Every now and then, The AllMomDoes Podcast host Julie Lyles Carr finds herself on the other side of the mic! Check out her conversation with Teresa Ann, host of Triumphant Victorious Reminders, both a radio show and podcast. Teresa Ann is a podcaster, radio personality, writer, and creative. She and Julie unpack what it means to be an original, and how to get out of your own way when it comes to thinking outside the box.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Purposely. Your life, God’s purpose. Listen at onpurposely.com.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Every now and then I find myself on the other side of the microphone. I’m Julie Lyles Carr. You’re listening to the AllMomDoes Podcast. It’s always fun to get together with other podcasting friends and to get to experience their shows and get to know their audiences. Today, we got special permission to take one of the podcasts that I was recently on with someone I just love. Her name is Teresa Ann and her podcast is called Triumphant Victorious Reminders. She invited me on her show. This is going to be a two-parter. You’re going to hear both parts of our conversation.
Teresa Ann is a podcaster, she’s a radio personality, she’s a writer, she’s a creative. She also has a sister who you might recognize. Teresa’s mom is one of my spiritual mamas, and Teresa herself is just one of the most amazing, thoughtful, creative, insightful, generous people. Today, we are going to do this rebroadcast from her show, Triumphant Victorious Reminders, and we’re going to talk about what it means to be an original and how to get out of your own way when it comes to thinking outside of the box.
Here we go. Part one, I hope you enjoy it. This is me, Julie Lyles Carr, on Teresa Ann’s show 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. 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, thank you so much for joining me today on Triumphant Victorious Reminders with Teresa Ann. I am so excited because I have my special guest, Julie Lyles Carr.
Now, let me tell you, there is so much that I could just preface you all with. She does everything. This woman is incredible. More than anything, she’s a lover of Jesus, but she’s also a wife, a mom, a sissy, also known as grandma. She is an author, a public speaker and a podcast, which I have been binging by the way, Julie, called… It’s titled AllMomDoes. Let’s just go right into it, Julie. Welcome.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Thanks for having me.
Teresa Ann:
Absolutely. We were just talking and today is the birthday?
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yeah, of my first book. Isn’t that wild?
Teresa Ann:
Oh my gosh, it’s crazy. How cool. We had no idea. I didn’t.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I didn’t really think about it until I was checking the calendar and I thought, “Okay, here we go.” I thought, “This is so funny because several years ago I was with Teresa as we were launching that first book, and here we are, 20 some odd books later.” But there’s something about the first one that just really is special, and so that date sticks in my mind and I thought, “Oh wow, I’m going to get to go be with Teresa again on this book birthday. That’s really exciting.”
Teresa Ann:
Oh my gosh, that is so cool. I love this book, Raising an Original.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Thank you.
Teresa Ann:
There’s just a testament to the way that you love the Lord, but how you’re able to practically love your children, enjoy your husband in such a way that really woos people back to the Father. Again, I have binged your podcast, AllMomDoes.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Bless your heart.
Teresa Ann:
No, I feel like I’m in a living room with you and just getting to hear you talk because I could hear you talk for hours, but one of the things that I just want to ask you right off the bat, because again, I have so many questions for you. When did you begin following after Jesus and what have you been up to even recently?
Julie Lyles Carr:
In terms of that pursuit. I was blessed that I was raised in a Christian home and it was… The church of my youth was an interesting place. I think a lot of us who had the opportunity to be raised in a Christian home probably follow some kind of similar trajectory. In a sense, you take it for granted. You just think, “Oh man, this is how we’re raised and my friends are out doing whatever on Sunday, and my family, we’re locked into a pew and we’re doing all the things.” I wasn’t raised in the Bible belt. I was raised by Bible belt parents, but I was being raised in Southern California and so I didn’t have a lot of kids around me necessarily who were experiencing the same rhythm of life that is pretty typical of a lot of churchgoing families.
The relationship I feel like I had with God at that time was one that, both by the rigors of this particular stripe of Christianity that I was being raised in, and by some of the own facets of my own personality, was very much a give me the rules, give me the checklist. Let me have assured outcomes and then I will follow the rules in this certain way to make sure that things go the way they’re supposed to go.
Now, there was part of it, Teresa, I’ve got to say, that’s sort of comforting in its own way. There’s also something in my personality that wanted to push back on that just a little bit. I was like, “Yes, I want recipes, but I want to improv.”
Teresa Ann:
So good.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Somewhere in between, but in the way I looked at God at that time, there just didn’t seem to be a lot of room for improv. It was like you got to follow the steps, you got to follow the steps. Then, I had something happen that was very interesting and kind of weird. In the denomination I was raised in, the point of water baptism, full immersion baptism, was absolutely considered your conversion point. I’m not here to debate theology or anything else. I’m just saying that was what it was for me in that experience, and so I wanted my dad to baptize me.
This was a huge decision. This was not something that was just left to younger children. Most of us were entering teenage years when we would make this decision. It was a very public profession of faith. It was a public getting dunked, which, honestly, as a slightly vain young teenager, that was probably one of my concerns that was floating around, like, but my hair. Everybody’s going to see me with wet hair. But I was very sincere in wanting to make this public profession of faith. I wanted salvation. There was some fear mixed in all of that. If I don’t do this at this point in my life, what does that mean for my eternity?
And so I asked my dad to baptize me. We came up to that day and I was baptized. I can remember coming up out of the water, truly feeling like a new creation, having a very profound sense of connection to God when that happened. Again, within the denomination which I was raised, nobody ever talked about that. It wasn’t an emotive kind of a thing. It was, this is the gauntlet. You run the gauntlet, you come out the other side, you’re saved. This was how this runs.
I wasn’t really prepared for that. When I came out, it was this sense…. I thought, “Am I glowing?” Like Moses coming down from the mountain, this is a huge moment. I will say for me, I really felt like I received the Holy Spirit in that moment. I know some people, again, theologically say that’s a separate event or whatever, but for me in that moment, wow.
Teresa Ann:
That was your experience.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Exactly. There was a woman in the congregation who came up to me and she said, “Do you feel just so clean and so new?” I was like, “Yes, and why aren’t we talking about this?” She said, “I know. It’s really how it feels.” It was awesome.
Got home and was in my room and recommitting to how often I was going to be reading my Bible and all the things because now I’m fresh and I heard the phone ring and my parents went to answer the phone. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door. They came in and they said, “We need to talk to you about something.” I said, “Okay.” They said, “So-and-so who was there at the baptistry when you were baptized…” Lovely woman, wife of one of the elders of the church, very loving woman, but she noticed that when my dad baptized me, my arm did not fully go under. They said, “We want you to think about that because full immersion is what we need.”
There was this moment, Teresa, of just what? What does that mean? Would my arm not make it in to heaven? How does that work? Then, questioning myself, okay, all this that I just felt, was that just me making it up? Was that just something that I came up with? They said, “You have a decision to make. If you decide you don’t want to be re-baptized, okay, but how do you feel about eternity without a right arm, or whatever?” They were more gentle than that, but that was the inference.
I cried and cried and thought about it and thought about it, and the next night went back up, got re-dunked, believe me, my dad really held me under that time. But it launched this very strange then relationship going into my teens thinking about, wow, with that kind of technicality, even with all of my best intent and my very sincere desire to be obedient, would that technicality keep me outside the pale? Which then launched a whole lot of other theological questions for me because I thought, “Wait a minute, who is this God I’m serving? How does this work?”
All of it drove me deeper and deeper and deeper into scripture. Fast-forward many years, lots of questions, all kinds of things. I would say, really, that part of my true encounter with Christ was probably later into my twenties. I wouldn’t say I had a Damascus road, kaboom kind of a moment. In some ways, Teresa, honestly, I a little bit distrusted those at that point, because I thought I’d had that, but over time it was this place of learning, unpacking scripture, getting into original language, rinse, repeat, go further, prayer and seeing how God knits things together, learning to lean into that a little bit more.
It was a whole series of things that eventually I began to realize I really do have a relationship with the Christ. I don’t exactly always know what the contours of that are. I don’t always exactly know what everyone’s experiences should look like, but I know he’s there. I know that even with all the things we try to do with the best intent in our religious practices and rituals and all the things, we’re always going to fall short, and he’s always going to be there to make sure that our right arm gets dunked. That’s really where I got to.
Teresa Ann:
Oh my gosh, Julie. I don’t know for you listeners out there, are you just in awe? See, why I am in awe right now is because of this clear difference between God’s love and religion. Religion says, “You have to do this, this and this this way, and if you don’t, then you’ve missed the mark.” But with God, he’s so merciful and so compassionate, and no one can take that day from you, that moment that you know you were changed, that moment that you know, no matter what.
I feel as though I’m very cautious and careful about saying the enemy, the enemy, but I even feel like in that moment what the enemy meant for harm, God used it for His glory because you actually went seeking the kingdom of God even more versus rejecting God. It actually drove you further into Him by you digging into scripture, by you going and saying, “Okay, what is the truth? What is this pursuit? Why am I even doing this for? Is this a waste of time?” All of these things that we as humans go through. If this doesn’t do anything, then why am I even doing this for? Then, for you, just hearing your testimony, and listeners, I think that you can totally agree there’s this moment of reckoning, of even if I’m still going to go after you, Lord.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yeah, me still looking in that pursuit.
Teresa Ann:
Yes.
Julie Lyles Carr:
One of the pictures that God gave me in that experience, and it was a confusing experience, and I’ve written on this before too, that a lot of us, when we begin to enter into, if you will, a metaphorical immersion with God, we’re keeping an arm on the side of the baptistry. We’re hanging on to some things saying, “Boy, Lord, what happens if I do go all in?” What if I do let go of some of the structure and rigors and assumptions and mythos and superstitions at times of the different things that we do in trying to make God containable and trying to understand more of the contours?
For me, as real as that first baptism was, I think it’s also so emblematic of so many of us when we begin to enter relationship with God, to immerse ourselves in a fuller way, is we have an arm on the side. We’re hanging onto the side of the pool.
Teresa Ann:
Oh my gosh, I love that.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Peter went through this, Peter hung onto the side of the pool to a certain degree. So many of us hang onto the side of the pool and we want to have that full experience, but it can be so hard to let go of some of the structures and assumptions that we’ve had up to a certain point. It doesn’t mean that those original encounters aren’t real. It also means we still have the work of letting go fully, of making sure we’re really, as best we can be, all in. There’s something too to the fact that it was my dad who baptized me and that a human father, a human parentage, a human heritage can only do so much to bring you to the Father, but there is that place that you have to really let go and go under.
Teresa Ann:
Drop the mic. Wow. Oh my gosh. Yes, Lord. Now that is awesome. What I’m getting, even from that, is the difference between commitment and surrender.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Yes.,
Teresa Ann:
There’s a huge difference because commitment says,” I’m still in control. I still am holding on.” But full surrender is… It reminds me of Peter when he has denied Christ three times. The rooster crows and then he sees the look on Jesus’ face. It’s the look of compassion and it’s godly sorrow, whereas Judas, it was worldly sorrow, which led to death, because he went to man to try to get the appeasement of what he had just done to his Lord. But yet with Peter, he goes back to Jesus and he gives it all. After that moment when he said, “I would never. Of course I love you. Of course I love you. Of course I’ve done this. Of course I’ve gotten saved. Of course.” Whatever our moment with God is, and then we find out, like you just said, there’s so much more. There’s so much more to be had, that right arm that’s still out there, that’s still hanging on.
God so graciously pries our hands and says, “Look, I promise you, the places I will take you. If you forget I’m with you, it will be scary. But if you know I’m right here, you will never be afraid.” Of course, this is a working out that we get to do for the rest of our lives, obviously, right?
Julie Lyles Carr:
There’s no real arrival.
Teresa Ann:
No, there’s no real arrival. Exactly. I don’t even know where to go from here except that I want to go to Raising an Original, the book that you wrote because it is such great revelation of how to raise our kids. Not raising our kids from a place of lack, meaning what I didn’t get from my parents, I want to raise my kids now in that place. It is getting the fullness of how does the Father God parent us individually? Then, transferring that to our children to where you actually… It’s not this, what do you call it, where it’s cookie cutter, but you’re literally seeing each child so uniquely. Talk about value and treasuring. I see you, but I see the way that you function. I see the way that you receive. I see the way that you give, and then transferring that to the next child. How did you get to this revelation of Raising an Original?
Julie Lyles Carr:
I think for a lot of us, we want those recipes, and particularly when it comes to our kids. We want somebody to sit us down and go, “This is the way to do it.” If you put all of this in and you bake it at the right temperature for the right amount of time, what’s going to pop out our college graduates who are accountants. They’re going to live close enough to you but not too close, and they’re going to know how to do all these things. They’re going to be these, quote-unquote, functioning adults and it’s going to be fantastic.
When we had our first child, there was equal parts of me being so fascinated by her and really wanting to understand who she was, and also this place of wanting to get it right, whatever right meant. Then, you throw in some little side hustles of also wanting to make sure that I was seen as being doing this right for her, that weird inverse we also create because there’s who our kids are and then there’s who we want to be known as in relationship to parenting our kids.
Teresa Ann:
So true.
Julie Lyles Carr:
All of that amalgam led to something of an interesting journey because I was seeking out certain books and workshops and speakers and that kind of thing who were going to equip me to raise a successful child. On the flip side, I also had this kid who I thought was spectacularly unique and special, and I still do, and some of those things just didn’t always line up. There was this moment of trying to figure out, well, who she really is and who I really believed God had called her to be and to honor that creation in Him, and there was also all of this other wisdom and noise and parents who had other experiences.
I do remember reading something in a book, because my daughter has always from the get been very individualistic and has always marched to the beat of her own drum. I can remember reading something in a Christian parenting book, this is years ago now, about needing to break her spirit to rebuild her spirit. That hit me so wrong. I was like, “Absolutely not.”
Teresa Ann:
Right, good God.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I am not breaking her spirit. I believe that God created her in a beautiful, unique way. When you go back into the word of God, you see so many places, whether it’s Gideon or it’s John the Baptist or Jesus. You see all of these people who while they’re still in their mother’s wombs, God is prophesying saying, “You are carrying someone who’s going to do this, and they have been specially appointed for that and they’re going to do this.” Why we tend to forget that today is really interesting to me.
I don’t know why we forget that, because there’s so many examples in God’s word about the way that God has knit together people for His purpose and His call. At that point, it almost became this turn of going on an excavation, if you will, trying to really understand and uncover who God had created. Now, part of my training and background is one of my degrees is in psychology with an emphasis in child psych. All of a sudden, this sounds ridiculous, but it was kind of like, you know what? I got a degree in this. Maybe I should take a little look because there is this weird divergence where you can have some training in one thing, but when you’re actually faced with whatever the topic is, it can take you a minute to actually connect the dots and begin to customize it for your situation.
Teresa Ann:
So true.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Beginning to look at her through the lens of personality theory and personality style and really taking a stronger look at that ultimately began this on-ramp, this fascination. Now, the other thing that did it too is I have eight children, and so when her next sibling was born and was different from the womb to the moment she was born, and then the next sibling and the next, all the way down to my last two babies who are twins. When I carried them, Theresa, they were so distinct and individual, even in the womb. Their sleep patterns, their movement patterns, everything was so different. It just solidified and hit home again and again for me, how individual we are. I’m not talking about snowflake kind of stuff. I’m not talking about letting our kids run wild and we’re just like, “That is who they are. It’s so darling.”
I’m not talking about that. What I am talking about is we can either cooperate in watching the revelation of who our children are or we can fight and try to push them into molds that we have somehow decided are the ways they’re supposed to be. I’m telling you, participating in the cooperation, participating in the unveiling, participating in the revelation of who our kids are, through what God has for them to do, is a much more joyful, amazing-
Teresa Ann:
It really is.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… astonishing journey than taking on the mantle of parenting and thinking that we have to force a human being into being what we think, through the filter sometimes of our religiosity, of our own fear, of our own reputation, what they’re supposed to be.
Teresa Ann:
Wow, listeners. Come on. Do you not want to go get this book? It’s again, Raising an Original: Parenting Each Child According to their Unique God-Given Temperament. Now, we are about to close on this particular episode, but we’re going to pick it back up next week, and so I just want to ask one question. It’s first a statement, because really what you’re saying is Proverbs 22:6. “Train up a child in the way they should go-”
Julie Lyles Carr:
“In the way they should go.”
Teresa Ann:
… “and when they’re old, they will not depart from it.” That’s what I kept getting when I was reading your book and rereading it is it’s not in the way we think they should go. It’s in the way that God intended them to go, training them up. I believe training, and you can correct me or just enlarge this definition of training, but doesn’t it mean to lead by example?
Julie Lyles Carr:
Oh, absolutely. I think this is one of the key things when this book came out and has led to the idea of doing some further projects around this topic. One of the things I kept getting back, Teresa, once the book released, and I’m so blessed, it found its way into many hands. People were so gracious to come back to me and ask questions and that kind of thing, but I would have people say, “I buy in. I want to raise my kid as an original. I get it. I get your message. I don’t know the original I am because that’s not the way I was raised. I was raised to fit into a certain mold.”
This idea of leading, of guiding, of navigating, of being there as consultant to our kids in that way does require… I’m not saying you have to have it all figured out right now, but one of the best ways that our kids will understand to walk and walk with courage and with delight in who they are, and listen, that’s how we have kids who march to a different drum in a world that wants to beat this same beat and say, “Everybody’s got to be like this.” The way that we can best equip and give them the multivitamin for that is modeling it ourselves.
Teresa Ann:
Amen.
Julie Lyles Carr:
When our kids see us trying to force ourselves into certain roles and models and deny who we are, that creates something of a hypocrisy. That creates something of a confusion for them, and so there is a lot around reading something like this, yes, with your own parenting in mind, but then doing what I call mama-ing yourself. What does this mean for me?
Teresa Ann:
For me?
Julie Lyles Carr:
What do I need to know about how I need to walk? What do I need to learn to embrace and love about the original God created me to be instead of continually beating myself up about the fact that I have this originality or this uniqueness in me that doesn’t always line up with all the other moms in the pickup line at school? That is one of the things that’s come out of this journey with this particular book is recognizing, wow, there’s probably a window here. There’s a need here for some teaching on really understanding how to be who we are so that we can model what it means to be an original to our kids.
Teresa Ann:
That is just so well put. I am just thinking of the books you’ve written, the blogs you’ve written, the things that you’ve spoken about. You were even a Bible study teacher for my mom, and she just-
Julie Lyles Carr:
Your mama, she’s one of my mamas. I love her so much.
Teresa Ann:
She just loves the way that you teach. She’s like, “She just makes you want more of God.” She’s always been that cheerleader for you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
She has.
Teresa Ann:
But before we go, I just want to first say thank you so much for coming on-
Julie Lyles Carr:
Oh, I’m honored. I’m honored.
Teresa Ann:
… and taking time out of your moments to be a part of Triumphant Victorious Reminders. Listeners, if you want to get ahold of Julie and you just want to contact her or find out the resources that she’s put out there, I will have that in my show notes, so just know that. If you guys are maybe on your phone right now and you’re like, “I just want to know what it is right now,” JulieLylesCarr.com. Go to that website. You’ll find out a plethora of things about Julie, and I’m telling you, all of her resources point you back to the Father. This is what I love about who she is she doesn’t credit herself. She credits the Lord. But with that said, thank you again for joining me, Teresa Ann, on Triumphant Victorious Reminders. Remember that Christ is our triumphant victory, and from Him is where we can see with heavenly wit, seeing mission fields in the midst of the battlefields.
Julie Lyles Carr:
We’ll be back next week for part two. I’m really excited for you to hear about that because she asked me a really interesting question about the two words that define my big family life, big family culture. We talked about the stories we’re building in our families. I can’t wait for you to hear it. Hey, do me a favor. Be sure and go to the show notes, because Rebecca will put a link there where you can go and see all the great stuff that Teresa’s doing. While you’re there, make sure that you are subscribed to our podcast, to hers. Leave a five star rating and review. That really helps get the word out and I’ll see you next time on the AllMomDoes Podcast.
