PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 266: Smorgasbord with Nancy and Allison
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 266: Smorgasbord with Nancy and Allison
The Hartman’s are staying with us for July 4th week. Join in with Allison and me as we talk about a lot of different issues, including what we can do to strengthen our families, rather than fragmenting them. We welcome you on board.
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, ladies! Today I have Allison Hartman with me. Every time the Hartman’s come, Allison and I love to do a podcast together with you. This is July 4th week. We had the most amazing July 4th yesterday. We always have a great time. I think it gets better every year.
It’s just about an all-day thing as we prepare for our lunchtime get-together. We used to have it down by the creek. But now that we have the wedding barn we have a pot-luck lunch in the wedding barn so we can sit and don’t have to be dripping with sweat in the sun. It’s great fellowship.
We start off very patriotically with the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the Star-Spangled Banner. Then we always have someone to share something about the nation, or something that happened in the time of 1776. Yesterday, Nate, one of our guys here, his sharing was so powerful, wasn’t it? We start off with a great patriotic spirit. Then we all fellowship together. Then everybody went down to the creek. Tell us what happened there.
Allison Hartman: Oh, that was so much fun! It was so hot\ and the creek water was so cold. All the children had the best time. They covered themselves with mud and then would wash off. All the dads were hanging out together. All the moms sat out by the shore. It was so much fun. We had a great time.
Nancy: And then we come back here to our place, and we have a big barbeque with family, with friends. Then we, after that, we have the hugest fireworks. Oh, wow! It was huge, wasn’t it?
Allison: Yes! It went on for a long, long time!
Nancy: Half an hour, blowing up money! [laughter]
Allison: Yes, yes. Blowing up money!
Nancy: But I think all these young people who’d gone around with the hat and all these young workers. . .
Allison: Yeah, they all collected all the money. Even the teenagers put in some money.
Nancy: Yes, it was such an amazing display. But I think there must have been about 200 there.
Allison: We’re thinking so. The whole lawn was full, full of people.
Nancy: The line of getting through the food took some time, didn’t it? But it was a great, a wonderful day of patriotism, of fellowship, and just being together. I think that one of the greatest things in life is being together. And God loves it. He plans it. He plans for us to be a together people.
In fact, it begins with God Himself who is a triune Being. Even in the Godhead, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, live in beautiful unity and togetherness. Then God created man and woman in His image and created us in His image to be a together people. That’s why He mandated family. That’s why we live in families. We’re not meant to be isolated. The Bible says that He puts the solitary in families.
Really, people are not meant to live on their own. It is so sad that there are many older people and others in circumstances who are living on their own. Some may love to live on their own but it’s not really the ultimate. God created us to be a together people. I think we must live such a blissful life because we have so much togetherness!
Yesterday was an extra big togetherness. Of course, the Hartman’s are here, not just for July 4th. They’re here for the whole week. I think I may have told you this before. When they come, oh, goodness me! They just won’t sit and relax. They come and just relax. But no, they all come, and they’re ready to do projects.
So, once again, today, I don’t know how we’re doing this podcast because there’s been banging in the bathroom, and children being loud, and things happening here and there. But anyway, we’re doing it! In the midst of all these projects. We’re doing the deck, fixing the bathroom, and fixing our shower that leaked. Then doing all the water pipes. Goodness me, there’s just activity everywhere!
Allison: Yep. It’s wonderful. I love seeing all the different ages do different projects. We want to try to be a blessing while we’re here. Our love language is work. That’s why we’re here.
Nancy: Yes. So, all the young people are also working today. But they also have so much fun. They were on the volleyball court for hours again yesterday in between everything else.
Allison: We’re trying to teach ours that you can have fun while working. There’s no reason why you can’t. We have a lot of friends who are Mennonites. It’s so interesting when they go to different families for vacation. They go with the intention to do a project for that family, to help them. Then they get so much more done. And it’s so much more fun if you’re doing it with someone else.
Nancy: I love that Scripture where Paul wrote about our fellowship in the gospel (Philippians 1:5). I think that’s a beautiful thing. When you’re working for the Kingdom and you’re doing things for one another. When you’re doing it together. . . Somebody doing it on their own, it’s a bit of a trial. But when you’re doing things together, it is fun and fellowship, isn’t it?
Allison: So true.
Nancy: We were created for fellowship. We need fellowship. It is so affirming and wonderful. Oh, now, you’ve got to tell us. A while back, you thought you’d do this most amazing thing and take your whole family on a holiday. So, what did you do?
Allison: This past Christmas we gave our children their gift. It was to take everyone on a family cruise. We booked it. Of course, it was pretty expensive because there were 17 of us. We took our 11 children, two spouses, and Vision. We brought Vision along too. Between all of us, there were 17 of us. In order to do that . . . Oh, I’m losing my voice because we were having so much fun this week. I’ve already been screaming and hollering.
We went ahead and got a cruise with Carnival. We did a five-day cruise to Mexico. It was about $8,000 for all of us to go which was somewhat reasonable when you’re talking all your food and stay is covered. It was a wonderful, wonderful idea, but I guess we’re mentioning this because I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what we went through.
What we found was, yes, it was great family time. But I didn’t expect what we saw. What we saw was an overwhelming lack of shame. The majority of the people who were on the boat, so many of them were there with the intention of just running from their problems at home. They probably, a lot of them, had saved up for years and years for this one big cruise.
You know, the saying goes, “What goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Whatever bad lifestyle that you had going on there, you don’t talk about it. That’s what it was like on the cruise. People came with the plan to live life to the fullest, drink as much, eat as much, but wear as little amount of clothes as you possibly can. Because it doesn’t matter. No one’s going to see you. No one in your real life is going to see you.
It’s like a pretend life, because on a cruise, it’s fun, but it’s not real life. There’s nothing in real life that says you’re going to have unlimited food, unlimited drink. For another $300, you can drink alcohol unlimited on the boat. You had these people get on. They started drinking the minute they got on the boat, and then they, of course, had to stop drinking when they finished the cruise.
As a mom, and as a family, we went, thinking we’re going to have this wonderful wholesome fun. But unfortunately, we have so many teenage boys and younger boys and the clothing that these girls were wearing on the ship was so, so, bad, so fleshly, that it was very debilitating. We had to have many times where we’d have a family meeting of what our boys were to do with their eyes.
You’ve got to think, we live in Pensacola Beach area, so we’re on the beach. We see what people wear on the beach. This was beyond. I don’t say don’t ever take a family cruise, but avoid short-term, inexpensive cruises, especially cruise lines like Carnival. They’re party boats. They’re meant to attract the party crowd. If you’re a family, that is really not the best place for you.
Nancy: I think you never go on a Carnival cruise with a family.
Allison: No, no.
Nancy: I think you’re better, really, just to find some other lovely place to go as a family.
Allison: I think it was probably not the best choice of family vacations.
Nancy: We’ve actually been on a couple of cruises that we’ve been so blessed. Pearl and Charlie said, “Oh, we’d just love you to go. This is your Christmas present, a cruise.” But they know that we would never even survive one like that. They have booked for us on a cruise where there’s mainly older people and that’s really quite lovely. But even on those, we lived mainly to ourselves.
Allison: I didn’t realize what a bubble I live in. I didn’t realize that this was even out there, that people would have that little amount of shame, that they would be willing to wear just about nothing. Bathing suits are one thing. Even bikinis are one thing. This was beyond. Yeah, it was something I really, really didn’t want to let my boys, especially, experience. It was a big shock to us.
However, we did have a really neat thing happen. When you’re on the boat, there’s nothing you can do. You can’t get off, so you might as well find something productive to do. Well, one day we went ahead and got in the pool with all the drinkers and the partiers. My husband and I were in this pool because there were no other pools to be in.
There was this lady who came up to us. She said, “I heard how many children you have. That’s just amazing! We can’t even believe it!” Her boyfriend was with her, and he came over and he included lots of cuss words. But he was just like, “Wow, that’s amazing! You have so many children! We’ve been watching you. And we have to ask you. There’s something different about your family. What is it? You don’t look like everybody else on this boat.”
When I say we were the anomaly, we were absolutely in the five percent on the boat that had clothes on, that were happily married, that weren’t drunk out of their minds. She kept saying, “What is different about you?” It was such a neat thing. There was loud, trashy music going on around us. There were girls who were barely clothed. So much nakedness and nasty stuff going on around us, but we had a moment with this couple.
We shared that the reason that our family looks different is because we actually love our lives. We love our family, and we came with the intention to spend time with our family. Well, this young man had just lost his mother. He hated his life, and he was on the boat to drink his problems away. We were able to share the Lord with him. We witnessed to him, right there in the middle of this pool. We asked if we could pray for him. We prayed for him, for probably 20, 30 minutes.
The amazing thing is, when we were done praying, all these people had scattered. There was like a force field around us. Nobody wanted to be around us, because I’m telling you, the Spirit came down during our prayer. It was so powerful. I looked up, and this man and woman were just bawling. I was able to speak into their lives. I said, “There is more to life than what you’re doing right now. You’re drinking your problems away. They’re still going to be there.”
We were able to share about Jesus with them. So, that, right there, it was worth it. The guy’s name, I’m trying to remember. I had his name written down, because we’ve been praying for him. But it was a real powerful moment. But we really realized that we were a light in a very dark, dark place. But anyway, we had a great family time and got to have a lot of lessons with our boys.
Nancy: Yes, yes. So, if you’re planning a cruise, don’t choose Carnival.
Allison: Don’t choose a Carnival cruise, especially out of New Orleans, especially short-term. Pearl goes on lots of cruises, but she said make sure you go on one at least seven days, and not a party boat.
Nancy: Yes, yes, yes. Oh, we’re talking about what is going on in this world. As you said, Allison, sometimes we can live in our little bubble. Well, last month was pride month. Isn’t it amazing that we have all these days that we commemorate in our nation, and that we have a day for them? And a very important day, some of them.
But how it is that these people have a whole month? It’s unbelievable. We were totally . . . we could hardly take it in. What was happening here in our state, in Tennessee, here in the Nashville area, which is the buckle on the Bible belt? Yet there were all these big, huge pride parades. They were advertising them as “family friendly.”
We didn’t ever go inside to them at all, but they did have . . . they were advertising, they had tents for the little children, and tents for the teenagers, so they could give them all their terrible junk. On two different occasions, in Dickson and in Franklin, Colin and just a few others went and protested. Not inside the gate, but just at the gate as they were all going in. I had other things on, and I couldn’t. I wanted to because I believe we have to be a voice against evil. God calls all this lifestyle an abomination. It is evil. It is against nature.
But anyway, then they had the Nashville one. And praise the Lord, I was free. This time we had about 11 of us who went. Randy, who’s part of our church fellowship here, contacted many churches in Nashville and encouraged them to come too and to be a voice against this evil. But apart from just one or two young people witnessing, we didn’t see anyone else.
We went there. We had signs, which were good signs. They weren’t just “You are terrible people,” or anything. But they were holding up the truth and lifting up the Name of Jesus. But, oh, you couldn’t believe it. We were just outside the gates. There we were as everybody was passing, and they were passing in their crowds. Their crowds! You just couldn’t believe it! How is it, in the buckle on the Bible belt, thousands and thousands of people are pouring into this place which God says is an abomination.
Once again, they were hardly clothed. It was such a display of the flesh, a display of what they call pride. The proudness, the determination in their eyes, and the pride. It was very astounding. But it was an amazing time to be able to, each person, well not person, because they were passing in their crowds, just praying for them.
We didn’t stand there sort of just looking like these terrible religious people. No, we were smiling at them, even though we were so grieving for what they were doing. Maybe there are many who didn’t really know what they were going into although I think most of them did, the way they were dressed and how they went in.
I did put a little post on my Facebook about it.
Allison: I saw that.
Nancy: I couldn’t believe the comments! Many Christians saying . . . one person I remember saying, “How dare you do that? You should be giving them donuts and cups of tea as they go in!” I don’t think this person could even understand. These people were rushing in. If we were trying to give them a donut, they’d be throwing it back at us! There wouldn’t be time to give them a cup of tea! Where or how would you do that?
They were rushing into this place. It was like watching that broad way. As Jesus said, “Narrow is the way that leads to life, but broad is the way that leads to destruction.” It was like they were just rushing down this broad way, not knowing where they were going.
We are in an hour of great evil in our nation. The amazing thing is, is that they’re trying to make it that anybody that speaks against them, they’re the evil one! What is happening? It’s all turned around so that evil is made to look good, and that which is good is made to be evil (Isaiah 29:16), This is total turning around. It’s totally against God and against nature.
But dear ladies, often we are home. We’re doing the greatest job in the world mothering our children and doing such a great work. But we also must be those who are standing up against evil because our children are having to grow up in the world, this deceived wicked world, and it’s only going to get worse unless we are a voice, unless we say something, unless we expose these evil things.
Allison: That’s right. It’s not going to come without a cost. You and I were talking about how. . . You were so funny, you’re like, “It doesn’t matter.” It doesn’t bother you when people lash back out at you on social media, but a lot of mothers that might be listening might say, “If I speak up, I’m going to lose friends.” You’re going to lose family. They’re going to turn against you. That’s true. It really is true. It’s a price that not many people are willing to take, not even a price that churches are willing to take. So many churches just want to keep things neutral. They don’t want to take a side.
Nancy: That’s what I couldn’t believe. I thought, “How is it, all these people rushing down this broad road to destruction,” because it’s a lifestyle that ends in destruction. Where were the people of God? Where were they? There was no one! I can’t believe it.
It’s like during the time of the Holocaust and leading up to that. There was a woman who wrote about it. She called it “the spiral of silence,” and how, little by little, the Christians were silenced because they did not speak out. But because they did not speak out at the beginning, then Hitler began to take more and more control. Their silence was . . . it was harder then to speak out. The more we say nothing, then it becomes harder to say something. We’ve got to be speaking out. We cannot go down this downward spiral of silence! No!
Allison: Remember Penny Lee that came and spoke at the retreat? She has a video that she put together called “Sing a Little Louder,” and that’s exactly what it was. The voices of the church people, when the cars would go by, they would say, “Sing a little louder.” You don’t have to hear the cries of the people. That’s exactly what’s going on.
I noticed several of the responses on your Facebook post were, “You should be encouraging them. You should be loving on them.” What person in their right mind, seeing someone heading for a . . . You think about destruction, you think about maybe a house burning down. Or you think about cars crashing into someone. Whatever you can think of that is the most destructive thing, who wouldn’t warn someone, and say, “No! No, don’t! Don’t go there! It’s destruction! You’re going to die!”
There’s a girl in our town who has just announced that she’s about to marry a woman. As sad as I was to hear that, I was more saddened to see the response of people at her church, saying, “Good for you! So happy you found this!” This is not, you’re not doing anyone a good service! You’re not really loving them by saying, “Way to go!” You’re just encouraging.
Nancy: You’re sending them to hell. I watched Colin this Saturday. We were down there. We were close to the people as they were passing by. He would say to them, “Don’t go through that gate. That’s the wrong gate.” He said it with such passion and love.
You know what? Their reactions were so incredible. Sometimes he’d say, “That is leading to hell.”
“Oh! I want to go to hell!” “I don’t believe in God!”
He’d say, “Don’t you want to go to heaven?”
“No! I don’t want to go to heaven!” That’s their response! Their hearts are so hardened. It’s unbelievable.
What does it say in Ezekiel? I’m always challenged by this. Ezekiel 3:18-19: “When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.”
That’s repeated again, in Ezekiel 33:7-8. That is a warning. We are told to warn the wicked. To love them is to save their lives! Yes. Oh, wow.
So, anyway, that’s some of the things we’ve been doing. Oh, yes, we were going to talk, too, about. . . Yes, at our last retreat, in April, Allison and Daniel and their family are the ones who put on the Above Rubies Family Camp in Panama City, Florida. It started off as a family camp every weekend. Oh, not every weekend, but just a weekend.
It became so wonderful that now nobody can survive for just a weekend so we have a week-long retreat every year now. And then that wasn’t enough, so now we have three retreats! Of course, we have other family retreats also around the nation. We have one coming up in Mississippi and one coming up in Missouri. They’re all such wonderful places to get to, to fellowship.
But you were saying to me, Allison, the one thing that you remembered from this retreat that I said, was something you picked up. When you are making decisions for your family, this is an important thing to remember. To think, “OK, is this going to keep our family together? Is this going to strengthen our family? If so, go for it! However, if it’s something that will fragment our family and cause us to all go in different directions, well, don’t do it? Because we need to always do that which will strengthen us as a family.” How does that affect you?
Allison: That was definitely my biggest take-away from the whole week. It hit me like a ton of bricks. As a family, we’re very busy. We have our own business. We own a photography studio. We run two farmer’s markets. Our children are extremely involved in sports. We’re a very athletic family.
To me, that was a very simple question to ask ourselves as parents because we’re obviously the heads of our households. Of course, our husbands are, but then the wives are under their husbands. There’s nothing really wrong with being busy, as long as your busyness is something that brings the family together.
It is a big challenge when you have a large family, especially, and they’re going in a million different directions. You can almost find yourself to where every day everyone’s going in ten different directions, 11, 12, 13 different directions. Yes, you might come together for the dinner table. But that’s such a small part of your day.
When you said, “Is what you’re doing with your time, is it going to fragment the family, or is it going to bring the family back together closer?” I really had to evaluate the things that we do as a family. What activities are really helpful?
One thing I realized that was not bringing the family together, but it was fragmenting our family, was a couple of different sports that we were involved in. Our boys love to play soccer. However, soccer season is also during our busiest business season. It’s also the same time of day as our family farmer’s market. But yet I was trying to juggle it all. What I found is, I was having other mothers have to pick up our son to take him to soccer, while the rest of us were running the farmer’s market, while the older children were running photo shoots.
I had to say, “What should I cut out?” And it was very easy. It was very easy to answer that. Cut out the things that fragment the family. If you can’t do it as a family, then don’t do it. Now, obviously there are some things that you’re going to have to do, that you can’t include everybody. You wouldn’t send the whole family grocery shopping. That would be silly. You would send your best grocery shopper.
But for the most part, if you’re doing things that are very seasonal, that are taking a part of your family away, then just cut them out.
Our goal is not to raise soccer players. Our goal is to raise mothers and fathers. We are not raising children. We are raising adults. We are raising mommas and daddies. If I’m not allowing them to do activities that are going to help them be better businessmen, adults, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, then I’m actually doing a disservice to our children.
Again, we love to play sports. So there is really no reason that you have to choose and not have fun, right? What we decided was that we started running volleyball tournaments because they love playing volleyball too. We started doing volleyball tournaments at our farmer’s market. That way, we’re all together on the same property, but our boys are able to do their volleyball.
And they made a business out of it. They started doing paid volleyball tournaments. You would come. You would pay a fee to be there, but they were running it like a business. They were able to play volleyball. We were able to keep an eye on them, so we were involved. It was a great compromise. I don’t know how that’s going to look for everybody. You have to figure out what works for your family. Sometimes you can do volleyball or a sport as a family, but make sure you’re doing it together.
The Baussum’s are another family who were so involved in basketball that it just consumed their family time. They were never able to do family dinner table because they were always playing basketball. They also, because of this past retreat, were so motivated to quit playing basketball, and they were very, very good basketball players. In fact, last night, the dad shared with us. . .
Nancy: Because the Beres’ family came, and they have been staying here also. There are other families who came for July 4th.
Allison: Right. But this was interesting. I didn’t even realize this until last night. He told his children, “You can either play basketball or we can go to the January Above Rubies Retreat.” The children are really good basketball players.
Do you know that they said, because they weren’t able to go to the January retreat to be with all their friends they had met, they decided, “We don’t want to do basketball anymore,” because it’s so seasonal. They wouldn’t be allowed to go to the retreat, and they really wanted to be a part of this Above Rubies fellowship that we started.
Nancy: Sarah was telling me last night that they’re coming to the January one, the April one, and the August one!
Allison: Yes! And they weren’t able to do that because if you’re involved in a sport, you have tournaments, games, practices, and it consumes you. They thought it wasn’t worth it. They’d rather have their children around other like-minded people.
Nancy: Yes, I think that you’ve got to work it out. Each family has to work it out. Sports often fragment the family.
Allison: You and I were talking about dance the other day, remember? We did a talent show. You didn’t mention the talent show, and how amazing it was.
Nancy: Right! Yes, we did a talent show. It was actually called “Talent for God Night.” We decided we wanted to have a night where all the young people, older people, anybody, children, could share their talent. Oh, we had 34 different items! Can you believe it? And everyone was amazing!
Allison: So much talent!
Nancy: Well, one of our lovely little girls, she’s only about ten. You know, one of the families here in the fellowship. She did a gymnastic dance. She was amazing!
Allison: Incredible.
Nancy: I thought she had been trained. I went to her mother afterward, and I said, “Oh, that was just so amazing!” She said, “Oh, yes, I think I’d better get her into gymnastics.” I said, “I beg your pardon? She doesn’t go?” She said, “No, but I can see she has talent.”
I said, “Well, you know what? She is actually better than people, young children I see who go. Why send her? Why spend the money? Why spend that time running her in, running her out?” It’s going to fragment her family even more.
“What do your other children do when you’re taking her?” I said, “She is so creative. She has totally choreographed the whole thing herself.” It was just amazing. It was incredible. I think you said, because you photograph them down there in Pensacola and she was better than anybody else.
Allison: We do several dance studios. My daughter Eden said, “She’s better, talent-wise, than most of the dancers at this entire dance studio, which has 300 dancers.” And these girls have been dancing since they were four!
Nancy: Yes. But you see, there’s something about when someone has a gift and they use their own creativity, it is incredible. I believe in that Scripture, “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before kings” (Proverbs 18:16).
Sometimes we think our children have to go to this, go to that. Really, they’re all made to do the same little thing. Oh, goodness me, it’s actually boring. When children are released into their own creativity and the gifts that they have, they can be far better! But we’ve gone overtime. We always do. So, let’s pray.
“Father, we thank You that we can talk together about all these things, that we all face these different issues. We pray today for every beautiful mother, and all the young people, and the children listening, and husbands. Yes, thank You for the husbands who listen too. We pray that You will bless each family, and strengthen them, Lord God. Help them to, Lord, do the things in their family that knit them together, keep them together, strengthen them as a family.
“Lord, our children grow so quickly. Lord, it’s like a blink of our eyes (and I say this because I’m now a great-grandmother). But, Lord, when I look back, it was like one blink of my eye and my children were gone into their adult lives. Lord God, this time that we have is so powerful and precious. I pray, Lord, that You’ll give them wisdom to, Lord, make the most of it, and strengthen their family as a family together as they learn to work together and do things together and play together. Oh, God, pour out Your blessing upon them today, and all throughout the coming week. In Jesus’ Name, amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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Transcribed by Darlene Norris * This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.