok and Instagram. And so um I try to get messages out there pretty frequently on how to encourage and address the current issues that I think are really impacting parents of adult children. And next year I do have a book coming out called It's Never Too Late to Be a Great Parent. And so, because I want people to have that kind of hope.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you so much, Catherine. You have really blessed us with just how to bridge this gap in parenting adult children and how we can do things today to stay connected with our children through the years and avoid estrangement and distance and just have the type of love between us that God wants for us. I think you're gonna have a lot of people reaching out to you. I want to repeat your website, parentingadultchildren today dot com, parentingadultchildrentoday.com. And if you want to grab a copy of Catherine's book, you love her style, how she's talking on the podcast today, I can tell this is just who you are, unscripted, just from your heart. Pick up a copy of her book, Heaven in Her Arms, Why God Chose Mary to Raise His Son, and what it means for you. Catherine, it's been such a pleasure. I want to personally thank you for your obedience to God's call on your life, because you shared with us that God put it on your heart to sit down with scripture and read his story every day for six months. If that is the only message you get out of this, I want you to hear, parents, clear time for God in your life because that's how you hear from him. He has a very specific message for you. And it may be something more simple than what Catherine heard. Read something every day for six months. Um, but he wants you to listen and he has a very specific message for each one of us parents. So set aside a little time each day to hear from God and expect a nudge from him in one way or the other. Guys, I'll catch you on another episode of the Families of Character show real soon. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll be back with another episode next week.
