00:00:25.000Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:00:28.000Get involved with TurningPointUSA Today at tpusa.com and get involved with our efforts to help save the country politically as well at tpaction.com.
00:00:37.000Two organizations, one big mission, let's save Western civilization.
00:00:41.000Email me your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
00:01:00.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:01:06.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:18.000Hey, everyone, it's E, and welcome to a new episode of Midweek Rise Up.
00:01:24.000I know it's been a hot minute since we've dropped an episode, but today is going to be fun.
00:01:30.000Usually we have a word for the week, but we're taking a minor detour with this episode because I have gotten thousands and thousands of messages about this topic and why Charlie and I decided to do what we did by keeping my pregnancy extremely private.
00:01:45.000So this episode is dedicated to my family, extended family, friends, and followers who are just finding out about our new baby girl in real time all together.
00:02:16.000But the pressure that's put on Christian women to find a husband, settle down, have kids, is immense.
00:02:24.000We create almost like a quarter life crisis for girls when they get to a certain age.
00:02:29.000And then once they hit their 30s or a little bit above their 30s or almost into their 40s, they feel like if they still haven't found the guy, had the kids, then they're running up against a ticking time clock as well as their own biological clock.
00:02:42.000And some women aren't meant to be married.
00:02:44.000Maybe they've chosen to live a life of celibacy and maybe some women can't have kids.
00:02:51.000Everyone's on their own unique journey.
00:02:53.000And when it comes to the prevalent nature of time becoming a pressure trigger, we have to remember that we serve a God who is the author and finisher of time.
00:03:02.000He knows the exact number of our days and the exact desires of our heart.
00:03:07.000So if you fall into this category, just breathe deeply and know that God's timing is always perfect.
00:03:12.000Even when it makes absolutely no sense, his wisdom and knowledge is always way above our own.
00:03:18.000But if you truly take a minute and analyze how our culture has evolved over the years, much of the sacredness of motherhood and even marriage, I feel is lost and completely overlooked or is heavily influenced by culture and being viewed through a modern lens.
00:03:34.000I know that calling it an idol is a weighted statement, but an idol is whatever you look at and say in your heart of hearts, if I have that, then I'll feel more secure.
00:03:43.000If I have that, I'll feel like I have true value and I'll feel like my life has meaning and it'll be significant.
00:03:49.000Idols are essentially good things that we turn into ultimate things.
00:03:53.000So for me, personally speaking, there were a multitude of reasons why taking on the role and responsibility of motherhood was not taken lightly.
00:04:01.000And I didn't want to start the journey without allowing it to fully penetrate my identity, my heart, my spiritual formation, and walk with the Lord in ways that weren't intended for public viewing, in ways that weren't setting it on a pedestal.
00:04:16.000I wasn't doing the whole pre- and post-pregnancy dance for other people to be put on display and for everyone to take notes.
00:04:23.000This time was precious and intentional, not just for myself, but for my husband and our precious baby girl and our little family.
00:04:31.000And what I am so tremendously grateful for was that before I could even share what was on my heart with all of this with Charlie, he already knew and he felt the same way about keeping everything private.
00:04:41.000And we were just on the same page from day one, which was super, super helpful and such a blessing.
00:04:46.000When I found out I was pregnant, the Lord really impressed upon me to reflect a lot more intently on the first few chapters of the Gospel of Luke.
00:04:54.000And I found myself rereading multiple times the verses of interaction with regard to the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son, and then the verses of Mary visiting Elizabeth, who was also pregnant.
00:05:07.000And although the chapters are limited with exact detail on how they carried out their pregnancies back then, what truly captured my attention was Mary's heart.
00:05:16.000After Angel Gabriel spoke to Mary, she went to Elizabeth in haste to visit her.
00:05:21.000And Elizabeth was about six months pregnant and Mary stayed with her for three months.
00:05:24.000And most scholars think that Mary stayed even for the birth of John.
00:05:28.000But for those three months, Mary was there to help Elizabeth and to encourage her.
00:05:33.000And it's through this that Mary teaches us that even in the womb, Jesus came not to be served, but to serve.
00:05:40.000There was no boasting, no pomp and circumstance, no parades, no email blasts or social media posts for obvious reasons.
00:05:50.000It was a gift from God, something not to be taken for granted.
00:05:54.000And in various verses in Luke, it shows Mary's heart as a mother on display and how she would keep things within her heart to ponder them and hold them there.
00:06:02.000Like in Luke chapter 2, verses 18 through 19, in Luke chapter 2, verse 51, there was something really powerful about her continual spirit of contemplation.
00:06:12.000And that's when I started to think of all the different transitions that we go through in life.
00:06:16.000And I asked myself, how many times have I been in service and also carried a spirit of digging deeper and more intimately into my relationship with Christ during an active, life-changing transition?
00:06:29.000I personally find transitions in life absolutely fascinating, regardless if they're small or on a massive scale.
00:06:35.000And no doubt you yourself have experienced many throughout your life.
00:06:39.000And if not many, then I mean at least one.
00:06:41.000But it's almost like we go through a rite of passage in life continuously.
00:06:46.000And sometimes these transitions are chosen and sometimes they're not.
00:06:49.000But from being a little child to an adolescent to a teenager to a young adult to an adult, engaged, married parent, grandparent, those are just age transitions, not to mention work transitions, friendship transitions, spiritual transitions.
00:07:05.000And no matter how much we try to prepare for these transitions in life, I don't know if we're ever truly ready for what's on the other side.
00:07:12.000No matter how many books you might read or how many step-by-step guides you study or how many opinions you saturate your brain with, I really don't know if anything can truly prepare you for the unknown.
00:07:24.000And that's why I feel it's so necessary during these moments to surrender and remain in lockstep with the Lord and his will.
00:07:31.000Because it's only after you've gone through the transition that you're like, oh, I see now.
00:07:35.000Or like, wow, I really had no clue what I was doing, but now I understand.
00:07:40.000So with this newness and beginning of a fresh chapter in life, bringing a new soul into this world, I wanted to make sure I did my inner work, my soul work to prepare my heart and establish a new foundation as to how I'd enter this new chapter, which would be vulnerably and open and in a space free of judgment from others.
00:07:59.000Because let's be honest, I'd probably never get this exact time back again to do this, especially if we have more kids in the future.
00:08:08.000Over the course of these nine months, I've learned a lot, obviously about myself, my body, but I was able to do it under the least amount of pressure as possible in such a high-pressured world that we live in, especially the one that Charlie and I are in.
00:08:23.000I was able to reprioritize and create a hyper-focused layout of what I wanted these precious nine months to look like.
00:08:29.000It reminded me a lot of almost being like a caterpillar wrapped in a cocoon, having months to pick out the exact colors of the wings you want to have before you get out and fly.
00:08:37.000This sacred time of transitioning into motherhood was such a precious time, and I did not want to lose perspective of that because you go through nine months of purging your old ways and your old self to make room for the new.
00:08:49.000And to me, the act of service found within this precious red of passage was to honor my mother, to journey through these nine months in such a way where it was private and honest and raw and real, not filtered, but to be able to feel the depths of emotions and shifts.
00:09:05.000And I knew that in order to be the mother my daughter needs and deserves, I needed to properly honor this path and transformation.
00:09:12.000Priorities shift, love deepens, instincts intensify, and it's so different for everyone.
00:09:20.000I'm just sharing what Charlie and I did and the reasons for why we did it.
00:09:24.000And what's wild to think is that when you're pregnant, you're someone's first home.
00:09:28.000So for me, that's where my focus turned back onto my own first home, my own precious mother, my mama Lowe, to learn, to honor, to serve, to embrace, even more deeply than I was before.
00:09:41.000My focus was on a spiritual growth, drenched in grace and introspective stillness, away from the noise of the world.
00:09:49.000God had me right where he needed me these past nine months, right by my mama's side as she continues on the path of healing that she's on for every doctor's appointment, every high and every low.
00:10:00.000And not just being her medical advocate, but having that intentional time with her for whatever she needed.
00:10:05.000I wanted to be there even more than I was previously before, and I was totally sold out for the journey.
00:10:11.000I had this dedication within me to just explore the depths of this foundation called motherhood through the divine lens of scripture and also the stretch marks of my mother's own heart.
00:10:23.000It was undivided and so sweet because I knew that as each day passed, it was one day closer to when my little one would be in this world and everything would completely change.
00:10:32.000So to honor my mother was to serve her.
00:10:34.000And yes, that meant canceling a majority, if not all, of my speaking engagements this year and rearrange a large portion of my work schedule so that I could be there for her and I wouldn't trade that time for the world.
00:10:46.000Because I had this special time to listen to her stories even more intently than before.
00:10:52.000I'd ask her about what it was like being a single mother, just having moved with me to a completely new state and starting her own company to the losses and the winds of life and just soaking in her wisdom and being held in her arms on days that were a little tougher than others with morning sickness.
00:11:08.000Because sometimes no matter how old you are, you just need your mom.
00:11:12.000So as the months continued onward, I yearned and craved and sought daily for the Holy Spirit to influence all my activity, renewing my mind with a fixed perspective on Christ, especially in moments of silence, which made room for serenity and fostered intimacy with God.
00:11:49.000And of course, the Instagram algorithm always knows more about your life than you want it to.
00:11:54.000I'm literally convinced they listen to all of our conversations because you can have one conversation about it, and then there's an ad for it that pops up on your Instagram or your browser.
00:12:03.000So, lo and behold, my explore page slowly transitioned from Bible verses and sneakers and fashion and viral political and pop culture videos to people's gender reveals, pregnancy announcements, pregnancy workouts, just literally everything baby culture with some of my old stuff of sneakers and fashion, like peppered in between.
00:12:24.000But the consumer role of social media can be so dangerous and so taxing on your mental health.
00:12:30.000So, after that, I decided to take two months off from social completely cold turkey.
00:12:34.000I didn't want to look at it, I didn't want the app on my phone, I just needed a break.
00:12:38.000And I realized very quickly how grateful I was to be insulated from the intense societal pressure of what you're expected to do when expecting.
00:12:48.000And sometimes I think maybe it's not even societal pressure, and instead we just put this pressure on ourselves because we're trying to keep up with someone else's square grid of stagnant photos and highlight reels.
00:12:58.000But for Charlie and me, our focus wasn't on a gender reveal or a baby shower or sending out an announcement.
00:13:05.000Again, I hold zero judgment for people who do these traditions, especially if it's a pregnancy that you've been waiting for for years.
00:13:11.000Or if you're just super excited and that's what you want to do, that's amazing, that's awesome.
00:13:16.000And I mean, quite frankly, even for our wedding, we didn't do the bachelor party or the bachelorette parties or even a massive wedding celebration for our actual wedding.
00:13:27.000Everything we do work-wise is already all out there, and even some of our personal stuff that we can't control.
00:13:33.000But it's so precious to be able to keep just a few things to yourself as you protect what and who you love and what you cherish, especially between death threats and just random mean messages that we sometimes get online.
00:13:45.000And we didn't need or want to deal with that evil nature of people wishing us ill will on us or our child that's in the womb during such a precious moment in our lives.
00:13:54.000But even too, social media can be super savage.
00:13:57.000And what sometimes we forget is that you allow people to see what you want them to see.
00:14:03.000You have the choice not to post something.
00:14:05.000And yes, it still happened if you didn't post about it.
00:14:07.000But seriously, though, I kept it all off of social media for a multitude of reasons.
00:14:12.000And I'm sure you can come up with dozens of your own as to why I did.
00:14:15.000But honestly, I just had zero desire to do the whole like post-my bump weekly photo to have a million strangers comment and scrutinize my body and make me look at this season of life differently than God was having me view it.
00:14:28.000And in all honesty, I probably only took about two or three photos of me with my bump, and those will stay in my own personal phone vault as a precious memory.
00:14:36.000But don't get me wrong, again, there are plenty of pregnancy and post-pregnancy influencers out there who are amazing and they're so smart and they're awesome at what they do and they're super informative.
00:14:46.000But it also has become a total echo chamber and almost like a competitive nature of comparison.
00:14:52.000Regardless if you're a new mom or if you're a mom of 10, it's a total whiplash of posts being like, see how much I love being pregnant or see how much I hate being pregnant or see how quickly I can bounce back from my old body to my new body, back to my old body.
00:15:07.000See how good I am at breastfeeding and all these different topics.
00:15:10.000And I'm definitely not a pregnancy influencer.
00:15:13.000But honestly, kudos to those who are because if you see some of the comments that are left on some of these pregnancy influencer videos and photos, when they either offer advice or share something that works for them or their family or their child, it's unbelievable the amount of negative chatter and trigger fingers hitting the black mirror in response or judgment.
00:15:31.000Again, super savage or it can be super uplifting.
00:15:34.000Just depends on your audience, I guess.
00:15:36.000So, I definitely wanted to avoid that, to cut out the noise and just remove the distraction of the outside world so I could focus on diving into scripture more, preparing what Proclaim Streetwear and Bible in 365 would look like the few months after birth and pouring into my husband and soaking in this time together as a family of two.
00:15:54.000Life is so precious, and we get so boggled down with the noise of society.
00:15:58.000And if we're not like society, then people think there's something wrong.
00:16:02.000When in fact, it should be the opposite.
00:16:04.000If you look like society, you cannot impact it.
00:16:09.000For me, stepping away from the societal norms of what it's like to be pregnant in today's world, swarmed by everyone's opinion on how to do it right, was what I needed to do.
00:16:19.000Serving and honoring my mother, immersing myself in scripture, removing the distractions, tucking away and relearning the rhythms of grace that were surrounding me in such a new and divine way that I had never experienced before.
00:16:39.000Life is precious, and it's not to be taken for granted.
00:16:42.000So, as I was helping to grow another life literally inside of me, I thought to myself, what are you doing with your own life during this time?
00:16:50.000This short but long nine-month window.
00:16:52.000So, do I think everyone should have a private or secret pregnancy?
00:17:07.000And at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, I can honestly say it was the most intentional nine months of my life, and I wouldn't have changed a thing.
00:17:16.000Yes, motherhood is sacred, and truly so is privacy in today's world.
00:17:19.000And honestly, I don't have it all figured out.
00:17:24.000I'm like, how many days into this whole motherhood thing?
00:17:28.000But if you're single, listening to this, and have the desire of a family one day, take heart and know that what God has intended for you will not pass you by.
00:17:37.000And if you're a mother and you're listening to this, you're a true hero.
00:17:41.000Not only were you someone's first home in the most precious way possible, you also taught someone how to use a spoon, fork, and a knife.
00:17:48.000Motherhood is not the destination, though.
00:17:51.000It's just one of the transitional stepping stones within this wild journey that we call life.
00:17:56.000Thank you for hearing my heart out, you guys.
00:17:58.000And thank you to all of you who have shown your love and support to Charlie and I as we enter in this new season as parents.
00:18:08.000I hope that these words encouraged and challenged you and postured your heart for the rest of the week ahead.
00:18:13.000If you have a minute, go to the subscribe and review section of this podcast.
00:18:16.000Leave us a word or a Bible verse that you've been carrying in your heart throughout the week that keeps you encouraged and motivated.
00:18:22.000I really want this podcast review space to be an added bookmark for that simple reminder that we're all in this together and that God's got this.
00:18:29.000Feel free to share this episode with your friends, family, or on social media.
00:18:33.000Also, for more information on Proclaim Streetwear and Bible in 365, please click the links below.
00:18:38.000We're so grateful to have you join us right here on Midweek Rise Up.