 My husband, Ken and I, have been married and in ministry, and pastoring, he's been pastor of Calvary Chapel in Bangor for 30 years, and we've also been raising children for 30 years. So I guess that's why Marie asked me to do a legacy of family because I'm so old. But I'll just give you a little of my background. Growing up, I was raised right here in California. I'm a California girl too. In fact, I'm a Valley girl. I was raised in the San Fernando Valley in Van Nuys. And I was raised by two parents who, they've both gone to be with the Lord so I can talk about it now. They were both alcoholics, and they fought all the time, used to get in horrible fights. Some of the things that Vanessa was saying, I thought, oh my goodness, those are things I used to wake up to and not quite that bad. They didn't throw, anyway. They were bad. But I would wake up to them screaming and fighting, sometimes getting in the middle of it. One time I got in the middle of my parents arguing, and my mom had a knife and she was going after my dad, and I got in the way to stop her from stabbing him, and she pretty much cut my finger off. I was 15 at the time, and I had just gotten my permit, so I had to get in the car in the middle of the night to drive myself to the hospital to have it sewn back on. And then really the next day she didn't even remember. It's just so sad. That's what alcohol does to people, to families, and that's the legacy that my parents have left, the things that we remember about them, first and foremost, is the fact that there were alcoholics. And it's really so sad. But I'm thrilled to say that my mom is with the Lord now. She got saved. So, you know, but it's hard to live down that kind of a legacy. And our childhood was so hard, my sisters and brothers and ours in mind, but my sisters and I all ended up marrying men that were similar to my dad. They were men who were alcoholics. And, you know, and that's what we do. We continue, like Vanessa, we continue in that legacy of our parents, the same thing. And you know, I ended up marrying somebody just like him and like my dad. And sin is just so generational, but the only one that can put an end to that is Jesus. He's the only one who can break that cycle. Isn't that the truth? The man that I married was not only an alcoholic, but he became a doctor with access to money and drugs and women. I got saved during the Jesus movement during the 70s at Mike Macintosh's church in San Diego when they were at the Old North Park Theater. And although my ex also got saved, he continued drinking. And I think that he really was all on fire for the Lord at first. And I think that that, the fact that he continued with the alcohol, led him back into the drugs and then with the drugs came abuse to me and, of course, adultery. And he would always threaten me. We would have these horrible fights and he would beat me and, you know, guns and the whole thing. Didn't really, phew, but guns to my head, you know, I thought he was going to. But he would always threaten me also that if I left him, I was very much afraid of him. And he would threaten that if I left him that he would kill me and kill my little boy. I had my dream home at that time in the, actually it was in Simi Valley. I had an expensive car and that all became my focus instead of the marriage, how horrible it was. And I ended up finding security in those material things. And you know, Matthew 619 says, do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust will destroy, but store up your treasures in heaven. And I ended up finding myself divorced and a single mom and alone and in hiding. And it really wasn't until I rededicated my life to the Lord that the Lord put all the pieces to my life back together. That's when he really changed everything. He brought this California girl to Maine to visit a girlfriend of mine that was living there. And her husband, her brother was pastoring a church in Maine and we went to her brother's church. This was right after I got off the plane. I walked in the church and there was this guy standing in the front tuning his guitar and I looked at him and she was going to show me the guy that she liked who was on the worship team. And she's pointing out this guy and I'm going, look at that one with the muscles. And then, and I guess he was saying the same, Ken, that was my, that was Ken. He was saying the same thing to her brother, like look at her or whatever. So anyway, we ended up falling madly in love. I've got, who was it who said three months Vanessa? I've got her beat. He asked me to marry him in four days. And yeah, well, I was on vacation. I was on a 10 day vacation in Maine. He asked me to marry him four days later and I thought, oh, you're crazy. But then, you know, I knew that there's this overwhelming love. I had always wanted a man, especially because of that first marriage. I wanted a man so badly that, that loved me and would adore me. But I found a better man. I found a man that loved and adored Jesus. That was just, that was so appealing to me. So I knew with, and he really, this man was sold out for the Lord. And I knew that if he was asking me to marry him, I knew that God's got to be in this. You know, I knew that either he was crazy or, or that the Lord was in it. And sure enough, the Lord was. And we ended up getting married. Just he ended up moving out to California a couple months after that. We got married that quickly. And we had to fight for custody of my son, Micah, who was seven at the time, to be able to take him from California to have complete custody, take him from California and move him to Maine. And the Lord did miracles there. But so anyway, we're, we moved to Maine. And the whole blended family thing really has its challenges, though. Having the contrast of my son being raised in two totally different households and I know a lot of you ladies have gone through that or are going through that. Having to share him with his dad, who lived a very different lifestyle than we did. You know, his dad was a California doctor who had lots of money and lots of money to spend on Micah, on my son. And my husband was this poor pastor trying to raise a family and start a church in Maine. And we had Micah for the school year, winter and, you know, hard winters in Maine and school and homework and discipline. And then he'd got to get to come here every summer for the whole summer and also every other holiday where he would have surf lessons and go to Disneyland, you know. So it was very hard and it was very hard having to put him on that plane to go, you know, he'd have to go with the stewardess and come here to California. And in fact, one particular summer we put Micah on the plane. And when he arrived here in California, his dad proceeded to give him Halcyon pills, which is a very strong sleeping pill. He gave enough that you would give an adult. He gave, he was nine at the time. He gave to a nine-year-old. And ended up knocking Micah unconscious. He had hired a makeup artist from Universal Studios to come over. And while Micah was unconscious, paint fake bruises all over his backside. He took pictures of that and submitted him to court and said that my, I don't know why I get choked up a long time ago when he's grown and everything's fine, but, but he submitted these pictures to court, said my husband Ken had, that this is the way we found this boy when he landed in California, that's what he had told the judge. So needless to say, Department of Human Services was coming after us in Maine. We were panicked because we didn't know what was going on. We didn't know if he had, because these, we saw pictures. Our attorney, we had an attorney in California. Our attorney had gotten wind of all of this. There's this court hearing that's going to be going on. Him taking, my ex taking my husband to court trying to get full custody of Micah so that he could kidnap him ultimately and take him to, to Dominica. He had already gotten his passport and everything to kidnap him. And we would never have seen him again, but God is so faithful and so good. What happened was, well, anyway, these pictures were very, very convincing. So what happened was is he had, Micah's dad had bragged about this that evening to a coworker of his, actually it was a woman that he was dating. He was bragging to her about this whole thing. He was telling her about the makeup artist and how he put fake bruises and that Jeanette's going to have both of her kids. My daughter Jessica was just born then and I was home nursing her. And he had said that the Department of Human Services in Maine, I called them and they're going to come and take the baby away from her. And Micah, I'm taking him to Dominica. The bags are all packed and everything. So this woman was an angel from the Lord and she actually called the courthouse to let them know what was going on, this proof that she had. And they said, well, you need something very concrete to bring as evidence. We can't just go by your word. So what did she do? She invited him over to her house that night, had him lay on her waterbed. Waterbeds were big back then. She had her lay on the waterbed and she hid a tape recorder underneath the bed and pretty much conducted an interview with him. And she was on the tape. So how did you get those bruises? And he goes, it was grease putty. I had a guy from Universal Studio come over and he used grease putty. Anyway, he confessed the whole thing on this tape. She took it to court. Two days later, we arrived in California. The Lord miraculously provided for us to get here because we were very broke. So anyway, we got there. She had the tape. They played the tape at court and he ended up going to jail over this. And we went to Disneyland. So that was, I mean, that's just so, God is so good. We have to, ladies, especially these kids that are shared, that we have to give them up to the Lord and the Lord will protect them when they're in places that we can't. Micah's teen years then were very much a challenge for us. He was the prodigal with a capital P. By the time Micah was in his mid teens, it was obviously obvious that he really loved the world and he wanted to be a part of the world. He was choosing the worldly way instead of our Godly home and the Lord's way. And the time came when we had to honor Micah's choice and let him go live with his dad. He hated it in Maine. He wanted to be here in California where it's so cool. And we held him back and my husband felt like he'd held him back long enough. And anyway, we could see that we were getting, it was just getting to the point that all we were doing was making him frustrated and making him very bitter towards us. So it was my husband's decision to let him go and live with his dad. And that was the hardest test of submission that I've ever had to take as a mom and a wife. When I didn't know that I could trust my husband's decision, I didn't want Micah to go and live with this man, you know, and have all of that kind of freedom and live everything that we didn't believe in, you know, that we were against and were preaching against and teaching him against. But I had to choose to trust the Lord when I didn't trust my husband and his decision. And Micah only lasted three months in the house of his dad before he called my husband and asked if he could come back home. And, you know, of course, yeah, but of course it gets bad again, so don't clap. Of course, the door was wide open, you know, and we welcomed him back. But he came back very different. He was disappointed with his dad and the things that he discovered about his dad. But he was quiet, but outwardly compliant, you know, and respectful. But inwardly, Micah was planning his escape. He wanted to be on his own. And one day, he didn't come home after school. And when we went to his room, we found a note, and the note was nice and apologetic, just saying, I just need to be on my own. It's nothing against you guys. And he was 16 at the time. I've got to be on my own. And he explained that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't because of us. But so within hours, so here he's gone, but within hours, by the mercy of God, once again, giving your kids up to the Lord, by the mercy of God, he had, somebody told us, one of his friends that he had talked to about this, told us where he was. And he had gone to a big city of Connecticut with some guys that he had met in Job Corps at Maine, and they were like little gangster boys. And he went away with them. And I cried and cried and prayed and prayed. You know how that is, if your kids have ever run away from home. And weeks passed, and I just held on to the word. We held on to the word. My husband kept encouraging us. Our daughter was 10 years old at the time. And, you know, when we have protocols that affects the whole family, doesn't it? Because our poor little daughter was heartbroken over her brother. That is right. He's good now. OK. But then one day, though, the Lord spoke to my husband about, even, Micah was a runaway, but the Lord spoke to my husband about letting Micah go formally. And we're going to talk about this a little bit later. He and Micah needed, he said that Micah needed to know that he was free. And that he wasn't a runaway, but he was a man out there on his own in this big city. And he said that Micah needed his right of passage. So he and a friend of his went to pick him up. And I was like, good, go drag him home by his baggy pants. But he didn't, though. When my husband found him, Micah hung his head. He was shocked to see his step dad there. But Ken stopped him and said, no, I didn't come to bring you home. I came to let you go. I came to let you know that you're not a runaway anymore. You're making this decision and you're a man now. And you're doing this on your own. You're not a runaway kid. And from that point on, so much changed in Micah's heart receiving that right of passage. And Ken says it was right from that moment on that Micah made decisions as a man instead of a kid. He ended up getting in the car with him. He came home. And he knew that at home in Maine, he faced jail because he was on probation and he had left the state. So Micah took full responsibility of that. He ended up going to jail. And the hardest thing that I ever did was to watch my boy, my son, be handcuffed and shackled around the ankles and be escorted off to jail. And that's just how I remembered him leaving and then having to go and visit him every weekend in jail. It was really hard. And I used to pray, Lord, do whatever it takes in his life to bring him to you. And I didn't want it to be jail. But that's what it was. Yeah, it's kind of a dangerous prayer to pray. But praise the Lord. He wasn't dead or something like that, horrible that could have happened to him. It was really all worth it. And now my son Micah is a federal corrections officer in San Diego. Yeah. And God is so amazing that his dad is even actually our friend. We've forgiven him. He has asked us to forgive him. And anyway, I'll go on with the rest of my family. And oh, wow. My daughter, Jessica, is 27. And we haven't had a big problem. She learned what not to do from her brother. And we have two precious grandsons. And I bless because they live right there in Maine with us. And then last but not least is our precious son, Benjamin. Ben. Ben is adopted. And we've had Ben ever since the day that he was born. And he's just, God gave us to him. There was a little gal, young woman, who was staying in Maine while she was having her baby and asked us. The Lord led her to ask us to take Ben, my husband to be dad, and me to be mom. And he was a gift from God. And I just want all of you to know if you're considering adoption, that adopted children are absolutely no different than your birth children. They're just such a blessing. And I know that the Lord just did this for us because my husband had been praying for his own son to raise. And sure enough, he gave us our Ben. And when we were asked to take him, I was like, wait a minute, I'm old. I can't do this. And a girlfriend of mine called me with the scripture verse. It was from Ruth. And I haven't said that to her or anything. But it was Ruth 4, 14, and 15 that said, and the women of the Lord said to Naomi, praise the Lord who has given you a family redeemer today. May he be famous in Israel. May this child restore your youth and care for you and your old age. Isn't that awesome? Then a few days later, the Lord is so faithful. I'm in the Word and the words just jumped out. You know, people say that the words jumped out, but they really did from the Bible to me. And it was these words. And now, and it was from 2 Samuel chapter 7. And now the Lord declares that he will build a house for you, a dynasty or a legacy of kings. For when you die, I will raise up one of your sons and I will make his kingdom strong, his legacy strong. So I feel like that was the Lord just telling us that our son is gonna carry on in my husband's footsteps. And I really believe that. I believe that he's a gift from the Lord. So I looked up the word legacy. And the word legacy means something resulting from and left behind an action event or person. It's like, what lasting influence will my life, will your life have on our children or our grandchildren? It's like, what are they gonna, somebody had mentioned, what are they gonna say about us when we're dead? We all want the legacy that we leave our children and our grandchildren to be great. But when we women think sometimes about our actions like it says in the dictionary, our actions and some of the events in our lives, so far we might be blowing our legacy, huh? That's why we want our legacy, the actions and the events of our lives, not to reflect us, but to reflect the person of Jesus Christ in us. Some of you may be thinking that, your children are grown now and you may not have been that great of a mom, but his mercies are new every morning. My mother-in-law, I think about her, she wasn't a great mom. In fact, she wasn't even a good mom. But the Lord has given her children just renewed respect for her. She's now saved. She's at church every time the doors are open and she's leaving a godly legacy for her grandchildren. And you know, we older women are blessed. The Lord gives us another chance, really, to leave a godly legacy for our grandchildren if we've blown it for our children. Let's look at Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four through nine, I'll read again. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as signs on your head and they shall be frontless between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and your gates. The theme here is the fact that we have a duty to teach our children, our children and our grandchildren the ways of the Lord. We have a duty to do that. Ezekiel three says that it's our duty to speak of God whether they listen or not. So in Deuteronomy chapter six, verses four through nine, this is a command from the Lord through Moses, not a request, it's a command. Verse six says you shall have these words on your heart. The only way that these words will be in our heart is by reading them and meditating on the word. Verse seven says you shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them, especially to those teens we need to talk to them about the Lord. All the time everywhere is saying verse seven. Diligently, that means above all else thinking of nothing else doing but nothing else getting the word of God in them. Verse eight says you shall always be giving it out. You shall be wearing it on your face is what verse eight is saying. You should be wearing it as frontlets, wear it on your face. And you know when I think about that wearing the word of God on our face, I think about some of our face sometime as women, mine can be puckered up or frowning or what was me face, can't we? We need to have a happy face. We need to be smiling. There was a, my husband told me of, what do you call it, a pole. They pulled a bunch of men in somewhere. I don't know who they are, but they pulled men. And what the men said, they asked in this poll, what is the most important thing you want from, what is the number one thing that you want from your wife? And what do we think? What do they think? You see, what do we think that they think? We think they think sex, right? But no, you know what it is? They want us to be happy. That was the number one thing that our husbands wanted, that men want of their wives is for us to be happy. So we need to, we need to be happy. We need to smile. We need to show them, you know, my husband used to be so funny. He still is, but when I first met him, I would just crack up at him all the time. I thought he was so cute and so funny. And then as the years went on, I'm like, oh brother, you know? But now when I think about it, when I really think about, oh my goodness, he really is funny. And then when I really look at his face, I'm like, oh my gosh, I love you and you're so cute and so funny. You know? And then that puts a smile on my face. We need to look at that. We need to smile. We need to make our count, countenance for our husband to be happy. I'm homeschooling my little Ben now. And sometimes I could be, oh brother, my age and I'm homeschooling. But when I think about it, really if I go in there with a like Miss Mary kind of attitude and you know, we're having fun homeschooling and you know, we have a blast. And we really, I enjoy homeschooling my son so much. So it's really a blessing. We just, it's the way that we look at things. I think we have to look at our life through the Lord's eyes and wear it on our face. Look at our blessings. Verse nine says, your home shall permeate the presence of the Lord is what it's saying. Our homes, we need to not compromise in our homes by the things that we watch on TV. And letting them, sometimes you can turn on TV and hear swear words on so many of these TV shows and the Disney channel, there's such garbage on there. Our home needs to permeate the presence of the Lord. I think I should hurry. Just go. I'm gonna say this really fast. Okay, I asked my husband if he could put into words different lessons that we've learned. Write these down real quick. I'll just say them really fast. Different lessons that we've learned in raising our kids in ministry. And you know, really raising kids in ministry is really leaving a legacy to raise our kids in ministry. Raising our kids to be in ministry is raising them in their own legacy. Raising them to be in ministry in whatever field that they choose. So number one, the number one thing that we both thought about that we've done with our kids and my husband has always taught. Number one is we need to work ourselves out of a job. We need to teach our kids to make good choices and to be accountable to the Lord, not accountable to us. Number two is they need to have a right of passage like my husband did with my son. Boys need a stepping stone into manhood. And girls, what do they need? They need those like ceremonies. They need the dressy dinner date and dad giving him a purity ring maybe or something like that. Girls need drama, don't they? And you know, girls need to know that they have made Jesus their husband. That's what they need to know as teenagers and that they need to save themselves for Jesus because they're married to him now. That's what the girls need to know and that's womanhood. That's entering womanhood. Starting their period for girls, that's not what makes them a woman. Making them becoming a woman is all about their relationship with Jesus. Them giving their heart and their lives and their body to Jesus as their husband and waiting for that man that the Lord gives him. Number three, we need to involve our kids in ministry. We've always dragged our kids, drug our kids to everything, church, youth group, VBS, all of the above. And number four, we need to participate in the things that our children are doing. Especially school. If your kids are in public school, we need to be there. We need to know what they're learning. We need to know their curriculum and we need to be involved. I always said, Michael went to public school and I always said, a lot of good at did him, right? No kidding. I always, you know, Mike is great now. When he was in school, he wasn't but I followed him everywhere he went. So that's what we need to do. We need to follow our kids in school. We need to be involved in their school. I always substitute Todd and all of my kids in school. Number five, we need to make our kids go to church. We need to make them attend church. Number six, we need to teach grace. We need to look for opportunities to show our kids grace instead of always consequences. You know, it's always, we always are giving them consequences and my husband is real good at this. And when my daughter knew she deserved a spanking, he would show grace. He would give her a choice. You know, do you want a spanking or do you want to be grounded or something like that? He would, and then if she would show contrition, he would always show her grace. You know, and that's what we need to look for in our kids. We need to look for contrition before coming down on them. We need to be, I don't know what number this is but I'll just go on. We need to be spirit led and disciplining. I think it's number seven. We need to be spirit led in disciplining our kids and we need to be consistently led by the Holy Spirit when we're disciplining our kids rather than some kind of chart that lays out consequences per offense. We need to lay out contrition like we talked about before. And we need to be prayerful and this is all part of number seven. We need to be prayerful in determining the consequences, don't we? We need to always explain the offense to them and the root issue is the issue of the heart with we need to pray that the Lord will give us biblical wisdom to see that root issue in their heart. That's the most important thing. We need to see what's going on in that little heart of yours or the big heart of theirs. Then we need to take time to pray with them, pray for understanding, for conviction and for change in them. Number eight, we need to, as Deuteronomy says, we need to always be in the teaching mode. And you know what it says in Deuteronomy chapter six verses four through nine is even more important, teaching them all the time, always being in the teaching mode is even more important than the structured family devotion time. We need to be teaching our kids throughout the whole day, using life as their lesson. Just as God commanded Moses to do with the children of Israel. And number nine, we need to pray before criticizing. In Revelation chapter two and three, Jesus addressed the churches. When he addressed the churches in those two chapters, he always started out with the good things they did, didn't he? And then he nails them on the wrong things. And that's what we need to do. We need to commend our children first instead of always pointing out what they're doing wrong. Praise is the most effective tool that the Lord used. Number 10, we need to admit our failures and humble ourselves when we're wrong and apologize to our kids. Sometimes we as women, and I am the queen of it, we can get Pia messed out or menopausaled out or whatever, and we can lose it on our kids. And we need to apologize and we need to ask the Lord to fill us with His spirit and have a gentle, calm spirit with our children. And you know, if you can't be calm on your own, if you're going through hormonal things, there are natural things that we can do to get those hormones in check. And that's what we, because you know it's our husbands and our children that end up suffering when we're stressed out and hormonal like we can get. I'm not saying this to you because, I'm saying it because I am the queen of hormones, but I've also done and learned to do all kinds of natural things to keep those hormones in check and it helps so much. There are natural things that we can do. Number 11, bless your children. Bless them out loud before the Lord. God honors this. And number 12, one of the big things that I've always done with my kids is we always have food around. And they always come back. They'll come to the house. Then all the kids in the neighborhood want to hang out at your house because you have good food. But the most important things with, to us as moms in order to raise godly kids is we must begin the day by hearing from the Lord as these other ladies have said. We must begin every day in order to leave a godly legacy. We've got to be daily. And with our hormones and our emotions, we've got to be daily in God's word, hearing from him before facing all of them. But we're fortunate that the Lord has promised and shown us that his legacy is being passed on to our children and through us and them to their children and so on. This is what we live for, isn't it ladies? It's the legacy of Jesus Christ being passed down through us and to our families. And it's never too late to start. Our godly legacy can have a powerful, powerful effect on our children. And we, it's never too late to start. The Lord's mercies are new every morning, but we must be filled with the Holy Spirit in order to do this. And I have to say I started out the first five years of our marriage. Like I said, I wasn't always nice to my husband. I started out the first five years of our marriage. Taking the things that had happened to me and my first marriage into this one, I was sure that my husband was gonna cheat on me. I was sure that I was jealous. I was insecure, paranoid all the time. When he'd come home, I was uptight and all of that. And I caused a lot of problems in our marriage. If my husband would have let, I would tell him, no, I was jealous of the church. I was jealous of, I wanted him home with me all the time. And I caused a lot of problems. If it were up to me, I would have ruined everything God was trying to do and did do and has done in my husband. The ministry that he has today would not be here had he listened to me, you know, because I would have held him back. One day, the Lord knocked me on the floor before him. Our marriage was in big trouble. And I laid on the floor before the Lord and prayed that God would heal my marriage. And the Lord gave me, I think at that point, gave me the gift of tongues to show me that I need the Holy Spirit speaking through me. Not my words, but his words. I need to be fully engulfed in the Holy Spirit in order to love my husband the way he needs to be loved. In order to be the mom that God's calling me to be. And it was from that point on that my marriage, when I gave up my life completely and was baptized in the Holy Spirit, from that point on, the Lord gave me an amazing love for my husband. I adore him, I can say. And I adore the people of God. I love you guys. But that's it. God bless you.