Untitled Episode

DJ Stutz  00:14

You're listening to Imperfect Heroes: Insights into Parenting, the perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in An imperfect world, and I'm your host, DJ Stutz. Welcome everybody, and thank you for choosing to spend the next few minutes here with Imperfect Heroes:Iinsights into Parenting, and we are continuing with our topic on the moral development of children.  But that expands into so many different areas of our lives and of our parenting and our children's development, and so it's kind of fun to look at some of those different points of view and aspects of that.  Before we get started, though. I just want to remind everyone that not only do I have my book, oh, let me grab it here. Roman is Bigger, but there are two more books now that are available. Roman became a bigger brother, and so we've got Roman is a Bigger Brother, and then we've also got Oscar's True Friends. And it's a lovely little story about a little fish named Oscar who is helping his friends discover that our differences are amazing. We do not have to be the same to be friends, that we can have big differences and still support and love one another. So what a fun story for that. If you're interested in any of those books, you can always go to my website, which is www.ImperfectHeroes.net, and you can find it there,. And they're all available, of course, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart's website and so on. So keep an eye out for those, and I hope that you'll enjoy those. Let's get started. Craig jDehut, you have a media company, Appian Media.  Why don't you tell us a little more about what you've got there?

 Craig Dehut  02:17

Sure. So myself and our co founder, Stuart Peck, we started Appian Media back the end of 2015.  And so I'm a video producer by trade, as is Stuart, and we both kind of live in the the Indianapolis area, but we're also interested in studying and teaching the Bible. And Stuart was just noticing, as was I, a lack of high quality, biblically accurate resources, specifically video media resources that parents and teachers could use in their classes. And as video producers, as you know, visual learners and and creators of that, he asked the kind of tongue in cheek question, but not you know, how hard could it possibly be if we just went over to the lands of the Bible and made those things ourselves, make them free, make them high quality, make them biblically accurate and easily accessible for everyone. So we did. Our first trip to Israel was in 2016 we found it as a not for profit, and so people donate to us so that we can create the content. And since that time, we've created, Oh my, It's probably been 12 to 14 hours worth of material, five or six major series. We've been to Israel and Jordan and Egypt and Turkey and plans for much, much more, all trying to create resources that parents and teachers and students of the Bible can use to see the stories of the Bible and where they actually happened.

 DJ Stutz  03:42

I love that you're doing that. And so anyone who's listened to Imperfect Heroes for very long knows that we have a faith connection in our conversations. And so while I don't go out and promote any specific religion, I do acknowledge the connection between many religions, most religions and faith, and then the personal, the spiritual side of that, and and those can be two different things, spiritual versus the religious, and they can work together. But I've seen people who are spiritual and not religious and are amazing. And so we really want to encourage families to use that, to develop that, to connect with that, to embrace that as they are raising their kids and living their own best lives, right?

 Craig Dehut  04:26

Yeah, from the very beginning, I'm married. We had a young son at the time. We now have three children, and so creating resources that we wanted ourselves to give to our kids, the things that I wish, honestly, were available when I was a child. We never want these biblical stories to kind of be these fanciful once upon a time in a land far away, kind of things, we want them to understand that you can actually go and see the places, you can study the history and the geography behind it. And most people say that they are a visual learner to some degree. And so trying to create something that sparks the imagination. Connection in children, but but also in adults, when we read the text of Scripture.

 DJ Stutz  05:04

Absolutely, and in fact, people know that people make children's movies, understand that they've got to have some like adult humor, that adult connection, to get mom and dad to bring their kids to the movie and to connect and think it's fun. And so the same thing works, I think, with all kinds of media, including spiritual media, and making sure that we are making that accessible and understandable and something that will spark a conversation with our kids and between us as a couple or even among friends that we're having, something that we can spark those conversations with and even go deeper than the video might, and people look it up in the Scriptures, open the book.

 Craig Dehut  05:45

How many times have I gone to a movie that's supposed to be Bible based? It's like, did they even read the book?

 DJ Stutz  05:51

Right. No respect for the source material. Yeah, that's that's something that I enjoy to hear people say, I've watched so much of your content. I don't necessarily love it when they say I've binge watched it, I would more rather hear someone say, I watched your video, and it got me really excited. I opened the book again and read First Samuel like I've never read it before, and the story of David and Goliath, because now I've seen the Valley of Elah. And we want people. We're not trying to replace the Scripture, we're not trying to replace Bible study, but we want people to watch what we've produced, to read some of the things that we've produced, and then get re energized as they go back into the text. And even though we do create some content specifically for children's level, we have a series called Lessons from the land. These are shorter videos hosted by one of our researchers and hosts. Barry Britt, now we always are very careful not to dumb it down, because kids are smart. Kids are smart. They're way smarter than I think we give them credit for, and we want them to treat the story of the Bible not as something that needs to be dumbed down or kiddified, but something that's rich and meaningful. And so we've got adults watching our kids stuff, and we've got kids watching our adult stuff. And really, like you said, it's re engaging the whole family, the whole classroom, the whole church and and getting them all talking together and excited about what they're seeing and reading. Right.  And two, so, you know, I'm an old fart, the videos, and some of them, the movies were even made before I was even born, or when I was just a little teeny baby. But they stayed in our society for so many, many years, I think of like the 10 Commandments and Cecil B DeMille. And I remember as a kid, our church got the guy who was the voice of God in the 10 Commandments, and he came and spoke to the teenagers, in fact, several churches, because he was such a big deal. And I grew up in Los Angeles, and so we had more access to some of these things, but to hear him just talk about their experience and how they went into making that movie, and you have to fill it with things that are supposed sure when you're talking about making these big movies, but how it was a big deal for Cecil to try and get it as accurate as he could, even though there are some blaring things like, Oh, quite right. I don't remember that. Yeah, even those things, though, are great to have a conversation with your kids about life. Sure, let's go and look and see, is this even accurate, or is this how this is someone's interpretation? What do we know? What is our interpretation? How are we looking at it? And so sometimes, even when they're not exactly accurate, that can still spark meaningful and deep and rich. Now, I'm not saying the Noah movie with...that was like, what?

 Craig DeHut  08:50

Yeah.  They were reading some source material. I don't, I don't think it was the Bible. But...

 DJ Stutz  08:55

No, it wasn't. It wasn't anywhere close. But yeah, I was like, appalled at that one, but at the same time, like, there's cartoons. Was one that was Prince of Egypt. Do you remember that one? 

 Craig Dehut  09:06

I do.

 DJ Stutz  09:07

And that was a fun one to really watch with my kids. And now that came out when my kids were really young, and so it made it so that we could have these interesting conversations and say, what do we know? What do we don't know we even had a night, or it wasn't just in one night, but where we compared The Prince of Egypt cartoon movie to the 10 Commandments. What were the differences? What was going on? What do we know? And then, what did we learn from the Bible? And so we can really use these as an amazing source of investigation and conversation and education.

 Craig Dehut  09:47

Yeah, as we should, and I have a great deal of respect for those that are creating more of the, you'd call them narrative right feature films where you're casting actors and you're writing scripts, that's a job to make sure that. They look according to the period that your history is accurate, that the words that they're saying are accurate. I've delved into that a little bit. I'm thankful, at least for the first 10 years here that Appian Media is primarily focused on documentary, and so we're interviewing real people over in the real places. We're not casting actors or writing scripts. We're not doing reenactments. I have a great deal of respect for the people who do and what they've got to balance between what we know and some creative license. You need to have respect for the source material that you don't just creative license all over this thing so that you can hardly recognize the real story anymore. But our goal, really, from the beginning, was to eliminate as many of those caveats as we typically had to give when you watched Bible lands videos. Hey kids, we're going to show you this thing. But keep in mind that this part isn't accurate. Keep in mind that they're coming at it from a particular, perhaps a particular denominational slant. We wanted to eliminate all of that. And we just wanted to say, look, we're going to take you to the place. We're going to talk to people, ideally locals or experts there, who can tell us about the place. And we're going to open our Bibles and talk about what the Scriptures say happened there, and according to what we know of Scripture and of history, and let that do the talking for itself. I mean, the Bible can stand on its own, and that really has, has been a driving force behind our mission from the beginning. Again, it's it's our hope. I love to hear that people have the book open right in their laps. They're watching what we're producing, and they're double checking us. We're imperfect people, and we've made some mistakes as well. We always really do appreciate when people come back out and say, Huh, didn't it actually say...was Jesus actually, you know, dedicated on the eighth day or the 40th day, which was a mistake we made, and we correct that. And it's always our goal to make sure that the scripture stands on its own and that great conversations can happen. We're supposed to engage our minds, and we're supposed to think critically. We're supposed to study it and digest it and meditate on it. And that takes effort, and we want to make sure that our resources are helping,

 DJ Stutz  12:12

Right.  Yeah, documentaries are really expanding now and and getting out there now, and there is a huge difference in watching a narrative movie that was made on a set or drawn or CG, but there's a difference in actually seeing this is the path that Jesus walked. One of my dreams, goals in life is to be able to go to Israel and walk the path that Mary and Joseph took to get to Bethlehem, that's just something that really interests me, but it's really great to be able to show them and say, This is what it really looks like. This is what the Valley really looked like when David took on Goliath, whom in listening to speaking at church, Oh gosh, this has been a few months ago now, but when he talked about how David was the true giant in that story, and what a great perspective that was. And then to be able to look at, even if it's a documentary, that gives you a clearer view of what it truly looks like, and we can have those conversations. Imagine, like the women at the well, oh, they had to go. They weren't turning on a tap to get water. They were lugging this water. They were taking buckets of water back and forth and and to let them see what that really looked like in the area that wasn't nowhere. There were, there was no air conditioning. There no, oh no, no. There were no tennis shoes that are made for running.  That the work was hard. There were no places to just go and grab a hamburger if you're hungry, you really had to work to get your food and to do all of that, and to bring some of these realities of life from back then is really eye opening, not only to us, but especially to our children. So the kids that I work with at our Sunday School, and when I share some of those things, we talk about how hard life was back then and why they made some of the decisions that they made, and it really does help them open their eyes.

 Craig Dehut  14:08

Yes, absolutely. I now have three children. Our oldest is, well, he's about to turn 11, which is exciting to think about. He was very small when we first made that that first trip, I think our daughter, who's our second, I think she was maybe six or eight months old when we took that first trip to Israel. But to be able to show them these things and have them they understand that the daddy's traveled over there numerous times, and to have them ask questions about it, one of the things that we wanted to do from the very beginning was what, we're not the first people to make videos over in Israel. I don't think we're going to be the last people to do it, but what we wanted to do was try to step away from many of the videos that we were seeing, which we kind of affectionately talked about as as lectures from the land. It was typically some guy standing there, camera is fixed, and Jerusalem just happens to be in the background somewhere, and he's. Pointing at hills and things that it's hard to get reference. We wanted to take viewers in. So we go into the city, we eat the food, we talk to the locals. We get dirt on our shoes. We typically will try to find not just the tourist places, or not just the places where you would go, even if you went on a tour of Israel, even a biblical tour, we're trying to find those kind of off the beaten path kind of places or and we've been so blessed with, even when we go to museums, getting access to places that aren't typical for the average tourist is something that we've been really excited to do and to bring to people. We want them to feel like they're traveling with us. That's one of the greatest compliments I feel like we can receive from viewers is felt like we were there with you. We've had, you know, we've talked a lot about how this impacts our children. We but we've had people in their 70s, 80s or older, watching our videos, saying things like, I'm probably never going to be able to travel there. Now. I'm just too old for that. You have brought the lands to me in a way that I didn't think I would get to experience. And that's that's always so encouraging to hear, like I said earlier, it's a resource that I wish I had when I was a kid, that I absolutely want our children to have that when, especially they go off to college, and likely they're going to encounter the kind of professors and peers that I encountered who do treat the Bible like it's a fantasy story and it belongs with Hansel and Gretel that our kids are going to be able to say, Actually, no. The history supports it, the archeology supports it, the geography supports it, even stories like David and Goliath that story, when you read it in First Samuel, it's actually very specific in regards to the geography it gives neighboring cities. It talks about the two hills and a valley in between, and a creek on Israel's side, and that's all. It narrows it down. You know exactly where that valley is, and you can still walk it. It's actually a privately owned farm. They use it for fields and farms, but they allow tourists to come, you kind of hop a fence, and they understand tourists will come through there, but it's kind of an open field most of the year. But we want people to come equipped to defend their faith and to challenge what I think is a prevailing thought among academia, especially here in America, that it was all just kind of made up, that it's fantasy, along with the Iliad and things like that, it's provable and verifiable, and that should be faith affirming to all of us.

 DJ Stutz  17:29

Yeah. And I think too, as you go and you watch different things from different perspectives, different religions, they have their own perspective. But I have always felt like and I wanted to encourage my kids, but it's important to have questions about, How did this happen? Is this real? What would it look like? Why would they make that decision? Is that correct, and is what I believe correct? And keep asking and looking and being open to some of that, but I've always kind of felt like if you don't have any questions, you're just not studying hard enough,

 Craig Dehut  18:00

I agree. I mean, it doesn't mean that we should walk into every situation with a complete open brain, and we jettison everything we know every time we open the book. But you read about these people of faith in the Bible, David had questions, you know, read some of the Psalms. There were times where he's asking God more or less, what are you doing? Why is this taking so long? This doesn't seem right or fair, and it wasn't. It wasn't wrong for him to ask the questions. Job asks some pretty important questions. Now he has to be careful there at the end he gets perhaps a little too big for his britches, I think perhaps, but it's okay to ask questions. Doubting Thomas. We give him this this moniker, and I think we probably give him a harder time than he deserves. It was okay to ask, Is Jesus really alive? I'm having a hard time believing that, which was the story that was being told. It's okay to ask the questions. What's so great about our faith and about these things that we're able to create is we don't have to be afraid of the archeology or the history surrounding it. We don't actually have to be afraid to go and look and ask now, is there 100% you know, is there evidence so that we can have absolutely no shred of doubt that the biblical account is true? No. That would remove, I think, any necessity of faith, but we have more substantial evidence for that than most other historical figures and events, especially for that period of time. And it's because people asked questions. It's because people went to the land and went, Okay, the Bible says it should be here. Let's start digging. And wouldn't you know, those are some of the things I love, just interviewing archeologists. And we've been able to interview some, some individuals who they're like in active digs. Specifically this, this gentleman, Dr Scott Stripling, has been for the last many years digging up Shiloh, which is where the Israelites kept the tabernacle.  

 DJ Stutz  18:00

I have a son named Shiloh.

 Craig Dehut  18:20

Do you? Wonderful!.

 DJ Stutz  19:29

And he's named after. In fact, he's named after, in Genesis, when Joseph is not Joseph, Jacob, sorry, is blessing his sons before he passes, tells Judah that you will have the stick of the law until Shiloh comes. And so that's the specific verse that we named our Shiloh after. But, and I think too though that it's great to have these stories and it's great to have these questions, but, ugh. one of the things going back to Thomas, that I love about Thomas is that he was struggling with this question, but he didn't leave. He stayed with the apostles. He stayed with them, asking the questions and listening, and he didn't abandon his faith because he had that question. And that's one of the things that I really love about Thomas, is that he sets that example of, it's good to have questions and not leave the faith, not leave your spirituality, because you haven't found the answer to that, whatever question that you may have, you keep going with it. Yeah, I really love that about Thomas, and I love too that got all of this evidence that, and it's getting more and more as we do right, more investigations and stuff. And Christ even talked about this, that knowledge is not as powerful as faith. And so I think that a lot of these things that we're asking questions we want to know. We want to know, but there are a lot of people who have known a lot of things and still walked away from Christ. They knew he was there, they saw him, they talked to him, and yet they still walked away. But blessed are those who believe on your words. Having not met me, there's that greater blessing that's there. And so while we're always looking for answers and stuff, I personally am comfortable with not having all of the answers that, yeah, that I am connected to my God through my faith, before that knowledge probably won't come to me until I graduate on to the next realm 

 Craig Dehut  21:56

Right, right. 

 DJ Stutz  21:58

And I'm okay with that. 

 Craig Dehut  21:59

Yeah. I mean, you liken it to parenting. There are times where I give my kids instruction or information, and I have more information than they do, but I don't give them everything I know for a variety of reasons. One, it just would burden them with stuff that they just don't need to concern themselves with. And two, it may be something beyond their current level of understanding, but I give them enough, and if I've trained them right, and we're working on it, my wife Karen and I, if they have faith and trust in me as their parent, as an imperfect parent, then they then they will be okay with following the instruction, even if they don't have all the information they would prefer. Now we do encourage of our kids to ask, you know, may, may I ask a question, or I don't understand, help me understand, and we will give them as much information as we think they need in the moment. But there are times, maybe because we're rushing, or maybe just because of where we're at, where we'll say, Look, you just need to trust me. I've given you the information that you need to move forward here to obey. And we're okay with that. Every parent does it. Every parent does it, yep. And so it shouldn't surprise us that God does that as our father and us as His children, where I'll be the first to tell you I've got questions about, I mean, our our kids were asking us, I've got, like I said, I've got a 10, a NINE and a six year old, almost 11, nine and almost seven year old. They were asking questions about specifics, about what happens after death. Where do people go? And, you know, are they waiting while this happens? And what is that like? And I just had to tell them, look here. Here's what the Bible tells us about that, and it's not very much. And yes, I would prefer a lot more information, but I trust the God that gave me at least that information, and I know His character, and he's proven himself to be trustworthy and faithful and good. And so I'll leave it up to him, and I'm going to continue to study. I don't think that study is over, but I'll trust him that in his right time. And it may be when I experience it myself that I go, Oh, okay, this is what it's like. So there's got to be a fine line. Yeah, I think it really just comes down to do we trust the character of our father, right? And so as parents, we try to be that for our kids, and I am quick to admit to them that I am imperfect. I don't have all understanding and knowledge, but I'll share with them what I do have, and then maybe we can learn it together.

 DJ Stutz  24:37

And I love that, that you just added, that we can learn this together, because I'm older and I am still like as I read, even this morning, as I was reading and I came across something and was like, Hmm, I hadn't thought of that before. And so as we have more experience, more education, more study, more research in our lives. We're going to look at maybe the same thing differently, and so that's why the Bible isn't a one time read. Oh no. I can't even tell you how many times I've gone through it. I've lost track, but I've gone through it in a focus, and sometimes I'll have a certain focus, like, oh, let's read this as a parenting manual. I did that one time, and I was writing down all these notes. And this works, and this isn't working. And what is the Lord telling me about being a parent and how to relate to my kids? And so sometimes, when you take it at maybe a different outlook, and you're looking for certain answers of a certain part of your life, and you go through you're going to find those answers, by the way, or at least some direction that's going to make you pause for a moment. Say, hmm, am I doing this right? Or, Hey, this is good. I feel like I'm following this. We can do that with our kids as well. One of the things,we don't have a lot of information about Jesus as a child. 

 Craig Dehut  25:55

No,

 DJ Stutz  25:56

We really don't. 

 Craig Dehut  25:57

Yep, we've got that one story, yeah, child, that's right.

 DJ Stutz  26:00

Yes.  And so one of the things that we've done for the kids in our Sunday School at our church, and I help out with that a lot, go figure. But we bought these mirrors, and we use the cricket and the vinyl words, and it's a mirror and it says Jesus was a child like me trying to help them to relate to Yeah, he had some of these experiences too, and all we know about him is that he lived a perfect life. So even as a child, did he take out the trash? Did he Did he help mom with dinner? Was he rude to his parents, or how did he manage his brothers? Or some of those things that kids can have that question for. But now it's open to imagination. If Christ was perfect even as a kid, what does that mean for me as an eight year old? And those are great conversations, I think, to have.

 Craig Dehut  26:59

Yeah, because even in that story, he gets left behind in Jerusalem, they find him at the temple, and he caused quite a panic. I would be as well. Jerusalem, even during that time, was not a small place, and yet it says that after they found him and on the way home, he was submissive to His parents, is what it says. And so there's a lesson in that where this was not some Mom and Dad, what do you know? I've got a bigger thing going on here. I'm no, he was able to, that's right, there was, there was respect and there was honor, even to these, they're human beings like Jesus. You know, the the creator of everything, is allowing himself to be submissive, even to these human beings. And there is a lesson in that for us, not just that our kids need to learn, but we as children, to our father need to learn. Yes, and so, yeah, there's so much parenting advice in there. Frankly, there's a lot of stories in there of bad examples of bad parenting, like they don't show favoritism to your kids. That didn't go well with the patriarchs. Let's not do that. The story of Joseph is an exceptional example of that, right? And there's a lot, there's a lot that we can learn. Yeah, Samuel, let's, let's.

 DJ Stutz 28:14

He even got chastized by God, like you need more attention to your sons!

 Craig Dehut  28:19

And yet he didn't learn them.  The same mistakes that Eli made he ended up making with his own kids. And so what can we learn from the mistakes of of those who came before us? I think is a valuable approach to reading scripture.

 DJ Stutz  28:32

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. It was a fun. It was fun. I took a year to go through the whole thing. I tend to, I'm not a speed reader. I like to munch and and taste and so I take a time to go through a lot of what I read. I make notes. I even found a Bible that has wider margins with lines on the side. So I'm writing notes and my questions and my answers and all those things, or keep a side journal. Encourage your kids to do that. One of the things I think, is I get a really cheap copy of the Bible as you're studying it with your family, and let your kids draw in it and and underline or make a picture of what the story is about, or whatever. What a fun treasure to have as they're older and and pass along to their children, you know. But those are just some of my crazy ideas on engaging with kids. And...

 Craig Dehut  29:32

I think it's great. I mean, kids, we all have an imagination. Kids, obviously, it seems like, you know, 100 times over, but the reading the Bible should engage the imagination, not just with young people, but with every person, and so let their imaginations do what it's going to do. Now are they going to draw a red barn where Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Maybe it's based on their imagination of what that was like a stable, right? That's not what. Looked like first century stables didn't look like that, and that's okay have that conversation, but let them engage. And as they get older, you know, they're going to be writing things out more than perhaps drawing. I drew Bible notes into my early 20s. I was drawing. I had once had aspirations to be an illustrator. I wanted to be the next Bill Watterson or Jim Davis and would draw biblical illustrations. Now, actually, they're on my shelf over here. My kids pull them out and watch them or read them and look at them, but it helped me remember I'm hearing a sermon or a lesson or something, and just drawing it out helped it kind of lock it in my brain a little bit more. So that's that's at the heart of what we're trying to do. We're focused on primarily media, but we've done podcasts. We've done workbooks. In fact, I'm working on one right now with our lead writer about out of Egypt. Is our most recent documentary about the Exodus, and it's full of visuals, and it's going to have QR codes where they can link to the videos as they read, the texts, trying to engage them on multiple levels, is, is really what we're all about.

 DJ Stutz  31:06

Yeah, and there's so much bad media that's out there, media that kills your brain cells, 

 Craig Dehut  31:11

Right, right.

 DJ Stutz  31:12

 Kind of Kind of thing, or they're demeaning to women, or they're demeaning to families, or they're, you know, there's so many ways that media is being used to attack faith and family and ethics and all of these things. So to have something that you can use media with to support, to grow and to learn is just so nice to have a resource like this. And so I just want to thank you for all the work that you're doing on this. So Craig, if they want to learn more about Appian media, where do they go? How are they going to find you?

 Craig Dehut  31:49

Sure they can look us up at AppianMedia.org they can also just find our YouTube channel. That's actually where most people find us. They can just search for Appian Media on YouTube. Like I said, all of the videos that we've produced, not just our major series and kids series and podcasts, but behind the scenes when we travel over to those countries, those are, you know, fun things to capture. Those are all available for free to watch on our on our YouTube channel.

 DJ Stutz  32:15

And then two, I'm sure you're funded with crowdsourcing, and I know Angel Studios has been doing a lot of crowdsourcing to fund their work, and so there's a way then to even donate to... 

 Craig Dehut  32:27

Correct.

 DJ Stutz  32:28

Right?

 Craig Dehut  32:29

Yes.  So everything that we produce is is crowdfunded. We are a not for profit, so individuals donate to us to fund this, and it's typically all done on the front end. video production isn't cheap. International video production is really not. And yet, people have been so incredibly generous over the years to allow us to not only travel over there with a small team, but all the funds that it takes for the post production, months and months of editing and writing that goes into that afterwards, so that we don't have to fill up theaters, we don't have to sell a lot of DVDs. I would love for us to not to sell any more DVDs, but because the funds are already there and we can give it away for free so that everyone can enjoy it. So yes, right there on our website, there's a donate button you can either give as a one time gift. Many people choose to just donate each month, and that is actually one of the best ways to help support, because we're constantly putting new content out and planning for 2, 3, 4, years down the road. 

 DJ Stutz  33:30

I love it! All right, everybody, all of those links are in the show notes. So we'll have the YouTube link, we'll have the website link, and so you can just go and click and you're going to be able to connect and have all of those doors open to you and your family as you move forward. I love it. Love it. Okay, Craig, before we go, I always ask my guests the same question. So I'm going to ask you.  You know, we know that there are no perfect parents, but we do know that some parents seem to just be a little more successful than others. How would you describe a successful parent? 

 Craig Dehut  34:06

That is such a good question. I don't have a quick answer, but I think it really does boil down to humility and getting your example of parenthood from the right sources. I was blessed with two wonderful parents. My mother did pass about a year or so ago, but my father is still living and I just I attribute to them so much of what I'm able to do with our kids. So having the right kind of source, not everyone has that, and I do understand and appreciate that God is the example of the perfect parent. So he's a father that's not going to ever disappoint you or break his promises he's going to provide for you and everything that you need. But I'm not God. You know, I do make mistakes, and so being humble, it's okay. I think it's actually beneficial when necessary to apologize to your kids. I've apologized to my kids. Perhaps I've lost my temper or I wasn't clear enough. Right, or I did something that was not helpful or right or good, and that's something that my parents did with me. They're wonderful people, but they weren't perfect either. And for an adult to be able to come down to their child's level and say, Look, I'm working at this as well. I'm doing the best that I can, but sometimes I mess up, I think helps. It really does help the kid to go, Okay, I need to be willing to do that at times too, because even mommy and daddy are growing and working towards that, we're all after the perfect example, but we're not going to achieve it in this lifetime. And just being real, just being humble with our kids and saying, Look, I messed up. Let's work together. They still need to respect my authority. They still need to obey when we give instruction. But I don't want them to think of me as a perfect superhero of a parent, because eventually that vision is going to get shattered. For my kids, it's already been shattered, and that's okay, because I want them to know that, right? It's you won't be able to keep that up for very long at all. Kids are too smart, no, but they will grow to appreciate and love their parents more, as I did with mine, when they realize these are real people, in the case of my parents and in the case of my wife and I, these are real people changed by Jesus, being changed by Jesus, and we're doing the best that we can to instruct and help them in the same way. 

 DJ Stutz  36:21

I love it. I love it. Craig, thank you so much, and I was mentioning earlier, but really this has been one of my favorite conversations in all of these episodes. And we're coming up on 200 episodes, so that's fantastic. Well done. Yes, yes. So I just really appreciate it. So thank you so much, and best of luck to you and all of the things that you're doing. And I encourage our families to really check it out and see how they can take these resources and really use them in their families. Yeah. And if you're looking for a good parenting book, an interesting parenting book, I recommend the Bible. So there you absolutely 100% yep, yep, okay. Well, thank you so much, and to everyone, we'll be back next week. I so appreciate you spending this time. Be sure and click follow, share, tell a friend, leave a five star review. Yes, five stars is the appropriate number of stars, and we'd love to hear what you think in a review. Or you can get a hold of us on any of our socials, all of those links again, are in the show notes. So until next week, let's find joy in parenting. See you guys, thank you so much for sticking around to the end of today's episode of imperfect heroes. Parenting is truly one of the most rewarding journeys we can take. But let's face it, it can be incredibly challenging, and sometimes we make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be. The good news is that with a little bit of work up front, there are practical steps you can take to bring more peace and joy into your family life. I am passionate to share these strategies and insights with you if you're ready to step on the path to joyful, effective parenting. I invite you to schedule a family checkup. Just click on the calendar link in the show notes below. Schedule a time that works perfectly for you, and let's work together to create a more harmonious and happy environment. And remember, every small step that you take today makes a big difference. So thank you again for joining us, and until next time, let's find joy in parenting.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai