46: Your Missionaries Offering is Sufficient with Travis Stephensen

In this episode, my brother, Travis Stephensen, and I discuss the challenges of letting go of judgment—both toward ourselves and our missionaries. We discuss the negative narratives we often tell ourselves, like “I’m not enough” or “Did I do enough to prepare my child for their mission?” and how these feelings can creep into how we view our kids' progress.

Travis shares insights about the unrealistic standards we set and how they can create a gap between where we are and where we think we should be. We discuss the importance of grace, reframing our meager offerings, and the incredible ways God multiplies what we bring—even if it feels small or imperfect.

We also explore how to support missionaries when they feel they’re not measuring up, offering them validation, permission to feel, and a safe space to share their struggles. Finally, we reflect on how gratitude and grounding can shift our perspective, helping both parents and missionaries find peace in the journey.

Wherever you’re at in your missionary mom experience, remember: your feelings are valid, your efforts matter, and we’re here for all of it—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Let’s embrace the messy middle together!

Mentioned in this episode:

• The power of listening without trying to fix
• God’s “impossible math” with our offerings
• How to normalize emotions for yourself and your missionary

Thank you for being here. Let’s keep putting goodness into the world. 💛

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Transcript

0:30

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I have people in my life that just really resonate and I can really understand and hear them and they make a lot of sense to me. And so I brought my brother Travis Stevenson back. He is amazing. And I he, I've had requests for additional additional episodes with him. And so he was gracious enough to join me. Thank you so much, Travis. Welcome. Great to be here. Okay. So we wanted to talk today just about kind of letting go of some of the judgments and some of the things that maybe come up in our own narratives and The way we kind of talk to ourselves, like how we talk so negatively, like I, I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm unworthy. I am not a good enough mom. Did I do enough to get my kid ready for a mission? Is my kid enough? Sometimes we watch our kids serve missions and I've seen a lot of moms worried because they're. Their kid's been out for a year and they're not a trainer or they're not a district leader or they're not a zone leader or they're not a whatever and so they feel like their kid isn't measuring up in some respect. And so we really wanted to just kind of unpack some of that and hopefully bring some goodness and some grace to all of us and to all of our kids. So Travis, tell me what your thoughts are. What do you think about some of all this? Oh, super important topic. And I think, I think just as humans, if we have a conscience and we're trying to be good, Then it's almost like just the act of trying to do the best we can, we automatically set up some sort of a standard for ourself, some sort of an ideal and that ideal judges us. And so we, in our imaginations, I think we have this imaginary, perfect missionary or this perfect family who perfectly prepared their kid. And we compare ourselves to that ideal and we think, Oh, I have, there's such an enormous gulf between me and that ideal and, and the width and the depth of that gulf sometimes causes like a deep, it's like our sense of love for ourself falls into that chasm and we feel lost and we feel like we'll never get there. And we can play some very cruel mind tricks with ourselves of how we, how we interpret that and how we set those expectations and how we judge ourselves once we've set those expectations and, and that can cause a lot of hurt to us, to our kids. And to our families because they see us struggling and they want to move and do different things to try to help buttress us and help us get through our hard feelings. So yeah, super important topic. How do you think what do you think would be like really beneficial if you have, you know, a missionary calling? They're parent and just kind of distraught because, they haven't been made a trainer. They haven't done anything. What do you think would be like really valuable to be able to express or, or to support that missionary? Because I feel like their feelings are valid and being able to question, are they true? Gosh, that's a really interesting question. So if I can frame it, so they're, they're telling you, Hey, I. I'm not living up to some ideal, and I feel embarrassed of myself, or I feel small, or I feel like I You know, maybe it, it would probably be helpful just to ask and try to peel underneath it to see what's driving it, because it could come from a lot of different places. And I think for missionaries, a real common one is, is that they want us as their parents to be proud of them. And they're, they're one thing that they're searching for, or that could be searching for underneath that would be, are you disappointed in me? Mom and dad, or Jesus is my sacrifice is what I'm doing. Is it good enough? And I think that if we can maybe be sensitive, if that's where some of that's coming from, that doesn't matter where they are, we can always reassure our kids that it doesn't matter what they're up to. We love them forever. You know, there's, there are very few things, maybe none that our kids can do that can break our love for them. And I've told my kids that my love is my business, and there's nothing you can do about it. There's nothing you can do to earn it. There's nothing you can do to break it. And it's just It's something that I give to you always. And so I think letting kids know that it's, that their actions and stuff don't determine it, that they're still good enough, it might help with some of that. Yeah. And I think it's always really important to emphasize that, like, it doesn't matter. That you are not called as, you know, whatever, you haven't been a trainer, you know, whatever it is, you are our little meager offering, no matter what it looks like God multiplies it and, and he does impossible math with it. I actually, I actually listened to Dallas Jenkins, the guy that's over. that produced The Chosen. I listened to a devotional that he did at BYU, which was hysterical because he's not LDS, and he kind of started the thing out, and he talked about how people had been coming to his house two by two for 40 years. And, and so he said, and I get to talk to everybody at once and he's like, so this is only fair. Anyway, it was really funny. That's pretty clever. But he talked about like these meager offerings that we we come to the Lord with and they, and that the Lord does this impossible math. And he said, so with the chosen, that's what happened. It was like not funded. He had no, no backing. And this little studio decided to pick up the project and crowdfund it. And he said the most crowdfunding that had ever been raised up into that point had been like 5 million, which was not going to be enough to sustain the show. And so he was like, Okay. And he said him and his wife felt like, well, the Lord's going to bring our meager little offering and do some impossible math with it. And we'll see what happens. And then the show just exploded and, you know, they raised 10 million. so quickly. It was like 3, 400 people had viewed and with 3, 400 people viewing it, they raised 10 million. And I was like, that is crazy. But they were able to raise enough that they could continue and do the next season and whatever. And so he talks about how we, we have these loaves and these fishes and And that is God's responsibility. He takes those and he multiplies it. So if we like can really somehow tell our kids, like, you know, we might be bringing one loaf and one fish, but it doesn't matter how meager that is because for God, like he can take that and multiply it and make it bigger. And it doesn't look bigger the way we think it should. Yeah, that's really beautiful. I really like that. The image that comes to my head is this, like, when our little kids come to us and they have their little macaroni art, and they're like, I made this. And we're like, huh. But as a parent, you look at it and you love it. And you love those little macaroni art things. They're, you know, it's no Picasso, but, but their offering is sufficient. And there's so many times, and that principle, it scales, you know, from when we're little kids with our little offering and our little tithing of like 1 it made out of coins, you know, up to missionaries with their little offering up to us as adults with our little offerings at whatever stage of our life we're at. We always just have these little. Fish, you know, little limp, half bent fish. And we're like, like, this is what I have. And it's my best of. And I know it's kind of pathetic. But I don't know, maybe that's not the point, huh? Maybe the point is, is that our heart's there. And that, and that we're trying. And, I don't know, a story that I, I experienced of somebody who's doing that, that really meant a lot to me, was when I was working, when I was studying surgery, and I was doing trauma, and there was like, just, It was like watching a horror show unfold constantly, like all day, every day. And it was just car crashes and people hit by trains and people chewed up by dogs and people shooting each other and kids stabbing their parents. And people getting scalped by machinery and I mean, just all kinds of horrors. And I remember one time we had a series of people who had been shooting at each other and now they were up on the trauma floor and their families and friends were also up there and they were trying to continue this fight and it just felt like, it felt like living in chaos and living in hell that was filled with violence and hatred. It had been going on and it was so heavy and the hours were so long and I was so tired that I was losing faith in humanity and our meager little offerings to try to hold civilization and humanity together. And I remember asking one of the other surgery residents if they ever got discouraged or if they ever lost faith or hope, and he kind of smiled at me and he goes, Hey, look over there. And I looked over at the nursing station, and there were these, you know, these nurses who are talking to these people and calming everything down. And he goes and look over there, and there's these nurses and their technicians going in the room to change somebody's bandages again. And he said, I don't lose faith in humanity. Because the nurses love is stronger than all the chaos and hell that these people can bring here and he says, and so, how can you ever lose faith. And it was so interesting because I think individually each of them probably thought that their little contribution that day was just a little bent fish. You know, and that they didn't see that they were holding civilization together and that they were holding back this wall of chaos and hatred with their hands and with their hearts. And, and I was like, Oh my gosh, you're right. And so I was like, well, I'll get back to work. You know, I've got my part that I have to do to help hold this too. And I think when we can help people, when they get into those discouraged states where they feel like they're a little offering, and I certainly get into that state and it's just, I think as humans, we get into that state because we have expectations of ourselves. I think a helpful way. To kind of be gentle with ourselves, this is just to remind us that our little offerings do matter, and they do compound, and they do add up, and we don't always know the ways that they hold back the darkness, and they light up little things for everybody around us, and so sometimes we just have to keep, you know, pushing forward a little bit. That's kind of the funny image that came to my head when you're describing that. Yeah. Well, I think that on, I think so many times when our kids are on missions, they don't see the end result of like all the seeds that they sow. And so they don't, they don't get to see what happens, you know, 5, 10, 15 years down the road, or even five months down the road, they don't get to see some of that stuff. And so I can see how it would feel kind of discouraging and, and maybe Very meager, but I think it's always helpful to remind that we have to have like a perspective that's long, a longer lens and maybe what they're, what they're doing and what we're doing as parents by letting them go that. You know, God is working in them and through them, and sometimes it's only them that can touch somebody. Like I even, like the way I introduced Travis is just as somebody that I could listen to and I can hear and the way he talks, it resonates with me. I think we've run into people like that in our life that were like, wait, what? Like all of a sudden that made sense. And it's because we can hear them because the way that they say it and then God's working through them. Yeah, and it's interesting because it's like they don't get to take credit. It's a strange thing because I think if we try to, and we think, Aha, look at this, you know, This thing, look what my hand had wrought. As soon as we start to try to take credit for goodness or kindness. And you know, like those nurses were oblivious to the good that they were doing. They were just at work, who knows what they were thinking, you know, they were probably just thinking, you know, I've got to pick my kids up. I wonder what, what time I'm going to have lunch break. And they weren't seeing that their actions mattered. And that they were incredibly important. And so it's often hard for us to see that in our own lives. And I think one technique that can help us, and it actually helps us to just with cognitive distortion that can lead to a lot of anxiety and depression. and worry and frustration and all those negative sort of things is to just stop every once in a while and just look at the things that we're grateful for. And we teach that to our kids, but I think we have to model it too. And so if we regularly talk about the good things that we can see. And the people around us, we train our own minds to be able to see, it's kind of, I remember hearing once about a guy who went mushroom hunting and he was walking along and this, he could not see any mushrooms anywhere. And the guy who he was mushroom hunting with says, do you see those? And he goes, I, it looks like just a forest floor with leaves everywhere. And he goes, no, look. Here's one right here. Do you see it? And he goes, oh, okay. And he goes, do you see those ones over there? And he goes, no. And he goes, look. You have to look. It's a little bit of a different shade. It's orange. It's not brown. And he goes, oh, I do. And he says, now turn around. Do you see those? And he turned around and all of a sudden there was mushrooms everywhere. And he was like, there was no mushrooms when I walked into this forest, I couldn't see any. And so gratitude does that. It trains our eyes to see that there's wonders and there's magic and there's good around us all the time. And it's super important to be able to see that because when we see that the world is filled with goodness, it's filled with love. It's filled with people do kind things for us. Every day that we don't even recognize, but when we can train our minds to be able to see it, then it really is a, a great counter to the discouragement and the anxiety and the feeling like I don't know, just a heaviness and oppression that can sometimes happen that can make us feel kind of, kind of low. Well, and I think the other thing that's like kind of to piggyback off what you said is when you feel those, whatever emotion, something that's. like I've kind of played with that I find really interesting is you can amplify it. So if for example, if I'm angry about something, I can spin on it enough that I can amplify that anger into rage. And the same thing happens though with gratitude. Oh, nice point. If you can like stop and see it and even try to amplify that gratitude and even like make it bigger as a bigger emotion and spin on it, you can spin it up. And so you can really embody like what that feels like, you know, even when things are hard, you can find small little things, you know, that you can be grateful for, even like. I'm so grateful for a glass of clean water. And you can look at the water and just be like, this is so amazing that we have access to clean water or, you know, just whatever it is, like you can really spin and, and push that emotion and, and expand it so that you can really feel it deep. Yeah, funny thing that comes to my mind when you're saying that was one of the things that I've added to my journal in the morning is is that I write, what were the kind things that my wife did for me, and I have to sit there and think, and, and so I've been doing this this is a new thing that I've added to my journal, just in the last year. Two weeks and it is fascinating because just in those two weeks of forcing my mind to think and meditate upon that, like it like exploded, just like you said, like the number it, it got magnified and I'm like, Oh my gosh, she does like. 15 nice things for me every day that I couldn't see. They were invisible mushrooms. And I was like, what does she do all day anyway? And now I'm like, Oh my gosh, all she does is sit and try to think of things she can do to be kind and supportive and helpful for me. And I was missing all of it. And like, so a weird way of applying that might be, You know, say a missionary calls and their companion is being a little difficult. What if you could focus a weird lens of gratitude and in their journal, say, write down three things that you're grateful for about your companion. I remember I was struggling with one companion and the thing I was grateful for was that he was big. And so it was strange, but I felt safe having a big companion. And I was like, yeah, nobody's going to mess with us because I've got a big companion. He's a big knucklehead, but I am grateful that he's big. And so even if you don't get along with them, they still have features and traits that, you know, we can be grateful for. If we can. train our minds to be able to see that there's still, there's still good that we might otherwise not even be able to see would be blind to it. Yeah. So there, I think when we start to focus and concentrate on like, I haven't done this, I've not done this, then we do expand that. And so what you're saying is like we can refocus so that we are expanding on the goodness and the good things. And okay, so I haven't been a trainer. I haven't been a district leader or a you know, whatever, but these are the things I have done. Like I've, I was able to, you know, teach three lessons and really feel the spirit in a deep way. In a new way, or, you know, whatever it is, so you can really start to, like, instead of seeing, you know, kind of that maybe lack, it's seeing like the gratitude and the things that, you know, have been able to happen because, you know, they're, they're on a mission and they're serving and, and they're bringing their unique talents. Yeah. And a version of that that applies to us as parents is, is that how many of us, you know, we don't have the district leader, the zone leader thing, but how many of us have thought, Oh, I want a calling, but I want an executive calling. Yeah. And then you don't get it. And you're like, Oh, is there something wrong with me? Because I didn't get called as the, whatever that calling is. And so that feeling stays with us, like our whole lives. It's always there. I mean, even in my job, I'm like, why didn't I get picked up for this position or that position? And so to be able to, you know, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with aspiring to try to be more of an individual, but I think we have to aspire inside the confines of what we can control and we can control our gratitude. We can control that I'm going to do kind acts for the people around me. We can control that. I'm going to behave like that version of myself who would be asked to have those sorts of jobs. And it reminds me of, there was a book I read some years ago and it was called, it doesn't take a title to be a leader, which is really nice. And it's just a nice sentiment, but the point of it, it's kind of obvious from the title is that you can. Be a leader by your actions and just by how you behave, but we conflate that actions with the title. And it's not the title that gives us a sense of worth or a sense of goodness or a sense of, you know, I'm worthy and now I'm lovable. We get those sorts of feelings from internal things that are inside of us. those are things that we can control. And so I think teaching us to have an internal locus of control helps make us stronger. And when we focus on the outside things that mission president didn't call me for that, I saw the Bishop didn't call me for that. Then we make ourselves small and. We can, in that small state, we can be filled with quite a bit of resentment, and vindictiveness, and malevolence, and real darkness, and so we have to be very careful with focusing on things outside of us that we have no control over. Yeah, I love, I love just even the title of that book. I think that, I think that like definitely is very, very true. And it makes you think of whoever leaders that you have seen who didn't have a title, but that like really left an impact on you. Yeah, for sure. That's a thought experiment. Yeah, I mean, even just off the top of my head, I remember, like, a couple of months ago, we were having a really exciting lesson, and I don't have any idea who was teaching, but somebody raised their hand, and their contribution, like, what they said, I was like, whoa. You know, like that hit me. And so it, it doesn't, you don't have to be the one leading the class. You don't have to, and it's not that you're like looking for ways, like, ah, I'm going to try and inspire somebody. I think it's like really being in that grounded state where it's coming from a very authentic, real place. And I think that that's really where God works is he works through us when You know, when we're in those like really good clean spaces where it's not, we're not trying to climb some church hierarchical ladder. Yeah. The greasy pole of success. Yeah. We're, we're just trying to come together and worship and, and learn about Christ and his goodness. I mean, I think that we talk a lot about like, how can we be more like Christ and how can we, what would Jesus do? And Jesus never like really aspired to, I mean, he wasn't there to like conquer the Romans and, you know, do all the things that a lot of people thought that he should. The way that he led was in a very humble way and at times very bold, but, but not in the way that most people thought. And so maybe a interesting thought experience experiment would be. How am I able to make an impact on my life and those around me in a very humble, different way than what I normally consider? Like, what would that look like? Yeah. It makes me think that Christ, he never gave himself a title. I think he gave himself like the most humble title. I think he called himself the son of a man. And I remember in seminary reading that and I was like, why does he keep calling himself son of man? Why does he call himself son of God? And it was like I didn't get it because we have put all these other titles on him But when you look at all the titles he has like in the bible, dictionary or topical guide I mean, he's got tons and they've just accumulated over the centuries but that's not what he was looking for. He was looking just to do good and to, he, he showed how having an internal source of I can create goodness from inside of me without a title, without a hierarchical position, without position, power, and authority, just by. Speaking the truth, being as good as I can, and obviously what he was capable of, the amount of good he was capable of was quite formidable. But also quite surprising because he took most people by surprise. Like how he, he how he went about things. So it would be an interesting thought experiment of, of how can I go about this in a different way? Like missionary work that I hadn't considered before. How can I go about supporting my missionary in a way that I haven't supported them before? Like what could that as a parent? Yeah. Like what could that look like? What words have I not used? To encourage or to validate their experience, you know, could be a really interesting. Yeah. And I think the other one, like to me, like if your missionary calls and has those sort of questions to me, the other part is a little bit of a puzzle is, is like, Like right now I'm just saying, Oh yeah, tell them about gratitude, tell them that they can, you know, focus on what they can control themselves. But the other part is, is that I think we also just need sometimes to listen to them. Oh yeah. And so I feel a little bit bad, like saying here, do this and here, do that. Instead of just hearing them out because I don't know, just listening to people is so incredibly powerful. And that's. It doesn't take a title to listen to somebody. It doesn't take a position authority to listen to somebody. And one thing that missionaries can do is they visit people and they can listen to them. And I remember like one of the things I realized on my mission is, is that I was basically like this weird anthropologist and it was like, okay, look at life. Like here's, here's a family, here's another family, here's another family and watch how families behave and look at this type of pain and look at this type of hurt and look at this type of laughter and you just, it's like, it's like a train with faces on it and a train is driving past you and it's speeding up and the faces are just blurring together until they're like a little flip chart. And it's just showing you this little cartoon outline of here's how your future family life could be, or here's possible jobs that you could have in the future. Or here's ways that you could treat your future spouse. Going forward, and these funny cartoon flipbook images, they start to sink inside of you. And all the lessons that I taught, one of the things that I didn't appreciate at the time was, is that they often weren't for the people I was teaching. Who, you know, didn't act on it. They were for me. And it was that I had to hear that lesson over and over and over and over. And so sometimes what our missionaries are experiencing isn't exactly what they think it is. And I thought that was a fun surprise. And that's one of the great things about missions. This is how many surprises they hold. Yeah. Well, and I think that when we are just going back to what you said when we're listening to our missionaries, how many times do we try to solve it and kind of hurry them to feel better? We hurry and send them a talk. And what we're telling them is that they don't have permission to feel some of the feelings they have. And so in, in a previous episode, I talk about making sure that we're validating our own feelings. We want to validate theirs. We want to normalize them. And then we want to give them permission to feel. So it's just something to think about, like, how many times do we like try to hustle them into feeling better by doing whatever, because we're uncomfortable with their discomfort. Oh, gosh, that's a really good, good point. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're like, we start getting kind of, you know, worked up, activated. Our nervous system's like, Oh no, every, everything's going wrong because my missionary is not feeling like successful or whatever, but what if it's okay that whatever they're feeling is totally valid and we're here for all of it. We're here for the good and the not so fun parts. Yeah. And so that would be for us as the parents, when we get those calls, it's like, We can't change their emotions, we can't change their emotional state, and when we feel that, like when, you know, my missionary was calling, and she was telling me about some hard things that she was passing through. My heart obviously opened with compassion towards her because I love my daughter and I wanted her to be happy and to have success and these things were hurting her, but to be able to hold space. One other thing that it does is is that it kind of reminds me of that Buddhist quote, it sets an example that storms don't hurt the sky. And if your mind can be like the sky, then whether storms come and storms go, but the mind is still there, you know, and your spirit is still there. And, and if we can set that sort of an example, when our kids bring us a storm that we can stay composed, it we have the words that we use and we have the ability to listen, but we also have just our example of how we ourselves process hardships and hard emotions. And our kids are paying attention to that too. Yeah. And, and like giving them the space so that they can digest and cause all of our emotions, none of them stay, they, they ebb and flow. And so if we can give them the space, you know, on that movie inside out to, you know for people that have seen it, it's you know, they take some of the emotions and they stuff them in the jar and they're like, ah, let us out, you know, but how many times do we do that where we're like stuffing our own emotions and trying to help our missionaries stuff theirs into the jar instead of them having the full richness of all of them. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it, it's an interesting sort of thought experiment to think of your emotions in a It was just slightly separate from you. And so you're not your emotions, you're the thing that's watching them or observing them. And if you could picture your emotional self stepping outside of you, for me, it would look like a young man or young kid who's scared. And maybe he's, you know, super happy and bouncing off the walls, but maybe he's just standing there with a quivering lip and slumped shoulders and to be able to take your emotions and give them a big hug and say, Hey, emotions. You're okay. I got you. I got you. And there's a part inside of us. It's like our spirit is big enough to handle our own feelings and to have compassion that, you know, this may be the first time we felt feelings. And so there's, they're very strong sensations. So, I mean, some of the strongest think of feelings of love and feelings of, Sadness and feelings of depression and despair and feelings of joy and things of wonder and odd curiosity, like all of these things, some of them are incredibly powerful. And they can feel like really kind of overwhelming in our body. But I think that if you think about if you didn't have a body and you didn't feel them, then you miss out on all of that. experience. And so what if the emotional part of our, you know, earthly experience, what if that's part of it is being able to embrace and really, really give those emotions a hug and be like, I'm here for all of this, all of you guys. And I want to be, yeah. And I want to be able to feel. What sadness feels like or disappointment in my body, like to my core so that I know what it feels like, because, you know, there's a time when we're going to leave earth, we're going to leave this planet for a minute, and we're not going to have a body. And are we going to miss those emotions? I've wondered, am I going to miss this? I'm, am I going to miss this? I mean, if I, if I don't get the feel, the emotion of happiness and laughter and goodness, and also sadness and disappointment and anxiety, yeah, like, and joy and awe. Where you're just standing in like amazement. And so I think our bodies are kind of those amplifiers for those emotions. And so if we can embrace part of that experience, like just think of how much richer and how much more depth our experience is with our body. Yeah. Yeah. That's really a fun experiment. I've been doing a lot of thought experimenting like a mad scientist lab in here. Yeah. Going through all of the things. No, but it's so, I just think there's like so, there's so many things that we can really start to turn over and, and to consider and, and not really get stuck in one emotion or even the emotion of like anxiety. Getting stuck and feeling anxious about like what's happening for our missionary or you know in their experience Like just being able to be like this is part of it. Whatever it is, and it's valid and it's normal You know, yeah, and and I think when you normalize it it takes a lot of the Pressure out of the tires, I guess. And it's like, ah, okay, this is normal. Here's a normal person having a normal experience. Maybe it's an abnormal situation, but your reaction to abnormal situations is normal. Yeah. Yeah. And it's okay. Put anybody in that weird situation and see how they do. Yeah. Well, and I think sometimes it's, it's nice when somebody says that. This is normal because sometimes we feel abnormal in our own emotions. We're like, I shouldn't feel this way. I should be whatever, wherever. And somebody says like, I mean, of course you're feeling this way. Like, like this is totally normal, you know, to feel this. And then you're like, Oh, it's, it is like being granted permission that like, there's nothing wrong with your emotions, like, and not that you're trying to justify them, which is different than just normalizing, which I talked about in another episode. And so I kind of went a little bit more in depth, super helpful to normalize. Yeah. Yeah. I just, in my mind, I'm just picturing like all the listeners out there and their weekly phone calls with their missionaries. And the range of different emotions that must come across in those phone calls. And I picture all these parents with their hearts just like wide open, like their hearts are trying to hug their kid through Zoom, you know, or Facebook Messenger, whatever they use. And and they're like, I hear all your hurt and I hear all your challenges and I love you. I just love you. And the kid being like, ah, I know you love me. That's all I'm talking about right now. I know, but like when we're like sometimes on our missionaries, I know when my missionaries call and they're struggling and they're kind of in an activated state, How many times have we met their activated state and raised them? Like, Oh, you're activated. Now I'm activated. And now like, I've got to go running around doing whatever that feels productive, as opposed to just being open to it and being grounded and being like, this is part of it. And I'm here for it. And then you're not, you're, then you don't have two people running around in an activated state. And When they're talking to you, it helps them so much be able to co regulate, but they can't do that if you get activated with them. Because then you just have two people drowning in anxiety or whatever. And so if you can kind of stay put together and be there and be open to all of it without solving it, then And, you know, that helps them regulate down into like more of a grounded place quicker. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. It is interesting just to kind of, I mean, my mind kind of turns back over the course of this conversation and thinks, you know, you have missionaries and us as parents who start off struggling with these feelings that they're not quite good enough. And then I think we've talked about different ways to, they, you know, bubble up. And I would hope that, you know, for people who are listening to this, that, that some ideas have bubbled up for them too. Just like, as we were talking, we had ideas that as they're listening, they're like, Oh, what about this? Or I would do that. Or this is something that works well for me and my child. And I would say, you know, pay attention to those ideas. They, they bubble up for a reason. And they, it's like sometimes we have great wisdom, and I think that's part of the way that the still small voice actually works. Is that we get these ideas and we get these insights from deep inside of ourselves and those are gifts to guide us and to help eliminate our paths here and help us with these, I don't know, it's like when we're lost in this dark and mysterious forest, and they're like, there's a little, I don't know, lightning bugs that light up a certain path and you're like, oh, let me follow where these go. And so, you know, if people, as they were hearing about us talking about gratitude or the other different thought experiments of holding space. For our kids, if they had other ideas that came up, I, I think that those are also valid, you know, and those, if they came up for you, those are, those are your own personal little revelations and please pay attention to them. Yeah. I think that's so valuable. So many times we look for inspiration outside of us and which it for sure comes that way too, but also inside of us and, and what, what is coming up for us? Yeah. Absolutely. This has been so good. Yeah. I think, you know, one of the ways that that happens is, is that we marinate our minds in the ideas that can give us additional insights. And so for anybody who's out there listening first of all, just know about my deep admiration and respect, because if you would, if you're tuning in to a podcast, To find a little thing to help you and you marinate your mind and some of the ideas that Michelle presents and I've listened to her podcast and I have all kinds of insights and thoughts as she's talking and I think the things that she teaches are incredibly engaging, but Know that like the fact that you're seeking those types of things, you're seeking those types of help. It shows your mind's orientation, and it shows that if that's what you're seeking, you will find the answers you're looking for. And I'm not saying just on this podcast, of course, but you'll find them Because your mind is looking for them. It's like a little cat on a hunt. Yeah. Yeah. And when our brain gets busy looking for something, it's working hard to find it. And I think it will, I think we'll find it. So man, this has been so great. Such a good conversation. And I just want to also mention before we wrap this up whatever you're feeling as a about your Kids mission is also valid. And if you have moments of frustration, or, you know, kind of maybe shaking your fist at heaven, like all of that is valid and God is big enough to take all of it and to hear and listen to all of it. And so You definitely are normal. Missions are not normal. You're a very obscure two year adventure or 18 month adventure that is very hard to wrap our minds around. And I mean, It's a very intense experience. And so whatever you're experiencing, the good, the bad, and the ugly, we're here for all of it. We're here for all of it. And so thank you so much, Travis, for joining me and for sharing some of your insights. They're invaluable. No, I'm happy. Thank you so much for inviting me back. I love you, Michelle. Hope you have a good rest of your. Podcast day All right, everybody try and put some goodness in the world this week and we will see you next week, bye