Rock Solid Families
Rock Solid Families
Introducing Bridgitte Price: From Family Roots to Coaching at Rock Solid Families - Ep 299
Introducing Bridgitte Price - Assistant Executive Director!
It's always exciting to add new people to your staff. New ideas, new energy, and new talents are just the tip of the iceberg about what Bridgitte is already bringing to Rock Solid Families.
Bridgitte comes to Rock Solid Families with past experiences as a school counselor at Batesville Community Schools. She has also worked with women and children through Safe Passage. And, she and her husband have been involved with Young Life in their local community. From her past work experience, it is evident that Bridgette has a heart for people and her local community.
Bridgette states that one of the biggest reasons she has made the move to Rock Solid Families is because she will get the opportunity to introduce God and all his Word to her clients. The greatest tool in the tool box will now be at her finger tips!
More specifically Bridgette will be working with children, adolescent girls, and young women and moms. She brings a smile and great enthusiasm into the office. She is currently seeing clients and making herself more available to those in need. If you have questions about working with Bridgitte or for Rock Solid Families, please call us at 812-576-7625.
https://rocksolidfamilies.org
#Rocksolidfamilies, #familytherapy, #marriagecounseling, #parenting, #faithbasedcounseling, #counseling, #Strongdads, #coaching, #lifecoach, #lifecoaching, #marriagecoaching, #marriageandfamily, #control, #security, #respect, #affection, #love, #purpose, #faith, #affairs, #infidelity
Welcome to the Rock Solid Families podcast. I am Linda Hutchinson here with my husband, merle, and a very special guest, bridget Price. Welcome, bridget, thank you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we've got our new assistant director here. Is this the roast?
Speaker 2:No, we're not. We're going to get the roast.
Speaker 3:This is roast Bridget Day. No, wait a second Time out.
Speaker 1:We are not going to scare her like that. You have been saying this for weeks and weeks.
Speaker 3:But this is so much fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not going to roast Bridget. We're here to introduce her to our audience. We're here to help our listeners kind of understand a little bit more who she is, you know.
Speaker 3:All right, all right, all right. So we'll get into that a little bit. We are excited to introduce Bridget to our audience out there. Introduce Bridget to our audience out there. Bridget is bringing a lot of different things to the show here Her ability to counsel, but also the demographic that you'll work with. So we're going to be talking about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:If you notice, she's a female, so it's two against one. Again, always, always, you are outnumbered. Honey, all right, but before we do, we've got to thank our sponsors, thank our sponsors.
Speaker 3:So we want to thank casey's outdoor solutions, maxwell construction and the hoosier ice house. So thanks to those guys for sponsoring the work we do here at rock solid families. And so also we just want to thank all of you out there that are watching and listening. Uh, thank you for continuing to share our shows, to give us five star ratings and to give us those thumbs up. We greatly appreciate that. That helps us get the message out. So we got a couple of little announcements.
Speaker 3:It looks like so maybe we should go through some of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is August, and so with August comes a new parenting class. Our Families Rock parenting class is always the fourth Sunday or fourth Saturday of the month, and so, if you're looking ahead, in the end of August, august 24th, we will be at the Lawrenceburg Firehouse on Tate Street, lawrenceburg, indiana, from 830 to 12. And that is our monthly. It's a reoccurring class, so if you've been there once, you've seen it. But it really is.
Speaker 1:It's for parenting helping you to get on a united front, co-parenting situations with blended families or divorced couples, and so we really. If that's something that you could benefit from, then check us out. You can learn more on our website, rocksolidfamiliesorg. Just top services and Families. Rock is under that.
Speaker 3:All right. So in our area we are starting the school year, and so if you need a little jumpstart on how to get your year started right for your kids. Check out our episode 297, episode number 297, where we just gave some pointers about how to get things started right Everything from routines and structure, how to handle your kids, how to interact with the teachers. So there's some great stuff on there, so go check out that episode 297.
Speaker 1:So we don't have anything there about parents tearing up, but today was your daughter's first day of preschool today, wasn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 2:So today was our daughter's first day of preschool, and we live in Batesville, indiana, so I cried all the way from Batesville to.
Speaker 1:St Leon today. She's full of emotions today.
Speaker 3:And you know, I looked at her and I said it's going to be all right, it's no big deal. Exactly what your husband said. I feel your pain.
Speaker 1:I remember those days, but did you cry when ours went off this year? But you know what? I had boys. We had boys first off, and so I think they're different. Girls sometimes are more emotional to begin with. So, so, Bridget, you know again. Thank you so much for being here, but tell us a little bit about Bridget. Where are you from? Where did you grow up?
Speaker 2:Sure yeah. So I am from Brussels, Indiana. I went to high school at South Ripley High School. Go Raiders yeah, so we had about like maybe 73 in our class. It was pretty small and I love that. I felt like it was nice knowing everyone and so I went to college at University of Indianapolis. For probably the same reason I always knew someone whenever I was walking to class. So I love the small town feel of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I still have some family members that live in Versailles, so we go there every once in a while.
Speaker 1:But tell us about your family growing up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so growing up it was my mom, my mom, dad and I have a twin sister, brianne, and my parents uh got ultimately got divorced when we were in middle school, but since then, going into high school and college, they got remarried, so now we have several step siblings. Our family is pretty big on both sides, um, but I would say throughout most of my life it's been brianne and I'm my twin sister and she's always been my best friend person. I talk to every day so yeah. So you and your sister.
Speaker 3:Is she your twin?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we do not look alike.
Speaker 3:You're not identical.
Speaker 2:No we are fraternal.
Speaker 3:Who's oldest?
Speaker 2:I am 29 minutes old.
Speaker 3:That's a big deal.
Speaker 1:29 minutes, that's a big deal in twin world, wow, yeah, twin world, that that so I don't know if you know, but merle has younger twin brothers, so he's a boy with brothers who are twins. So it's always like the twins the girls. And then there was merle.
Speaker 3:Yeah and well, they were two minutes apart. Yeah, and that two minutes has lasted a lifetime yeah hey, hey, you know, the old one, the young one right, yeah, so that's pretty fun.
Speaker 1:So if your mom was here, bridget, what kind of kid were you Like? What would she say?
Speaker 2:When I saw these questions that you shared with me the other day, I texted my mom because I knew, without a doubt, what she would say, and so I said like tell me what you would say. And she said why don't you tell me what you think I'll say?
Speaker 3:And I'll thumbs up if it's true and thumbs down if it's not true.
Speaker 2:So I said I think that you described me as being strong-willed, which we just talked about strong-willed children this morning. Strong-willed, independent. I was proud to be independent as a high school student and I think she would say I'd always like to have the last word. So I don't know that I would be proud of those characteristics.
Speaker 1:But you know what, though I'm so glad we were actually hun, we just left the pregnancy center where we were client advocate. She was shadowing and we worked with a mom today, and the subject was strong-willed children.
Speaker 2:So we were talking about that. So how fitting God is just so good, my mom thumbs up to all those things. Yeah, she does she thumbs up?
Speaker 1:to those.
Speaker 3:I agree so here I sit at a table with two strong-willed women, two women who want to get the last word.
Speaker 1:Wait a second. My mom's not around anymore to ask her, but that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Oh, we would have to ask your mom. I've lived with you for long enough, I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so okay. So you grew up with a twin, just you and your sister, and then you have some step-siblings.
Speaker 2:but now, how about your family? Now? Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, so my family now. My husband's name is Garrett. We got married in 2018. We met in Batesville. We actually met through mutual friends at Amex while at the coffee shop where I was working at the time, and since then we have been blessed with a daughter named Berkeley, who we'd mentioned earlier, started preschool today. She'll be four in October. So this is just a whole new season for us of school and all the things.
Speaker 2:We live in Batesville. So we moved. We lived in Harrison our first year of marriage and we moved back to Batesville because at the time, we were both young life leaders. So we just felt like if we're going to do ministry, we need to be in community with these high schoolers. So that took us back to Batesville. Now Garrett works in Batesville, at Gilman's actually, and he coaches the soccer team at the high school. We're on the Young Life committee now and we're not leading, but we're still involved and I would say I tell everyone this we have the best community of people, friends in our lives, and church community. We go to Crossroads and we actually stream it at Ron Weber.
Speaker 2:So if anyone is looking for a church Ron Weber on Sunday at 10 o'clock we stream Crossroads, we have a kids church, so all of our kids are learning about Jesus, and so it's just awesome. We are blessed with the best community of friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were down in Harrison, Ohio today at the Pringsey Center, and so we were taking a little tour and we were learning about Bridget's life. She was showing us where she first had a little apartment. It was so cute. So remember those days, hon. Actually our first house was Batesville.
Speaker 2:Indiana In.
Speaker 3:Batesville yeah, we had some roots, you know it was a little 900 square foot farmhouse.
Speaker 1:You know we, you know the amount of money we spent on our house was crazy, like 42,000 dollars which you know nowadays like that's what people spend on a car. Um, but yeah, it's crazy, so that's exciting. So, as um when, as a kid, what did you like, what did you want to do when you grew up?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a good question. What did?
Speaker 1:you want to be.
Speaker 2:So my mom is a teacher. She's always been a teacher my whole life, and so I of course, just want to be a teacher, like my mom did, and I kind of went back and forth on that until I realized that I'm not super passionate about teaching math and reading Me neither.
Speaker 2:So when I was in high school I volunteered for Child Evangelism Fellowship. I was a summer missionary and that was really where I'd spend all summer long, like teaching, vacation Bible schools, like singing all those cheesy church songs that I love, that my husband makes fun of me for that, because he did not grow up going to Sunday school like that, bridget you and I are cut out of the same cloth.
Speaker 3:I think Garrett and I are cut out of the same cloth. I think Garrett and I are cut out of the same cloth, so my mom's a nurse and I hated the sight of blood, so that wasn't working for me.
Speaker 1:So I did want to be a teacher. But you're right, I did not want to teach, like literally. I taught social studies because I didn't like calculus, I didn't want to do labs, I didn't want to see blood, and so it's like it was. And I didn't like to read, so like that kind of like narrowed it down, you know.
Speaker 1:Um, but I love the fact that I wanted to talk about God and and growing up. For me, the only people that taught and talked about God were nuns, and I didn't want to be a nun. I wanted to have a family and get married, so it was like how do I do that?
Speaker 3:So it's so cool how God worked. Like, I get to talk about God, I get to teach about God, but I'm not a nun. Yes, well, for a while. Isn't that good news for you?
Speaker 1:honey For our family. It is actually.
Speaker 3:Otherwise, yeah so, but you went to school, you got a degree in psychology, but then you got your master's in social work. All right, yeah, so tell us a little bit about that. All right, so you didn't go into the teaching world, you went into the I'll say more of the counseling world.
Speaker 2:So tell us about that so I definitely, uh, did not know what I wanted to be when I went to college. I, um, my twin sister knew what she was going for. She wanted to be a nurse and, um, I went to Ivy Tech and then I transferred because I had no idea. So I went into, uh, I went to university, university of indianapolis, and I was going for psychology, pre-occupational therapy, and if you know me, you know that's probably not something I'd be great at, because I volunteered a lot for ot and every time a patient would come in I would care more about how they were doing and what they did. The past week, and even one OT said like hey, do you want to go learn about these robots that we use?
Speaker 3:And I was like oh, yeah, that's why I'm here.
Speaker 2:So, I ended up not going that route and I started working at Safe Passage on the prevention team, and that really helped me understand more of what social work was. I truly, truly just. I don't even remember ever hearing about social work when I was in college, or I think I would have done that over psychology. But um, we worked a lot on like a macro level social work and just trying to change the community on the prevention team and from there that's where I learned about social work and I just knew that psychology wasn't going to be the degree that would ultimately get me the job that I would want long term, and so I went back to grad school after I got married and went for social work.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that sounds. I mean, I was undecided also going to school. And I like the idea of psychology and I like biology too. But both of those are like how can I make a living at those Like for psychology you really have to have at least your master's and really probably farther. And that's where teaching started to make some sense to me, and then so I kind of went into the counseling world by way of teaching world, and so then you found yourself in a school right after you got.
Speaker 1:Hey, before you do guess where she got her master's from go norse nku. Yeah, all right, we have three nku grads here alumni, so undergrad for our education and hers master's in social work. So you are talking to a norse group here a norse team.
Speaker 3:That could be good or bad. I hope we. Jenna's a bear cat. So, man, we're gonna have to go back. That's why we don't let her work with people.
Speaker 1:Jenna, I'm just teasing, just teasing, jenna, we love you, yeah so yeah, right before we, you came to Rock Solid. What were you doing?
Speaker 2:yeah. So right before I came here, I was a school counselor at Batesville Middle School. I had been there close to five years and I loved my job. I felt like I truly had no idea what I was walking into.
Speaker 3:I remember a principal I worked with at the time said we wear lots of hats in the school system and I just was like, okay, sounds good. And I was like, oh, these are a lot of hats.
Speaker 2:So I learned a lot. I definitely made me, um, just be more confident I was in being able to sit in special education meetings and helping lead those meetings and my old self I would have been so intimidated to do something like that, so I feel like it definitely shaped me into how who I am today. Um, yeah, so I was at the middle school.
Speaker 1:Now I see you two are bonding.
Speaker 3:Well yeah, because I've thought about that so often. The counselor is the last one in any school to have a true job description. Everybody knows the job description of the teacher, everybody knows the principal, everybody knows the nurse, everybody knows the secretary, but the counselor like literally, you don't know exactly what the responsibilities are it's called fire.
Speaker 3:putter at her Until you walk in and say how do they work here? And even when you ask, you're not going to probably get a straight answer because your job is to deal with whatever comes up. And I've said this before, but when I started in the Franklin Covey the Stephen Covey Covey's planters were coming into play and they're oh, you got to use a planter.
Speaker 3:You got to use a planter. These are the best things ever and they would send you to classes on how to use a planter. And I went through all that training and everything. This is so great, I'm going to be so organized.
Speaker 1:And after about two weeks of that sitting on my desk and never touching it because the alarms kept going off, I said this is a waste of time and I put that thing away and never looked at it Well, and it's stressful, right, it's stressful to not kind of have a plan and be able to execute that plan every day, because it is whatever comes in your door or whatever crisis comes along your desk.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, you know it, it's tough, but we're glad that you're here and hopefully it won't be as stressful and yeah, I would say it's already night and day different than what I was going through a little bit, because it is really stressful. I love my job, but it's just a lot to constantly be trying to like show up and give a hundred percent to everyone that comes into the door and yeah, there's just a huge.
Speaker 1:I had one of those fire put around our jobs and I felt like I at some point. I said I could never do anything well, because I was always given a little bit and then I get pulled and so, yeah, it's frustrating and it's stressful. So at some point you have to put boundaries up and really expectations of, okay, what do I expect to get done during the day and expectations of okay, what do I expect to get done?
Speaker 1:during the day. Yeah, and expectations of other people Like you really expect me to do, you know, 150 standardized tests today or whatever.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely miss the people that I worked with, but I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's great, great people in the Batesville schools. That's where we started our area and so yeah.
Speaker 3:So, bridget, you came from the school but, now you're at Rockside Families and we get to do something beyond a different sort of schedule. We get to bring faith into our work. Tell us what that means to you and just what you're looking forward to. The idea, you know, not that you could never bring faith in at school, but it would have to be the student or somebody else would have to bring it in first for you to even have it in the conversation. Now you're actually. It's part of what we do. What's that mean to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. So I feel like in the school, like as we've been talking about, you're kind of just pulled in a hundred directions so you could have a student who has been carrying something their whole life and then they finally recognize like this isn't really normal and I want to talk to someone and you're kind of only giving them like 15 minutes because you could be running off to something else, and I just remember feeling like man.
Speaker 2:I wish that we could just get to the root of this and help them see like there's freedom in this, you know, because a lot of families don't have the resources, you know, to get them to therapy, and if there is, there's a wait list in our area. So it just felt like we're the only person that's right there for them. But even then I didn't feel like I could always give them the space that they needed. So I'm so excited to be able to do that now. I love being able to talk about the freedom that we get to experience through Jesus. That's what he has planned for us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, amen.
Speaker 2:And I just feel like yeah, I think I said this at our benefit the other day but whenever I've been shadowing with you to see what the coaching sessions are like, you can just feel that in the room Like God is truly just using this organization to create this space, to come in and give these people a new life, and I don't think that's anything that either of you would take credit for, because you're just being servants to what God has called you to step into, and one of my favorite things is being able to pray for them at the end, to just speak truth into their life that way, and also to just pause and ask God like what do you want to tell?
Speaker 3:these people you know, and so I love that yeah. Yeah, well, we do too, and that's why we actually um, it's a breath of fresh air and I think that's why we have kept our foot in the counseling slash, coaching world, because you you get to feel like you've got counseling, sometimes about what tool you're going to bring in out of the toolbox, and you're handicapped so often when you can't bring the word or Christ in. And now you get to bring the most powerful tool in on nearly every session. Yeah, pretty awesome.
Speaker 1:So you're going to be working with our teenage girls, our young adult women, maybe young moms, single moms or you know a young wife, and so how do you and Garrett Garrett with T one T, by the way how do you and Garrett walk out your faith today as a married couple and as a mom and a dad to Berkeley? Like, how do you guys deal with that? Because maybe there is a young woman there that's listening to you and kind of trying to figure out how to navigate this. So what do you guys? How do you guys do it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would definitely say so. We'll be married six years in November. I think we still have a lot to learn, you know, but I would say when, early on, when we were dating, we both said that it's important to us that the person I marry will love Jesus more than they could ever love me, and so I feel like that's something that we try and keep at the forefront of our marriage.
Speaker 1:Garrett does a really good job of leading and stepping in if I want, to, like, go down the wrong way, and then he's like Berkeley is the God.
Speaker 2:Nope, nope that does not line up with what the Bible says, and so he does a really good job of reeling me in and leading us in that way. But I know I said this before, but truly, um, the community of friends that we have, like I can't tell you enough how important that is to have other christian couples, that you walk through seasons with all of our close friends, that we do church with, um, we, our church, started doing what we call tables every friday, and so it's so laid back. We just show up. It's like a big pitch in every week. We sign up for what we're bringing and truly, you don't even have to come to crossroads to come to that, but we just show up.
Speaker 2:Sean Boyce is the one who kind of like spearheaded that and he has a little cards that pass around and we like answer the most random questions. To start off, our kids are playing, if you have kids, and and truly that's just led into other conversations. A season that we're walking through right now is just fertility, like trying to have more babies, and I think we've been blessed by having people who's walking through that with us, you know, and I wouldn't have known them if it weren't for table. So all that to say, the community and friends that we have have truly helped us learn from each other on what it means to be parents how God wants that?
Speaker 1:yeah, absolutely. I think that, um and I say this to my clients all the time there there's not one tear that you've shed that God does not want to redeem, does not want to use for his glory. So, whether it be infertility, whether it be a preschool daughter going to school and you know that heartache of that, or anxiety that you know, merle, you've shared before or just control issues that I have, like the frustrations that we have, the weaknesses, the thorns in our side, whatever those are traumas we've experienced God wants to use them. He doesn't want to waste them, and so that's what we do here. We just like, okay, this is sad where you're at, or this is what happened, but what could God be doing here? How can we use this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's the part too that you recognize, I see, in your notes. Here it's a little bit about your fear of snakes.
Speaker 2:You can talk about that, but I look at that.
Speaker 3:As you know, all of our fears, all of our pains are actually. People often wonder, like, why would God allow suffering? And I don't know the full answer to all of that. But I do know one thing Suffering is a great humbler. It humbles us right, it brings us down to our knees and makes us realize we don't have it all together. We don't always understand. And then when we see somebody else who's going through a fear, a phobia, a pain, we go oh, I've been there before.
Speaker 3:I get that and so never to minimize suffering. I'm not trying to say that at all. What I'm just saying is I do know one good thing about it is it puts us.
Speaker 1:It's a great equalizer right, and that's one of the things the enemy does is he wants to isolate us so that we feel like we're all alone, like no one else has ever gone through that, and so part of what we do as faith-based coaches, what we do with support groups, um, is really just help people see, like you're not alone. Like I love the Eve Center. It's a peer counseling for women, free in the Cincinnati Tri-State area, and their tagline is we've been where you are, and so just to help women like you're not alone, you know there's someone that's walked those shoes and that can walk alongside you. So, bridget, did you like school? We had our school episode a couple weeks ago and we were split. Had our school episode a couple weeks ago and we were split. You want to take a guess who liked school and who didn't like school? I'm gonna say you like school, I liked school so um I liked getting out every day yeah, so were you a kid that liked school.
Speaker 2:I would say I did like school. I mentioned earlier that my parents got divorced in middle school, high school, and it was just kind of like a big thing that we went through and being at school allowed me to be around, kind of have a break from that, you know, and to be around, yeah, and to be like kind of have my own identity, um. And so I really started getting involved more with ministry, like child evangelism, fellowship, I could say that.
Speaker 1:CEF is easier.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so I started just finding my identity in that way. I started volunteering and just serving others. So I would. I wanted to ask my mom, but I did not text her this, so I'll have to tell her to watch this. I wonder if she would say that she saw a heart shift in me when I started like going that route and not be so strong-willed so did you do CEF in high school?
Speaker 1:yes, did you really.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you can actually still do that you can still uh be a summer missionary and do vacation bible schools and it's awesome what got you turned on to that? Um, so South Ripley, super small, so there's uh people that I knew that I went to school with. Their mom's name is also Bridget and she's the director for that in our area, and so I met with her and we started doing it.
Speaker 1:That's very cool. So what would be some advice you would give? You know, I know your daughter just left for preschool, but, like, what would you give to parents as a family starting the new school year? You know whether it be public school, private school, maybe even homeschool families like, what would be some advice that you would give them as we start this new school year?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like this is something Garrett and I are actively trying to do a better job at too, so I'm saying this with us in mind as well.
Speaker 2:But it's so easy to get home and just be tired from the day and like put your kids to bed, then you do your own thing, get on your phone or whatever, and so we're trying to put our phones away when we get home. Give Berkeley and our family all of our attention, um, and just be intentional with our time, and I think I could absolutely speak out of this from the middle school. But kids have a hundred different things to turn to that you do not want them to turn to, you know. So if you're not pausing to give them that space and time, they're gonna find it already filling up somewhere else, you know. So I would say to think about that and also to just be mindful of technology. It's so scary, I feel like, what our kids can um find on their school computers, how they use that and even just their phones. But I think, ultimately, if you're showing up and putting your family first, hopefully that sets the path where your kids aren't even going to want to turn to that.
Speaker 1:After God, of course, yes, in your time of the day. Yeah, what would you say, hun? What's your advice to parents as the school year starts?
Speaker 3:I think really to be intentional about having some conversations. You know what are some of the expectations.
Speaker 2:What are the intentional?
Speaker 3:things about how we're going to function when we get home from school. What's the expectation during school, behavior grades, all those things. It's really not about everybody being perfect. It's about people being aware. It's not until you have an expectation that doesn't get met that people start to get you know a little uneasy. So if you kind of lay it all out there, we had to do that this week and tell our son, like well, here let's be clear about all the expectations you know.
Speaker 3:And, of course, his response was I know, I know, I know, which is fine, right, but the idea is, let's just make sure we're all on the same playing field. So I think that's a big thing for for our parents to be doing, um, also, I, I think it's just so important. You know, you've got your little one here with their first years um, and you're going to be relying heavily on the input of the teacher, like, well, how is she doing and how is she interacting with the others? And, um, when she says something, to just let the teacher say it, right, whether it's good or bad, or, and most of the time, the teachers are like oh she's so nice or whatever you know but sometimes they say well, you know they're they struggle with this or they're not being very nice with that.
Speaker 3:You have to hear those things and I, you know, um, teachers, school people by and large do not have evil hearts waiting to disrupt the the kid's life or the parent's life.
Speaker 2:So listen to them, listen to what they have to say and then start to make adjustments from there so, yeah, I feel like something I would add on to that too and something we started doing at berkeley, like, um, it's just telling her who she is, you know. And I think I feel like if you even had high school students, they might feel a little awkward hearing that you know, but if you're not hearing that from the people who your identity is in christ, you know, every morning we started telling berkeley like you are smart, you're kind you're a child of god you, um, you're a good listener, you're a good helper, and here lately she wants to listen on the second or third time.
Speaker 2:So we say, berkeley, you listen, and she says on the first time, not the second time. But I just feel like that's so important, you know, because I think a lot of us can relate to going through a season where what was our identity?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great and honestly, it's not too early to start now, like at age four, because it starts to become something she remembers and hears in her head. So when someone says you're stupid, or you're ugly? No, I'm a child of God. Like that's not where my identity is.
Speaker 1:My identity is in who Christ tells me I am. And so yeah, speaking those truths. And I would just chime in on what you just said about being intentional, about sharing and unloading and unpacking the day on a regular basis, not one day a week or whatever Like. When does your child get to share?
Speaker 1:the hard things, good things about their school day, if we're not sitting around the dinner table, if we're not having those intentional times, and so as much as we can we try to. Now our kids are driving and working and stuff that's just extra hard, but we try to create that space and we want them and invite them and we want to just keep doing that. Let me put a disclaimer on that.
Speaker 3:If you have boys and they're in middle school or higher, maybe not even middle school, and you say hey bud, what'd you do today?
Speaker 2:Nothing, nothing.
Speaker 3:That's all right too. We have been guilty of Linda and I being counselors, harping on our kids what'd you do? How's it going? And one of our older sons one time looked at us and said can I just not be thinking about anything?
Speaker 2:Why do I?
Speaker 3:always have to have a thought about every question you ask, and the idea here is boys and girls process information, they process their day differently, and so they may not be ready to talk when you're putting them on the stage. And so, uh, don't, don't get upset with this, it could be your girl too, but with your boy if he's not ready. But that means you know, have your door, your windows open for other opportunities.
Speaker 3:Maybe, you're just driving down to the store together and that's the one time they start talking a little bit more. That's when you tap into it. It may not be at the dinner table every single night, and so just don't beat them over the head with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that actually just happened just the other day with our teenage son and we were in a car, just he and I, and he started sharing things that you know, I don't know if he would have if, yeah, if we weren't in the car together. So you know, rigid as we wrap up and close today's show out, are there any words of wisdom that you want to share with our listeners, like we're?
Speaker 3:going to have you on a regular basis. Can I start?
Speaker 2:oh, here's the roasting question. No, no, no, no, I just want to make sure that all of our listeners know.
Speaker 3:Who is your group that you're going to be primarily?
Speaker 2:working with. Just to be specific, who's your?
Speaker 3:demographic. Who's coming in and when? Should they check Bridget's calendar box instead of?
Speaker 2:Merle or Linda? That's a good question. Yeah, I would say any youth, any teenage girls and any women up to 30.
Speaker 3:Okay, all right. So you guys heard that we're primarily we we've used the phrase you know our young, adolescent specialists and stuff. But just so that you know, like, what that means. Um, those, those are the demographics.
Speaker 1:So check bridget's box and the reason being is because you know, um, I've worked with that demographic since we've been um opened up and I'm just getting older and older. I don't know if anybody's noticed that, but like I'm a grandma now, right, and so I don't, I'm not as cool as I used to be.
Speaker 3:I'm so sad to say that, and I'm a grandpa, so we need now a younger guy. I know we're working on that. What's Garrett?
Speaker 2:doing.
Speaker 1:I don't know Every day I'm like here and you've already been rocking it and we're super excited. She's also going to be kind of our community connection woman who goes and connects with our other nonprofits and churches and schools. So if you are in a school or church or a nonprofit and you want to connect with us and partner with us, bridget will be your go-to person there. So we're excited about that. But any words of wisdom.
Speaker 2:So truly. When I read this the other day, I was blank nothing.
Speaker 1:I got no wisdom.
Speaker 2:I feel like, as we've been talking, I felt like truly even me getting to this job. Like I remember there was a time when I did ministry and I wanted to be a missionary and I just Bridget's job in CEF. I like it's what I want to do.
Speaker 2:I want to be able to talk about Jesus with people. I want to look like broad in a lot of different ways and, um, fast forward. I just never saw how that was going to play out. Like I was working in the school, so I was like, hey, this is where God's called me to believe, to be, and I do believe he wanted me there for that time period. But then when I got offered job, I know that God was like all the desires and things that you have told me that you wanted all those years ago, that was what, like over 10 years ago. Here it is, you know, and I was like what? Like I thought that was long gone, you know. And so I would just say, like any wisdom and for anyone who could be going through infertility like we are, I'm believing that God knows our desires you know however that plays out.
Speaker 2:So if you're in a season of kind of waiting and you just are trying to figure out, like are these my desires or is this what God has for me, he will make it very clear you know.
Speaker 1:So that's powerful Good stuff, yeah, so sometimes we, you know, our timing is not God's timing, and so you know we've told the story before that we had the vision of Rock Solid Family seven years before the opportunity presented itself, and so for seven years God laid that on our heart. Like this, ministry, that didn't exist, and even the name Rock Solid Families came seven years before we even had little cards.
Speaker 3:But it actually fell off the radar Because, like you said, you have that dream and if the dream doesn't seem to happen in a certain period of time, it starts to get more distant from you. And then it came back.
Speaker 1:But we do believe that God laid that desire, that mission, that vision on our hearts. The Holy Spirit did for a reason, and so, when the opportunity was like, yeah, this is what we've been praying for, so we're going to have Bridget. This isn't the last time you're seeing her. We'll be having her on a regular basis to share different words of wisdom in different areas that hopefully will impact you as listeners, and so we're just thankful that you could tune in and maybe you and I should put merle on the hot seat.
Speaker 3:I think I've been in this seat roasted more than enough times, I think I think I'm well cooked.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, on that note. Um, we definitely want to thank our sponsors. We want to thank casey's outdoor solutions and maxwell construction and the hoosier ice House for their support of what we do here and the opportunity that we could have to hire Bridget and expand our team, and so we're really thankful for them and just their partnership.
Speaker 3:All right. So thanks again for listening to the Rock Solid Family Podcast, building a stronger community, one family at a time, and make it a great day. You survived. Rock Solid Families wants to thank Casey's Outdoor Solutions for sponsoring the Rock Solid Families podcast. Casey's has grown to be one of the largest and most unique garden centers and gift shops in the Cincinnati tri-state area. Whether you are looking to take on that next landscape project or simply add a little home decor to your house, casey's has you covered. Located at 21481 State Line Road, lawrenceburg, indiana, call them today at 812-537-3800. Let Casey's help you add beauty to your home. Rock solid families wants to thank max Maxwell Construction for sponsoring the Rock Solid Families podcast. For over 30 years, maxwell Construction has been a leader in turning dreams into realities Building schools, banks, restaurants and many other commercial and public facilities. Maxwell Construction has made it their priority to not just build buildings but to build into their community. So if you have any construction needs, call them at 812-537-2200.
Speaker 1:Rock Solid Families would like to thank Hoosier Ice House for being a proud sponsor of the Rock Solid Families podcast. In the heart of historic Lawrenceburg, Indiana, the Ice House is at the corner of Vine and High Streets. The historic building evokes a feeling of comfort, with spacious indoor and outdoor dining, a large bar and comfortable dining areas Large enough to host parties, yet intimate enough to feel like your favorite neighborhood restaurant. So thank you again for the Hoosier Ice House for sponsoring the Rock Solid Families podcast.