PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 384: EDITING YOUR CHILD'S STORY
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 384: EDITING YOUR CHILD'S STORY
Pam Fields joins me to today for a very powerful podcast. Sadly, there are children who have traumatic things happen to them in their lives. As a mother, you have the power to determine how these situations will impact their lives. Listen in to these powerful testimonies.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to the Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies, a magazine bringing strength and encouragement to families across the world.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! Always so wonderful to be with you. For some time, I’ve been talking to you all by my little self. It’s time I asked someone to join me, so today I have with me my very dear friend, Pam Fields. If you've been listening to the podcast for many years, you will already know Pam. I’ve done quite a number of podcasts with Pam. So, here she is again, with me. We are looking forward to a very, very special podcast today. I know you're going to be so blessed.
Now Pam does her own podcast. I wonder if you've ever got to hear it. It’s called “The Mom Next Door.” Pam introduces mothers and wives who have been going through all manner of experiences in their lives and shares their stories.
You can also catch up with her at TendingFirelds.com on Facebook, Instagram, and all the social medias. Yes, it’s a good name, “Tending Fields,” because your name is Pam Fields, so you're tending first to your own family, but you're also tending to bless all the other families who can hear you speak. Anyway, say “hi!” Pam.
Pam Fields: And all families. All women have so many things we’re attending to. That could be our marriage, our money, our ministry, our children, our household. We all want to be tending well. There are many needs in our homes, all of us.
Nancy: Now, Pam, recently, you've been reading a very interesting book, plus you've been going through different things in your own life, an experience in this season of your life. I’d love you to share some of these things, because as you've been sharing them with me, I realized how powerful they are.
Pam: We’ll try to isolate these conversations, because we’ve had so many different conversations on the home, and here, and all these things. But yeah, I think we have a lot of busy-ness when our children are young. As they grow up, our seasons change. I think we’re able to maybe sit more and grow in a different perspective. We’re able to linger and really think through things. Maybe life was happening so fast in the younger years. My youngest is 12 now. My oldest is 29.
Nancy: And you have eight altogether.
Pam: We have nine children.
Nancy: Oh yes, that’s right! Where did I . . . I lost count!
Pam: And by the time this podcast airs, we will have six grandchildren. So, life just moves fast. And it continues moving fast, but the day-to-day changes. I’m able to now throw out the anchor a little bit and to have a different thought process.
I had not, not until I was about 50, I had not been to a counselor. Going to a counselor and having her help me work through some of my family of origin stories, some of my childhood. It’s been really good, because it brings me into also understanding the perspective of my motherhood. There is no perfect mother. We can all aspire to do our best, but we are all human, right?
Nancy: By the way, ladies, as Pam is talking with me now, we did a podcast together, talking about her childhood. That was really the first time she’d opened up about it publicly. So, you can look back if you want to hear that because you’ll know where Pam is coming from. In fact, look up “Pam Fields,” and you’ll be able to find all the podcasts we’ve done together.
Pam: Yes, yes. So, in talking to my counselor, I was pondering, why are there certain events that can be traumatic to one person, and maybe very similar events don’t become traumatic in someone else’s life? Because we see that. And we think, well, “Why is it? That’s just so silly. Why does that person think that’s a trauma?”
Or the other way, “Why did that hit me so hard? I don’t understand why.” It just doesn’t make sense to us. There are a lot of different factors. There are family of origin, there are genetics, there are your current circumstances and relationships in your life that can cause you to process things differently.
But as I learn about this, I think if I can learn the skills, and best apply them to my life . . . We always want to do better. We always want to grow. I thought about this in regard to even now, as a grandma, telling my daughter and my daughters-in-law . . . You know, we have an incredible opportunity as parents that we can help our children edit their stories and edit their circumstances so that they maybe don’t hit us quite as hard.
The reason I’m saying that is, one quote I wrote down from my counselor. She said, “Trauma takes over the brain when you don’t have an adult to help you edit your story.” I had to really linger on that and then think through. So, that is when a parent sits with you after a really difficult thing. And they say, “You know, that was really hard, but you got through it. Like, look at that!” You know, “Well that was as a stinky day! But you know what? God’s mercies are new every morning,” that we can edit where we . . . You think about a piece of paper, and you're editing your child’s schoolwork. You have that red pen, and you're taking out the things that need refining, that need rewording, that need to be adjusted, so that they have a greater ability. It’s not to say that we take out things that . . . things happen in our life. We can’t exterminate them as if they never existed, but we can adjust the verbiage. We can adjust things so that we have a different . . . it hits us differently.
I remember when I was a young mom, I went to one of your retreats. You were handing out these bracelets. One of them, I think it was yellow and it just had “Smile.” Little rubber bracelets. I thought, “I need to wear that bracelet.” I would come home, and I would be clunking around the kitchen, and whatever was happening.
My daughter, who I think was nine when she started, eight or nine, started going to the retreats with me. She would look at me, and she’d point at the bracelet, and be like, “Mom, smile! Smile!” And I thought, “Oh, I don’t WANT to smile!” But she helped me edit my day and edit my story by readjusting my attitude. So, we have people in our lives we can help. As women, we can help each other edit the story as we listen and help re-form. It’s such a further on.
Nancy: Yes. Now, you were telling me, Pam, two, actually very interesting incidents with your own children’s lives which could have been incredibly traumatic, but how the Lord enabled you to edit those stories. Can you share them?
Pam: Right. Again, I’m trying to keep a little anonymity for my children, so please forgive me if I stumble a little bit. But there was a circumstance with one of my children. I don’t want to say there’s such a thing as a minor one, but it was a childhood ridiculousness that happened at a babysitter’s house.
As I was driving my child home, she actually, she said something that happened. And I thought, “Oh! OK, that’s interesting. Tell me more. Oh, now what happened?” And then, “What was the response of your babysitter?” And “Oh, that was so interesting!” And I responded, trying to keep my cool. I remember in my van, I was driving home, thinking, “I’ve got to keep my cool here.” I just asked a lot of questions, and kept very positive in my questions, so that I was not blaming or condemning, or startling her, and creating fear in her.
Then, when I got home, I remember I said, “Well, let’s go turn on Blue’s Clues.” So, I went and turned on a little movie so that my children could watch that. As soon as I closed the door in the room, they were in to watch that movie, I stepped away, picked up the phone, called my husband, and explained the situation.
At that point, I lost it. I exploded to him of the situation that had occurred, and my frustration, and anger, and confusion, and trying to formulate my response. That was just a moment when I don’t think I realized until multiple years, decades later, that the response was valuable.
Nancy: Yes, because in the natural, it would have been the easiest thing for you to get into a state right there, talking to your child, and begin to blow it then.
Pam: Yes. And I probably had a history of that, a little more often than I do now, in my older years. I just responded very quickly. So, I don’t know what was within me, to respond . . .
Nancy: The Lord was just with you, yes.
Pam: To respond in such a calm manner. And then, reserve my explosion until later, when I was with my husband, who had the logic and the wherewithal to receive that from me, in a different way than a child would.
Nancy: And then, his response was very good too. What did he say?
Pam: Well, you're thinking of the second incident.
Nancy: Oh, yes, that’s right.
Pam: So, the second incident was, my daughter was at a playday with a friend. That playday just kind of kept lingering, and going long, and long. Pretty soon, I got a phone call from this other mom. And she said, “Can your child spend the night?”
At that point, we hadn’t any rules about spending the night. And I thought, “Sure, that’s probably fine.” I thought. I hadn’t said that, but I said, “You know what, let me call my husband, and see what he thinks. See if he’s got plans for our family tonight.”
When I called him, he said, “You know, I think I’d rather her come home tonight. Why don’t you let her stay as long as possible? Pick her up at ten, or ten-thirty, so she can have a good time with her friend. They can watch a movie, but I think you should probably go pick her up around ten, ten-thirty.” I was like, “OK, that’s fine.” That was the arrangement that we had made.
Well, after I got my daughter in the van, and we’re driving home, I had this great big, 15-passenger van, and I’m driving home in the dark. There was this wee little voice out of the back of my vehicle. I was asking her, “How did the evening go? What did you do?” At one point, she said, “You know, we were done with dinner, and the dad wanted me to come see his office in the basement.”
I was like, “Oh, that’s really interesting. Does he work from home, or does he have the basement?” I was curious. “Tell me about it.” I said, “What did it look like?” Or “Did you go down there?”
She said, “Yeah, I went down to the basement to see his office.”
I said, “Oh, well, what did it look like?”
She said what it looked like, and she said, “But, you know, it gets cold in there.”
I said, “Oh, Ok. Well, that’s interesting.”
She said, “Yeah. The dad told me it was cold in there, so he asked me to close the door.”
And I was thinking, “Oh. So, did you do it?”
“Yeah, I closed the door.”
“Oh, OK.” I kept asking her these questions. “What did you do after the door was closed?” I was peppering her with questions that made it not seem so much as an interrogation, but asking questions about the room, and what have you.
I said, “Well, where was the mom?”
“Well, she was doing dishes.”
“Where was your friend?”
“Oh, she was doing her chores.”
“Oh, so how long did you stay down there?”
And she said, “Oh, it wasn’t long before my friend finished her chores and came down to join me. Then we went somewhere else and played.”
I took a breath, and I was like, “OK, thank You, Lord,” because, as she told me about this, my thought was, “She was being groomed for something.” I was so grateful that earlier, my husband said, “I think we should just bring her home tonight. Let’s not let her spend the night.” I thought, “Had it not been that night that something had happened, if that was just a grooming, and a making comfortable for that situation . . .
You know, bad things happen. So, it was, again, I asked her all these questions, a curiosity, light-hearted, but still getting information I needed. When, again, I got home, and I explained to my husband what had happened, and the circumstances, we were both very thankful that we had decided to not let her spend the night. From that point on, we drew a line in the sand that we don’t do over-nighters, except in circumstances where my husband knows the other husband extremely well. Are there other sons in the house, of teenage years? All of these situations, because this was another Christian homeschool family.
I could be all wrong. Maybe there was nothing going to happen. Maybe it was completely innocent. But my protective mama heart stepped in. Those two circumstances, when my counselor told me, “Trauma takes over the brain when you don’t have an adult to help you edit your story.” She also said, “It doesn’t become trauma in a child’s brain if an adult walks them through the circumstances.”
Nancy: That’s what you did.
Pam: Yes! And in both cases, I asked right. I replayed those to the counselor, and I said, “Many, many years later, I asked my daughter, “Do you remember those situations?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Were those traumatic for you?” She said, “No.” I thought, “I can’t believe those weren’t traumatic for you, because it seems like they should have been.”
And the counselor said, “But you know what? You edited it well. You kept your cool, and what she had was a well-regulated mom to make her feel safe, who responded, not with any sort of accusation, or flying off the handle. To her, you were safe, and she believed in your safety. She knew her safety. It’s like she borrowed it from you. If she was feeling any apprehension, she borrowed your safety.”
And then, we had another situation where I totally flew off the handle. I was telling you about it the other day. We were at the park, and we had several little ones. The bathroom was not super close to the playground area. When somebody needs to go the bathroom, my theory is, “You water one, you water ‘em all!” Everybody goes potty, everybody gets a drink, and then we all, with the group, go back and forth together.
One child had asked to go to the bathroom, and I said, “We’ll go in a minute. I’ll gather everybody. We’ll go in a minute.” And it had taken a couple of minutes to gather everybody. Then, when I looked, and did my headcount, this child was gone. I was running over hills. There was a mound, and I remember running over, calling. I’m looking, and I’m calling, and I don’t see her anywhere. I panicked.
So then, I ran toward the bathrooms, which were also at the edge of the parking lot leading to the main road. If somebody was to design that park differently . . . That would have been smart to put these bathrooms by escape, if someone was to grab a child, right? So, at that moment I had been running frantically around the park, calling and trying to find her.
I gathered all the children. We went towards the bathroom. And she walked out, and she was just in the bathroom. “But didn’t you hear me calling??”
“Yeah, well, I was in the bathroom.” And I laid into her. I was so . . . I feel it now, in my body. I was apprehensive. I was angry. I was scared. I was frustrated. I was so nervous. I just started yelling. And then, yelling for her safety, for good reason. And it makes sense. It’s logical.
But then again, 20 years later, 15, 20 years later, I actually was talking to all four of my daughters. I asked them about any traumatic situations in their childhood, and all of them named that as a traumatic situation.
Nancy: And yet, nothing happened!
Pam: Nothing happened. It was completely innocent. She walked off. She used the bathroom. She was fine. She walked out. But what they saw was not a well-regulated mother. They saw a mother who flew off the handle and freaked out. They saw my fear. They saw my anxiety. They saw me absolutely losing my mind.
Nancy: And then it became theirs.
Pam: And it became theirs.
Nancy: Yes. Isn’t that interesting?
Pam: So, that is what they remember as trauma from their childhood.
Nancy: And yet they don’t remember those very bad things.
Pam: As being more traumatic. It spoke to me so much of like, wow! The power of me having a calm mind and a calm heart that is Spirit-led, having the Holy Spirit flow in us, and bring us peace. Again, I’m not going to do it all right. There’s always places where we, as humans, are going to struggle. We always need refinement, and that was a skill.
Since then, I have learned. I thought when I go into situations, “OK, this could be a bad situation. I could fly off the handle here naturally, but I’m going to pray for peace. I’m going to go into it with a little more calmness.”
Nancy: Yes, yes. That’s amazing. I remember another story you told me, the coyote story.
Pam: More recently, since I have learned this idea, my littlest, he’s our chicken tender. He had gone out one day to check on our chickens. A coyote, or something, had gotten many of his little chickens. He was not well-regulated as a response! He was angry. He was screaming. He was punching pillows. He was so mad that he lost his chickens. Those are very appropriate responses for a 12-year-old when they lose all of their chickens.
But all of a sudden, I thought, “Wait a second. I have an opportunity to edit his story. This could be traumatic, or maybe it won’t be if I edit it well. So, I said, “Come here. Come lay down on the bed.” And I laid down next to him, and I rubbed his back. I said, “You know, I can tell you're upset. I can tell you're angry, and you're mad. I understand that. It makes a lot of sense.”
So, I validated his feelings. I didn’t try to take them away. I didn’t say, “No, that’s silly. Don’t be upset. Don’t be angry.” I said, “I understand that.” Then I reminded him about the good things he had done to protect the chickens. “You know, we had the fence, we had all different things you do to protect your flock.” And I reminded him, “Those are the things you had done, and you did it right. And you did it well. You did the best you could to protect them.”
And then, I was like, “OK, so what are we going to do now? How are we going to solve this? Get in this with me, and let’s figure this out. Do you want to go to the store and buy new chickens? Do you want to maybe get some full-grown hens?”
I brought him into the problem-solving with me. I think that was when his emotions were so extremely intense. I couldn’t just dump the solution. I couldn’t say, “Don’t be angry. We’ll just get new chickens.” I had to bring him down and recognize the emotions he was facing. Calm his spirit, calm his heart. And then I could minister to him with solutions when he started to gain his senses and he could think through, “What do I want to do?” I think that was . . . I hope it won’t be so traumatic for him when he goes back and thinks about that day.
Nancy: Yes, yes. Actually, you're telling me that. This reminds me of a story in the life of David. I remember when he, at the time, was living in a place called Ziklag. They’d been out fighting and warring. They came back to find their whole town of Ziklag had been ravaged, completely wiped out, and they had taken all the wives and all the children.
Well, David was devastated. They all cried until they could cry no more. Then they were so mad, they were going to stone David. He was at the end of his tether. Completely. It was so traumatic. He didn’t even know what to do.
The Bible says” “Then David looked to the Lord” (1 Samuel 30:6). And when he put his eyes on the Lord, that’s when his spirit obviously calmed. He wasn’t calm. They were so devastated, completely. But it was then that the Lord was able to show him the strategy of how to go and retrieve their wives and children, which they did. God was with them.
But David wouldn’t have had a strategy if he had just kept on in his traumatic state. We can never get an answer when we’re in a state of trauma. We’ll never, ever get an answer. That was interesting how you said, as you were able to bring him to that place of calmness, then you could talk about, “OK what will we do?”
That’s an important principle, I believe, because so many people say, “I want answers!” But they’re in this state of trauma. You never get an answer in a state of trauma. You have to come out of that. You’ve got to come into that place of trust in God, and that peace that passes all understanding. Then your spirit can hear from God.
Pam: I’m a very visual learner, so I can picture myself laying on the bed with my son, rubbing his back, and talking him through this. Really, what I was doing was soothing him. Soothing him so that he had his mind space back. Isn’t that what the Lord does for us when we go to Him? When David called out, when we go to Him, He soothes us. The Lord soothes us, so that we can then have that peace of mind, and we can think clearly. It is His renewing of our mind, and the calming of our heart. It’s not just a head-thing. It penetrates all extremities, as peace.
Nancy: Amen! That is such good stuff, Pam!
Pam: The other thing we talked about is how usually it is, for us, as humans, to forget things, and forget experiences, and forget the good things. So, that was another situation where I have learned that you cannot only help edit your child’s stories, you can help them rewrite their memories.
Or they just flat-out forget situations. I have a prodigal. I’ve talked about that, I think, briefly. It’s so funny. From what we’ve seen from some writing that this child has done, it’s like they’ve completely forgotten some good things that have happened. And their memory has been re-written, but by exterior influences that are not speaking truth to this child. But we can rewrite our children’s memories when we speak the good, and when we do the good.
For example, OK, this summer my son had an orthodontist appointment. We had just gotten back from Alaska, mind you. Two days later, we went to the orthodontist, and the nurse who sat him down said, “Hey! How’s your summer been? Have you done anything fun this summer?” And he said, “No.” Just very glibly, “No. Not really.”
I just smiled, and I said, “Um, we actually just got back from Alaska. Do you remember anything fun happening in Alaska?” And he got a little bit of a smile on his face, and he’s like, “Well, kinda.” [laughter] The nurse looks at me and says, “What did you did when you were in Alaska?”
I said, “Well, we actually hiked the glaciers. We went on a three-mile hike on ice, on glaciers. And then, the next day, we took a glacier cruise out to see the glaciers. We hiked lava flats, and there was a Fourth of July parade, and he biked with his cousins for hours and hours with cash in his pocket, going by the grocery store, where he had uninhibited restrictions to buy candy and soda pop, and all theses things.” I
was like, “Do you remember that?” And he just smiled, and he’s like, “Yeah.” I said, “Was that fun?” “Yeah.”
And this is where it’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to forget the good things that have just happened. I was thinking, “That is like us. Do we not forget sometimes the good things that God has done for us, and in our lives?” Do we not need sometimes . . . That’s why we have photo albums as families. That’s why we have souvenirs we bring back to remind us of the things.
In the Bible, there’s the Ebenezer that was there as a physical reminder of God’s provision. It kind of challenged me when I think through that situation, and I think, “I want to be very purposeful to have reminders in my home that remind my family and my children about the good things God has done in our lives, in our family, answers to prayer, and in so doing, having these reminders.” It helps rewrite their memories so that they focus on “whatever is good, pure, excellent, and praiseworthy.”
Nancy: I think that is so important, because I think all of us have a tendency to go to the negative. You know? Even positive people, if you go to the negative. So, I love what you are saying there, Pam, how we have to reiterate and affirm the good things, and make memories of them. I think that is wonderful.
In fact, whenever we go as a family, or even with part of the family, because our family has grown now. So, we’re going somewhere, and we’re returning, whoever’s in the car, whoever it is, I will always begin to ask questions, and say, “Hey, what was the thing that ministered to you most at where we went tonight? What was it?” Or, whatever that person said, “What was the thing that stuck out in your mind?”
Ask questions about it, so that they can reiterate what has happened. As you say, we just forget. Goodness me, how could your son forget that amazing holiday? You can’t believe it! But we do need to remind them and get them to speak things out.
It’s like our salvation. Our salvation is not just something hidden inside. How does the Bible say we are saved? “He that believeth in his heart, and confesses with his mouth shall be saved” (Romans 10:9, 10). It is not only a believing in your heart, but also a confession with your mouth, because when you confess, it affirms, and you remember.
So, the more we seek out the good things, the more we remember them. A good thing to do at the table, in the evening, with your children, is to say, “Hey, tell us a good thing that happened today in your life.” Go around the table. Get everyone to think of some good thing. It gets them into the habit of thinking of good things. And also, when our children do have negativity about things, to bring out the good things like you did, to remind them. To see things in a different way, to re-edit their story to what is the actual truth.
Pam: Well, that is a big burst when I have thought about my podcast. In Psalm 71, I don’t remember the exact verse at this moment, but it is, “I will tell the testimony.” We’re going to recount, we’re going to recount the things the Lord has done, and that is, when I started my podcast, it was based on coming to the Above Rubies retreat. That last day, giving testimony day, I was so encouraged by that. When we hear of God’s faithfulness, it reaffirms our knowledge of Who He is, and our trust in Him.
Nancy: Oh, yes! There was always, of course . . . My favorite meeting at Above Rubies retreats, as I’m speaking all weekend, and there, at the end, I just get to sit and listen to the stories of the women. It’s amazing. I can’t, sometimes I’ve got my mouth wide open! I just cannot even believe the stories. I look at this beautiful woman, who looks as though she’s been homeschooling for twenty years, and just so saintly. Then I have my mouth open as she tells me she’s had six abortions in the past and how God has redeemed her and totally re-edited her life!
Pam: Because He is! He is the Author of our life. He is the editor of our lives, and we can trust Him to make this story a beautiful thing.
Nancy: Amen! Oh, dear ladies, I hope you have been so encouraged by this podcast. Just think more about it. May the Lord help us all to have such wisdom as we raise our children, and many times, having to know what to say in these difficult situations. And often, to also re-edit their stories when they’re not seeing all the good.
“Lord God, we thank You so much that this is what You’re doing all the time in our lives. You’re coming with Your Word to show us the truth. When we let our emotions and our mind go, it goes to negativity. It goes to self-pity. It goes to the enemy of our souls and our minds. It takes us away from the truth.
“Lord God, help us to keep our eyes upon You, and our hearts and our minds filled with Your Word. Lord, anoint us as mothers as we seek to affirm. Lord, bless our children as we’re raising them, Lord, into all that you have for them. We ask it in the Name of Jesus. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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