Grace for My Home | Christian Women, Growing in Faith, Spirit-Led, Hearing from God, Sowing Truth

REPLAY: Take Care of Yourself So You Can Take Care of Those You Love

• Audrey McCracken | Mom Encourager • Season 4 • Episode 130

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This week's episode first aired February of 2023.  It has been my most popular episode to date.  Enjoy this replay...


Have you ever felt like taking care of yourself was somehow selfish?  After all, so many other people are counting on you. That mindset nearly broke me—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

When my boys were 5, 4, and 2, my body staged what I call a "mini rebellion." Heart surgery, chronic hives, thyroid issues, kidney stones, and persistent headaches all converged in the same season. This mini-health crisis became my wake-up call.  I had to face an uncomfortable truth: I had been operating under the false belief that being a good mother meant giving until I had nothing left.

That's when I realized that mature people recognize their own needs and take responsibility for meeting them. This wasn't selfishness—it was wisdom. God gives us permission to create balanced, healthy lifestyles for ourselves and our families. We have far more control over the rhythms of our homes than we often realize.

As mothers, we set the emotional tone for our entire household. When we're depleted and running on empty, everyone feels it. When we're rested and nourished—both physically and spiritually—we create an atmosphere where our families can thrive.

In this episode I share six principles that helped me change my approach to motherhood and self-care: recognizing your needs, creating balanced routines, prioritizing rest, dealing with the chaos of busy seasons, asking for help without shame, and committing to growth in self-care. You weren't meant to be a martyr for your family; you were meant to be a blessing. And you can't pour from an empty cup.

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Audrey:

Hello friend, welcome back to Grace. For my Home, I'm Audrey McCracken and I'm so glad to be back with you again this week. I hope that you're doing well. We have some exciting things going on here. My oldest son will be graduating high school in a few weeks and that warms my heart because, as a former homeschool mom we made it I feel like I'm graduating as well. But he has. He entered high school his freshman year after being homeschooled for his entire life and he did great. He did well. You know, it was his decision and he has. He has done a great job and he's had so many experiences in high school that I believe has prepared him for the next step, and that is university. He's going to university in the fall, and we for the next step, and that is university. He's going to university in the fall, and we're excited about that as well. And then his brother's right on his heels. His younger brother will graduate next year. So at least you know, at least I will have been through this once. Right now I'm trying to figure it out. I feel like I'm walking around in the dark trying to figure out all of the pieces, and you know I'm very proud of him. We all are. We're very proud of David and his accomplishments and excited about what the Lord has for him.

Audrey:

Also, I'm working on a lot of projects, some things that I have shared with you guys along and along. One of the biggest projects I'm working on right now is I am going to release a daily devotional podcast, a quick five, 10 minute podcast during the weekdays to give you a little encouragement for your day. This is something that I have wanted to do for a long time and I finally got up the courage to do it, finally decided hey, I'm just going to do this. This has been on my heart, it won't leave me and I really want to do this. I'm been on my heart, it won't leave me and I really want to do this. I'm working on that nail, and I'm also working on my second book, and I have a Bible study that's floating around in my head that I need to get out of my head and get it. You know, get it into the real world. And so I have a lot of projects I want to work on and I need some time to make some traction. So what I've decided to do is to do something a little different Over the next five weeks, I'm going to share with you one of my most popular podcast episodes from Grace From my Home.

Audrey:

In the past three years. I've been doing this, coming up now three years, and so I have some podcasts that have just for some reason, they've been very popular and I want to share them, and I hope that they will be a blessing and encouragement to you. These are the podcasts I've had the most downloads on and also I've had the most comments or questions, and I think you enjoy them. The first one, the one that I'm going to show this week I released it first in February of 2023, and it's called Taking Care of Yourself, so you Can Take Care of those you Love, and it's just a general reminder that you can take care of yourself and others at the same time, that God gives us enough grace to do both, because sometimes we think we have to choose either or, and that's not true. You know God's not going to ask something of you and not give you the grace to do it well and, at the same time, to take care of yourself, because if you run out of energy, if you run out of steam, if you run out of yourself, then who's going to take care of those that he's put you in this world to help take care of right. So I hope that this podcast is a blessing to you. I hope it's an encouragement and each week for the next five weeks I'll pop on and I'll say hello, kind of give you a little update, and then I'll play an episode from the past and I hope and pray it's a blessing to you. Now I'll still be around.

Audrey:

So if you have any questions, comments, if you'd like to touch base with me, I would love to hear from you. You can click in the show notes. There is a link to text me a message and I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear any questions that you have. I'd love to hear anything that's been encouraging to you from the podcast or from my blog. Also, I will be posting blog posts regularly, even through this break, and you can go to graceformyhomecom and check that out. And if you want to hear from me weekly, if you want to stay up to date with the things that I have going on and the projects that I'm working on, subscribe to my newsletter. I send out a newsletter once a week, just an update of what's happening here, and I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to have you, you, I'd love to have you on that, so we can stay in touch. But, god bless, have a great week, enjoy. Hello friends, welcome back to Grace From my Home. I'm so glad to be back here with you guys this week. It is my heart to come and encourage you and hopefully inspire you in your important work as a mom. That is my heart, that's my desire to each week, bring you just a little encouragement to let you know that you're not alone, that God has a good plan for you and that he is on your side, that he's cheering you on and I'm cheering you on too.

Audrey:

Just to give you a little recap, I think last time last week, I told you that my husband and I were going to go on a marriage retreat together. Well, we didn't. He got sick the day before we were supposed to leave and he had just a miserable weekend. So we stayed home and I tried to take care of him, and I don't know if I did a good job or not, but he did get better and so he has gone back to work. But we had to cancel our retreat and we'll reschedule it. But also, I think he felt bad about missing it because he is supposed to go away for a business trip this coming weekend and he's invited me to go with him. So I told him, yes, I would go, I'll just hang out while he's in his meetings and then at night we'll get to spend time together.

Audrey:

So, but just a little recap on what's going on here and I want to talk with you this week. I want to just share with you some encouragement on taking care of yourself and how important it is to take care of you. You know we as moms, sometimes we can think you know, I've got to take care of everybody else and we get put on the back burner and that's. You know, we can do that for a while, but it catches up with us and I've learned the hard way and that's usually how I learn things, because I can be very stubborn and I've learned the hard way that taking care of me is taking care of my family, that unless I take care of me, I am not going to be able to take care of them. So taking care of yourself is not being selfish, it is being wise, it's being mature and it's learning, it's growing and we have to learn, as moms, to take care of ourselves.

Audrey:

You know, I think there is a false belief that you know, being a Christian means being, being selfless, and it means just giving and giving and giving until we don't have anything left. And it is important to give, it is important to be generous and, you know, to give of ourselves, but we also have a responsibility to take care of ourselves. You know, we only have one body, we only have one mind, we only have one life to live and God has given us this wonderful gift. And it's kind of like if somebody gives you a gift and you treat it poorly, then you don't really appreciate that gift. And so God has given you the gift of life. He's given you a body, he's given you responsibility to take care of that body, to take care of your mind, to take care of yourself so you can do the things that he's called you to do, so you can love the people that he's put in your life to love.

Audrey:

And years ago, just to give you a little story about me, I went through a mini health crisis. Now, I say a mini health crisis because I know people who have gone through huge health crises and they've been on chemo and through all kinds of things. Well, mine was not quite that severe, but it was enough to make me wake up and say what am I doing? How do I want to live my life? In the same season I had heart surgery. I had hives all over my body, reacted to anything and everything. It seemed like I put in my mouth, I had kidney stones, my thyroid went south. It just knocked out on me and I was dealing with headaches and all of this at the same time. And it was a wake-up call for me Because all my life I had been very healthy, rarely sick, and felt like I could do anything I wanted to do and never really had to pay the consequences and never needed much sleep. So when this season hit me it was when I had little ones. My boys were, they were probably, I think the oldest was probably five, and so that meant I had a four-year-old and a two-year-old.

Audrey:

And it was a very difficult, very hard season because I was struggling, also because I was struggling with so many things in my body. I was struggling mentally and I just felt like I was falling apart and I really had a lot of anger issues. Because I was struggling mentally and I just felt like I was falling apart and I really had a lot of anger issues because I had no energy, I was tired all the time. And then I felt guilty because I was tired all the time and I had little boys who wanted to run around and play and I just wanted to get somewhere and sit. And that was such a learning time for me because I had to come to terms with my own limitations. I was not superwoman, but in my mind I was superwoman and in my mind I was still in my 20s and could do whatever I wanted to do with very little consequences.

Audrey:

But here I am and I'm thinking, if I'm going to make it for the long haul, like I'm in my I was thinking I'm in my thirties If I want to make it to my seventies and still have, you know, an enjoyable life, still able to do things, then I didn't really need to start thinking about my health, because when all these things started happening, it just seemed like they popped out of nowhere. But they hadn't. You know, they were the fruit and there was a root. And that root was that I never thought about me ever, I mean once I had kids. See, I love time alone. I am just by nature an introvert. I like to read, I like to think and I like to drink coffee when nobody's around, right, and that's when I journal and I like to write, and that's just my nature. Well, when kids came along, it seemed like that was gone. That was a part of my life that I would never get back and I really grieved. That was like a death for me.

Audrey:

So what I would do is I would stay up until everybody was in bed, and that seemed impossible. Sometimes you know how you put them down and they're like they just pop right back up. I mean, I would wait until everybody was asleep and I would sit down with my coffee, with my book, with my journal, with my music playing, and that would be my time. And I would eventually fall asleep on the couch and wake up at two in the morning and stumble into the bedroom and go to bed. And to me, I craved, I needed that time, because I craved that time alone. But what I was doing was I was getting no sleep, I was getting no rest and my body was just saying no, I just refuse to keep on going. And not only that, but I never thought about what I ate. You know, I would cook for them, I would cook for my kids and I would just eat a little bit here and there, and I wasn't thinking about what my body needed. You know, exercise was just chasing them around. I never thought, you know, I should take care of me, I should go for a walk or I should do something, and I was frazzled.

Audrey:

Now maybe you're wiser than me, maybe you've never gotten to that place, or maybe you're in that place right now, but I really had to have a come to Jesus moment where I had to say I don't want to wear out before my time. I want to be a good mom. I don't want to be the angry, mad, frustrated, tired mom. I want to be a mom who has some energy, who can do some things, who has a smile on her face sometimes. I don't want them to remember childhood as just me pulling them through it and hoping to get them out of the house. You know I wanted them to have memories of. You know I had a fun mom. She wasn't perfect, you know. She had her moments, but we had a good time and so, by the grace of the Lord, he helped me to start seeing things differently, and he helped me to grow up and to mature, because that was an area where I was not mature, that was an area where I did not have his wisdom, and so, by his grace, he helped me to find that wisdom and I wanted to share with you today just a couple of things that during that time that helped me. They're mostly mindset shifts and I'm just going to share them with you today in the hopes that they will help you where you are.

Audrey:

The first one is I had to come to the realization that mature people recognize their own needs and do what they need to do to get those needs met. Nobody was going to come in and make me take care of me. God had given me everything I needed, but I had to decide I'm going to take care of myself because I love these people, and that's part of being a grown up. That's part of being mature, you know, and that's part of being a grown up. That's part of being mature. And somehow I just I just thought I can do it all and there's no consequences, you know, but I can't. I am limited, and so are you, and you know it's kind of like kids.

Audrey:

When kids are little. We feed them, right, we? They don't. Even sometimes, when they're babies, they don't even know they need food. They just know oh, that's good, I like that. We give them food and they're like oh, yeah, that's good, but they cry and they don't even know sometimes why they cry. They don't even know why they're hungry. They just know that something's wrong, right. And then, as they get older, they know they're hungry because they can ask I want a snack, I want something to eat, but they can't make that for themselves, right? So we're there to help them, we're there to say it's time to eat and here is your food. But as they get older and they learn to take care of themselves, hopefully they learn to feed themselves more, right, they know where the snacks are or they can make their own sandwich. And my goal is that one day, when my kids leave, they'll actually be able to cook some things for them. I mean not gourmet meals, I mean just, hopefully, hot dogs. Right, they can do something for themselves. They're not going to starve when they leave my house, and that's how it is with us.

Audrey:

We have to first of all recognize that we have needs, acknowledge I have a need, and then we have to learn that we have. God has given us the agency to meet our needs and, yes, he supplies all of our needs right, according to his riches and glory, by Christ Jesus. But he is not going to spoon feed us when he's given us what we need and we have to say I am worth taking care of. So mature people recognize they have needs and they do what it takes to meet those needs for themselves. Nobody's going to come in and do it for us. We have got to take care of ourselves.

Audrey:

Number two I had to realize God has given me free agency to create a balanced and a healthy lifestyle for me and for my family. You know, I can be kind and generous with myself. I can be creative with how I take care of me. You know I don't have to live in perpetual craziness. And that was a revelation for me because I thought being a mom it just means I'm going to be tired all the time, I'm gonna be depleted all the time. And I started realizing that a lot not all of it, but a lot of it was choice, because I haven't, I had not learned how to create a balanced and a healthy lifestyle for myself, much less for my kids, right? Because I hadn't done that for myself, I had no idea how to do that for them, and so the Lord started showing me.

Audrey:

I give you permission to get your life in order. I give you permission to take care of you. I give you permission to think about your own needs. We can establish daily and weekly flows that serve our families and it serves our priorities and where we can be healthy. Is that new for you? I mean, is that revelation for you? Is that like completely new thought for you? Because it was for me, you know, I I think I knew it in my mind, but I never really thought that I had the ability to create a balanced life for us, and just knowing that built hope in me. I thought, oh, I have a lot of control of these things that are going on in my life. Let me see what I can do. You know how can I make things better? And one of the ways I made things better was I set routines and I set structure.

Audrey:

I want to tell you I am not and this is kind of a side note, a little off topic I am not a schedule person. I run from schedules, I rebel from schedules. They make me feel confined. I've never met a schedule that I can keep, but I have learned that there is a blessing in having a routine. No, we don't. We don't necessarily do everything at the same time each day, but our days flow pretty much the same way each day, and that gave me enough freedom that I didn't feel confined, but it gave me enough structure that I didn't feel like I was shooting from the hip all the time, and just knowing that this is when we're going to do this and this is when we're going to do that it made me feel like I had more control. And also it helped me to establish a structure so that I could take care of me.

Audrey:

And one of the things that we put in that flow was rest, see, rest, and this is number three. Rest should have an established place in our life, in our day, in our routine. Now, by grace, we need to make a place for rest. It needs to be a part of the ebb and flow of our home, even if it's not perfect. It's not going to be perfect, but rest is so important that God put it as one of the ten commandments, and I don't know why he did that. He's God, but I think it has something to do with the fact that if he didn't make us, we wouldn't do it. Rest is so important.

Audrey:

Jesus said, god made the Sabbath for man, not the man for Sabbath. I mean, he made the Sabbath for us. He gave us rest because he knew we needed it. Our bodies cannot go and go and go and go, and neither can our minds. There's times we have to turn our mind off. When we don't, when we keep going and going and going, then things get really negative.

Audrey:

And I found that when I didn't rest, when I didn't take care of me, when I felt like everything was crazy, then I got really resentful because I felt like I'm giving and I'm giving and I'm giving and it's never enough. And see, my needs weren't being met. And so I was resentful at those who looked to me to meet their needs, because I'm taking care of everybody else's needs but my needs aren't being met. And so I was resentful. And it wasn't their fault, it was my fault, because I didn't know to take care of me first and then I would have enough left over for them. And it's not perfect. I don't want to paint this picture perfect, ideal. It's not perfect, it's always in process, but it's good. These are principles. They're not rules, right? They're not laws. They're principles that, when we apply them, they help us to bring order to our home and peace to our mind.

Audrey:

Number four is busy seasons will always come, but they don't have to send us in a spiral of craziness and chaos. See, we're going to have busy seasons and we get through them, and then we have to go back to order. We have to press the reset button and say, okay, you know it's kind of like, hold your breath, okay, we're going to get through this and then we're going back to order. You know, recently I've shared with you guys about, you know, the weeks that we've had. We've had four weeks of nonstop travel, actually three, because me and my husband didn't travel this last week when we were supposed to, but we're traveling next week, so so it's just been a very busy season and a lot of time during those seasons. You know, it's like we just we're going to get through them and then we're going back to order. But see, if you don't have an order set to go back to, you don't have, you don't have anywhere to go, you don't have anywhere to go, you don't have a plan. But when you've got a plan, then you can go back to the plan, even when you had to take a detour for a little while.

Audrey:

You know, monday is a reset day for me, it's just reset, I know. You know, after the weekend things are, they're different. Right, I wash a load of clothes at least one load of clothes. Right, I wash a load of clothes at least one load of clothes every day, because if I don't, it is. I mean, it's a mile high, it's a mountain. Now I don't wash on Sunday, that's my rest day.

Audrey:

So Monday I'm back at it and see on Monday that you know, everybody is trying to get back in routine and that's when I try to reestablish our patterns, our routine. It's not perfect, it doesn't look great, but in my mind that's a day for grace. That's a day to give myself grace. We've been off of our schedule, we've been out of our routine. So today we're going to reset. But it's not going to be perfect, it's a mindset. Today we're back on track and we have to do that after seasons too.

Audrey:

See, I'm coming up next week when we're coming off of this really, really busy season. Now there'll be other things. You know, sports is starting up. It's going to be crazy, I know that. But I'm thinking okay, our travel season is over, reset, and it gives me grace to say you know what, we've been off of routine. But let's get back on routine, let's create order here. And that's what we get to do as moms, you know, and it's a blessing, it's a blessing to us and it's a blessing for our family and they can't do it for themselves and it's not easy for us. But I will tell you, it makes a difference. When we decide, you know, we're going to feel in control here. We're not going to be crazy here. We're not living in the chaos, you know, we're bringing it into order. God told Adam and Eve subdue it. Here's the world Now. Subdue it. You know, bring it into order. And that's what we do in our homes.

Audrey:

Number five is when I need it. I ask for help and I acknowledge my own limitations when I say it's your job to recognize your needs and meet your needs. I also recognize that there are some times when we need outside help and you don't have to be ashamed to ask for that outside help. You know, god has made us social creatures. There are times when we need people, when we need each other, and that's okay. You know, I think in today's world we're so far removed a lot of times from our families and from the way that things used to be, when there were big families and they lived close to each other, that you naturally had a support system, that today we feel so isolated and alone and sometimes we feel like it's wrong to ask for help and we don't have people close enough to see that we need help and jump in. So sometimes we have to be willing to be vulnerable and say, hey, I need some help. I'm very blessed in that I have a support system close to me. I live close to my mom and my mother in law and they will help me when I ask. But I know a lot of you don't. Find some people, connect with some people. Find a friend who has kids about the same age as yours and partner with them. Partner with them, work with them, have days when you trade off with each other. Maybe you give her a couple of hours one day and then the next week she'll give you a couple of hours.

Audrey:

You know we all have doctor's appointments we need to go to. You know I had gotten so bad that I didn't go to my doctor's appointments because I was just too busy and I really needed to go. But I thought, oh, I'll be fine, and I wasn't fine. So we all need somebody. We need somebody to watch the kids while we go to the doctor. Right, go to the doctor and don't only go to the doctor, but after the doctor, go, sit down with a cup of coffee for 20 minutes and drink that coffee surrounded by adults. You know, if that's your thing, if that's not your thing, go to the mall, go to your favorite store and walk around for 20 minutes and just be an adult. Buy yourself something. If you see something, buy yourself something. Take care of you the way you would take care of somebody you care about, and you are putting fuel in your tank. And it will be a blessing not just to you, but when you come home smiling, when you come home happy, when you have extra energy, it will be a blessing to your family.

Audrey:

And the sixth principle that I want to share with you is commit to growing in wisdom and grace in this area of taking care of yourself and meeting your own needs. It's not one and done, it's not something that we say, okay, I've got that, I'll do that. It's constantly working it out. It's a journey to learn how to take care of yourself. I have to keep reminding myself this. I have to keep doing this to take care of yourself. I have to keep reminding myself this. I have to keep doing this.

Audrey:

I'll go through seasons where you know I just I don't have the time that I did have. Or you know, I've got a lot of responsibilities in this certain time period and when that time period is over, I'll forget to take care of me because I've been so focused on everybody else. And see, it sounds selfish, but it's the most unselfish thing you can do, because you're taking care of the one who takes care of everyone. You weren't meant to be a martyr for your family. You were meant to be a blessing. And if we develop that martyr mentality, nobody wants to be around us, right? If it's always like woe is me, look how much I do, nobody knows. Nobody wants to be around that person. You know I don't even want to be around myself when I'm like that.

Audrey:

As a mom, you set the tone of your home. I know dads do too. I know that dads can play a big part in this. But as a leader in your home, you have huge influence over the atmosphere of your home, and if you're wore out and you're tired and you're irritable all the time, ain't nobody happy in that house. Ask me how I know. Ask me how I know.

Audrey:

This past week something happened and I didn't like it. And my son Luke? He told me that night. He said I thought today was going to be a bad day. And I said well, why? He said because I saw your face when that happened. And I said well, why would that make it a bad day? He said because when you have a bad day, we all have a bad day. He told me that he's 15 years old and he's very smart. But it was eye-opening for me. I said, honey, I'm sorry. I said I don't mean to ruin your day with my nasty attitude, but he said it in jest. But there was truth in there too. There was truth in there too and I want to encourage you today.

Audrey:

Think about these things. I don't know if anything here hit home for you. Maybe this is common knowledge for you. It was not for me. You Maybe this is common knowledge for you. It was not for me, but God has given us so much freedom to create a beautiful life, to create a life that we would want to live and not just endure. We can change our minds, we can be new people, we can enjoy this life we've been given, but we have to let go of the mindsets that we've been. Maybe they've been passed down to us, maybe we've learned them, maybe we've just never been taught.

Audrey:

I just thought that you know it was normal to struggle and struggle and struggle. And don't get me wrong, being a mom is hard. It is hard work. It's not easy, it's never going to be easy. But you know what the Bible also says this is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it and we can decide to do that, amen.

Audrey:

I want to encourage you. If this has been a blessing to you or any of my episodes have been a blessing to you, go subscribe to my blog, because I send out emails. I try to send them out weekly, sometimes more than weekly, and it's the same kind of content that I share here on my podcast. So if this is something that is encouraging to you, please go to my blog, graceformyhomecom, and subscribe. Get on that email list and I'll be getting in touch with you.

Audrey:

But before I let you go today, I do want to pray for you and believe with you for good things. Father, I thank you that you are gracious and compassionate, you are slow to anger and you abound in love. God, I pray that you would teach us wisdom, that we would be wise and mature, that you would help us to recognize our need for you and Lord, our need for rest and our need, oh God, just to unplug sometimes. Help us to take care of us by Lord, using wise principles. Help us to be women of wisdom. Lord, help us to care about what goes in our bodies. Lord, help us to take care of ourselves so we can take care of these you've put in our homes. Lord, we love you and we thank you for your grace, in Jesus name, amen.