About the Guest
Barbara Rainey
Barbara Rainey is a wife, mother of six adult children (plus three sons-in-law and two daughters-in-law), and “Mimi” to nineteen grandchildren.
After graduating from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, Barbara joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ in 1971. She and her husband, Dennis, whom she married in 1972, are co-founders of FamilyLife, a ministry of Cru that is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Barbara has published articles on family-related topics and is the author of Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember and When Christmas Came. She speaks at FamilyLife’s Weekend to Remember® marriage conferences and is a frequent guest on FamilyLife Today®, a nationally syndicated, daily radio program. She and Dennis are the coauthors of several books, including Growing a Spiritually Strong Family, Starting Your Marriage Right, Moments Together for Couples, The New Building Your Mate’s Self-Esteem, Parenting Today’s Adolescent, Rekindling the Romance, and Moments with You. She co-authored A Mother’s Legacy with her daughter, Ashley Rainey Escue and joined Dennis and their children Rebecca and Samuel on the book So You’re About To Be A Teenager. Barbara has also co-authored Barbara and Susan’s Guide to the Empty Nest, with close friend Susan Yates, and A Symphony in the Dark, written with her daughter, Rebecca Rainey Mutz. And Barbara has written a series focusing on character traits for families, including the titles Growing Together in Gratitude, Growing Together in Courage, Growing Together in Forgiveness, and Growing Together in Truth.
Having faithfully served alongside Dennis for more than 30 years, both in ministry and at home, Barbara has recently launched a new endeavor called Ever Thine Home™. This new line of products, including Christ centered ornaments for Christmas, teaching tools for Lent and Easter, and beautiful additions for your home for thanksgiving and year round makes it easy to express faith at home in a way that is both biblical and beautiful. Her heart for Ever Thine Home is based on the familiar Old Testament instruction:
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6:9, ESV)
You can read more about Barbara’s work at EverThineHome.com.
Find Barbara online on:
Twitter @BarbaraRainey and Facebook facebook.com/raineybarbara
Bruce Johnston
Susan Yates
Susan Yates has written 15 books and speaks both nationally and internationally on the subjects of marriage, parenting, and faith issues. Her books include And Then I Had Kids: Encouragement for Mothers of Young Children; And Then I Had Teenagers: Encouragement for Parents of Teens and Preteens; Barbara and Susan’s Guide to the Empty Nest (with friend Barbara Rainey) and Raising Kids with Character That Lasts (With her husband John). Her two new books are Risky Faith, Becoming Brave Enough to Trust the God who is Bigger Than Your World and the One (Devotional) Book. You can read Susan’s blogs on a variety of topics at susanalexanderyates.com. She also writes for Club31Women.com. For 11 years, she was the Parent child Columnist for “Today’s Christian Women” magazine. She has also written for other publications including, “Thriving Family,” a magazine published by Focus on the Family. She’s the mother of five children (including a set of twins) and the grandmother of 21 (including a set of quadruplets!). Susan and her husband John have been married over 50 years. They live in Falls Church, Virginia, a Washington D.C. suburb where John is the Senior Pastor of The Falls Church Anglican. But what is she really like? Her blood “bleeds blue.” She’s a Tarheel, a graduate of the University of North Carolina. She loves Monday night football, ACC basketball, shooting hoops with her grandsons, hiking and riding horseback with her husband, running-especially on country roads, eating chocolate, playing practical jokes on folks, walking and talking with girl friends. You are not likely to find her at the mall; she’d rather be at the farm. You won’t find her in the kitchen by choice; she’d rather be outdoors with her golden retrievers. Her favorite time of the year is June when all her kids and grandkids are together for a week of “cousins and family camp” in the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia.
About the Host
Michelle Hill
Radio has been ingrained in Michelle for most of her life. This love for radio has taken her to various radio stations and ministries in places like Chicago, Alaska and other snow covered terrains like her hometown in north central Iowa. In 2005 she landed on staff with Cru/FamilyLife®. While at FamilyLife she has overseen the expansion of FamilyLife Today® internationally, assisted with the creation of Passport2Identity™-Womanhood and is now the host of FamilyLife This Week®.
For the last 15+ years Michelle has been mentoring young women and is passionate about helping them find their identity in God. She also has a fascination for snowflakes and the color yellow. Michelle makes her home in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Episode Transcript
Bob: Well, let me ask both of you. If you had to define a mother’s role and responsibility, during the empty nest period, does she have any responsibility before God to continue to be a mother during this period? If so, what she’s supposed to do—
Dennis: That’s a great question, Bob.
Bob: —and not do?
Dennis: That’s a great question.
Susan: That’s a great question; let me give it a stab.
Bob: Okay.
Susan: I think one of the things that will help us balance between being the helicopter or hovering parent and being the hands-off parent would be a scenario like this: your freshman in college calls. She is miserable! She has not been accepted into the right group of girls; a certain boy broke up with her; she doesn’t know how to make a decision about a class—she’s in a tough place for whatever reason.
What she needs to hear the mom or dad say is: “Honey, I have confidence in you. You will make a great decision. I know this is really hard right now, but you’re going to make a great decision.” What our kids need is to know that we have confidence in them, even when they don’t.
They don’t necessarily need us to fix it, to bail them out, or to go and intervene on their behalf. What happens—when we go and intervene on their behalf or we say, “Okay, I’m so sorry you’re so miserable; come home. You don’t have to stay at that school,”—what we’re really saying to them is: “You can’t handle it; you need me.” Even though our intentions are right in that we want to be a good parent, we’re undermining the very thing that we want to give them.
We want to give them confidence. It is really best to do all that we can to have this balance of being interested/validating the feelings; but then quickly saying, “You will make a great decision. You can stick this out”; because that builds their confidence when they may, themselves, be lacking.
Bob: Barbara, what if they’re not calling? What if the kids aren’t calling and asking, “Mom, what do I do in this situation?” Do you just presume that, if they’re not calling, “I wait for them to call,” and “I don’t really have any responsibility, as a mom, unless they call, asking for something”?
Barbara: Well, I think it depends on the kind of setup you have in college. Most college students are there because mom and dad are helping in some form or fashion. They may not be footing the entire bill/they may just be paying for part of it, or they may just be helping you with your car; but there is some involvement, usually, by parents in their lives.
I think if the parents have an involvement/if they are supporting the child, then you have some accountability. I would be calling and saying, “What’s happening? How are you doing? How are classes?” I want to be involved at that level, but I wouldn’t rush up there unless I knew that there was a real urgent situation.
Dennis: In college, I think you have a certain responsibility; because, as you said, Barbara, you’re still supplying some of the financial support. It’s a transition into adulthood at that point. After they get married, I think you’ve got to get off the teeter-totter.
Barbara: Well, even after they graduate from college, and they have their own career or whatever, I think, again, that’s another release point, even if they’re not married. If they’re a single adult, and they’re living in an apartment, paying rent—they’ve got a job and their own income—that’s another release.
Susan: The most awkward time is in the first launching of the empty nest/when they first leave,—
Barbara: Yes.
Susan: —because that’s when you’re a little more involved than you are later.
I think everything changes when your children get married. When your children get married, the priority relationship is no longer your relationship with them.
Dennis: Right.
Susan: But the priority relationship becomes their relationship with their spouse. Your daughter calls you—and she’s married—and she says, “Dad, what kind of car do you think we should buy?” Your response should be, “What does your spouse think?”
Bob: Yes.
Dennis: Yes.
Susan: So that we are giving advice, but our first role is to turn them to each other, not to make them dependent upon us.
[Studio]
Michelle: Great advice from Susan Yates and Barbara Rainey on how to effectively get used to that empty nest, and how to parent our children as they face those transitions of slowly moving into adulthood.
It kind of reminds me of that final scene of Father of the Bride—you know, where George Banks hasn’t gotten to dance with his daughter; he hasn’t gotten to see his daughter at the wedding—but she calls him from the airport. And that is that point, where he finally just gets to release her—to shoot that arrow from the quiver—so to speak.
Parents, it is a hard job! You’ve been raising these kids for so long. Whatever transition you’re facing now, whether it’s from preschool to kindergarten, or grade school to high school, or high school to college, or maybe there’s a wedding in your future; it’s hard, but it’s good.
You know, Susan Yates and Barbara Rainey sat down with Dennis Rainey and Bob Lepine for five whole days, talking about the difficulties and also the joys of releasing your children. We have links to those programs on our website; go to FamilyLifeThisWeek.com; that’s FamilyLifeThisWeek.com.
Hey, next week, we are going to spend a little time with FamilyLife® board member and pastor, Bryan Carter. One of his passions is seeing families thrive. He’s going to be talking about how to build a strong family: “Just what does that take and what does it really look like?” I hope you can join us for that to get a vision for your family.
Thanks for listening! I want to thank the president of FamilyLife, David Robbins, along with our station partners around the country. A big “Thank you!” to our engineer today, Keith Lynch. Thanks to our producer, Marques Holt. Justin Adams is our mastering engineer, and Megan Martin is our production coordinator.
Our program is a production of FamilyLife Today, and our mission is to effectively develop godly families who change the world one home at a time.
I’m Michelle Hill, inviting you to join us again next time for another edition of FamilyLife This Week.
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