Day 130: Mother's Day! With Guest Hosts Kayla and Niki Packer

May 10 

Today's Connected Readings: 

• 1 Samuel 2:1-10;  25:1-38
• 2 Kings 22:3-20/2 Chronicles 34:14-33
• Luke 1:46-56, 8:1-3
• Acts 16:11-15, 16:40 
• 2 Timothy 1:3-5

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hello and welcome to day 130 of The Canon Connected. This is episode 130, and I am obviously not Gaudi. Um, I'm Kayla Cannon. I'm his wife, and I have with me my friend Nikki. Um, and we are here today just to talk a little bit about the women of the Bible and a little bit about motherhood. Um, as today is Mother Day, Mother's Day. So I will go ahead and let Nikki introduce herself.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Hi, my name is Nikki Packer. Um, my husband is the pastor at Jesus Center Insessor. Um, I have five kids. The they range from 24 to 13. Um, I love the Bible, I love the church, and I especially love Kayla and Gowdy. And they have been a huge blessing to us over the years, and uh it's just really good to have people that are walking a similar path than you. We're a little bit older than them, but our kids are definitely older than theirs. But um, it it's just we've experienced some similar things and we can walk together. And it's and literally Kayla and I walk together in the mornings sometimes, so it's really good.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Yeah. Um, and like she said, we've been friends for a couple years now at this point, and we've spent a lot of time together, especially when Gaudi and I were in ministry and just having someone else in ministry has been really powerful. And um, Gaudi has alluded to the fact that we do have two small children. Um, I have a seven-year-old and a three-year-old. So we are in different parts of our um lives and parenting and things like that. But we thought we would just come today and talk a little bit about the women of the Bible and a little bit about motherhood, um, especially as the last two days have been all about strong women in the Bible. And some of the ones that you would have read about today were Hannah, Abigail, Hulda, Mary, and then um Timothy's grandmother and mother Lois and Eunice. Um, so we're gonna just talk a little bit about them and their stories and the impacts they've had on us, and then we have some questions and ideas about motherhood too. So um, do you want to go ahead and talk about Abigail since you brought her up? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

Uh when Gaudi asked me, I was trying to think like, what are some of my favorite women of the Bible? And I don't like it when somebody asks me, like, what's your favorite? Really anything. The only thing I have a favorite of is food and its donuts. And everybody knows that. That that's really the only thing because I can't, I'm not a good decision maker. So there's so many good women of the Bible. But uh as I was um thinking about it, really Abigail is one of them that's up there on top of the top of my list. So it was interesting that I even it was before I found out that that was today's reading um that I thought of Abigail. But I really just I like her because she's bold and brave. But the two things I think about her are peace. She was a peacemaker and she was married to somebody who wasn't really a peacemaker for so long. Nabal was not really the nicest guy. And uh she kind of did what she had to do, maybe went around him a little bit and brought the peace. And so I love that. But she also brought food. So I love that. My two favorite things in the world really are food and peace. I love peace and I love food stuff.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, I think for me, one of my favorites, um, and it's been for a long time, has been Esther. There was a summer when I was in college that I was a counselor, and our summer was spent um on Esther every week of camp. And the idea for such a time as this, and just how she rose to a calling that she really was not prepared for, and she put her life on the line um for her people and for her God and held fast to her faith, even when um, you know, it didn't seem like that was gonna be the easy path at all. I mean, Mordecai kind of had to tell her, like, if you don't do this, someone else will rise up for it. So it's either you or someone else, um, and then you're, you know, what do you want your legacy, I guess, to be? And how do you want to carry your faith? And so that's been just a reminder for me. I mean, she did something that was really hard. Um, and for reminder me that, you know, the Lord will give me the faith and strength to do hard things like Esther did. So she's one of the ones for me for sure. Um, but we're also just gonna talk a little bit too about um some motherhood things as well, since it is Mother's Day. And I know that not every woman is a mother. And I know that that could be for a variety of reasons, and I I want to treat that carefully and honor that and know that you are seen and you are heard if that is you and that you have that longing and the Lord hasn't given that to you yet. But I still think in some of the lessons that I've learned in motherhood, and maybe the lessons that Nikki's gonna share too, and the way the Lord has spoken to that, there's truth in that that can navigate that can go beyond just motherhood. And I think that's the biggest powerful thing for me is motherhood is definitely my ministry to my children, but it's been a tool to refine me as a Christian too. And so we kind of want to delve into a couple of moms and just some questions that go along with those. Um, the so the first one that um, and it was one of the readings today was Hannah. Um, you know, she she was a woman who was longing for motherhood and her womb was barren and she was begging the Lord for a child so much so that Eli thought that she was drunk there at the temple. Um, and so how um I guess, Nikki, what the question I have for us is how do we keep our faith strong when motherhood doesn't look like what we expected motherhood to look like?

SPEAKER_02 5:34

It's a really good question and a hard one. Yeah. I mean, it's true, I think, for all of life, even not just motherhood, but is learning to accept the things that God gives us instead of demanding the things that we think we want. And uh really he created me, so he knows me better than I know myself. And so even if it doesn't look like I thought it would, I do still think it's gonna be better. And uh trusting God that he does have good in store for me. And uh it's just all a matter, it all comes back to trust and just trusting him for his timing, for the the perfect plan. And it's just really hard though. And I know that in the middle of it, that doesn't really help anything. You're like, well, that yes, trust God, that's the the right answer. But um, it does come down to that, and you just do it even when you don't feel like it.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

And I think there's like the as you're saying that, I feel like we don't always we want motherhood to be this wonderful, beautiful thing, but and it is, don't get me wrong. But there is a level of grief to when your motherhood doesn't look like what you wanted your motherhood to look like. Um, and I think I spoke to that a little bit too when the last time I was on the podcast with Gowdy about the picture perfect life with our oldest, um, and the diagnoses that he got when, you know, he was 18 months old, and that was not part of my motherhood journey at all. Um, but like kind of just to echo what you said, it came down to faith. Like, am I going to trust the Lord in this season when life doesn't look like what I wanted it to? And I think that's the same thing with Hannah, and that's where it kind of deviates from motherhood too. It's am I going to trust God when things don't look like I planned for them to? And that's really not a fun place to be. Um, I know I've been there more in my life than I thought that I would. Um, but that's also what the Lord has used to refine me in my faith too, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

I definitely agree with that. He he cleans out some of those spaces that you didn't even know were a little dusty, and it just um he uses those circumstances in life that are different than we anticipated and don't look like we thought. But he does refine us and that's it's a beautiful process, but not really while you're going through it. Yeah, no, it's it's not fun at all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Um, and then then another thing that I thought of um as just busy women, I think. Because Hannah is is taking time to pray at the temple, but we thankfully, um, you know, we don't really have to do that anymore. Thankfully the the curtain is torn. And so as women, I know for me, prior to children and now the having children, like I'm very busy. I am a I'm a sixth grade teacher. Um, I start my day around 4:45, 5 o'clock, and I know that you start your mornings really early too. Um, especially even being in ministry and and working. And so, how do we, as busy moms and busy women and busy individuals, because that's kind of the American way these days, is how um do we create prayer habits that are meaningful for us during those times?

SPEAKER_02 8:39

That's a great question. I mean, for me, it does look like getting up early in the morning and doing it before my family is um awake and bothering me. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

No, no, it's true.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

We're honest. Yes, it's just honest. So that it does look like that. It doesn't look like that for everyone. Um, but I also think they're even if you have that time in the morning, it's easy to just be like, okay, you're I'm hitting the day running, and then you've lost all the good that happened with you and God that morning. And so you really do have to go back and center yourself all throughout the day. And and it's just a matter of practicing the presence of God that you practice it while you you, you know, you pray and talk to God while you're washing the dishes or while you're driving to work or while you're doing a mundane. There's a few tasks in my job that are just super mundane. I can sort of do them blindly. And so you just do kind of take him along with you and never just leave him at, you know, where you were at your little prayer closet and just leave him there for the next time you can meet there.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, and that's been the biggest thing for me too, is like, or like even, I mean, like I said, I teach sixth grade. So my um emotions run wild all day long with them. I love them dearly, but sometimes that means I'm taking a beat at the copier or I'm I have a post-it note that sticks on my desk that reminds me of like I'm needing to center myself in the presence of the Lord when I'm in the middle of the insanity of teaching every single day. Um, and I think that's kind of like what I was thinking with this question too, is just the reminding myself that I can go to him at any point in time. Um, and be, I mean, and we can we can pour out our deepest and um, I mean, darkest needs to him. None of it scares him. Um, one of the biggest things of prayer that's really the Lord's really been using motherhood to teach me recently is my children love to talk to me at the same time, one over the other. My three-year-old does not understand when my seven-year-old's talking. Like, I cannot, I have two ears, but I cannot process all the information at one time. And I was been thinking about this recently that God can hear all of us all the time. You know, it's like he can hear all of his children. And I'm just like, I my finite abilities cannot do this, even though I love them both so much. How grateful I am that his attention is completely on me, even when he may have, you know, hundreds of my brothers and sisters in Christ praying to him at the same time as well. So that's just a tight blessing. I guess it's been, you know, like I said, motherhood's refining me, not me refining motherhood or me refining always my children. Um, another woman of the Bible that I I think sometimes gets overlooked, but I really do love her story. And it's just for a blip. It really is, um, is Yocabed, Moses' mom. Um, and you know, she had to put her, she had faith enough to keep him from from the the Egyptians, and then she puts him in the basket and sends him, and she ultimately releases control of the future of her child. How do we this is like a loaded question, but how do we do that either with our own lives if we're not in motherhood or if we're doing that with our own children? Like, what does that look like practically?

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Yeah, it that is really a tough thing, I think, especially for moms, because we usually kind of have a hand on everything. We know where everybody's at. I know where all my life 360 people are right now. And and so I think it is um really hard as a mother to let that go. But I also think it's so good for our kids and for the people around us to be able to fail and to make mistakes. And they're never gonna learn that if we're protecting them or, you know, making their path easy. And um I will say that is probably one of my biggest um uh goals, I guess, in motherhood is independent children and um letting them kind of fall down on their own and get back up and learning that really it is okay to fall down. It is okay to fail. And I think a lot of us don't feel like it we can fail. And so then you um, you know, spend your whole life trying to be perfect and trying to make everybody happy all the time. And it's okay to say I failed at this and and uh I want my kids to learn that too. So I think she is a great example of that. Like, okay, I don't know what's gonna happen to my child, but I put him in God's hands and I trust that God loves him more than I do. And God will take care of him and whatever his future looks like, it'll be for his good. And I'm sure there were times in there whenever he was exiled or you know, when he that she was like, Is this the plan? And I didn't really I don't think he's really you're really taking care of him, God. But um you can see, of course, now on this side how greatly God used Moses.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

For sure. I mean, that's in like for me, I wrote down like re- releasing control. And I've talked about how I'm a control freak on here. Nikki knows that part about me very well, probably just as well as anybody else, and how that's so hard for me. But I have learned as I'm going through, you know, just with me, not necessarily through motherhood, just how if I don't release control, there's no room for grace. You know, I have to have have to live in the grace uh that the Lord gives me. And in order to do that, that means I have to surrender everything to him. And I think that's really kind of what it looks like when we look at all these women and what made them so great is that they surrendered, you know, like it didn't matter motherhood or not, like are were they surrendering to what he had for them? And I think if I'm able to, and I'm kind of just preaching to myself at this point, like if I'm able to surrender in everything, then then I'm gonna be hopefully fulfilling what the Lord has for me.

unknown 14:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Um, the next woman I have on my list is probably the most prominent woman of the Bible, if I were were to say that. Um, and it's Mother Mary, it's Jesus' mom. Um, she is so, I mean, the more, especially now as a mom, and I understand her a little bit better, I think, but I don't think I could truly ever fully understand her because of who she gave birth to, um, and then what she had to watch her son do. Um, but we don't, we were talking about this prior and I was thinking about we really don't see her her acts as a mother very much in the Bible. We see, you know, the pregnancy and then we know that she gives birth, but really there's not much from zero to two about Jesus. There's that little blip when they go into Egypt, then there's the blip uh when he's 12 and he's missing and he's at the temple. But other than that, we really don't know much of the day-to-day. But that also have to believe, you know, she she raised the son of God. And that what do you think are the everyday things that we do in our lives that um have the most impact on eternity? And I phrase it that way, in case, you know, some of the people, you know, we do have men that listen to this and women who are not mothers. Like, how are your everyday acts impacting eternity either for yourself or for someone within your sphere of influence?

SPEAKER_02 15:42

I kind of think it's mostly the things that we do over and over. And even though I, you know, when I was younger, I spent a lot of time trying to get out of those rote things that you just do for tradition's sake or whatever. But the older I get, the more I realize those things that I do every day are actually the most life-changing things. Um, you know, you might go train for half marathon or a um full one or some big thing event that you're doing. And that's great, but it's really more walking together every morning at four or five o'clock in the morning, or the um the things that you do for 15 or 20 years that transform your body and especially your spiritual self. So um I do think even though it's not fun and it's not, it's just the things that we do over and over again that really kind of impact um they they shape our character, and that's what shapes eternity and the people around us, and that makes us love people better whenever we are uh walking more in line with what God wants and who God created us to be. And I think those are probably more shaped by the mundane things that we do over and over.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Yeah, I think Gaudi has a saying, like the menial, everyday menial something mundane things where and that's where like sometimes you're fulfilling the will of the Lord the most is in those tasks. Like that may be, you know, if you're a teacher that is gonna be um giving grace to those kiddos every single day and the way you run your classroom and the way that you teach and the way that you grade papers and how you, you know, if you got to give a kid a bad grade, how are you doing that? What do you how are you going about that? Or if you, you know, um work in a different, you know, if you're a nurse, how are you treating patients? And it just, it's the moment by moment things that we are not ever gonna be written down. I mean, the moment by moment parenting decisions of Mary were not written down. Her moment by moment, we don't even really know what she was doing moment by moment to be chosen by the Lord either. Um, and so just I think that's it. It's the it's everyday small things that are you getting up and spending time with the Lord each morning? Are you bringing in prayer, like when you're getting overwhelmed, you know? And I think if who your sphere of influence, whether that be your children or the people you work with or the people of your church community, will be discipled by those, like knowing that you're that type of person. And that's what you do in in those moments when things are difficult. Oh, well, she goes to the Lord. You can see you can see it, like she pauses before she speaks, or you know, things like that, which I'm not great at doing. I easily fly off the handle, like I have to rein it in. But um, I know like those are things I've really tried to, I guess, practice more and more is like this, the moment-to-moment decisions and making sure the Lord is present in each one of those. And I think that's the way Mary would have done that.

unknown 18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

And then there's one more group, it's a group of women, um, two women. Um, it's Moses, or not, sorry, my notes distracted me. It's Timothy's grandmother and his mother, Lois and Eunice, which were in the second Timothy passage, and they're just in there for a blip. Like, I think when he's writing to Timothy, Paul is just briefly mentioning like the the legacy that his mother and grandmother have left him in the faith. And so how do we pass down our faith? And not that we ever actually choose faith for someone, but how do we set someone up, our children or someone in our sphere of influence, niece, nephew, friend? How do we impact them the way Lewis and Eunice did to be become faithful individuals um with their their, you know, and they can have a strong spiritual quote unquote heritage?

SPEAKER_02 19:17

That's a great question too. Um you know, I I Kirk says this, but it's not original. So Kirk and Gowdy probably know who wrote this originally, but that faith um is not really taught, but caught. And so I think it's really just living where what your faith is. And whenever your kids and the people around you see that, then that's transformative to them. Um and I also I think about um some of the most impactful people on my children's lives, and they are not birth mothers uh to them or to anyone, but you can have such an impact on the people and the kids around you. And my kids have had some really good surrogate mothers and just people around them to love them and to just sort of model what it looks like to follow Jesus and model what it looks like in the face of persecution or suffering or hardship, but to follow God and trust him and say, I I just I I give it to you, God. And so because they've had that opportunity, that uh example, I feel like it's easier to catch that and then to catch on whenever you just see it around you.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

I like that the the it's what do you say, it's not taught, it's caught. I like that. I I think I've heard Gaudi say that, or maybe even Kirk say that at some point. But that's I mean, that's that sums it up. Like you I can't I can't force my children to believe. I cannot force them into having faith, but all I can do is model for them every single day what that looks like. And even, you know, I definitely talk about, I mean, I'm a teacher, I talk about my my students like they're my kids too. And every day, like I cannot overtly speak about my faith in my classroom, but I can live a very specific way and treat them with you know dignity and respect and hopefully treat them, teach them something about um the faith through that because the Lord can use anything. I mean, it doesn't have to be, you know, motherhood or it doesn't have to be at a church or anything like that. So I really like that idea. Is there anything else before we kind of close out about women and women of the Bible and motherhood or anything that you would want to share? And it's okay if not, because I'm feeling like we covered a lot. Yeah, I think it was good. Yeah, I think so too. Um, one thing that I would like to do, if that's okay with you, I would definitely just like to close in prayer. Um, do you want to lead the prayer or do you want me to? I don't mind you. Sure. Okay. I'll go ahead. Definitely Father, I do thank you for this day. And I thank you for my friend Nikki and just the influence that she's had on me. Um, and I thank you for the canon connected and the way that you're using it to just influence others as well. Um, and the way that it's spoken to me, you know, just the things that my family's been doing with it this year and the way it's impacted me. And Lord, I pray that you would just be um. With all the mothers and the women and anyone else who is and the men that are listening to this too and just um help there to be, I guess, something that we can glean from this today, that we can glean from your word and studying the women of the Bible and that we can each take with us and carry with us. Lord, I just pray that you um just guide us and protect us and help us to have our hearts and minds open to you at all times. And I just again thank you for this day. In your name I pray, Lord, amen. All right, we will see you tomorrow for episode 131 of the Canon Connected, where we will read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections. Thank you.