That's the question Rheanna Arfsten has been sitting with for years of motherhood. And the answer she's found is both simpler and deeper than most of us expect. It starts with where your eyes are looking.
Rheanna is the co-founder of Freedom Culture and the Occupy Freedom Ministry, a two-time bestselling author, and a homeschooling mom of four who came to faith at 22 with no church background and a painful childhood behind her. God has used every single part of it.
In part one of this conversation, Rheanna shares what inspired her book Raising Nations — and why it's not really a parenting book at all. It's about the eternal substance being built in you as you raise your kids. The transformation that happens not when everything goes right, but when you fix your gaze on God in the middle of everything that doesn't.
We talk about the ski instructor analogy from Colossians 3 that reframed how she thinks about daily life, the morning practice that carried her through her heaviest seasons, and why she believes the greatest gift you can give your kids isn't a perfect mom — it's a mom who keeps pointing them toward a perfect God.
This one ends with a prayer that is worth every minute of the conversation that led up to it.