Shannon Popkin (00:00) We have Bill and Pam Farrell back with us here at the Live Like It’s True podcast. And man, if you heard the first couple of episodes, this one is maybe my favorite. if I had to pick one. Maybe this one would be my favorite. Bill and Pam are just such a wealth of wisdom all rooted in God’s word. They have written over 60 books, including Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti.

They are relationship experts and international speakers They’ve been married for over 45 years. They have three grown children and a bunch of grandkids and

last time we were talking about this trend of going no contact or having very little contact with your parents, with your children, your grandchildren. And so in this episode, we’re going

talk about,

bridges between these different generations.

we’re gonna hear a little bit more about the family that God redeemed Bill from.

Pam And Bill Farrel (01:07) We went and visited my parents. My mom did something. I still don’t even remember what she did.

it affected my kids. I remember that. And I got so mad, like, you know, when you’re so mad, you can’t talk. I was there and all I said, I said to Panic, get in the car. Don’t say a word. That’s all I like to like, come on kids. Come on kids. Yeah.

I was I drove us home. It was about a two and a half hour drive from my parents house to where we were living for two hours of it. I was working the steering wheel so so intensely my my hands hurt and and I finally said no more. Like I cannot allow my mom to have this reaction on me anymore and can’t allow her to hurt the kids. And I was thinking about doing what we’re talking about. I was thinking about cutting off my parents, both of them.

And what stopped me was I was praying about it and I came to the conclusion, I don’t think I can tell my kids that family is important if I have no relationship with my parents. So I’ve got to figure this out.

Shannon Popkin (02:13) Yep. How can I tell them

to never cut me off? And yet I’ve done that, right? Mm-hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (02:18) Right, right. So what we started talking about is okay. What can my parents handle? They can handle about not your mom can handle an hour to 90 minutes before she amps up and like Explodes that’s about the time frame we have to work with and she can’t she does better When we come up to her world and go out to lunch So that she feels like she has control she does better when our boys

Shannon Popkin (02:44) Hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (02:46) are like out at the park, not in her house. So we started like taking apart what, when mom explodes and how we can help her not do that.

Shannon Popkin (02:54) Wow.

Pam And Bill Farrel (02:57) And other thing that God developed in our life was a little bit of a sense of humor to help us navigate the unusual and sometimes outlandish ⁓ experiences when we interacted with Bill’s parents. so we wanted to maintain this relationship. Dad was very generous. Dad was brilliant. Like there’s so much about dad. He wanted relationship because he didn’t have family.

You know, so there was a lot of pieces to build the bridge with, especially from on the dad’s side. But one day, it was just like years into our relationship, we had like two little boys.

Four and two were our kids and mom and dad wanted to go to Disneyland to celebrate the 35th wedding anniversary. And all of us siblings are like, Disneyland, she hates people. That’s kind of okay. She wants to go to Disneyland. So we head to Disneyland. We’d been on one ride, one ride.

And we came out, we’re standing in front of the Magic Castle and she starts screaming, like melting down, like, get those kids away from me. I’m not the babysitter. Like, we never leave our kids with her. We set people up for success, not failure. And so it’s like, she’s screaming so loud. Other people are taking their children and running away. I mean, it is a meltdown loud. so.

Shannon Popkin (04:06) ⁓ no.

dear.

Pam And Bill Farrel (04:20) The two daughter-in-laws grab the little kids and we’re running in the other direction. All three siblings are running towards mom and dad. Dad is disabled. He’s had a stroke. And so he’s kind of hobbling. And ⁓ they catch up to dad. They’re like, how about we meet you at ⁓ Main Street for lunch, But they didn’t show up this is before cell phones.

Shannon Popkin (04:43) Mm-hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (04:43) And so

Bill was calling on the phone. to make sure they’re okay, especially dad, is he okay? And ⁓ no answer the next day Bill starts calling again

Shannon Popkin (04:47) Mm-hmm, yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (04:53) Finally, he gets dad on the phone. Your mom wants to talk to you. So I got on the phone with my mom and she says, well, yesterday at Disneyland, I got a hold of some bad coffee and it just ruined the day. so we had to leave. So we had to leave because of the bad coffee. So from that point on, you have a meltdown in our family. Oh, it’s just the coffee. Had some bad coffee.

Shannon Popkin (05:10) Okay, so she’s.

I mean, the alternative is to pound your gavel and say, you are bad. Look, everybody saw that. You are a bad person and we cannot deal with this anymore. there’s one option which is filled with pride hubris, know, superiority contempt perhaps. The opposite, think laughter has a ⁓ humility about it.

Pam And Bill Farrel (05:42) Medicine.

Shannon Popkin (05:43) I think, you

to be able to laugh about the bad coffee is just saying, you know what? It is what it is. And we’re not going to cast final judgment. That’s not our place. We’re gonna do what we can. We gotta deal with some bad coffee once in a while, right?

Pam And Bill Farrel (05:58) Exactly, exactly.

Shannon Popkin (05:59) Okay, so you sent a postcard a couple weeks after the Disneyland. And you said, we’re sorry we didn’t get to say goodbye.

Pam And Bill Farrel (06:08) We’re sorry we didn’t get to say goodbye. We missed you at the end of Disneyland. ⁓ Our sons really loved this particular ride. we mentioned that we were gonna get together at the holidays. We would love to still do that if you’re still open to it or if you have other plans, we understand. Love, Pam and Bill. And so we sent this postcard.

Like over 30 years ago, when we’re cleaning the house after my mom passed away, we found it. We found the postcard. She saved it. saved it. It meant something to her where she never would. She never had the ability to verbalize those kinds of moments. She was that broken. But to see that now years later, I cherish that I, that Bill and I made the decision to take the high road

Shannon Popkin (06:41) She saved it.

Pam And Bill Farrel (07:00) try to build a bridge.

Shannon Popkin (07:00) Yeah,

Pam And Bill Farrel (07:01) And the big payoff is I have two pictures now that I’ll treasure for my whole life. I have a picture of my dad, myself, my oldest son and his son at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game. I have a picture of my middle, my dad, myself, my middle son and his son at a Marie calendars in Ventura County. So four generations of feral men sitting in the same place, which hasn’t happened in my family for at least 100 years.

Shannon Popkin (07:29) That’s awesome, yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (07:29) And I watched

God do the redemption. And we found out at the end of their lives that dad, he was spiraling down, physically and mentally toward the very end of his life. it was so sad. we got called us to be caregivers for a decade. We’ve been caregivers to mom and dad. And what happened is because we said, yes.

Shannon Popkin (07:48) caregivers.

Pam And Bill Farrel (07:54) the pieces of the puzzle started falling together because dad was sharing what the stories behind the behaviors were like, ⁓ So compassion, you we started feeling all this compassion. so toward the end of their lives, we got to say goodbye in a way that had so much honor and healing.

Shannon Popkin (08:06) Hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (08:20) For example, Bill’s dad he’s an engineer, know, so toward the end of his life, it was all about numbers. And so again, humor helped. And so one day Bill walks in to take care of his dad. So my dad had a couple of smaller strokes near the end and at one point he lost the ability to talk. And so for two days he was silent. Well, then it started to come back, but it was a mixture of words and numbers. So I walked in his room one day and went, Bill.

I am so disappointed in you. And I went, really, Dad, why? He went, 78. And I went, yeah, I hate, he goes, 79 too. I go, yeah, that’s a bad number also. So we just started laughing because he started talking in numbers, you know? But, so now we’re trying to, like, how do we honor him at his funeral? And we decided to take all the numbers of the family. So all the birthdays, anniversaries.

Shannon Popkin (09:01) See you.

⁓

Pam And Bill Farrel (09:14) We took a bunch of the engineering formulas that he had used at work. Saying we, meaning Caleb, our engineer’s son, who had also done caregiving, respite care for his grandpa. The relationship was restored so that our son wanted to do that for his dad. So we printed the numbers on vinyl stickers, gathered around his casket and put them on his casket before they lowered it in the ground. And we’re standing as a family.

Numbers across Ed’s casket holding hands singing Amazing Grace And then at mom’s funeral, which was just a couple weeks ago she became agoraphobic her life closed down within five years of Me knowing her. Yeah afraid of going outside so she wouldn’t leave her property. Yeah

Shannon Popkin (09:56) What is agoraphobic?

Pam And Bill Farrel (10:03) Yeah. She’d go outside her house to her property, but wouldn’t leave her property. Right, right. so I saw this very talented, wonderful woman allow fear to close her life down over the course of maybe 10 years or so. And then that’s how she lived. And because she was agoraphobic, she became a hoarder. So she, everything that ever came into her house is still there. We are in charge of releasing that.

Shannon Popkin (10:07) Okay.

Pam And Bill Farrel (10:29) But one of the things when I met Betsy in that first couple years she was a gardener. So she would go outside and she had this beautiful garden. And I admired that about her. And after she passed away, we were going through the things in the house. And one of the rooms was like floor to ceiling. it took us eight hours to clear a three foot path to open the door. That is how bad it was.

Shannon Popkin (10:29) you

⁓ my goodness.

Pam And Bill Farrel (10:56) And we realized the top half was all dead flowers that she had been given over the course of her life. She kept every flower, but now it’s dead, in a box labeled who gave me and the date. Yeah, so you can tell flowers meant something to her. She kept dead ones. Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (11:08) my goodness.

my goodness.

Sure.

Pam And Bill Farrel (11:20) And we started cleaning out that room and there were two beautiful gardening hats. Now, if you see a picture of us talking right now, you’ll see I have a hat on. And because ⁓ I’ve had cancer during this caregiving time too. And now I’m like no evidence of disease, but I’ve always been known for my hats as a female girl or not. I’ve just loved hats. So I put one of these hats on. I’m like, this is so gorgeous. like hat symbolizes the woman that

Shannon Popkin (11:40) Mm-hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (11:49) Betsy was intended to be, that gardener, that creative woman. And so all of us in the family were given the opportunity we could speak at her funeral. And so I gave flower seeds to everybody at the funeral. And then I used passages from the Bible about flowers and blossoming. And then I held up a mug that a friend of mine gave to me.

as she had been praying over me. And that basically says see the winter is gone. The flowers are blooming. The turtle doves are singing. Arise my beautiful one. And so I read that verse and I’m like, this is what God intends for us and our family to move the legacy forward. Bessie was creative. She had so many gifts, but she loved

Shannon Popkin (12:24) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (12:39) fear to close down her life. And God wants us to live in full bloom. And then I held up this mug. Well, actually my granddaughter held up the mug that said, live life in full bloom. And so we were able to at her funeral, honor her, especially honor the path that God had created for her. And Bill, when he gave his message,

Shannon Popkin (12:51) of it.

Yeah, yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (13:03) our granddaughter held up Betsy’s Bible, she did own one, and doesn’t mean she applied it, but she did own one. So in her heart, there was a place for God. And Bill said, if we asked Betsy if she could come back, what would she say? And Bill said, I think she would say through tears.

Shannon Popkin (13:06) Mm-hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (13:26) Don’t miss Jesus. Don’t miss heaven. Don’t miss the plan that God has for you. And so everybody there had a moment where they could take a little self inventory and say, am I living in full bloom? Am I allowing Satan to thread lies through my brain that stop me in the legacy that God has?

Shannon Popkin (13:48) Yeah. Yeah. Well.

Bill, I can relate to your mom on some level because I too am a controlling woman. Like that’s my bent, my sin bent is that direction. I, like without the Lord, I think I would have gone crazy myself. know, really think it’s sin is all sin is like, it’s a disease. It turns us into the antithesis of what God intended for us. And so I imagine though,

Pam And Bill Farrel (14:01) Yep.

Yes.

Shannon Popkin (14:18) Even now, like we have brokenness in our family because I was a controlling woman. But if people could talk about me the way you talked about Bill’s mom, like what a gift, what a blessing. I would receive that all day long. And that is a bridge to relationship. think ⁓ what you guys have described, it’s not only how you responded to the parent that everybody could have labeled as toxic or ⁓

you know, abusive, whatever word you want to use. you not only dealt with them with wisdom and grace, but also in the ways that you talk to others about them. And I think, man, I wish I could have talked to you maybe, you know, 30 years ago before I got married because I, you know, it just says I’m writing this book, Judgy Girl, I’ve been kind of recounting my relationship with my mother and that was very strained.

Pam And Bill Farrel (15:04) Yeah.

Shannon Popkin (15:15) And I think it’s because, if someone would have told me, I knew that about a day and a half that’s what we could handle and it was all really good. And then after a day and a half, it really went not so good. Like that would have been good information and being able to laugh about some of the things instead of like in my heart, when I look back, I had impeccable behavior as a daughter-in-law. I did everything right.

was hospitable, I made lovely meals, I did holiday celebrations, I bought beautiful gifts, I did it right. But you what was wrong about me is I held this contempt in my heart as I thought about all the ways she did it wrong, you know? And that just, that grew, that’s the opposite of what I hear you guys describing. I, you know, I look back with a lot of regret. I didn’t go to her funeral with any regrets because of course I did it all right, all with my nose slightly turned up.

you see, you know, but now that I’ll, what’s that?

Pam And Bill Farrel (16:17) That’s very honest of you.

Shannon Popkin (16:18) Yeah, yes. But now that I look back, the Lord saw that contempt in my heart and she didn’t live long enough for me to be able to discover that and to course correct. mean, to some degree, there were things that I had apologized to her about, but I love this idea that you guys are giving us of how to build these bridges between generations. That is so otherworldly. That is not the world that we live in.

Pam And Bill Farrel (16:48) Since we’re being honest, So about 11 years ago, I started to get this impression. God’s asking me to care give for my parents and help them to finish well. We were in San Diego. All the other siblings lived very far away and they live in Los Angeles. So two hours on a good day, mostly seven hours on the traffic driving side of things. So in this devotional time, God impresses upon my heart.

He wants me to do this. My response to him was, you cannot ask me to do this. You’ve got to be kidding God. That was crazy growing up there. It’s the same house. Like the same house I grew up in is the house that my parents both passed away in. Like God, you cannot ask me to go back there. Like it was crazy growing up. It took a lot of work to overcome some of the effects there.

you cannot ask me to do this. People all the time say. It’s not how we’re supposed to pray. Right, right. Why didn’t you invite them to come like live with you? And we’re like, OK, I want to stay married. have like she’s agoraphobic. She won’t leave. And they’re like, why don’t you put them in a home? I’m like, OK, here’s the deal, people. She is afraid of doctors. She’s afraid of everybody. The only way we will get her out of that house is like.

Shannon Popkin (17:45) Yeah, yeah.

⁓

Yeah.

Right, yeah.

Mm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (18:08) Prozac for everybody and the authorities strapping her down. All right, that’s what we’re doing here

Shannon Popkin (18:14) But you

know, it sounds like Jonah, know, God says go to Nineveh and you can’t send me there, right?

Pam And Bill Farrel (18:22) Right. And then three weeks later, he impressed upon me, I’m asking you, I’m not asking you to do this for your parents. I’m asking you to do this for your kids and your grandkids. So my response was I can do it for them. So they will see how to honor and love people that are fragile in old age. And I didn’t know then about the four generation trend that I told you about. It was after we came up to CareGov. And all of sudden it made sense.

Shannon Popkin (18:41) Yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (18:50) that Pam and I have worked really hard to break this tradition in our family. And this was part of it. And you know, this is 10 years. So we thought they’re so their health is so fragile because they weren’t good at taking care of themselves. I thought it would be two or three years at the most. And they wouldn’t from a distance, they were slow to accept the help that we could offer. But about maybe a year ago,

Bill was having, we always choose word of the year. And so he was praying about his word of the year and his quiet time he was actually looking at his parents’ house. Right, so I was in my parents’ backyard and I was reading the story about Abraham where he down to Egypt and then he came back. And on the way down to Egypt, he’d stopped at Bethel and built an altar. Then he went down to Egypt and then coming back it says,

He went back to the place where he first built an altar to the Lord. And I was looking at my parents’ house and the thought hit me, my job will be done here when the room that I prayed to receive Christ in gets redeemed. And that’s the room that was built to the brim. And so it gave us, like God finally said, because we kept saying, how long, how long, how long? We’re like, OK, when that room is cleaned out and the house is ready to sell.

Shannon Popkin (20:01) My goodness.

Yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (20:12) That is when he’s gonna release us from this responsibility. So hope on the horizon, God cared for our hearts. And like in all of this, I just want people to know that, you know, we’re not just these martyrs that lay down like doormats No, God has taken care of our hearts, our lives. He’s done miracle after miracle after miracle. During these 10 years.

Shannon Popkin (20:17) What redemption?

Pam And Bill Farrel (20:37) And he has blessed our kids and our family and our grandkids. Like I think me personally, my two greatest accomplishments in life. My sons are three of my best friends and all of my daughter in laws get along with each other. And I’m like, God, this doesn’t happen in my family. Thank you so much.

Shannon Popkin (20:56) Right. Well,

tell us how did that happen, Bill? Like, I mean, you know, we can talk about aging parents, but how, as we’re bringing new people into the family, there’s so much opportunity to judge one another and put up those walls and, you know, so how do you, what advice do you have for new people in the family?

Pam And Bill Farrel (21:12) for the advice

I would give to us as the parents. First thing is what we talked about earlier, give your kids permission to evaluate you, because it helps them to become adults. Second, at some point, your kids are going to be better at something than you are, ask them for their advice, because it calls them up to the level of adults and you start to get being peers with your kids. And then,

Shannon Popkin (21:17) Mm-hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (21:41) Get your kids to define the kind of relationship they want to have with you and the relationship they want you to have with their kids. Because if they will define it, you can succeed. If they don’t define it, you’re always guessing. So we’ve asked all of our kids, what role do you want us to play in your life? And what role do you want us to play in your kids’ lives? And we will honor what you would like us to do. And if there’s a seed of disagreement, ⁓

Shannon Popkin (21:52) Okay.

Pam And Bill Farrel (22:07) We were honest. we, like when we did something wrong, we would apologize and we would say that was wrong. That did not match up to what God said. and if there’s something like with grandma and grandpa, like here’s the deal. This is what we know about why Nana would have said what she said that was wrong and what she did was wrong. ⁓ but this is how we’re going to handle it as a family.

We’re not gonna gloss over it and pretend like it didn’t happen, because it did. Let’s talk about it. What can we learn from this? And so they grew up in a house that if there’s any strife, you talk about it. And so as our boys started getting married, if there was even a seed of frustration or rubbing each other the wrong way or like me and one of my daughter-in-law is having something there, a thing,

Shannon Popkin (22:38) Yeah.

Mm-hmm,

mm-hmm.

Pam And Bill Farrel (23:02) ⁓

Our boys would call up and say hey, you know I’m not gonna get in the middle of this you two are grown-ups and We our desires have a good strong relationship with you and you with us and so can you two females just like have a little conversation here and they wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie and in those conversations Because our boys were wise in the women they married

Shannon Popkin (23:25) Okay.

Pam And Bill Farrel (23:32) They married women who would own their side of the issue. And I was first to own my side of the issue. I’m like, okay, let’s remember, I never really had a good relationship, you know, as far as having a wonderful mother-in-law who did everything for me and always brought me presents. Like I am learning girls. I’m sorry that you’re the guinea pigs, but I’m learning what it means to be a godly mother-in-law. Will you help me? And the other thing that I would say to every

Shannon Popkin (23:38) Okay.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well.

Pam And Bill Farrel (24:02) Like every adult whose kids have now become an adult, consider yourself as a consultant, not an authority. Right. And the rule for consultants is you wait to be asked. Because we have all kinds of life experience. We have all kinds of opinions. Pam and I had to fight off. We’re seminar speakers. We don’t want our kids to be our audience. We want to be their parents. want to be the grandparents of their kids.

Shannon Popkin (24:09) Mm-hmm.

Okay, that’s a good rule.

Pam And Bill Farrel (24:29) So we had to ourselves in that position that with our kids, we are consultants and that we wait to be asked. You can ask questions. Consult good consultants will like ask questions to draw things out so that that person grows and develops. And we told our kids, if you ever want to ask us any questions about our life or how we parented or any of that, we will do our best to answer. But we’re not going to impose our opinions on you. We did that when you were young.

Shannon Popkin (24:37) That’s good.

Pam And Bill Farrel (24:58) We’re going to trust you now that you’re older. But if you ask, we will share what we know. so kind of prime the pump to encourage them to ask. Right. In our book, Tim Best Decisions a Parent can make, we kind of go through the different ages and stages. And there’s a lot of practical tools that the audience, know, that you, that wonderful audience you have, if they’re curious about what we did at every age and stage, in there. But the end goal is you want your kids to own their own life, including

Shannon Popkin (25:01) That’s good.

Pam And Bill Farrel (25:27) how they’re gonna relate to you as you age and have them in your life. And Shannon, we need to pass the baton. If our kids have to wrestle the baton out of our hands, there’s gonna be conflict. They will not win the relay if they are wrestling you to get that baton.

Shannon Popkin (25:29) Mm.

⁓ it’s so true. It’s

so true.

Pam And Bill Farrel (25:47) I think that keeping the end in mind will help us during those tough days when our kids that are grown or young adults or college age, when they say outlandish things that you’re just like, my, that’s like really hurt my feelings. Help me run to God. If you keep the end in mind is okay. When I’m 80, what would I like to see? I would like to see our family gathered at Christmas, our grandkids, our great grandkids.

me being able to hold them, love them, sing songs, open presents, share at a deep, honest level, that will help you hold your tongue. You have to keep that end in mind. And like just this last Easter, a couple of weeks ago, we drove over, we’re spending time with our middle son and his family, and the grandkids ran out of the house, they hugged us, and my granddaughter, who’s nine, she had her Bible open to the Easter story.

And she’s like, we won’t read the Easter story because we have so many questions. Papa, have so many questions. Nana, we have so many questions. And she ⁓ wrote this book on love. she told me, Nana, I know that you are an author and you have like lots of books. Well, I just want you to know that I wrote this book on love and I’m hoping that I can have it published by the time that I turned 10.

Shannon Popkin (27:04) ⁓ my goodness. I mean, could you imagine a sweeter, more precious scene than that on Easter? And like, that’s what you fought for. That’s all of these times where you didn’t set it aside. You went ahead and had the difficult conversation. You went ahead and taught your kids what it looks like to build those other generational relationships. You you humbled yourself. You told them.

Pam And Bill Farrel (27:07) I’m

once.

Shannon Popkin (27:31) No, I was wrong. You gave them the opportunity to take the baton forward. I mean, all of that work. This is this is the reward. I just I love that.

Pam And Bill Farrel (27:41) Yeah, live life with the end in mind.

would say to all of you just in closing, start where you’re at. Don’t try to make up for the past. Don’t go back and try to clean it all up. Just start where you’re at. And for me, that’s really personal because my dad’s best decade of his life as far as influence in the family was in his 80s when he was physically at his worst. But he engaged where he was at and added to the legacy of our family. Dramatically in that last decade.

Shannon Popkin (28:07) Yeah.

Pam And Bill Farrel (28:12) If my dad had died when he was in his 70s, I would have gone, okay. the time he died at 92, I felt like I lost a friend because he opened up and started engaging. So just engage where you’re at. Don’t go back and try to relive the past. give yourself the grace that God does.

Shannon Popkin (28:23) Hmm, yeah. Hmm, yep.

Pam And Bill Farrel (28:30) Our son, his story just capstone, our son married, had kids, our oldest, calls us one day, Mother’s Day, and said, we just went to a prayer conference. At the prayer conference, they had us draw our family tree. On the family tree, we had to write all the sins that so easily beset. So the sins of our family that you’re prone to pass on.

And then you’re supposed to take a, then we’re supposed to take a highlighter and anything that our parents or grandparents redeemed from darkness to light. We had to put the highlighter on those sins. And I, he’s a football coach. He’s crying. He’s like, as I did that, it was like a Christmas tree. It lit up and God said to my heart, look at all the hard work your mom and dad did so that you and your kids could live free.

I had to call and thank you. I’m like, hallelujah, go to heaven. I’m good.

Shannon Popkin (29:31) Yeah, best Mother’s Day gift ever. Wow, what a precious gift. And that way we may all be Christmas trees, trees deeply rooted in the truth of God’s word and living

Pam And Bill Farrel (29:39) And.

Shannon Popkin (29:44) like it’s true.

Pam And Bill Farrel (29:44) the other thing

Shannon Popkin (29:45) Well, thank you so much for all of your wisdom. But what are some of the resources that you guys could recommend for us, some of the books that you’ve written that kind of pertain similar to what we’ve talked about?

Pam And Bill Farrel (29:57) Sure.

Like our best selling is Men Are Like Waffles and Like Spaghetti. It’s like 500,000 copies in English and translated to 15 different languages. So that’s like a great starter. In it, it has pieces of our story,

And then more of our stories in 10 Best Decisions a Couple Can Make and 10 Best Decisions a Parent Can Make. Then my full story, including the tribute that I wrote to my dad, is in Seven Simple Skills for Every Woman. And Bill wrote a book for men. The 10 Best Decisions that Every Man Can Make. And it has a lot of history. Which is everything I try to teach my kids about what it…

What it means to be a godly man. All the practical stuff that we can do. So we’d recommend that one

the other book that I would recommend that we’re actually working on, we’re working on a devotional called Anchored in Love, which is a year-long devotional for couples. How to love like God loves. That will have a lot of this stuff in it short form. And as a couple, if you stay in sync with each other, then you’re going to talk through all this stuff. If you’re living separate lives and you’re just intersecting here and there, it’s hard to stay on the same page. But when that comes out, I’d…

That type of devotional thing would be a smart thing for couples who want to turn the tide in their family. that’s going to get you two reading the same thing out of God’s word on the same day is going to lead to intimacy and great conversation. And if you want to have like structured conversations about all this, we wrote the marriage meetups, which is a structured couple meeting to talk through.

the issues of your family and encourage each other along the way. It starts off with you complimenting each other and praying with each other. So it’s not like another business meeting, but it helps you to talk through all these issues of your family. Like, how do we improve our relationship with our kids? And how do we get involved in our grandkids lives? how do we help turn the tide in some of the trends that we didn’t know to work on? And now we hope our kids will work on them. So that will give you more structure if you’re looking for it. And then our blogs at LoveWise.

Shannon Popkin (31:45) Okay.

Pam And Bill Farrel (32:06) We’ll have pieces of all these things and we try to give a lot of free downloadables that you can use right away, like right then, to help apply some of God’s Word.

Shannon Popkin (32:16) It’s love dash wise, correct? Love dash wise. Well, so what you’re telling me is you’ve funneled all of this wisdom into resources that we can keep learning from you. So I’m sad with you for the brokenness that you’ve encountered in your families of origin, but I’m so grateful for these redemptive stories that God has and is writing. It’s a beautiful thing. So thank you so much for sharing it with us today.

Pam And Bill Farrel (32:45) You’re welcome.