00:08:00.160They were engaged for about six months.
00:08:02.520My mom had this resolution that she told me about a long time ago.
00:08:06.200It was a resolution for herself that she would not get married as a teenager.
00:08:10.340And her reason for that was that her parents had gotten pregnant with her and then married as teenagers.
00:08:16.440And even though that had technically worked out for them, she also saw that it caused a lot of turbulence in their lives.
00:08:23.360So one month after she turned 20, and while my dad was still 19, they got married in El Dorado, Arkansas.
00:08:30.580And a year and a half later, they had my oldest brother.
00:08:33.520Three years after that, they had my other brother.
00:08:36.000And then seven years after that, I came along.
00:08:39.220They moved states, they moved cities, they changed jobs, and they have, over 46 years, overcome many, many challenges.
00:08:50.500Staying married for almost half a century is a huge accomplishment that they would say has been made possible by the grace of God
00:09:00.300and the resolve that they had that marriage is for life.
00:09:03.560Both of their parents had unstable marriages.
00:09:07.720Both of them, I think, my mom and dad craved stability.
00:09:11.700So they worked really hard to ensure that my brothers and I enjoyed a level of peace in our home that they didn't really have as much growing up.
00:09:20.860And I want to honor all of that, their 46 years, by highlighting three of the greatest gifts that my parents have given me.
00:09:29.060And I hope that these things are an encouragement to you, whether you are looking for your future spouse, whether you are married,
00:09:36.560and especially if you've been married just a little while, maybe you're on the cusp of raising children, you're in a tough season.
00:09:43.140I just hope that this gives you the spirit of endurance and perseverance that my parents really instilled in me.
00:09:51.040So the first gift, the first greatest gift that my parents gave me was faith in Christ.
00:09:56.740My parents, my grandmother, who lived with us throughout my life, taught me about Jesus from the earliest stages possible.
00:10:04.580Hymns, Bible stories, prayer were a normal part of our routines.
00:10:08.480And the reason I know so many hymns, why their lyrics have been etched into my heart is because of the hymns my mom and I would sing before bed at night,
00:10:17.900that she was taught going to church growing up.
00:10:21.440My mom has always been a diligent prayer and a studier of God's word.
00:10:26.320She probably has hundreds of journals of her prayers and thoughts about scripture that I watched her fill over the years in her morning routine with her coffee and her journal and her Bible and her Bible study.
00:10:36.880And my dad made sure as the leader of our family that we were in church every week and ensured that my brothers and I had a Christ-centered education.
00:10:45.860So my love for scripture, my passion to understand it, to defend it, was instilled in me because as a baby, I was taught the word of God.
00:10:56.020I was taught the truth of the gospel because I lived in a home where Jesus's authority was just a given.
00:11:01.360And nowadays, this phrase, I was raised in a Christian home, is usually accompanied by a story of trauma or of what's called church hurt or abuse or hypocrisy.
00:11:13.840And then it's followed by a narrative of leaving the faith and finding true identity and happiness and liberation inside themselves.
00:11:21.340If you watch documentaries or you see on social media or in Hollywood, there are virtually no positive depictions of Christian parents raising their children to go to church, to memorize scripture, to pray, to get baptized, to help others and to love Jesus.
00:11:37.380It's all cast in this very harsh light of so-called fundamentalism or extremism or hyper-patriarchy, repression or legalism.
00:11:44.820And you never really see depicted in the mainstream other kinds of religious homes that are represented in this negative way.
00:11:52.080It's only ever Christian homes that are displayed like this.
00:11:55.580And while that may be accurate for a sliver of families that identify as Christian, that kind of repressive, hyper-strict home, that is not representative of most Christian families in America.
00:12:07.520And it's certainly not representative of the one that I grew up with.
00:12:11.740Many pieces of my upbringing are echoed in so many stories of deconstruction and apostasy today.
00:12:19.080I was born to Southern Christian parents.
00:12:21.260I was taught about Jesus from the earliest ages.
00:12:23.540I went to a Southern Baptist church at least twice a week, my entire upbringing.
00:12:28.620I attended youth group where sexual purity was emphasized.
00:12:31.980I attended a conservative Christian private school, kindergarten through 12th grade.
00:12:37.300And the popular conclusion to that story is, well, now I resent it.
00:13:12.520I saw the different ways to look at the world.
00:13:16.960And let me tell you, I am so thankful for how I was raised, for the faith and the sincerity and the consistency and the perseverance of faith that my parents gave me.
00:13:28.460What a tremendous gift, the gift of salvation, eternal salvation by grace through faith in Christ, the gift of wisdom, the gift of biblical clarity, the gift of seeing all of that walked out in parenting and marriage and business.
00:13:45.300And I know not everyone listening or watching has that foundation.
00:13:50.820And maybe you're thinking, gosh, is everything lost because I wasn't raised that way?
00:13:56.420But ultimately, your salvation is secure in Jesus.
00:14:00.560Jesus is the true author and perfecter of our faith.
00:14:05.560But what an incredible blessing it is to not be able to even recall one day that I didn't hear about him.
00:14:13.740My parents would be the first to tell you that they weren't perfect because no one is.
00:14:19.160There are probably things they would have done differently.
00:14:21.540But there is no question that they purposely and intentionally ensured that all three of us, my brothers and I, knew where to find the answers to our questions.
00:16:32.860You read op-ed after op-ed in the New York Times and the Atlantic and the New Yorker, glorifying divorce, divorcing your spouse when things get tough,
00:16:42.500when the person turns out to be different than what you thought, when you feel like you've lost yourself,
00:16:48.660when you fall into the lie that your children would be happier if you were able to pursue your happiness outside of the confines of marriage.
00:16:55.520It's glamorized, it's this kind of like exciting stop in a person's journey of self-love and self-discovery.
00:17:03.600And not only is this very rosy depiction of divorce just completely inaccurate for most people,
00:17:09.600it also totally negates the negative effect divorce has on kids.
00:17:14.180Unless a marriage is rife with abuse and is wildly tumultuous, divorce really does not bring peace.
00:17:21.960It doesn't bring peace for people, especially not children.
00:17:24.160It brings confusion, it brings chaos, a loss in a child's sense of belonging and acceptance and stability in their future.
00:17:31.520And more than anything else in the world, this married mother-father structure is the most protective, stabilizing force for kids.
00:17:39.460It is the greatest predictor of a child's success and their soundness in mind.
00:17:44.660Not perfect marriages, but stable marriages.
00:17:48.020And I am so thankful that both my husband and I have been given this gift from our parents.
00:17:53.140We do not take for granted that both of our parents are still married.
00:17:58.200His parents are on year 47, I believe, this year.
00:18:01.460We both grew up in homes where divorce was just never an option.
00:18:05.620And that has set us up so well and we are just both really grateful for it.
00:18:10.600And it wasn't just that the cohesion of my parents' marriage was clearly important growing up.
00:18:16.940It was also that character to my parents was and is really important.
00:18:21.380Integrity was a really big deal in our home, even outside of just marriage.
00:18:25.400I knew my dad and my mom, but specifically my dad when it came to business and things like that, to be a man of integrity.
00:18:32.440A big value in our family was telling the truth.
00:18:35.400We would get in trouble, yes, for disobeying, going against the rules, but we would get in way more trouble if we lied about it.
00:18:42.040Telling the truth, even when it is hard, was something that was just, it was emphasized so much growing up.
00:18:48.260And it still informs not only how I do the show, but also how I hope to live my life, how I do business, how I navigate friendships, how I'm a mom myself.
00:18:57.140Don't lie. Don't be sneaky. If you ding someone's car and no one saw you do it, you write a note with your contact information and you put it on their windshield.
00:19:07.040You don't go back on your word. You don't betray someone. You go out of your way to be above reproach, to be the bigger person.
00:19:14.220You communicate clearly so that there's no hidden tension or misunderstandings with a friend or a business partner.
00:19:19.820You take ownership of what you're doing, even beyond what's expected for you.
00:19:23.620And I haven't always met that standard in every single stage of my life, but that is the standard that was set for me.
00:19:30.440That is the standard that I am always trying to strive toward.
00:19:33.180And so in addition to seeing my parents' workout conflict stick together, even when times were hard,
00:19:38.940I think this was one of the biggest reasons that I knew I could trust my parents to be faithful to each other and to us.
00:19:49.160I never saw them say one thing to our friends or teachers or our pastor and then act another way in another setting or in private.
00:19:56.800Even in my teenage years, when I didn't always agree with them, I did always know that I could trust them, that they were never going to betray me.
00:20:05.140They were never going to walk out. They were never going to betray each other.
00:20:07.980I mean, what an incredible gift. That is very rare. And I'm just so thankful that my parents gave that to me.
00:20:16.420And the third gift that my parents gave me that you've heard me talk about a lot is Christian education.
00:20:22.580My dad always said that he would do whatever it took, however many hours he had to work, however many shifts he had to work,
00:20:29.060to make sure my brothers and I attended a Christian school.
00:20:32.720My grandmother, my grandfather, my mom all worked in the public school system.
00:20:37.440They didn't have a specific bias against public school.
00:20:41.200My parents are products of the public school system of yore.
00:55:06.900They save thousands and thousands of lives every year with the help of you, with the help of pregnancy centers.
00:55:12.560By the grace of God, they supply these pregnancy centers with their resources and tools they need to serve pregnant moms in need, specifically sonogram equipment.
00:55:21.340The sonogram equipment is really expensive, but it helps save lives.
00:55:25.280Because when a pregnant woman, she's in crisis, she's been lied to.
00:55:29.240She just wants confirmation of her pregnancy.
00:55:31.440She's been told that it's just a clump of cells, but she wants to see how far along she is, maybe just so she can go get an abortion.
00:55:37.780But time stops when she's in that sonogram room.
00:55:55.220This is not just a clump of cells or pregnancy tissue.
00:55:58.760And right there, she is so much more likely to choose life simply because she is able to see and often hear the humanity of the baby inside that womb.
00:56:08.100And that is why Preborn exists, to equip these women and these pregnancy centers with what they need to help women make life-affirming decisions.
00:59:22.240He unveiled the 2026 collection that Vogue Runway described as gloom made tangible because all of us are like, how can I get my hands on some gloom?