Michelle Anthony > Quotes

“In times past there were rituals of passage that conducted a boy into manhood, where other men passed along the wisdom and responsibilities that needed to be shared. But today we have no rituals. We are not conducted into manhood; we simply find ourselves there. Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“The abundant life is the beautiful fruit of pursuing Jesus, and it was never intended to be a pursuit in and of itself.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“deep inside each one of us is the desire to write and control our own script of life.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“The best thing to spend on your child is your time. Louise Hart”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Parenting “Aha!” Since God’s Word makes it clear that He alone is divine and He alone changes hearts, I knew I needed Him to help me parent differently. I knew I would have to parent with His goal in mind if I was going to be successful. Pleasing Him became my only focus that day. Nothing else mattered. This was the first truth I began to cling to in my desire to be a spiritual parent. This truth revealed to me that it was not my job to merely control my child’s behavior and by doing so somehow create a spiritual life for him or her. This was a real “Aha” for me. Nowhere in the Bible does God ask me to spend my days managing the deeds and actions of my child. Nowhere in Scripture am I warned that if I don’t “control” my child’s behavior, horrible things will happen. However, I have oftentimes assumed this role—and sometimes pursued it as an end in itself. After all, who doesn’t want children who behave beautifully at all times? For years I had naively assumed that as Christian parents we simply have babies, raise them in a Christian home, and then do our best as parents. We expose them to Christ and to God’s Word, we put them in the community of other believers, and then eventually … don’t they just choose to follow Him?”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“But what would it look like if we parented a generation of young people to define themselves by what they did do? What if they were defined by their actions of justice and mercy, forgiveness and love, strength and courage, generosity and humility and faithfulness? What if they were a generation who lived in the world and still proclaimed these things by their very lives?”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“Our goal as parents should be to endeavor to pass down our faith to the next generation in such a way that they will be able to pass down their faith to the following generation in our absence.”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“We stop living the life that He planned for us, and we start living out of dysfunction instead.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“The single most important concern we should have as parents should be the same primary concern Jesus has for us: We must make it our ultimate goal to help our children know and love God with all their heart. How do we do that? One of the simplest and most powerful ways … is to give them a daily, concrete encounter with His power and favor by laying hands on them and speaking a blessing. Rolf Garborg, The Family Blessing”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“I looked back … and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality.… We’re drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god. Phil Vischer, in an interview with World Magazine”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“What is my end goal in raising each of the children God has entrusted to me, and then how will I parent them with that end in mind?”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“while living on His script. While far from perfect, the Spiritually Healthy parent is a parent who walks each day, step by step, with God as his guide. Becoming a spiritually healthy family means you will allow God to call the shots for you and your family members and that you look to Him to give you wisdom instead of relying on your own strength and “great ideas”. Because you realize you are a work in progress yourself, you offer your children grace when needed, while helping them see the corrected path that God desires all His children to follow. You recite the following things each”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“How We Define Ourselves Maybe some of you are like me. Raised in a Christian home, I often felt defined by the things that I didn’t do. To not smoke, not drink, not swear, not chew, and not go with boys who do (such a helpful little rhyme) was how I defined myself for the most part. But what would it look like if we parented a generation of young people to define themselves by what they did do? What if they were defined by their actions of justice and mercy, forgiveness and love, strength and courage, generosity and humility and faithfulness? What if they were a generation who lived in the world and still proclaimed these things by their very lives?”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“Children raised by the I-Can’t-Say-No parent often grow up too quickly, suffer from chronic boredom, think that rules don’t apply to them, become poor money managers, are unable to cultivate healthy emotional boundaries with others, and have an unhealthy attachment to you in adulthood.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions. James Dean”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Our children hunger to see the reality of who God is in the natural flow of our lives—when we’re getting up, when we’re sitting down, when we’re on a journey, when we’re putting them to bed. It’s not that the formalized methodology is bad, because it definitely has a place. It’s just that it’s not best apart from a role model. Our children need to see that faith matters, that it’s relevant to our daily situations, that it’s real. We need to model how our lives are spiritual in every decision, erasing the divide between sacred and secular.”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“This is the vision for us as spiritual parents: We persevere in loving Christ in our hearts and by our actions, in trusting in Him for what only He can give, and then modeling this to our children. We persevere, and we don’t give up. We don’t abdicate to somebody else. We don’t make excuses for the way we were parented or the resources we didn’t have. We walk by faith, and we thank God, the one who entrusted them to us in the first place. We fight the good fight every day, knowing that we can’t model something that we don’t already possess.”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“It’s the pressing on toward the goal that is important, not simply trying to look perfect or be perfect. And it’s also important to forget what is behind us, because we cannot change our pasts. We can, however, look forward and fix our eyes on Jesus as we listen to His direction.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Maybe becoming a spiritually healthy family is not about becoming a perfect family but rather following a perfect God together. And in doing so, to find peace with Him, our pasts, and our family members.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Yet we don’t have to fall into those failing responses. Instead, we can look to Scripture and the character of God for insights on living. In a conversation with Lee, he shared, “After many of the great movements of God, He asked His people to build a memorial so that they would remember what He had done. God created a system of spiritual ceremonies for His people to celebrate regularly as families to remember what He had done. When Jesus was on His way to the cross, He used the symbols of wine and bread to teach about what was going to happen to Him. Then He invited His followers to ‘do this in remembrance of [Him]’ as a ceremony to help them remember.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“When we start to realize how amazing God's story is, a question naturally arises: "Who am I that I should get to be a part of the greatest story ever told?”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“Children raised by the Double-Minded parent will often grow up having codependent tendencies, seeking acceptance from others, being unrealistic in their view of “self,” and feeling insecure. They are confused about what it means to follow Christ, and might avoid their parents in adulthood.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“While I may want to take my kids out of this world, God continually shows His power in our kids to help them stand firm in it!”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“Spiritually healthy families come from spiritually healthy individuals who, on their journey together, seek to live “on script” each day.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“What you believe and where you aim your heart determines the direction and outcome of your entire life for eternity.”
― Michelle Anthony, Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

“let’s think about Jesus’s statement. It’s a command against something that many of us feel is involuntary. I mean, I don’t normally think I choose anxiety. I’ve never said to my husband, “Honey, I’m going to take some time to go for a walk and just focus on how I can make myself feel utterly out of control and stressed out. I will fixate on all the things I’m unhappy about or I can’t change in my life, and hopefully when I return, I will be a raving lunatic.” That would be ridiculous. But, if you think about it, Jesus states this as if it is indeed a choice. Do not worry. It’s a command from Jesus”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“I gave in, and admitted that God was God. C. S. Lewis”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Our children need to see that faith matters, that it's relevant to our daily situations, that it's real.”
― Michelle Anthony