Episode 4: Building a No Secrets Family

Joy McClain: Here’s Erin Davis—mom, author, speaker, and . . . race car driver?

Erin Davis: I almost got away with it! I was sixteen years old. It was my first summer with a car. Some friends and I went shopping in a neighboring town. One friend, Angie, was driving her car full of girls. I was driving a car full of girls. And as we headed into the parking lot, I looked over at Angie and said, “Let’s race!”

What I can tell you is that I got my car up to 120 miles per hour, but I took the outer road. Angie took the highway. I got to our end destination, and I clearly had won! Angie didn’t show up . . . and Angie didn’t show up . . . and Angie didn’t show up.

Now, you’re worried that this went terribly wrong. Actually, Angie just got a really high-priced speeding ticket. Fortunately for Angie, the speed limit on the interstate went up that week. If not, the officer who pulled Angie over told her, “You would have gone to jail.”

Joy: This is The Deep Well with Erin Davis. I’m Joy McClain.

Erin’s in a series called, “Lies Boys Believe.” On this episode, Erin’s going to challenge the idea that we can have family secrets. To illustrate, let’s go back to Erin’s story. She won the car race, but didn’t feel like sharing the news of a triumph too broadly.

Erin: Now, I didn’t feel the need to tell my mom that story. I just went home. I told her we had a great afternoon, nothing of interest happened.

The problem is that my sister Nicki was in Angie’s car. And when Angie had to fess up to her parents about what we had done, because she had a speeding ticket to pay, one of her punishments was that Angie had to go to the house of every girl that was in her car and apologize to the parents for putting their daughters in danger. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was not yesterday. I was sixteen a long time ago!

My mom, my sweet mom, is listening to Angie cry and repent and tell her she’s sorry. And my mom looks at Angie, and she looks at me, and she smiles in a way that makes me know I am in BIG trouble . . . and I was. I lost my driver’s license for the entire first summer that I was sixteen years old!

I think Nicki had the worst punishment. Because we're twins, she had to drive me everywhere. So, she was in this car that got the ticket, and she had to drive me everywhere.

It was a secret that didn’t stay a secret very long. And that’s what we’re going to talk about in this episode.

I want you to take a moment and think back to your own childhood. I bet you can remember a time when you did something that you were not supposed to do. I bet you can recall that feeling, that pit in your stomach, that you don’t want to be found out.

Maybe it was taking something that didn’t belong to you. I still remember when, as a six-year-old little girl, I stole a single peanut out of the bin in the grocery store. I was terrified I would be found out. I didn’t enjoy that peanut at all.

Maybe it was breaking or losing something that your parents treasured, and you tried to cover it up and hope they didn’t find out. My mom actually buried my grandma’s jewelry box as a little girl, and they never did find it.

Maybe it was being somewhere you weren’t supposed to be.

But I’m certain, as I’m describing these things, there’s a certain sweaty-palms, dry-mouth, racing-heart reaction that happens inside each of our bodies when we’re trying to keep a secret.

Covering our tracks is an impulse that most children have. And the reason for that, we talked about it in the previous episode, is because we are all born with flesh. But we can actually trace that reflex all the way back to ground zero for lies.

It’s time for me to say my favorite words: open your Bible. We are going to stay in Genesis, chapter 3. We’ve already been there in this series. And I’ve already said, I don’t know that we can go back to these basics too often, especially as we’re considering deception and the power that lies can have on our lives.

So, I’m teaching out of the ESV for this series. I’m going to read us Genesis 3:6–12.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

What we see here is the first lie, followed by the first sin, quickly followed by the first cover up.

It’s laughable, really. Sin, remember, we talked about, was like a bomb dropped on God’s shalom, perfect creation. The bomb went off, and Adam and Eve thought they could cover it up with fig leaves and playing hide ’n seek.

It’s a progression that we need to face as we consider how to help our sons run from lies and run toward God’s Truth because it’s like creating an environment where dangerous bacteria can grow when we allow secrets to be a part of our family lives.

Because: 

• Secrets produce shame.
• And shame leads to more secrets.
• And then those secrets lead to isolation.
• And then when we’re isolated, we are far more prone to fall for the enemy’s deception.
• And then we find ourselves in bondage.

So one application of understanding Genesis 3 is that our Christian families need to adopt—and we need to keep adopting—a no-secrets policy. It needs to be part of what sets us apart from those families who are not seeking to honor Christ in their families because sometimes there’s frosting under the bed.

Let me explain.

Several months ago, I was deep cleaning my sons’ rooms while they were at school. (I get that itch about twice a year.) So I’m cleaning my big boys’ room. (They told me I can tell this story. I said, “I won’t share your name, and the boy involved said, “You can share my name, Momma.” But I’m not going to. You can use your imagination.)

So I’m deep cleaning their room, which means I pull out everything that’s under their beds. I found a shoebox. I open the shoebox, and here are some of the contents of the shoebox:

• Half of a jar of chocolate frosting
• Several empty bags of chocolate chips
• Dried marshmallows
• Candy wrappers
• A few wrappers from string cheese (So at least the boy got some protein.)

When he got home, I said, “Hey, Buddy, I found this under your bed.” And we talked it through. Then I gave him a punishment. And he said, “Mom, it’s just a little candy. What is the big deal?” And here’s what I said:

“Buddy, if you’re willing to sneak and hide snacks from me now, you will be willing to sneak more dangerous vices later in life. I’m not willing to let this one go.”

It wasn’t about the food. Now, I’m not sure I’d let my son have a bedtime snack of chocolate frosting—he’s probably right there. But I’m not strict about food. If he’d come to me and said, “I’m hungry, Mom.” We would have had a snack. The problem was the snacking.

God’s Word is clear. As followers of Jesus, we have left our days of hiding behind fig leaves behind. Here’s three reasons why—straight from Scripture:

The first and most obvious reason, although it’s often not obvious to us in the moment, is that there are no secrets with God.

God knew Adam and Eve were hiding in the bushes. Think about it: God made everything. He sees everything. He made the bushes they were hiding behind. There’s not a leave or a twig big enough to hide them from Him. What was true of Adam and Eve is true for all of us. We cannot hide from God.

Listen to what Jesus said in Matthew 6:6: 

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Now, we always want to jump to application, but there’s no good application without right observation. And the right question to always ask of Scripture is: “What does this tell me about God?” And what Jesus was teaching us about God the Father here in Matthew 6 was that your Father sees what you do in secret.

Psalm 139:15 says: 

My frame was not hidden from you,
   when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

So even in the hiding place of your mama’s womb . . . Imagine this, when the psalmist wrote this, there was no such thing as an ultrasound. Nobody had ever seen a child in the womb. And the psalmist is saying, “When you knit me together in that secret place, that place that no one has ever seen.” Oh, but God’s seen it.

Listen to Proverbs 15:11 (I like the New Living Translation of this verse): 

Even Death and Destruction hold no secrets from the Lord.
How much more does He know the human heart!”

God sees. God knows. What that should do is inject a healthy dose of fear into each of our lives. It shouldalso liberate us from the illusion that we can cover up our sin.

Adam and Eve sinned. No way around it. They fell for the enemy’s deceptions, and they sinned. But imagine if instead of hiding from God, they immediately realized, “Oh, He saw it. Let’s run to Him. Let’s see who can get there first to tell Him we’re sorry and repent and ask Him to fix what we’ve broken here.” That’s not what they did.

We need to model this for our children. And everything I’m going to say in this series I’m probably going to give this disclaimer: I do not do this perfectly. I’m a sinner raising sinners.

But one way we model this for our children is by openly confessing our sin to them. It’s not just, “Mommy had a bad day.” Although we have those. It’s that, “Mommy sinned in my anger, in the way I talked to you, in the way I talk to Daddy, in the way I responded. I sinned. And I want you to know I’m sorry, and I want you to listen as I tell Jesus I’m sorry.”

We’ve got to model that. We’re born hiding. We’re not born repenting. It’s a skill we have to learn. (We’ll talk more about that in a minute.)

But it also means that we have to respond in Christ-like ways when they confess their sin to us. And we say, “We don’t keep secrets.” We’ve taught our boys that since they were little. We don’t keep secrets. In this family we don’t keep secrets. 

We’ve told our boys many times, “If somebody tells you, ‘You can’t tell anyone.’ You run. Especially if somebody tells you, ‘You can’t tell Mommy and Daddy this.’ You run.”

“And if anybody says, ‘If you tell your Mommy and Daddy this, you will be in big trouble.’ We say, ‘No. They will be in big trouble. There are no secrets in this family.’ It’s safe. Always come and tell us.”

We have the same rule in our marriage. If anybody ever says something to me, like, “Don’t tell your husband.” 

I say right then, “Sorry. We don’t operate that way. We are one flesh. I don’t keep any secrets from him. I’m not willing to do that. So if you’re not willing to tell me what comes next, that’s great. But I’m not willing to keep it from my husband.” That’s modeling that we live our lives out in the open.

Now, we’re not omniscient. We can’t see everything. But we can model this character of God in refusing to let anything be hidden in our families.

The second reason we need to build no-secrets families is that, as children of God, we are called to live in the light.

First John 1:5–7:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. [That’s good news!]

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

In Scripture, light is always a descriptor for sin freeness—the churchy word for that is holiness. That’s a biblical word too. But it’s this idea that we live exposed. We live in the light because we don’t have anything to hide.

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. I love to put my white sheets and my white towels out on the clothesline in the summer.

And that also is a picture for what the Christian life is supposed to be like. We’re supposed to live our lives in openness, free from secrets, because in doing so it reveals our sin, and it helps us to turn from it.

Listen to 1 Timothy 6:16: “God dwells in unapproachable light.”

Psalm 104:2 tells us that God is wrapped in a robe of light.

So get that image that Scripture is giving us that the place that God dwells is so illuminated that our eyes can’t take it in. And not only is the place where He dwells a place of unapproachable light, but He is actually wrapped in light. God doesn’t just live in light. He doesn’t just wear light. Jesus Himself described Himself as “the light of the world.”

One of the things that I think is going to be so amazing about heaven is we learn there won’t be a need for the sun or lamps, because Christ Himself will be our light. He is light. He dwells in light. He wraps Himself in light.

And then in Ephesians 5, Paul called us, God’s children, to walk in the light. Listen to Ephesians 5:8–9: 

For at one time you were darkness, [I love that. It doesn’t say, “You were in darkness.” You were darkness,] but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light.”

Verse 9 is in parenthesis in my Bible, but I don’t think it’s a parenthetical thought. 

(for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true).

How do you know if you’re walking in the light? Well, first of all, you’re not hiding anything. There’s no frosting under the bed of your heart. And you are pursuing what is good and right and true.

So it’s in living as children of the light, and teaching our children to do the same, means that we live exposed, and we refuse to hide.

One of the metrics that we use at our house to determine what we will watch and what we won’t watch is we don’t watch things that are dark.

Sometimes, with movies, you feel like you don’t ever come out of the darkness of the set. The story dwells in darkness. And those are movies we just avoid. I’m always telling my boys, “Buddies, we’re children of the light. We gravitate towards things that are of the light, not things that are of the darkness.”

We have to model this. We have to refuse to hide our own sins, our own selfish desires, our own habits that are not healthy, our own heartbreaks. We bring it all into the light. And we do that as our way of proclaiming who God is and our desire for Him to infuse every part of our lives with His light, His goodness, His life.

The third reason to build a no-secret family (I touched on this earlier, but let’s go a little deeper) is that the Bible invites us into a rhythm of confession and forgiveness. Confession and forgiveness. Confession and forgiveness.

It doesn’t just happen at the point of salvation. Most of us can remember the moment. I can remember the moment. I was fifteen years old when I realized for the first time my own sin. I ran down the aisle. Certainly that was a moment of confession and forgiveness. But that starts a cycle of confession and forgiveness in our lives.

Nothing has exposed my sin nature more than becoming a parent. I’ve heard many moms say these things, and I probably said them myself, things like: “I was never angry until I had kids,” or “I didn’t struggle with irritability until I became a mom,” or “I wouldn’t be so out of control if these children would just let me sleep.”

Actually, what’s true is that you are a born sinner. Parenting is the circumstance that God has used to expose the depth of depravity that exists in your heart.

And I gotta tell ya, I’m far more depraved than I realized. I’m far more selfish than I realized. Those boys who I would jump in front of a bus for without giving it a second thought, are also what God uses to expose how angry I am in my flesh.

And that could be discouraging, and of course, it is. But I don’t think the answer is incessant mom guilt. There is an alternative given to us in Scripture. It’s a verse that I hope you know and live, James 5:16: 

Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Now, do you need to confess your sins to your sons because they are the ones who hold your redemption? Of course not. That’s Jesus.

So why does James encourage us to confess our sins to one another? Because this pattern of confess–forgive, confess–forgive, confess–forgive, we need each other to live it out on a daily basis. It’s not a one and done mandate. It’s a lifestyle.

And for us to parent toward the light, that means we have to regularly own our sin. We have to confess that sin. We have to ask forgiveness from those we’ve sinned against.

We pray with our children often. This is awkward. I’ll be the first to tell you, this is hard. It’s never gotten unawkward for me. But I hope my children are going to have families of their own. I have to remind myself often I’m not raising boys. I’m raising men . . . they’re just in the boy stage. And what I know is that for them to have healthy marriages, they’re going to have to confess, repent, and ask for forgiveness. Confess, repent, ask for forgiveness. Over and over and over.

They’re going to be daddies, and they’re going to have to do the same thing. I know that the Great Commission is for each of them, that they have a call on their lives to serve Jesus in remarkable ways, and that’s going to require that they confess, repent, and ask for forgiveness.

Certainly, we don’t need any more Christian leaders who hide their sin. We need more and more that will bring it out into the light. And so, my boys have to see that modeled. I hope they’re seeing it modeled from me.

It also means we have to create an environment of grace. I don’t always want to give my kids grace. That's my flesh.

Now, an environment of grace doesn’t mean that we remove the consequences. Hebrews 12:6 tells us that the Lord disciplines us because He loves us.

So, I think we swing the pendulum too far when, if we think as Christian families that means our children have no consequences for their sin. That doesn’t model Christ-likeness either.

How does God respond to you when, instead of hiding your sin, you confess it to Him? He forgives. He receives you back. He says, “Come in here, back in the fold.” He welcomes you back.

We follow our Father’s example when we see their moments of confession, which are hard. It is hard for our boys to come to us and admit that they made a mistake, that they sinned.

We take those moments as opportunities to remind our children, our boys, “I don’t love you any less when you sin, and God doesn’t love you any less when you sin. You could never lose His love. He doesn’t want you to sin, because sin ultimately hurts you, but He loves you. And He has promised that when you repent and turn to Him, He will forgive you.”

One of our boys is especially prone to discouragement. Unfortunately, he’s like me in that way. And so when he messes up, man, he feels it big. It’s hard for him to shake it. We point him to the passage that says that God hurls our sins in the depths of the sea. And we say, “Buddy, does God own a wetsuit?” (Though God could own a wetsuit if He wanted to.)

But the idea is that God isn’t putting on scuba gear and diving down to the bottom of the ocean so He can drag that stuff up and throw it back at our face. No. He’s hurled it far away from Him, and He’s not diving down to get it.

So, we need to model that for them. I am not saying this is easy. Almost nothing about family life is easy. Almost nothing about training the next generation to walk in the light is easy. It can certainly feel so scary to live committed to having everything open and exposed.

But ultimately, our willingness to have no secrets is about how much we trust the One who sees everything anyway.

Family secrets is the stuff of soap operas, right?, and Hollywood dramas. But if we’re honest, if we think about our own families, family secrets are often the stuff that tears families apart.

We can probably all think of a time when a family secret gets exposed, and the result is devastation. God did not design our families to be institutions where secrets are kept. God designed our families to be safe havens where the truth gets passed around at the dinner table, and we tell the truth to each other, and we refuse to hide the hard stuff, the yucky stuff, the sinful stuff that exists.

As I wrap up this next episode, I want to tell another story on one of my boys. He was a preschooler at the time. It was half-day preschool, so I would go pick him up, and we would have lunch together. 

He was acting funny. He was extra hyper, which, boys already have a lot of energy, so I couldn’t necessarily pin that on what was going on. But I’m just telling you, the Holy Spirit told me to ask him . . . He was probably three, maybe four.

I said, “Buddy, did something happen at preschool today that you don’t want Mama to know?”

“No!” His voice got super shrill. I let it rest for a minute. And I’m telling you, I was praying, and the Lord was just pressing. And finally I said, “Buddy, I love you. I’m always going to love you. But there’s something you’re hiding from me.”

And tears fell down his little chubby cheeks. He reached down in his pocket, and he pulled out three little white seashells. And he said, “I got these for GiGi.” GiGi is his grandma, and she loves the beach. The shells were at the sand-and-water table at preschool, and he thought GiGi would love them. So he just stole them and slid them into the little blue jean pocket and came home.

But I’m telling you, the Lord wasn’t going to let him get away with it. So we drove right on back to preschool, and we had to face Miss Amanda. With tears in his eyes, he pulled those little seashells out of his pocket again, and said, “I’m sorry. I stole these.”

We have talked about that moment over and over and over, and I have told my boys, “What a mercy that moment was. God wouldn’t let you get away with it. It might have seemed like no big deal, but it was a big deal because it was a sin to steal, and it was a sin to lie to your mama. And God exposed it.”

And as my boys get older, the stakes get higher. It’s not seashells anymore. They still have that tendency because they’re boys of flesh who want to hide from the truth.

Mary Kassian taught me to pray years ago that when my sons are in sin, that the Lord would expose it, that I wouldn’t have to be on a constant witch hunt. Now, there are some wise things we should do: we should be checking their phones at certain ages. We should be deep cleaning their rooms and checking under their beds. But I don’t have to be constantly worried that I have to find him out.

I do need to be vigilant in asking the Lord, “If my boy is in sin (and it’s a matter of when, not if), expose it.”

I’m grateful for that teaching that Mary gave me all those years ago. I’m grateful for a God who sees all.

And so as I wrap up this episode, I want to pray for the boys that are connected to the women listening, that God would expose all the frosting, all the seashells, all the sin, and drag it out into the light. So let’s pray.

Lord, though it is scary to us, we are grateful there’s nowhere we can hide from You. We go to the depths—You’re there. We ascend to the heavens—You’re there too. You’re there in every secret place. Your desire is not just to catch us in the act so that you can hurt us or scare us. Your desire is to catch us in our sin so that You can free us from it.

So I pray for the boys connected to the women listening to this podcast, the boys in every church represented, every family represented, every community represented. As I think about that, that is thousands, if not tens of thousands of boys. I pray that if any of them are in sin, You would expose it.

God, do that work of pulling them away from the fig leaves. Help them bring into the light what they think they can cover in the darkness. And help us, as the women in their world, to respond with grace and with affirmation that our love isn’t changed by their sin, Lord.

We love You. Thanks for loving us in spite of all the things we try to hide from You. It’s in Your name I pray, amen.

Joy: I know a lot of us have just been challenged. Not only do moms need to encourage their sons not to keep secrets, all of us need to be in the light, no matter our season of life.

Erin and Jason Davis help moms and grandmoms teach young men important lessons like these in their new book, Lies Boys Believe and the Epic Quest for Truth. I think everyone with boys in their life should get a copy, but I also know a lot of listeners will want to get a copy even if they don’t have boys. It’s been clear in the series that we can all benefit from the biblical principles Erin and Jason write about.

This month, November of 2023, we have a special offer for you. If you donate any amount to help make The Deep Well podcast possible, we will send you the new book, Lies Boys Believe.

Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com. Click on “Lies Boys Believe,” make your donation, and let us know you’d like the book.

And would you do me a favor? Scroll to the bottom of the page, click on “Contact Us,” and share what you think about The Deep Well podcast.

It’s time for Erin Unscripted. We’re going to start with Linda, a woman in the audience.

Erin Unscripted

Woman: I loved what you said of the Bible inviting us into the rhythm of confession and forgiveness. How do you train a child—girl or boy or adults—to realize the importance of that? Of having a pure heart, and know that you’re free?

Erin: Yes. Freedom is the right word. I think of one of my boys. He was struggling coming into his own. I just pressed into prayer for him, and he surrendered his life to the Lord in that season. But what I remember is what he said next. He said, “Mom, I just feel so much better.”

And so the weight of carrying around his own sin, which was not even something he understood or could have articulated, was not freedom. He experienced that. He couldn’t fully describe it, but that is what we communicate. We think that it’s safer to hide. We think that it’s safer to not tell. But actually, that becomes a prison. We have to protect that.

And the real freedom is in the telling. So you can ask things, like, “Thank you for telling me. Don’t you feel so much better?”

Or we say, “I really didn’t want to tell you that I did that. I really didn’t want to confess that to you. But I actually feel so much better.”

And another thing we say to our boys is, “Is that worth breaking fellowship?” And the idea is that whatever you’re arguing about, ultimately it breaks fellowship. And the same is true with secrets. It breaks fellowship. And when we tell each other, there’s an intimacy there.

And so you end with a hug and say, “That was hard, but I’m so grateful we don’t have to break fellowship because of that secret.” So we model it–over and over and over. And we’ve got to communicate about the freedom. We don’t want them to just tell for telling’s sake. We want them to tell–God wants them to tell–because in telling there is so much freedom.

Linda: I’m Linda. I wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you teaching boys this information. My husband just read “The Lies Men Believe,” and family secrets can tear families apart, and how that was dealt with in this book. So it’s fresh on my mind.

I just think to create an environment of grace, and to create an environment where we’re teaching our children confession and forgiveness, that they can learn it at that young age, before they get into adulthood and before the brokenness becomes so great. I am just so thankful for you and Jason writing this book.

Erin: We were so honored to get to.

I grew up with a family with secrets. As a very little girl, I was entrusted a big secret that no little girl should be entrusted with. I tried to protect it the best a little girl could, and it was just so destructive.

So I think there’s probably someone that’s going to listen to this ultimately, and they’re going to say, “Uh-oh. I’m either in a family of secrets, or I’ve built a family of secrets.” This is something I still struggle with as a mom. I kind of show my real grief or my real feelings to my boys because, when are they old enough to handle all of that? I don’t want to be a poster child for being in a family of secrets.

There’s always time to say, “You know what? This isn’t healthy. Let’s drag it out. Let’s clean out the garage. Let’s pull it all out.” And that process will be painful, But if you’ve got breath, you’ve got time to change the trajectory of your family. That’s good news. It’s by the power of the Holy Spirit, not on your own. And so, you don’t have to keep secrets. Even the big, scary secrets, they don’t have to be kept.

Joy: Erin, I have a few follow-up questions. Let’s say, a grandma is teaching these principles to her grandson, but the parent is not trustworthy with these secrets. They may blow up in anger. It may come in retaliation against the child. Or they laugh off the concerns and don’t even take it seriously. Are there times to not share secrets with the parents who cannot be trusted?

Erin: Hmm, you threw me a curve ball there. You know, I think where we clearly see in Scripture that, as God’s children, we’re not to cover up our sin, we are to confess our sins one to another. We’re to live as children of the light. All the things we just talked about.

What we don’t see is that all people are to tell all secrets to all other people. So I love that you brought this up because we don’t want to over simplify. We don’t want to pretend something is a biblical mandate that would put somebody in danger.

And, certainly, there are some secrets that can’t be entrusted to some people. Unfortunately, you and I were just talking about this at breakfast this morning, Joy. There are some people that aren’t safe.

And so, the examples you gave are some of them. There are other examples. I think the scenario you described, Joy, where it’s a grandparent trying to help their grandchild walk in the truth. And there’s a layer there where that child’s parent might not be safe. That requires a tremendous amount of wisdom, prayer, and discernment.

And I would not say we have to tell that child they have to tell their parents everything. But the commitment here is that I’m not going to hide things from my own life. I’m not going to hide my own sin, and even when somebody sins against me and tells me I have to keep that a secret.

We heard that shared in the room during this teaching. Some women who had been sinned against and been told they had to keep that a secret and the harm that caused. Maybe they couldn’t tell the abuser. Maybe they couldn’t tell the parent. But my hope is that they would tell somebody wise and God-fearing, as a way of exposing that.

So, yes. It’s not simple. It’s often not simple. But the principles of God’s Word certainly apply for our messy world.

I’ve often said, “Tell, and keep telling, until you find someone who is going to be able to help you navigate that wisely.”

Joy: That’s got to be very comforting, Erin, for those grandmoms who are in that situation. But, as always, in everything, we drench it in prayer and ask for the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Erin: Yes.

Joy: Wise advice. Thank you so much.

What about the mom who catches the boy with the box of frosting and snacks under their bed, or whatever. Your response was grace, but you still dealt with the issue in hopes that one day worse things aren’t happening, as far as keeping secrets.

Erin: Yes.

Joy: Help the mom know how to navigate her response so that that child is not fearful of coming to her—or anyone that they might trust in secrets.

Erin: That’s one of many examples where I can look back and just know the Lord really does care about my family, and the Spirit really does dwell within me because the Lord was in that whole situation. It was the Lord that wanted to make sure my son’s secrets were exposed because of these principles that we’ve talked about.

But even the timing. It happened in the afternoon. My kids weren’t going to be home for a few hours. I had time to calm down. I was pretty hot under the collar when I first discovered that box of sneaky snacks. But in time, I could think about, “Okay, what’s really going on here? And, how do I really want to handle this?”

So that time I was able to do it with grace. But I’m not always . . . I do think it’s important for us as moms to face the fact that sometimes our reaction when our child does tell us a secret will be what sets the tone for whether they want to tell secrets in the future—to us or other people.

So, when we blow our top, for example, when we overcorrect . . . Maybe it was a little thing that happened at school, and we go over the top in our response. That’s going to communicate to our kids, “Whoa! When I tell secrets, Mama explodes!” or “Mama really reacts,” or “Mama even embarrasses me.”

So, we need to be careful and always respond with that grace that we talked about. But when we blow it, what do we do when we blow it? It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about. We go back to our kid and say, “You trusted me with that. And I know that was hard for you to tell me that. I did not respond in a way that was helpful. I’m sorry. I want to do better next time, but you didn’t do anything wrong by telling me the secret.”

And so, this is just an ongoing conversation with our kids. But when your kid comes to you with a secret, and I hope they will, take a minute and say, “This is new information to me. Let me think about how to respond.”

Don’t respond in your flesh. (I say this a lot. I may have even said it in this series: my flesh is the first responder. It’s always the first one on the scene. And because I know that about myself, I know to take a minute.)

I mean, I think you should be the one responding to this. You have way more parenting and grandparenting experience than I do. What would you say to the mom who’s saying, “How do I respond in a way that doesn’t compound the complexity of this situation?”

Joy: I think it’s how you respond. It’s not that you are or you’re not. It’s how. It is grace, but it’s also a bit of sternness. You want them to know, “This is serious.”

But there is such a grace in it, because, I tell you that this is where my milestones can speak the wisdom. Someday that little boy is going to grow up and have relationships, grown-up relationships, hopefully a wife. Do we want him afraid to speak to his wife? To be able to say, “Hey, I’m struggling with this”? Do we want them to have a pattern of behavior in the back of their mind of, “If I speak the truth, even if it may reconcile something broken in our relationship, I may get backlash”? I don’t.

Trial and error, that’s what parenting is. But that’s my advice to mothers. Address it, but address it with grace. And you don’t have to hound little boys. I think you talked about that. They’re listening. You don’t have to say it 500 times.

Erin: No. There’s a point where they have stopped listening.

We didn’t talk about this specifically in the episode, but as you were talking, it came to mind. It feels like we might as well call out the elephant in the room–which is porn.

Porn is so pervasive, and it happens in secret. It is a secret thing that we try to cover up. And all the data shows that it’s probably not going to be when he’s a grown man that your son is going to first struggle with that. So, brace yourself, and draw the line to his future family.

If you’re the first one that responds to that information, and he’s essentially saying, “I’m a sinner. I was drawn to something that wasn’t good for me.” If you freak out or weep and cry and ask, “How did I fail you? I should have done better,” and turn it on yourself, why would he ever go to anyone again with that pattern of sin, or another pattern of sin?

So, how exactly it fleshes out in your family at the moment, it’s like all kinds of things, you can trust the Holy Spirit is going to give you the words when you need them. But it’s also really helpful to be prepared in knowing that your current actions and reactions will have an impact on what your son thinks about who he can tell something to in the future.

Joy: That’s exactly right. Do not operate in fear. And do not drive the stake of fear into their hearts. Fear creates shame.

Erin: Yes, that’s so good.

Joy: It can paralyze them. So we need to be careful. As always, be prayerful. Be diligent in asking for wisdom and discernment, and God will be faithful to give it to you.

And I think, right now, as you say, in the current culture, be prepared. It’s not a matter of if, but when that little guy is exposed to something that breaks your heart, or you think steals their innocence. It will happen. So brace yourself. Prepare yourself. Say, “Lord, give me what I need, the wisdom and the grace, to parent, to mother him, to encourage him, and still affirm him through this.

Erin: We can’t go back to the gospel too much when it comes to our parenting and our families. Your son is going to sin because he is a sinner. So, on the one hand, it’s kind of being the foolish woman to not think you’re going to have to come to this crossroad where your son made a sinful choice. Of course he is. And then we become the wise woman in responding in wisdom and with God’s Word.

So I guess we need to get ready.

Joy: We do. We do, Erin. Thanks for sharing that.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.