PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 385: FILLING UP YOUR LACK
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 385: FILLING UP YOUR LACK
Every mother needs to be fortified with certain emotional nutrients in order to mother effectively. As mothers, we must also give our children these needed nutrients.
Pam Fields joins me again today to share about five motherhood nutrients we need in our lives, and in the lives of our children. She shares how we can supplement where we are lacking and learn to give them to our children.
What kind of soundtracks are you recording for your children's future lives? Make sure you get to the end of this podcast to hear the beautiful "hugging" story.
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! You will be pleased to know that I have Pam Fields with me again today. I know you would have enjoyed last week’s session with Pam. Now, as you know, Pam also has her own podcast, “The Mom Next Door,” so you can look into that.
Now, Pam, I know that in this new season of your life with your children grown, getting married, and even the younger ones are growing up, you are seeing things through a different lens and you're learning new things. Well, we just want to learn right along with you. You were telling me about how you read in this book about five basic things that a mother must give to her children. I think that’s worth talking about today. Can we talk about those? Start off with the first one.
Pam Fields: Absolutely. When we start our motherhood, we’re reading a lot about what to expect when you're a mother, what to expect when you're expecting all these things. Then I felt like, for a while, “I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t really need to read a lot of mothering books.” And there aren’t a lot for the upper years anyway.
But then, I’m in this season where I’m starting to be more, maybe, retrospective, perspective. Also, things I can learn now, I’m seeing in a different light, because it doesn’t only help me sort through my own upbringing, and my own years of mothering, but I can kind of filter it out, as just a colander, and take the things that I have learned, and choose the nuggets to pass on to the next generation of parents in my family.
As my daughters become moms, and my daughters-in-laws become mothers, if I can boil it down and give them some thoughts, some ideas that maybe could help them direct some of the things they do. Wow, what a benefit that is, to be able to pass that on.
In the last session, we talked about editing our child’s story, or even being able to speak into one another, and edit each other’s lives for the glory of God. I was reading this book called, Our Mothers, Ourselves, by Cloud and Townsend. It talks about a mother’s influence and how it really stabilizes us or not. It will lead us into our future years.
I know you always talk about this, but this was a little bit of difference, the way they said it. It really struck me. They said that five basic needs must be met by a mother.
The first one is SAFETY. That safety comes in the form of a person who is predictable, stable, and danger-free. This kind of mom creates a foundation for all of the other tasks of mothering. We kind of talked about that in that last session about being stable, about being predictable, about not losing our minds.
Without being that stable mother, then the child remains in a state of panic or anxiety. When that panic and anxiety are high, then it makes it very difficult. Maybe even at times, that child is unable to love, or to learn, because they feel from their environment so much destabilization. So, safety being the number one.
The second one, BEING NURTURED. Fuel for the soul. I know that in our home, we tend to be pretty practical, pretty efficient. We’ve got everything down to a system, a lot of the transactions. Because we’re a big family it’s a lot to manage.
I can tend towards getting things done and I forget to fuel the soul. Sometimes it’s not natural in me. I kind of have to have a list and remind myself, “Oh, I need to nurture here.” It’s within me, and it’s my nature to be practical. It’s my nature to get the list done. But we need to have the immaterial, the non-physical, functional part of relationship. Building that, nurturing relationships in order to live in fullness.
The third one on this list is BASIC TRUST. The need and ability to trust oneself in a relationship. Trust is a learned thing. Trust helps us to reach out, and to depend, and to need. When I have needs, it means it’s something that I can’t do for myself. If I have a need, I have to go to somebody else. When I see somebody else, and somebody else pours into my life, I learn that dependency is actually a good thing.
We need to feel comfortable with dependency, instead of simply thinking “I can do it myself!” I need to trust other people. That trust and that dependency on them really sets us up for being able to trust and depend on God. If I learn in the physical, in my day-to-day life, that I don’t need anybody, I can do it all myself . . . that’s also where I naturally tend to be, in a protective measure that I put into my life at a very young age, or what. I maybe just need to take care of myself, because I’m not so sure about the people around me.
But if I continue to live in that independence, then I’m not going to be able to trust God and go to Him. Isn’t that where we need to dependent upon God? As mothers, a big part of that is instilling that basic trust and letting our children understand that we can be trusted, and they can depend on us, and that being dependent is not a bad thing.
Four: BELONGING AND INVITATION. We all have a need to belong. We have a need to belong to family and to something more than just ourselves. Because God created us with a desire and a need for relationship. We can’t have a relationship by ourselves. One person is not a relationship.
When mothers love and care for their children, they make them feel wanted. That transfers onto later feelings of worth and confidence in our relationships. This is something that I’m finding. It’s something that cannot be known through an intellectual exercise.
You can tell me that you belong here. You can tell me, “Oh, you're invited. Go ahead and come.” But when I arrive at the Campbell home, if I walked in the door, and you say, “OK, get along then. Do your thing. We’ve provided the structure, the bed for you to sleep in, but you're on your own.” that is not going to give me the feeling of belonging, an invitation and welcoming that I get.
No, when I walk into the Campbell home, Nancy is up from her desk. “Well, hello! Thank you for coming! How wonderful it is to see you!” And then, there’s a big hug, and “Let me show you to your room.” All the good food that you cooked, those are the things that are welcoming to me. I have no doubt that you want me here.
Nancy: Amen!
Pam: I have no doubt as to whether I belong or not. You have exhibited to me an experience of consistently belonging and consistently being wanted. That is something. It’s not just an academic exercise. It’s an experience.
I can tell you I have a welcoming home. I can tell my children, “I love you.” I can tell my children, “I want you here.” I can tell my children all the things with my words, but to experience that, to experience that connection, and that welcoming, and the consistency, that’s a different level. This is something I am learning more of. I’ve been a mom for almost 30 years, but I’m still learning and growing in this.
Nancy: That’s the wonderful thing. We never stop learning, do we?
Pam: For sure!
Nancy: And if we do, we’re becoming very stagnant and redundant. There’s always got to be an opening to more and new.
Pam: And that’s the exciting, exciting thing, that we are constantly stepping into that. As we go through the seasons, it makes a lot of sense, because we learn things. “Precept upon precept, line upon line,” as we grow, that is.
Nancy: Yes. You know, talking about that welcoming and belonging, you were telling me another incident recently of how you felt that welcome at a friend’s back in Oregon. Remember that story?
Pam: Oh, yes, I was telling you that. We’re in Tennessee now. We’ve been here for five years. But our whole life, we lived in Oregon. Just a couple of weeks ago, I went back and called up a friend on a Tuesday. I said, “Hey, I’m in town for a couple of days. Is there any way I could stop by and visit for just an hour? I haven’t seen you in a couple of years.”
She called me right back, and said, “Oh, I would love to have you. I have an hour. I have other appointments.” I thought, “I don’t want to take too long of her time.” So, I pulled up in my rental car and got out. I looked around, and it was like, in the movies, how it’s all so beautiful. I don’t think I had seen her house with that amount of beauty. I don’t know, it just struck me, maybe because I had been reading this book.
I stepped out onto her porch, and she walked out and said hello. All it took was the “hello,” and I starting bawling. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Oh, my goodness, I need a tissue!” And all I’m doing is standing on the porch! She only said, “Hello,” but I thought back to all the years.
I met her when my oldest was five, so 24 years that this woman has invested in my life and brought me meals when I had a new baby. Or, honestly, she didn’t always tell me the rosy things. Sometimes she challenged me, and she told me things that maybe were difficult to hear. She challenged me. She poured into my life.
So, at that moment, I said, “I don’t know why I’m crying, except just being here! Just being here.” It was that welcome heart, and that welcome home, and knowing that I belonged, and that I held a piece in her heart. just as much as she held a piece in mine.
Nancy: So beautiful!
Pam: Well, which actually kind of brings us to this fifth and final point of the basic needs that must be met by a mother. That one is, SOMEONE TO LOVE. We have, when a baby is born, there is an object of their love. That object is mother. Mother fulfills their needs, and they begin to fall in love with Mother. Dad is probably secondary as he begins to nurture and care for them. Of course, all the siblings, and then, as you grow, there are many objects of our love.
But initially, in order to develop emotionally, and physically, and intellectually, socially, all those things, we need to experience, to give love, and to receive love. I see it with your friend Erin. As she got these little children, she adopted them. I can’t remember how old they were. But she has been able to pour into their lives. That has grown them, even physically. Physically, socially, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, all these things.
I’ll just go on. I’m getting a little distracted. But those needs that we need, and those actions that we take, are like vitamins for our lives. You think about when a child is born, they have their body chemistry. There could be some nutrients missing. There could be some deficiencies for some reason. Or as they grow in their environment, in the seasons around them, they may acquire some deficiencies.
Whenever we think about them nutritionally, if you have a nutrient deficiency, what do we do? We supplement. We don’t just say, “Ah, well, you're deficient in that, sorry.” No, we go, “OK, we want to bring the body to wholeness, and we want to bring the body to health.” So, if there is a deficiency, we supplement it, to bring it into health.
That is something where this book has really challenged me in saying, you know what, there are places . . . Even the best mom, the mom who was super-intentional, and had done everything perfectly, well, we’re imperfect people. So, we’re always going to miss something. It’s not reasonable to think that we are going to do everything perfectly with each child, and each of their personalities, and each of their make-ups. There are going to be things that are missed.
I know, looking back, there were things in my life that were missed through my childhood. This is something where I’m learning is the concept of re-mothering. The areas, maybe where I wasn’t mothered well that I can go look for supplements. That’s what, when I found Above Rubies and somebody handed that magazine in my hands when my eldest was four months old.
READING ABOVE RUBIES RE-MOTHERED ME
Nancy: That’s a long time!
Pam: Yes, that’s a long 29 years ago! Reading the magazine began to re-mother me. It was teaching me things that were missing. As I listened to audio cassettes (in those days), and then began to attend some Above Rubies retreats, I experienced different aspects in learning of motherhood that were intellectually teaching me.
But they were also experientially teaching me, through the ministry of other women, and through the ministry of you, and of you coming up and asking about, being curious about my life, as we would drive to the airport, to send you back to Tennessee.
Nancy: Because eventually, Pam, along with some others, began to put on Ladies’ retreats up there in Oregon. We were coming up every year, and I would stay at your home. It was always a very special time. And I watched your children grow. It was so wonderful!
Pam: Yes. They all remember the times Nancy would come and read stories to them. We’d have a fantastic dinner. It was the healthiest I could try to put together. I have to say we had to make a little bit of variety, because some of my family didn’t always want to cooperate. [laughter]
But anyway, yeah. There are areas that all of us can learn to grow. When we have maybe not been given those nutrients in our homes as children, we are just not going to mature in certain areas. What I’m finding, as I read and as I study, and talk to my mentor, and my counselor, and all these places that pour into me . . .
One of the things that mothering teaches us is boundaries. Mothering teaches us boundaries, and how to respond to challenges. We talked in the last episode about a challenge of losing chickens, or different challenges in our situations. And mothering through our ministry to our children molds them into their future.
A MOTHER’S WORDS ARE THE SOUNDTRACK FOR THEIR FUTURE LIVES
One time, a few weeks ago, I was at a park, doing my thirty minutes of walking every day. I saw this young mom with a toddler, and the ground was rocky and uneven. This momma took her baby down from her hip, and pointed to grandma across the way, and said, “Go walk to Grandma. Go on. You can do it! You can do it!”
As this little one toddled over, that mama kept saying, “You can do it! You can do it!” That struck me, in the light of what I’m learning. And I wanted to go over and say, “Oh, you have no idea! You are giving your child this internal narrative. You’re teaching them that, in the future, when they have obstacles, when they have rocky roads, when that distance seems a long way to go, they’re going to have your voice in the back of their mind saying, “You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.”
And that is something. We’ve heard your daughters interviewed before, and they say, “It’s amazing to be the daughter of Nancy Campbell because she always spoke into us and encouraged us in the things that we could do. And always spoke so positively.” It made them believe that they could do anything. This is that soundtrack that they play in their minds. We want our children to play these soundtracks that remind them that they can do things.
Nancy: Yes. I love that. It makes you think of Proverbs 6, where it talks about the mother’s teaching. It says here in verse 20: “My son, keep thy father’s commandments, and forsake not the law (that is the word “teaching”) “of thy mother. Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou goest, it shall lead thee, and when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee. When thou awakest, it shall talk with thee.” IT’S A SOUNDTRACK!’
So, we have to think, lovely mothers, what are the soundtracks we are recording for our children? As this mother was saving, “Yes, you can do it! You can do it! You’re amazing!” When our children hear that constantly in their ears from their mother, it becomes a soundtrack, as you said, for future years, and for when they will face incredible challenges along the way.
I often remember this story of my eldest son, Wes. They were taking out the Newsboys, the band he manages. They were tired of just having all their concerts in these big auditoriums because they took so much of the money they would make from the concert. It would just have to be given back on this, and this, and this, and that.
So, they said, “OK, we’ll design our own big tents!” They did that. They designed these tents, and it was like going out with a circus. They had to take everything. They had to take the food stores, and the toilets, and they had to take everything with them. But unfortunately, they got out there in Texas, and incredible windstorms came and tore these tents to pieces. It happened on more than one occasion, until they actually lost millions.
I remember saying to my son one time when he came in, I said, “Oh, Wes, how are you getting on with all these problems out there?” He just looked at me. He said, “Mom, I don’t have problems, only challenges.” He worked through those challenges, but that was his whole understanding. Problems meant nothing to him. They were just a challenge along the way.
Pam: That was the soundtrack in the Campbell home that you have put in your children from the beginning. And all your grandchildren know it. I’ve talked to your grandchildren. What do they know? “A good man’s never stuck!”
Nancy: That’s right. That came down the generations.
Pam: It is. They continue to play that.
Nancy: Yes! They do! It’s amazing. That was a phrase that my father constantly said as we were growing up. To himself, with any challenge that he faced. “Wow! How am I going to do this?” NO! “A good man’s never stuck!” He got it from his father. My father would say it, and then it came out of us children, his children. My generation all said those words. Now the grandchildren are saying it. And I guess the next generation will too! It just carries on. It’s a soundtrack. We can make positive soundtracks or negative soundtracks.
Pam: That’s true. And, you know, this one thing I’m finding . . . A lot of my friends are my age. It makes sense. We come to an age where we’re like, “Ah, things didn’t exactly turn out for some of our children, or even for ourselves, the way we thought.” Sometimes it’s not all bad. It’s different. It’s different than we thought.
But we do start, I think, now in our 50’s, we are getting to be a little more contemplative of why and what and how. I have a group of children who are grown adults, and then I have younger ones still in the home. And I think if I could stop and think about areas, and the way that I mothered these older children, and was it any different? Or is it any different that the way I do the younger ones? I have to say yes. As we learn and grow in our motherhood, we decide what hills to die on.
Nancy: Exactly.
Pam: And then, sometimes I do admit, I’m just more tired. That determines, sometimes, where I’m going to put my effort. I have grandchildren now, and I have all these things to juggle in a different way. One of the things, as I look back on these basic needs to meet as a mother, I have to evaluate. OK, what did I do really well? And in what areas could I have done better?
For me, on this list, nurture is one of those ones. I said, “I probably could have done a better job nurturing.” That was hard for me. I needed almost a list, like these are the things. The Power of Motherhood, that book, I got it right after it came out. It was about the time my first one was born.
I needed that manual for motherhood because when I entered into my mothering, I just was not quite prepared. I did not have the tools I needed to go into motherhood. That taught me things, but again, we’re thinking that almost academically it taught me things. So, then I transferred over academically. These were the things I needed to do. I look back, and nurture is not an academic thing. It’s an experiential thing.
We were talking earlier about an experience I had with one of my daughters. I’ll tell you this: I have a fantastic mentor in my life right now. I meet with her almost every week. We’ve been meeting for ten months to study the book of Ephesians, and we are only to Ephesians 5, because we find all these areas to stop and linger and work through.
One of the things that she told me when she started mentoring me, she was like, “You’re not a hugger, are you?” And I said, “Oh, no! I am not a hugger! It’s just tying a knot in me. I’m not really . . . I could do without it.” She said, “We’re going to change that.” I thought, “Well, I’m not interested in changing that, but if you say I need to, I trust your wisdom. But I know, within me, that is hard.”
So, every time I meet with her, at the end, she’s like, “Come on, give me a hug!” And then she’s sending me articles. You need to have a 20-second hug every day and different things. She’s always challenging me. That’s one area, I think. Looking back, I hugged my children, but I did that because I read it in a book. It might have been The Power of Motherhood. It might have been a different one. I don’t remember. But I cognitively knew, “Hugging is good for your child. So, I need to hug my child.”
And I remember, down on my knees, or up on the couch, just hugging them. And not quite thinking, when to miss it over, but also not feeling it as much as I was committed to doing it, because I knew it was right for them. I knew they were feeling it. I knew it was making the endorphins react for them to respond to my hug. But it was very much a cognitive effort for me.
And then, as they grew into teenagers, I really don’t hug them as much. I don’t cuddle them on the couch as much. I don’t. That’s an area where I need to work on, and I need to refine. But it’s kind of awkward to go back and fix it. It’s like, how do you start this? I have not been a hugger. How do I do this?
Well, we had an experience a few, I don’t know, months, weeks, whatever it was. I have a daughter who is living on her own. One day she called me, and she said “I’m not feeling safe to pull into my driveway right now. I’m just going to keep driving. Will you talk to me while I drive?” And I said, “Absolutely. You don’t feel safe pulling in your driveway, keep driving. The Holy Spirit speaks to us. Keep driving.”
Pretty soon, she said, “OK, I’m here.” I said, “OK, you're home. Are you going to go in now? Everything’s fine? You feel better?” She said, “No, I’m at your house.” I said, “Oh, well, come on in.” And by that time, it was, I don’t know, close to 11 o’clock at night. I was in my pajamas. I was in my bed.
For a little bit of reference, we’ve had some challenges in our relationship, really, mostly on my part, my hard-heartedness, and stubbornness, and rigidity. Some of those things, I just could have done better as a mom. So, we’ve been challenged, a little bit, in our relationship. In that, I want to make things better, but I don’t know how. It’s awkward.
But at this moment, my daughter ended up coming to our house because the boogeyman could have been at her house. So, she came to our house. And she comes in to talk to me. She just starts relaying her day, and on and on, just talking and talking. And then pretty soon, she said, “You know,” talking about her walk with the Lord.
She said, “You know, I used to physically feel God hug me. I could feel His arms around me, like physically. I knew He was there. I don’t physically feel His hugs anymore. It’s really kind of strange, because when I spent time with Him, I could feel His hugs, but I just haven’t felt that for a long time.”
I said, “You know what? This is really interesting to me, because I have been learning more about hugs. This is an area in my life where I realized I have really failed you as a mom. I should have hugged you more when you were young. I’m kind of wondering, could it be, that you physically felt God hug you . . . because I wasn’t doing it?”
This is where I’m talking about relational vitamins. There are vitamins we need to grow, and to have wholeness. If we don’t have those vitamins, they need to be fulfilled somewhere. I said, “I wonder if the Lord was fulfilling that, and He was physically . . . You’re feeling His hugs because I was not giving you that essential vitamin. I’ve been learning that I need to do better at that. I’ve been learning about hugs. I’ve been reading articles about hugs. And I kind of think I’m supposed to hug you right now. What do you think? Do you think I need to hug you right now? How would you feel about that?”
And she said, “Yeah, I do. I want a hug.” I said, “Well, how do we do that?” It was just awkward as it could be. I thought, “How do we do that?” I said, “Why don’t you come here?” Here I am, laying down in my pajamas on the bed, and she just folded into me. We both sobbed. It was a beautiful moment, and I think we both recognized that.
A little while in, I said, “You know what? I think it’s safe to go home now.” She kind of giggled, and she said, “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I think God wanted me to drive past my driveway, and keep driving, because He wanted me to end up here. I think He wanted us to have this moment together.” It was like, I didn’t know how to navigate that, but God sent her to my door and sent her to an opportunity to fix the things that I had gotten wrong for so many years.
I’m now, at this point, I need to be humble. I need to recognize that and recognize I didn’t get it all right. And as right as I got everything, as intentional as I was as a mother, I was missing something. That was a challenge to me. That is something, when I stepped up to the door of my friend in Oregon, I think the reason it touched me so much is because she had filled a vitamin, an essential nutrient that I had been missing in my life, and in my motherhood.
When I come to your home, you energize me with an energy shot, of a vitamin water energy shot, to make me more whole, and let me step into the calling that God has for me. I would just challenge all of us to ponder, “Lord, what was I missing? I want to hear what I was missing, and I want to step into it. I want You to lead me, to heal any relationships that are broken, and to be able to nurture those who I need to nurture differently. But Lord, also sending people to teach me, and allow my heart to be ministered and re-mothered.”
We were mothered once, but we need to continually be re-mothered by our community, and the people around us, to bring us into this place where we can walk in the fullness of His calling.
Nancy: Yes. Thank you, Pam. Thank you for sharing that beautiful story about your daughter. That was so beautiful.
“Father, we just come to You at the end of this podcast again. Thank You, thank You for Your patience, and Your longsuffering, as You continue to show us Your ways, and teach us Your ways. Help us to be open to listening to Your voice. We thank You that You have promised that the meek You will teach Your ways. Lord, we want to have a meek spirit, to hear Your voice.
“I pray again today for all the precious wives and mothers listening. Bless them today. Pour out Your Spirit upon them and lead them more and more into all that You have for them. I ask in Jesus’ Name. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris
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