PODCAST TRANSCRIPT | EPISODE 283: From Mechanic to Mother
LIFE TO THE FULL w/ Nancy Campbell
EPISODE 283: From Mechanic to Mother
Introducing Julia Hughes from Idaho. Julia set out on her married life to be a mechanic, but somehow, she was hooked into coming to an Above Rubies Ladies' Retreat. Everything she heard blew her mind, but she knew she couldn't deny the message. Little by little her mindset changed. That was 18 years ago!
Today Julia is a mother of eight children! And guess what! This last weekend in Tennessee Julia attended her 34th Above Rubies retreat! I think she wins the prize for coming to the most retreats! Can anyone beat that?
Announcer: Welcome to the podcast, Life to The Full, with Nancy Campbell, founder and publisher of Above Rubies.
Nancy Campbell: Hello, beautiful ladies! Well, there just might be some men listening, so, nice to have you too! Today I am interviewing a friend all the way from Idaho, Julia Hughes. Julia, I first met her years ago, when she first came to an Above Rubies ladies’ retreat. When you get this podcast next week (we’re recording it now), we will have just had our ladies’ retreat here in Tennessee. Julia has come all the way from Idaho to Tennessee to be part of this retreat.
I have Sonya, but I’m not really meant to say “Sonya.” I meant to say “Sonya,” but I can’t get into the habit. [laughter] Oh dear. Anyway, Sonya, and her friend Charity, and her friend Pam, and Julia, who is here with us, have put on Above Rubies retreats in Oregon for so many years. They put on ladies’ retreats, and they put on family retreats.
Then, during the plandemic, they all got tired of all the goings-on up there in Oregon, and they all decided to escape. [laughter] We were so blessed in that Sonya and her family, and Charity and her family, and Pam and her family all came to Tennessee. But Julia went to Idaho.
They’re going to all be together this weekend. Now they’re putting on Above Rubies retreats here in Tennessee. So, Sonya, just so great to have you here, even though I see you lots because now they’re part of everything that’s happening here on the Hilltop. We are so blessed to have her and her whole glorious family with us. Tell us, are you glad you left Oregon?
Sonya: I’m very glad we left Oregon, yes. We love it here in Tennessee. It’s been a good move.
Nancy: Well, we’re so blessed that you’re carrying on the mission you had up there in Oregon here in Tennessee, because I had lots of retreats in Tennessee years ago. Then we had a dearth of not having any, so they’ve picked up the mission, and away we’re going again! So, Julia is staying with Sonya. I’m sure you’re having a great time.
Sonya: So far. It hasn’t been long. She just got in last night, but we are having a great time so far, yes. Looking forward to a good week!
Nancy: That’s so great! What was the last straw that made you leave Oregon?
Sonya: Oh, boy. There was a lot, I would say. The school board in our town was up for election. They had a chance to replace many of the people who had a lot of liberal views. There were a lot of good candidates that were going to be running for that. We thought, “Oh, good! This is a chance to have it turn around.”
Our children weren’t in the public school system, but we figured this would be the opportunity for them to say, “Enough is enough. We’re going to make a change.” We watched that election. Everybody who went in had been endorsed by the socialist party of Oregon. Every one of the promising candidates lost. They do everything by mail-in ballots over there, so the outcomes are often not surprising. We thought, “OK, we’re done.”
Nancy: Oh well, we got blessed here in Tennessee. Thank you.
Now Julia, I can’t believe where the years have gone! It was about 18 years ago when you first came to an Above Rubies retreat.
I have to introduce Julia to you. I think she has the Guinness book of records for coming to the most Above Rubies retreats because Julia has actually been to, guess how many? I wonder if you can guess in your brain . . . ?
She has been to 31 Above Rubies ladies’ retreats, and two family retreats. This coming weekend, it will be 32 ladies’ retreats. Isn’t that amazing? Wow! So now, your eldest son, Elijah, he’s 18 years. He was only about five months, wasn’t he, when you first came?
Julia: Yes, he was five months.
Nancy: Well, Julia, if you can remember back that far, what was it like when you came to your first retreat?
Julia: Oh, my goodness! Well, I had been invited to my first retreat by a friend who, at the time, I barely knew. The whole weekend started out with this three-hour drive with this almost-stranger. I was like, “What are we going to talk about? What are we going to do?”
I didn’t know anything. I had gone on the website and read a little bit about the ministry, but I still didn’t have a clue. I’d never seen a magazine, didn’t know anyone who’d ever heard of the ministry. We drove up, and at that point, I was fairly newly back to coming back to the Lord. Between marriage and children, it’s amazing how God can use those things to bring you back to Him.
I remember sitting down and you came out on the stage and started talking. Your whole subject for the weekend was an acronym on the word “FEMININE.” And I thought, “What did I get myself into?” [laughter] I was sitting there, going, “This is NOT what I expected!” It was very different. The people there were very different from other people in my life. It was a different culture, different heart, different mentality.
I felt very out-of-place, like I stuck out like a sore thumb, except that there wasn’t anything that didn’t resonate with me naturally, instinctually, I guess. I remember having this flashback moment of all these areas in my life as a child. Just hearing you talk about different things, going, “Oh, my goodness!” I could tie what you were talking about to the memory I had at nine or ten years old at my church, feeling this way about something, and wondering why it seemed so strange that I felt that way.
Over the course of the week, hearing you talk, and comparing what I was hearing from you that was so clearly the Lord’s heart for women as opposed to what had been drilled into me by my mother and the culture. “You need to be a strong independent woman. You need to be able to take care of yourself, and never depend on a man.”
I was fully on my way to being all of those things. I wanted to be in the military. I was working toward becoming a car mechanic. Literally nothing feminine about me. I don’t think I even owned a dress or a skirt at that time. Everyone at the retreat was wearing them, so I was like, “OK, already I feel very out-of-place here.” [laughter] There were not a lot of jeans-wearing women! I probably would not have gone had I known what I was walking into, just where I was at that place in my life. But it was also, I can’t complain, one of the most life-altering weekends of my life.
Nancy: That’s so great. You know, I think it’s so amazing how the Lord works in our hearts. I often say to people, don’t think, “Oh well, I can only give Above Rubies to this person, because they’re a lovely home-schooling mother. They’ll love it.” No, I don’t think we should choose who we think we should give it to because every woman needs this message.
I say give it to every woman you see, because often it’s the most unlikely that God will begin to speak in her heart and change her heart. Because we have innately, within us, who God created us to be. He put it within us transcendentally. It is there. It’s who we are.
But, of course, it’s brainwashed out of us with the media, and with our schools, and our education system. Our brains are totally turned off from who we really are. Sometimes it takes just the seeds of truth to begin to open up. “Wow! This is really who I am.”
In fact, I’ve often had ladies come to me during an Above Rubies retreat, or at the end of a retreat, and say, “Oh, Nancy, thank you! Thank you for giving me permission to be who I want to be!” This is what they’ve wanted to be, but they were not allowed to be that, because they’re so brainwashed that they’ve got to be, as you say, this independent woman who can stand on her own and make her own way in life. You know, have this career. She can’t be who she wants to be inside.
Julia: You know, I have a perfect example of that in the sense of brainwashing. When I was probably nine or ten, I was at church. We were out in the foyer. It was in between services or something. I overheard people behind me having this conversation about a family who had just found out they were pregnant with their sixth child.
I remember, they were having a conversation, and one of them said, “Well, they’re one of those families that doesn’t believe in birth control.” In that instant, this is such a vivid memory for me. This is one of those things that I say it was so clear, that God went ahead and prepared me, even at a young age. I thought, “Why do we use birth control? Isn’t that God’s job? Isn’t God in control of giving us life, or not giving us life? If He doesn’t want us to have a child, won’t He just prevent us from having a child? Why would we want to stop that?”
But, by the time I got married, I was right on the birth control bandwagon. I was taking it and using it. It was, it was literally when you were talking about giving God control of our family, and trusting Him, whatever that may look like. It doesn’t necessarily mean 15 children. It might only mean one or two but giving God control of our family. And I remember very distinctly going back to that memory of, why do we take that away from God? Because, as Christians, how can we say that I know better than God if and when a child should come into my life? So, yeah, the brainwashing is intense. It’s intense.
Nancy: When you think about it, and you say the words “birth control,” yes, it’s controlling birth. And, as you said, who are we to do the controlling of the birth? OK, even Colin and I, we had to get God to bang us on the head and change our hearts about this. We were just in the groove.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re secular or in the Christian church. Even in the Christian church, the brainwashing is just as much. In fact, I was reading today about the lowest birthrate in the world. Do you know which country has the lowest birthrate?
Julia: I believe it’s the US.
Nancy: No, it’s not the US. There are quite a few below the US, who have less than the US. I was quite surprised to find out it is South Korea. South Korea has a current birthrate of only .7, not even one child per family. .7; it’s the lowest in the world.
But the interesting thing is, it’s a very Christian country. A third of the people in South Korea are Christian. It has the biggest church in the world. That, to me, is very concerning, that they should have the lowest birthrate, and yet, a high percentage, according to many other countries, of people who are Christian.
It shows you that we can be born again, and because we believe the gospel message, and we believe that Jesus is our Savior and took our place upon the cross, we can have that belief so firmly in our hearts, but our minds haven’t caught up with our hearts. They’re still filled with all this stuff, the secular worldview.
I believe this is where we need to be constantly filled with the Word of God, and with truth, because so many Christians don’t really know what God says, even about having children. They have no clue! Because we’re not familiar with the Word of God, well, we believe whatever everybody else believes.
It’s the same thing. There was a time . . . I grew up when you’d hear it preached from the pulpit. “OK, you must never marry a man who is not a Christian! You must not be unequally yoked!” So, we got that in our brain.
But today, you really can’t take that, because there are so many Christian young men who are not ready for marriage. They don’t have any understanding of the responsibility of embracing a family, providing for a family, being open to having children, or who are even interested in getting married! There are so many young Christian men who are in their late twenties, early thirties, just hanging out! Just doing their own thing.
It’s not just whether you’re a Christian or not. It’s whether you have a biblical worldview!
I think perhaps you could tell us part of your story. I know you haven’t got time to tell the whole story, but I guess over the years, your worldview has, little by little, changed.
Julia: Yeah. It started in so many different ways. Walking away from that retreat. It wasn’t just about trusting God with the number of children we had. It was viewing what was important in life. I remember looking back on my childhood. My parents had taught me what was important. The times together. All I could think about was what I remembered with my parents. For them, it was fancy vacations and nice clothes, and all the things.
I remember walking away from that weekend going, “I don’t care about any of that.” The things I remember were not the stuff we had, or the fancy things we did. It was the little camping trips next to the river. It was throwing a baseball in the yard with my dad, and changing my view of what it looked like to be a family, instead of, “Well every family gets to go to Disneyland! We’ve got to make sure we get our kids to Disneyland!” It’s not.
It’s the quality of time together, having a mother in the home, rather than working. The children fending for themselves. That was where we were at. That’s OK. God used that in my life, so I don’t condemn that in any way, shape, or form. But I just knew.
I walked away from that weekend knowing that I wanted to be in my home, I wanted to be with my children, I wanted them to be my priorities. I wanted to foster a legacy. I wanted to create a legacy for my family, like what you have here on this amazing Hilltop. Generations of children loving the Lord and growing in the Lord. Worshiping Him. Going out and teaching others about Him. That was not how I felt in the beginning. It’s very definitely gradually tipped away from having those thoughts.
Then I went home and joined the Above Rubies forums because we didn’t have Facebook and all that back then. We had a forum online. I joined that, and it just opened up a whole world of all these women who had all this information. Like you said, permission. We have permission to be what we were created to be, and to question all of the people who have told us our whole lives what we’re supposed to be.
Well, why does it have to be that way? Because it doesn’t line up over here. You can’t tell me to trust the Lord when I lose my job, or my car breaks down. I don’t have money for a new one. You can’t tell me to trust Him then, but not trust that He’s going to provide for my family if I’m in the home doing what I’m supposed to be doing. It was scary. It was terrifying to me when David and I took the step for me to be home with my children, because he was making $9 an hour. How do you raise a family on $9 an hour?
It goes back to, well, if I’m going to trust the Lord, if you’re going to tell me I need to trust the Lord, shouldn’t that be in every area of our lives? Not just when something bad happens, but when something scary happens. Scripture tells us: “To him who knows what is right and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” So, if I have a conviction from the Lord that I need to be home with my children, we need to trust the Lord with our family, and I don’t do those things, how can I expect His blessing on our lives?
Nancy: When you took that step of faith and you were barely surviving, what happened?
Julia: Well, ironically, God provided a situation where I was able to take care of my sister’s children while she worked. She was a single mom with three children. I took care of them, and that supplemented just the income we needed, for me to be able to stay home. We didn’t have a glamorous life by any stretch of the imagination, but there are so many times where I can say it was scary, but God was there. We had everything we needed. He was faithful, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT!
So, I stayed home, and I’ll never forget. Elijah was three months old, and it was a rainy Oregon day, standing in the window, looking outside. It was three months to the day of when he was born. I started sobbing, thinking, how many mothers were taking their children to daycare that day so they could go back to work. I was like, “I cannot even imagine. I’m so blessed to be here where God has put me.” We took a step of faith, and God showed Himself faithful. It’s happened time and time and time again over the last 18 years.
Nancy: And here you are today, with eight beautiful children! Isn’t that just so amazing?
Julia: It really is.
Nancy: Yes. Tell us all the names of your children.
Julia: My oldest is Elijah. He just turned 18. Then I have Abigail who’s 16. Gideon is 12.
Nancy: Oh, between that time, I can remember you coming to at least two Above Rubies ladies’ retreats a year.
Julia: Yes, two a year, for sure!
Nancy: And you’d always be up when it’s time for prayer, asking God for the blessing of another baby!
Julia: Yes, I was desperate for more babies. Three-and-a-half years it took. It was probably six retreats that we prayed. It took three-and-a-half years. Because at the time, for me, my godliness, or my value as a mother was in the number of children I had. Well, if I’m going to trust the Lord with my family size then I must end up with all these children, and I only had two, and I’m not having any more, so what’s wrong with me? It was about the number of children.
It wasn’t until I was in my attic, pulling my baby stuff out, saying, “OK, Lord, it’s fine. It’s fine if these two are the only two I have, I’m going to do the very best I can with them.” I was literally pulling my baby stuff out of my attic. That evening I ended up pregnant. That opened the floodgates, because it didn’t stop after that! [laughter]
Nancy: Wasn’t that funny? So, keep going! Tell us!
Julia: Gideon is 12, and then Hadassah is 11 today. Today’s her birthday. She turned 11. Naomi is nine. Zadok is seven. Bethany is six, and Sarah is four.
Nancy: So wonderful! I think you had some rather interesting birth stories too. Have you got anything you want to share with us there?
Julia: Well, my two favorite . . . Well, OK, I have three pretty cool birth stories. Gideon’s was the hard one. When I had Elijah, he ended up being a C-section. I tried with Abigail to have a VBAC. Couldn’t do it. Different circumstances. Gideon, I was just determined that I was going to. . . We’d lost our home five weeks before he was due, so we were sharing my in-law’s two-bedroom apartment with our two children, and due any day with a baby. We ended up, I was just determined to have him. I ended up in my midwife’s apartment, in labor for 48 hours, 24 hours of that was pushing.
Nancy: Wow!
Julia: Turned out he was sideways, and he also had a 15-1/2-inch head, so his head was very large. He just was not coming. We ended up getting transferred to the hospital for another C-section.
I am not one of those that easily gives up, so when I got pregnant with Hadassah, I again just resigned it to the Lord. In Oregon the laws are very strict about VBACs. There was no one who was going to touch me or help me have her at home. My husband wasn’t even for it at the time.
My friend Jane’s midwife said, “Why doesn’t she just do unassisted?” It was the minute Jane suggested that to me that there was this peace that washed over me; this is what you need to do. I thought, “Well, I’ll bring it up to David, and we’ll see how THAT goes.” He still was very medically minded at that time. I said, “What do think about this?” He’s like, “We’ll give it a try.” I was like, “OK, Lord. That was from You.”
Nancy: It was a big step of faith.
Julia: It was huge! For him, especially, because he’s very reserved in that way. I just prepared and prayed, and gathered verses from ladies about fear and strength, and all the things. We put this book together. One of the retreats, Sonya, you were three weeks from having one of your babies too. I was two days from my due date at the retreat.
Nancy: Two days!
Julia: Yeah, the women just gathered around and prayed for me, and prayed that God would be in the birth. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Just godly. You know that time in transition when you kind of get scared? I called Jane, and I was like, “I don’t think I can do this! I’m terrified!” And she came over.
She was not walking with the Lord at the time, but she still took my verses and started reading off these verse cards that I had, of strength, and not being afraid. She read them while I sat there. She’s like, “Honey, you are in transition. You are very strong. You can do this. You’re close.” When that baby came out, I will never ever forget the experience that that was for me. In the tub in my apartment. My husband and I had had the most amazing day. The labor was not terrible at all. It was really amazing.
Nancy: That is so amazing. Just think, if you’d just resigned yourself. “Well, OK, I’ve had three C-sections. Well, I’ll just have to keep going.” But wow! What you would have missed out on!
Julia: So, I was able to have her and Naomi there in the apartment. Then Zadok was kind of a quirky situation as well, so we ended up having to go to the hospital for him. But it was a really redemptive birth because I had him vaginally in the hospital.
To the hospital people, I was like a legend, because I had had three C-sections and then two home births. And then here I was in the hospital, having another vaginal birth. That was a relief. That’s one of my favorite birth stories, too, because it was very redemptive for me.
Hospitals were very awful. I hated them. I didn’t trust anybody in them. I didn’t want to be there. God was so faithful in that birth experience, too, because I was only there 20 minutes before he came out. It wasn’t even like a full-on long labor situation. I was just, get me in the room.
Nancy: That was so wonderful! Oh, and then you kept on having natural births.
Julia: No, actually . . .
Nancy: You didn’t?
Julia: Bethany and Sarah, I developed cholestasis with Bethany. They wanted to induce me early because there is a high risk of stillborn births between 37 and 40 weeks when you have cholestasis. So, they wanted to induce me early. They induced me, but because I had had C-sections before, and all the circumstances, they wouldn’t let me move around, or do what I needed to do. I ended up stuck in a bed, monitored, and was never able to get over that hump with her.
Then Sarah was, I developed cholestasis again, but she ended up having to come early because she was not growing properly in the uterus. She was born four weeks early, but she was only four pounds, eight ounces. We spent some time in the NICU. She was my only planned C-section, because they were like, we have to do this. They weren’t going to try; with Bethany having to be a C-section, they weren’t going to try it.
Nancy: So, the Lord has been good.
Julia: Yes.
Nancy: And safely brought forth all your precious children. Time is going, but can you share with us just little bits about how the Lord has helped you in your mothering? Some little things He’s shown you as you’ve mothered now for 18 years.
Julia: I still feel brand new in it. It’s really strange. My oldest, I’ve never been a parent of an 18-year-old before, so each stage is a new stage. You’re still learning and growing.
Nancy: I think that’s so interesting, what you said, that you still feel as though you’re new. That is so true, isn’t it?
Julia: Um hum.
Nancy: Because you’re facing new seasons all the time. There are so many seasons of motherhood, aren’t there?
Julia: This interesting phase of like, here I have this four-year-old, but I have an adult now. That’s an interesting place to be. But one of my favorite things about my journey as a parent has actually been our MAAM group. Sonya and I would get together at the retreats, and we would lament about our struggles with our anger, and our frustrations, and how we weren’t . . . I’m sorry. Is it OK if I say this? I should probably check with you first.
Sonya: Go ahead!
Julia: Sharing our struggles and frustration with anger that we’ve dealt with, and how we handled it, and hurting ou (Sonya), and Charity, and Laurie. We talked about how we need, as mothers, to be able to be honest about these troubles that we have. Yeah, Lindy did end up joining us later, didn’t she?
We had this text group. We called ourselves the MAAM group. It was the Mothers Against Angry Mothering. We’d text each other. “Hey, I’m really angry right now. I’m not handling myself properly. Please pray for me.” That was really what developed relationships between all of us. We could be real with each other. To have that community and the encouragement of others; just having people that I could be real and honest with.
Nancy: I think that is one of the greatest needs of mothers, is TOGETHERING, being able to get together with other mothers. Sharing, talking things out. I often think back to earlier times. Mothers didn’t have all the mod cons that we have today. Maybe they’d have to even go down to the river to wash their clothes.
But imagine it! There they are, with their basket of clothes, and their little children round them. They’d go down and the children are all happily playing together. Maybe there are a few fights, but they’ll sort that out. But the mothers were there, washing their clothes, and they’re talking. They’re sharing their hearts and their struggles.
When you can share with someone, you can cope. It’s amazing. But today, there are so many lonely mothers because they don’t have anyone else around them. I think that’s one of the biggest things. The necessity is to have other mothers. So, I would encourage you, if there are any of you lonely ones we’re talking to today, and you feel so much on your own, well, look around. See if you can find even a couple of other mothers that you could get together with every week. Maybe have lunch together, may do a little Bible study together.
Loads of women have used my book, The Power of Motherhood, and gone through it little by little together. I had a Bible study in my home when I was having our children. Every week mothers would come. There would usually be more children and little ones and babies than mothers! But it was such a great time because it helped us through. I didn’t know you had that little special group, but that sounds so amazing!
Julia: It really was.
Nancy: Actually, you did it by texting, even.
Julia: Well, yeah, because everybody else was in Salem, but I was up in Portland, which was like 45 minutes away.
Nancy: Then you come to an Above Rubies retreat and stay up all night! [laughter]
Julia: I know. Exactly! It’s really sad to me, with as many means of communication as we have in our day and age, how utterly lonely, and on an island moms can feel. That probably is my biggest hurt for mothers is to reach out, and you’re not alone. You don’t have to do this alone. We all want to help you, but we also can’t if we don’t know there’s a need for it.
Nancy: Amen! OK, what’s our time, girls? Well, just as we’re closing, Julie, it’s been so great to have you here.
Julia: Thank you for having me.
Nancy: All the way from Idaho! We’re going to look forward to this weekend together. But can you just share some of the things you loved best about motherhood?
Julia: Oh my. My favorite things of motherhood lie in the candid moments. The moment (you see, I’m going to get all teary now) the moment you see your children, one sibling generously giving to the other of themselves. They don’t know you’re watching. They don’t know you’re watching, and you see it, and it’s so genuine and so real.
The moments where you see the people that don’t have super great attitudes, where the toddler goes running up to them with a hug and turns them right around. These candid moments, that’s what I live for. Mothering is hard. The training part feels never-ending, and sometimes devastating. But those little candid moments make it all worth it.
Nancy: That’s so wonderful. And even though you say it’s hard, yes, I think anything that is powerful is not going to be a piece of cake. But really, it’s knowing that what we are doing is the most powerful thing on earth. To have the privilege of conceiving a child from God, and bringing this child forth, and preparing it for this world, and for eternity, there is nothing bigger than that. That is huge.
And also, to know that God has chosen us as mothers in our role, in who we are, in embracing children, and nursing babies, and nurturing and mothering, that we have been chosen to reveal to the world the most tender attributes of God. That’s our privilege. When we embrace them, we are really showing to the world, OK, God is saying, “Look, that’s what I’m like.” Motherhood can reveal to our children, and to those around us, what God is like. Well, we don’t always do that, do we? [laughter]
But He created us for this purpose. When we understand that, we want to walk in that more and more, don’t we? And, of course, I think, even in the throes of motherhood, you don’t yet see all the blessings that you’re going to see. I’m now talking from looking back. Now I’m having great-grandchildren.
But you can see, the day comes when you see the fruit of all you’ve been doing. Your faithfulness, and your day-to-day plodding on. I think that’s what has been my life, really. I just think of it as a “plodding on from day to day,” being faithful!
Well, thank you again, and thank you for bringing her, Sonya. Let’s pray.
“Father, we thank You that we can sit here together and chat together about motherhood, and birthing, and all the things that are part of our lives from day to day. Lord, I pray for every mother and wife listening, that You will bless them, that You will encourage them, that You will, Lord, affirm to them again, right in their very beings, that they are in Your perfect will. They’re doing what You intended them to do. I pray for Your blessing on their marriage, on their family life, on their home. I ask it in the Name of Jesus. Amen.”
Blessings from Nancy Campbell
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