Parent Forward
Parent Forward: Where Parenting Meets Spiritual Formation
with Julie Ann Luse
Parenting is more than managing behavior — it’s sacred, formative work.
Parent Forward invites you to see raising kids through a new lens: as a holy journey of becoming, both for your children and for you. Join longtime ministry leader, mother of three, and spiritual formation guide Julie Ann Luse as she explores the everyday moments of parenting through the lens of faith, neuroscience, and soul-deep connection.
Through personal stories, research-backed insights, and biblical wisdom, Julie Ann helps parents move beyond quick fixes and behavior charts to embrace the slow, beautiful work of forming souls — including their own. Every episode offers gentle encouragement, honest reflections, and practical steps to help you cultivate a spiritually nurturing home where love, grace, and presence shape the next generation.
If you’re longing for deeper connection, tired of parenting tips that miss the heart, and hungry to weave your faith naturally into daily family life — Parent Forward is for you.
It’s not about perfection.
It’s not about performance.
It’s about becoming — one faithful step at a time.
Subscribe and begin moving forward today.
Parent Forward
Treasuring What We Never Expected | Advent Series Episode 3
The moment my hand met the cold stone in Nazareth, the story shifted from stained glass to skin. We meet Mary not as a distant icon but as a teenage girl in a small, ordinary room whose life was interrupted by impossible news and who chose to treasure and ponder rather than shut down. That posture becomes our guide for Advent, a way of holding confusion without losing the thread of hope.
I share the journey from jet lag to the Church of the Annunciation, down into the grotto that tradition calls Mary’s home, and how that space reframed Luke’s quiet line: she treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. We explore what treasuring means in practice and why it matters for a restless brain. When stress closes in, the amygdala narrows attention to threat. By pausing to let a small mercy land, a kind word, a warm touch, a moment of ease, we feed our nervous system evidence of safety and let goodness register long enough to become memory.
The road then winds to Bethlehem, where a glittering tree clashes with the raw reality of a birth in a cave. With help from older Christian symbolism, the evergreen becomes more than décor: life that holds through winter, light threaded into darkness. The problem isn’t the tree; it’s the pressure we wrap around it. When we let go, the symbol points us back to Mary’s reality and our own: God arriving in ordinary places amid noise, scarcity, and uncertainty.
You’ll leave with a simple daily practice for December: name one small mercy and give it ten extra seconds. Write it down, breathe it in, whisper thank you. It won’t erase the hard parts, but it will widen your capacity to feel God’s nearness, not just think about it. If this conversation helped you slow down and find light in ordinary moments, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs calm, and leave a review so others can discover these grounded practices. What small mercy will you treasure today?
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