It’s Part 2 of Julie being on the other side of the mic! Julie recently sat down with Teresa Ann of Triumphant Victorious Reminders. They talked about the two words that define much of Julie’s big family culture, along with the importance of how we build the story we’re telling about ourselves, our marriages, and our families.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Purposely. Your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Julie:
Today we are back for part two of when I was able to be on Teresa Ann’s show, Triumphant Victorious Reminders. I’m Julie Lyles Carr. This is the AllMomDoes Podcast, and usually I’m the one asking the questions and I’m the one hosting. But on this occasion I was so honored to be on Teresa Ann’s show. If you missed Part one last week, be sure and go back and listen to that. We talked about what it means to be an original and how to get out of our own ways and really be the originals that God created us to be. So be sure and check out that one. That was last week, but today Teresa and I are going to talk about, yeah, my big family life, the big family culture that I have and a couple of words that have really defined that culture through the years. I am just so excited for you to be able to hear this. We just thank Teresa Ann and her team for allowing us to re-broadcast this. And so this is part two from my time with Teresa Ann on Triumphant Victorious Reminders.
Speaker 3:
Welcome to Triumphant Victorious Reminders with Teresa Ann, the show that brings you thoughtful perspective through the lens of Christ. Join us every Saturday morning at 11:30 AM on The Bridge Austin radio, broadcasting on both 1120 AM and 101.1 FM. Whether you’re on the go, hitting the gym, or simply relaxing with your favorite beverage, Triumphant Victorious Reminders will empower you to live in Christ with heavenly wit. Teresa Ann reminds us that true perspective isn’t just about being positioned correctly, it’s about being positioned in Christ, who is the ultimate perspective. So tune in and let your friends know to join us as we journey towards seeing mission fields in the midst of battlefields. This is Triumphant Victorious Reminders with Teresa Ann, and we are excited to have you with us.
Teresa Ann:
Well, welcome back to Triumphant Victorious Reminders with Teresa Ann on this Saturday. Yes, I have my guest back, Julie Lyles Carr, and if you got to listen to last Saturday’s episode, I know that you’ve been waiting for more. So guess what? You’re getting more. You are getting more. So I want to, just for those who maybe did not get to listen to that episode, I just want to catch you up to today’s show, but I have Julie Lyles Carr. She’s pretty well known here in Austin, and she’s someone that I adore and I get to know because she was actually… She just happened to be my mom’s Bible study teacher, but she’s so much more, she’s a wife, a mom. She loves to be called Sissy, which you were called that before being a grandma. And she’s a bestselling author, popular speaker, podcaster, business owner, media talent, and content consultant and you will see why. She’s even a ghost writer, hence the book you just released, Footnotes.
Julie:
Footnotes is my own, yeah. But then there’s some others that are out there floating around.
Teresa Ann:
That’s so awesome. So again, she’s also a mom of eight, like hello. And she has made it look like so much fun, and she’s been blogging since before blogging was even a thing.
Julie:
It kind of feels that way.
Teresa Ann:
Yeah, I mean, you were very… I think I was listening to the… Oh, by the way you guys, sorry, but you’re just going to pretend like you’re just in a living room with me right now if I stumble over my words, but Julie also has a podcast. It’s titled AllMomDoes, and so I got to listen to one of your episodes with Allie.
Julie:
Yes, yes.
Teresa Ann:
And just to hear that banter back and forth, it was really, really awesome, because you both started as mommy bloggers way back.
Julie:
Yeah. Way back.
Teresa Ann:
And so just to see where you are today leading up to you just see those moments of just taking what you had and your loaves and your fish and what God has done with all of that up to this moment. And we were talking about the book that you wrote. And actually, last week was the birthday for Raising an Original. Such a great book.
Julie:
Book birthday.
Teresa Ann:
Yes. And so I wanted to ask you this, what is the overarching theme in your life that you can share as a common trait, whether it be in the space of being a wife, a mom, grandma, writing, speaking, storytelling, being an entrepreneur, what is that common trait between all of those things?
Julie:
I so badly want to say something super spiritual, but I also want to say something really truthful.
Teresa Ann:
Just say it.
Julie:
And you know this, we’ve talked about this before, but I do think that an overarching theme throughout our family, throughout my marriage, throughout a lot of my books and different things that I do is we laughed. Laughter is really important to me.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
To me, it is joy, it is praise personified in a way. It is that way in which we can actually hear and change the very sound waves around us into the sounds of happiness and joy and hilarity and all of the things. And I think that laughter is one of those gifts from God that gets us through some weird stuff sometimes.
Teresa Ann:
Yes, for sure.
Julie:
And is the payoff. You know, you’ve raised kids. I mean, when you hit a point where you can hear your children in another room laughing together and joking together, having that common language, that’s a moment where you go, “Okay, I think they’re going to end up as friends. This is good.”
Teresa Ann:
I love that. I love that.
Julie:
I would’ve to say whether… I can super spiritualize that if you want me to, but at the end of the day…
Teresa Ann:
Well, you know what? I think the testimony is laughter. I mean, it really is. It reveals a grateful heart, and it’s like you’re just so content in the midst of discontent. There’s that reminder that laughter kind of brings you back to that place of contentment, and I just love that you said that because it’s so true. I mean, anytime I hear you speak or whenever, I mean ,there’s always this undertone of don’t take yourself too seriously.
Julie:
Too seriously.
Teresa Ann:
Yeah. As serious-
Julie:
Because you’re just going to embarrass yourself if you do.
Teresa Ann:
Exactly. As serious as this is, just make it light. And doesn’t it help other people think along the way?
Julie:
I think so.
Teresa Ann:
I mean, when I’ve been that parent who was just so stressed out, I mean, it bleeds into the way that we parent our kids or even if what they witness as how we respond to things, like we were talking about last week. But then also it’s so reverberating when we do the opposite, when we laugh together and say, “You know what? Did you see how mom made that mistake? Oh, my gosh, I wish we could watch that again.” And just, again, making light of it. I love that. Now, I wanted to ask you, because I can only imagine the feedback that you’ve gotten from Raising an Original, I’m sure there’s probably many testimonies, but what particular testimony of someone reading your book about Raising an Original and how it helped them with continuing on raising their kids? Or maybe it was someone who already raised their kids and they’re like, “Gosh, I wish I would’ve known that.” Whatever that testimony is that you’d like to share.
Julie:
Right. I see it kind of comes in three phases, one we talked about last week, which is people who contacted me and who’ve said, “I buy into the message. I don’t know the original I am.” Which has been very interesting, so there’s kind of a whole sidebar of teaching and speaking and maybe some future projects that will unpack some of that, which I think will then also lead to unpacking in our marriages, you’re married to an original.
Teresa Ann:
Oh, wow.
Julie:
So what are we doing with that? Because honestly, I think between our interpersonal relationship with ourselves and then our relationships with our spouse, I think those can be two of the toughest places to embrace the originality in those two people, you and your spouse. So that has been an interesting bit of feedback. Another one that I do get that you brought up is people who’ve raised their kids, they’re encountering this book, and they are having that moment of going, “I wish I’d had this when I was back raising my kids.” And my statement to them is always, “But listen, it is never too late to begin to embrace the originality in your children.”
Teresa Ann:
That’s right.
Julie:
And really what a breath of fresh air that could be into a relationship that you feel like you might’ve damaged or might have some chinks in it to go back in and say, “I really want to understand who you are. I may have spent a lot of time being didactic as a parent, telling you who I thought you should be. Now I actually want to sit and truly listen to who you tell me that you want to be.” But I would say the third one that I think is the one as it pertains directly to the messaging of the book that always makes me so excited is when I have a parent come up who either has heard me speak or has read the book or contacts me and they say they’re so delighted to have permission.
This whole idea of permission, Teresa, is so interesting. I think there are things that we can know through the Holy Spirit that are right and are different and that we should do, but we are so consumed with socially proofing what we’re doing. And it doesn’t mean the way that your cousin is raising her kids or the gal who she has a child in your kid’s class and they seem to be doing a beautiful job. It doesn’t mean that they’re not. It’s not to castigate them for what they’re doing. It just doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily what you are supposed to put on.
Teresa Ann:
Right.
Julie:
So this permission to go, wow, to really look at my kid and to decide and understand and observe, the permission to do that actually empowers parents. This is something that I don’t think all parents struggle with, but I certainly see parents who do, is that they feel so uncertain, so unsure, they see the way they were raised. They don’t want to do it that way, but sometimes they over-correct to 180 degrees instead of maybe just 27 degrees or maybe just 43 degrees.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
They’re just whammo. So if they were raised in a very legalistic background, they become exceptionally permissive. If they were raised in a very permissive background, they become very legalistic. I mean, I see this swing both ways.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
So this place of saying, “God has given you what you need to observe. He made you this kid’s mama. No one has ever raised your child before. So they may have raised kids, they may have some great wisdom broadly, but they’ve never raised your kid. You are uniquely called and equipped to raise this child.” I would say that’s probably the feedback that makes me the most delighted, is when people walk into that and understand that for the first time.
Teresa Ann:
Yes. I love that you said permission, because again, religiosity can come in all forms. It doesn’t have to be in a church. It can come in the form of relationships. It can come in the form of parenting. It can come in the form of how we just interact with people. And so again, to know that I have permission to do this over again, I have permission to see you as getting to unbox a gift like, “Oh, my gosh, wow, we’re only here for such a time, and I want to see you as a gift I get to unpack.” Kind of like what you were saying. I love that so much.
Julie:
And Teresa, on that notion of permission, I want to share something that I feel like the Holy Spirit showed me, which is when you have permission to do what you’re doing, you are doing it as per your mission, per mission, you’re on mission, give yourself permission to operate fully and in cooperation with the Holy Spirit per your mission.
Teresa Ann:
So good, yes. Okay. I will not see that word the same again in the most delightful way. I love this. Isn’t this so fun? See, now, if you didn’t know Julie, you’re going to wish you did all your life. I mean, this is just so fun. So let’s see here. When you were… Okay, so here you are, you’re writing, you’re blogging, and you’re doing all the things with your parenting, with even just her own experiences, being hilarious, and whether it was wearing Spanx or just-
Julie:
A lot of Spanx in my history, actually.
Teresa Ann:
And just whatever playful way you were able to deliver a message that was able to just drive home to a heart of a mom or drive home to a heart of a woman. I still remember going to an event years ago with my mom and my two sisters, and you were the speaker. And I was just like, “How is she able to drive truth in such a way, but with such hilarious joy?” And I want to know, have you always been that one that had that lightheartedness that God innately put in you? Was this learned? I would love to know that.
Julie:
That’s a really interesting question. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that before. I will say that being raised by two southerners, so my mom and dad were originally from Mississippi, and you talk about cultural economy being in humor and storytelling. Now, I was not raised in the south per se. I was raised in Southern California, different kind of south.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
And then all points in between. We lived all over the place. My dad was literally a rocket scientist, and so we followed the space shuttle program. I was born in Alabama but was never really raised in the South. We went back almost every summer to spend time with extended family. However, I can tell you that my mom and dad’s cousins, my dad’s brother, my grandmother Lyles, she had two sisters in particular who were hysterical. Oh, Teresa, they were hysterical. They would say the most outrageous things.
And I can remember as a kid, particularly my dad, but my mom also, watching how my dad would light up when somebody would say something funny, when some of these stories would come down the pike and my parents would be rolling. And I was very performative as a kid in terms of I wanted my parents to be proud of me. I wanted them to really be delighted with what I was doing. I wanted to do things right. Now, I also had times I would buck against stuff and all of that.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
Here I was, I always say that I was like this warrior poet being raised by a rocket scientist and an accountant, and I’m sure there were times they were like, “What? What are we supposed to do?”
Teresa Ann:
Love that.
Julie:
But I can remember watching my parents’ responses to watching this extended family of theirs tell these colorful, gorgeously crafted, but seemingly off the cuff, stories that were just hysterical and how they could take something just going to the grocery store and make it so engrossing. So there was something in me innately I think that always responded to that storytelling muscle. I always loved to write. Huge reader, so there was also this intaking of how someone would develop something and put a story together that almost becomes just sort of a second language to you as you watch how narrative is crafted. And then particularly, I have two younger brothers. I’m the oldest, and I adore my brothers and they’re my babies even though they’re 6′ 5″ and 6′ 6″, and I always thought I was petite. I had no idea I was being raised in a land of giants. I’m like, “I’m tiny.” I’m not tiny.
Teresa Ann:
I love it.
Julie:
But the brother who is 21 months younger, one of my earliest memories with him is he being in his playpen and me getting back from a little shopping trip with my mom. He must have been… I don’t even know if he was a year old, a little over a year, and that means I was just maybe three and me popping out and making him laugh and doing silly stuff and the sound of his laughter.
Teresa Ann:
Wow.
Julie:
Something still to… I could actually cry talking about it. There’s something still to this day that if I can make Rob laugh, because it’s such a primal memory in that sibling relationship, and then with our younger brother, that is still so huge to me. So I think there’s always this weird testing going on, like, “Let’s see if this makes Rob laugh.”
Teresa Ann:
Yeah.
Julie:
And then my husband Mike, I think that’s always been one of the things that he’s appreciated and loved. He would say he’s not that funny. I think he’s funny, but Mike appreciates laughter at such a huge degree that if he thinks somebody is really funny, he will laugh and laugh loud, even if people turn and look at him, because he believes that you’re supposed to support the people who make you laugh.
Teresa Ann:
Yes. I love that.
Julie:
I think there’s just always been in the background almost like this wheel turning just, “Ooh, I’m collecting that. Oh, that would be funny. Oh, if we elevated this or talked about that, would this make Rob laugh? Let me call Rob. I’m going to test this out on him.” Those kinds of things I think are always in the background for some reason. I don’t know why.
Teresa Ann:
Well, I love that. It’s interesting how the actual act of laughter and wanting to kind of bring that narrative to the forefront is maybe not the innate thing, but the innate thing was wanting to see people laugh, wanting to see people happy.
Julie:
Yeah, people happy. That’s right. Change their state. I mean, I can get really quantum with it. I love quantum theory.
Teresa Ann:
Me too.
Julie:
And one of the things that we know in quantum theory is string theory, the harmonics that hold this whole thing together, which I think there’s great biblical evidence that solidifies, ironically solidifies us. Who’s talking solidify with quantum physics? That girl doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Let’s forget that part, but this idea that harmonics hold our universe together, it makes sense with the word of God speaking it all into creation. That’s something about this sound wave kind of setup that we’ve got. So when we make people laugh, in many ways, we’re literally changing the harmonic. And so there is that place.
Teresa Ann:
You’re right, I believe that.
Julie:
I think what’s more innate is that deep desire to help people change their state, to help them feel a little better, to help them not forget, but at the same time be able to walk alongside some of the grief and hard in their life with something that’s funny.
Teresa Ann:
Absolutely. Yes.
Julie:
I think that’s there.
Teresa Ann:
Too, something that just comes to me is there’s like a moment of where trajectory changes, where perspective shifts in the moment of laughter, where what you thought was really bad, and it probably is-
Julie:
Yeah.
Teresa Ann:
And I can say that just from my own testimony with our daughter.
Julie:
With your daughter in the hospital.
Teresa Ann:
All of that stuff.
Julie:
All the crazy.
Teresa Ann:
Yeah, but just seeing how, wait, if I just take a moment and use the laughter as an instrument of praise with intentionality, what will happen? And it was almost like it was a science project.
Julie:
Right.
Teresa Ann:
What’s going to happen if I choose to laugh instead of complain about this?
Julie:
Right.
Teresa Ann:
And I’m telling you, it’s like a… I don’t want to say it like this, but I’m going to, it’s like a different dimension.
Julie:
It is.
Teresa Ann:
It’s like you get to see another world unfold that you may not have been able to see if you didn’t go that route.
Julie:
Agreed. It’s almost like if you can look at certain circumstances in your life and in your head be like, “If I were going to do a standup routine about this, what would this look like?”
Teresa Ann:
Yes. What would this look like?
Julie:
I’ll give you a great example.
Teresa Ann:
Yes, please do.
Julie:
My father passed away 10 years ago. It was very unexpected. It was a medical mistake, and he was just one of the major heroes of my life, and it was just truly devastating. We had to make horrible decisions. We had to make medical ethical decisions that, honestly, and this could be a whole other show, but we’re not talking a lot about in our faith spaces, which is unfortunate, because you can hit certain times in the ICU where you’re like, “What would God want me to do here?” And we aren’t equipping people of faith for these moments.
Teresa Ann:
No, that’s true.
Julie:
So it was heavy. It was big. It was awful. There were so many things that happened in that moment. After he passed, we then were tasked, of course, with needing to do a memorial service with him and trying to do it quickly, and we were all exhausted. We’d all been up for days and days and days, all the things. And in quick succession, we had a stomach flu zip through the family. So we had the kids, we had a bunch of the kids, my children and my nieces and nephews, housed over at a hotel with a connecting door while we were all scrambling trying to get details done. And there was a connecting door of these two hotel rooms, and what they basically did is one room was the sick bay and the other room was the well bay. And two of my daughters were already by that time in their late teens, early twenties.
Teresa Ann:
Oh, wow.
Julie:
So they were the ones, and the kids talk about, it was like some horrific Disney ride where one of them would identify, you seem to be showing symptoms, we’re going to push you through the connecting door over into stomach flu hell. And that’s where you’re going to have to live. In the middle of all this, we get a phone call from one of my daughters who’s like, “I hate to tell you guys this, but I found lice on one of the kids.”
Teresa Ann:
Oh, my gosh.
Julie:
So then a whole bunch of them got lice. Then the day of my dad’s memorial, it was an ice storm. So then we are all trying to get to the chapel we’re going to have the memorial service, and we’re having to chip ice to actually get in our car doors.
Teresa Ann:
No.
Julie:
We are sliding all over the place. I was never more thankful for my family’s sense of humor than when all this was going down.
Teresa Ann:
Oh, wow.
Julie:
And I’ve used this circumstance to teach before and kind of have a whole bit about it, but there was this moment, you’re so right, we’re in the midst of everything that was truly so hard, but this moment to go, “My dad would be cracking up if we tell this story right.”
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
And to really look at it, I know it sounds strange, but if I were going to write standup around this, there was something so sustaining about that, Teresa, that in a very interesting way made God feel very present, that made my dad feel very present, because we knew how much this would be tickling him. Just all of this crazy, like, “Yeah, we can’t even throw a funeral. What is happening?”
Teresa Ann:
Oh, my gosh. I love that.
Julie:
So there’s something to that that I think is really powerful and does take you to a different way. It allows you to lift your eyes just a little bit.
Teresa Ann:
It really does.
Julie:
I think a lot about Sarah, that Isaac’s name, the child that Sarah had was child of laughter. And when you look at all the circumstances of Sarah’s life, the promises she thought she’d been given, the things that weren’t happening, what it would mean in that culture that she hadn’t been able to deliver to Abraham a child, the responsibility she probably felt going, “Abraham was told he’s going to be the father of thousands and thousands, and I can’t even get an ovulatory egg to be the hands. This is not happening.” And when you look at that, when she came all the way to seeing the promise of that, that her first response was to laugh, like, “God, then what was all of that? What were we doing? There was a shortcut, and then there was this long on-ramp.” And yet how profound and what it means that he becomes the child of laughter.
Teresa Ann:
Wow, what a beautiful thing. Oh, what a beautiful thing. Oh, that’s so good. And it leads to the scripture that says laughter is good medicine.
Julie:
Yeah.
Teresa Ann:
I mean, and then the joy of the Lord is our strength. It’s like all these reverberating things of… Have you ever heard of, I know you have, epigenetics?
Julie:
Oh, you don’t even want to get me started. We’ll be here so long. Your listener will be like, “I was tracking, then she got weird.”
Teresa Ann:
Oh, my gosh.
Julie:
But I love epigenetics.
Teresa Ann:
Epigenetics, if you don’t know what this is, listeners, epi means above.
Julie:
Right.
Teresa Ann:
Correct?
Julie:
You’re tracking. You’re good.
Teresa Ann:
Okay. I might just pass the baton over. But it’s pretty much, in layman’s terms, the genetics that you were handed, you can actually turn off those genetics by the way that you eat, by your environment, not changing maybe your geographic environment, but just the way you speak, the way you laugh at things.
Julie:
Your outlook.
Teresa Ann:
Your outlook. And it actually can bring long life. But you want to expound on that a little bit while we have just a couple of minutes?
Julie:
Yeah. I love the concept of epigenetics, because it plays well and in opposition sometimes to some of the messaging I have around Raising an Original. I never want someone to think that I was born this way, it’s deterministic.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
And this is an important distinction when we talk about raising our kids as originals. There is that place of really taking a look at who we were created to be, and then all of us have sin nature.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
All of us find that we’ve got an Achilles heel somewhere. And one of the things I often say that often in our greatest strengths is our greatest weakness. So when we’re coaching our kids to be the originals that they are, we’re also helping them understand, don’t ever let the enemy trick you into thinking that just because you have a strength in this area that there’s not a place of vulnerability that you need to be watching. Epigenetics to me is kind of that-
Teresa Ann:
That’s good.
Julie:
… that we should embrace and love the genetic heritage, the DNA we’ve been given. There are places in our genes where things play nicely. There are places in our genes where they don’t. There are places our genes give us a certain advantage. Let’s say that your pulse ox exchange is really high, then you may be able to go do the Tour de France. Yes, because you’ve trained really hard, but also because you were genetically gifted something to be able to do that.
Teresa Ann:
Right.
Julie:
And so when we talk about epigenetics, it’s the same thing to me as Raising an Original. It’s that place of saying, “Okay, this is who I really am to my core. Here are the things that I can enhance even further. Here are the things I need to keep an eye on.” And when we keep an eye on things in our lives, whether that’s part of our sin nature, part of the places we’re tempted, part of places where we might have a physical vulnerability and we do something in opposition to it.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie:
So for example, if I have a genetic predisposition to a certain disease, but simply by eating this way, I remove some of the risk of that.
Teresa Ann:
Right.
Julie:
Same thing within our internal lives. Hey, yeah, I was made to be a really passionate person, which means I probably have some anger that I need to keep an eyeball on.
Teresa Ann:
That’s good.
Julie:
Some of that same energy can fuel the same way. How do I enhance what I was naturally given and how am I honest about what I was naturally given in order to live the most vibrantly I can, according to John 10:10, to live the most vibrant abundant life that I can have?
Teresa Ann:
Amen. Wow. I mean, it goes back to living above and not beneath, being the head and not the tail, and doing that in Christ. And Raising an Original just full circle. It goes back to who was I meant to be, Lord? Who are my children meant to be? Who is my spouse meant to be? Who is my friend meant to be? Lord, let me love them the way that you called me to. And I just love having this conversation. I wish we could continue this, which we will off the show. But I just want to say thank you all so much for joining Julie and I on Triumphant Victorious Reminders with Teresa Ann. And remember, again, if you want to get ahold of Julie, all the resources of what she’s written, of who she is will actually be in the show notes. So again, Christ is our triumphant victory. And in Him is how we see with heavenly wit, seeing mission fields in the midst of the battlefields.
Julie:
A great big thank you to Teresa Ann of Triumphant Victorious Reminders for having me on, allowing me to rebroadcast this for you so you could see what it’s like when I’m on the other side of the mic. And I hope that this was helpful to you and informative. Hey, I would love it. Go to the show notes, be sure and check out Teresa Ann’s show for yourself. While you’re there, subscribe, do all the things. We just love supporting other great podcasts, other great women who come alongside. And so be sure and do that for us. And I want to see all the places allmomdoes.com, AllMomDoes on the socials. I’m Julie Lyles Carr. I’m usually over on Instagram. You can find me there under Julie Lyles Carr. Rebecca’s got show notes. Be sure and check those out. And we just love you so much. We’re so thankful you’re here. And again, a big thank you for tuning in for this two-part special rebroadcast from Triumphant Victorious Reminders. We’ll be back next week with a fresh brand new episode for you here on AllMomDoes.
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