Meg Glesener - Finding Home

Meg Glesener is a remarkable woman who has turned a traumatic upbringing into a life that brings love and hope to so many. Her home is one marked by openness, safety and love but her experience of a family home growing up was starkly different.

 

 

Website: http://lettersfromhomepodcast.com

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(Transcript is a guide only and may not be 100% correct.)

 

Emily Olsen

Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host Rodney Olsen.

 

Rodney Olsen 

Thank you for dropping in on Bleeding Daylight once again. I’m always interested in your thoughts and comments so please connect with Bleeding Daylight on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Also, I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts.

 

Today’s guest is a remarkable woman who has turned a traumatic upbringing into a life that brings love and hope to so many. I can’t wait to introduce you.

 

When you think of Meg Glesener one of the first words that comes to mind is family. Her home is one marked by openness, safety and love and I suspect that her definition of family spreads far wider than blood relatives. So maybe you're surprised to find that her experience of family growing up was starkly different. These days, she hosts and produces the podcast Letters from Home. I'm honored to have Meg join me as a guest on Bleeding Daylight. Thank you for your time.

 

Meg Glesener 

Rodney, thank you for having me. I feel so blessed to be part of all the great stories you're getting out there to encourage our hurting world.

 

Rodney Olsen 

Thank you very much. I mentioned you growing up in an environment that's very different from the one that you and your husband have created. So let's start with where you grew up. Can you describe what kind of neighborhood you grew up in?

 

Meg Glesener 

Well, I went to about 10 Elementary School. So as far as the neighborhood Well, I'll tell you about My parents so my parents met in Memphis at playing a game in college. They were playing Bridge and my dad thought, Oh, she's really smart. And anyway, I think he lost some kind of a bet and ended up on a date with my mom and they dated for a very short time. Then my dad ran into a telephone pole while he's backing up for a football catch, went into a coma. He had broken up with my mom just before that my mom came and visited him and then they redated again for a very short time, and my brother was conceived. So they married, both being Catholic, but their marriage was volatile and loveless from the get go. And my dad didn't really grow up with a father. His father had abandoned him. He was very abusive, and then you add alcohol to the mix and they have three kids in three years. And so their marriage started off really, really bad. My mom because of the physical abuse kind of went internal and when I was five years old, they had moved to California and my mom had tried to reach out to her family, but nobody believed her that she was being abused, which is really awful. And so they ended up moving to California with three kids had a fourth in California and when I was five years old, it was Christmas time. And my mom and dad were fighting. It's the ..  only have two memories of when they were married, and they were fighting and they were yelling and they shoved us and sent us in a room. And I was sitting there on a bed with my brother and my sisters and I could hear that song that Christmas song Oh Tanenbaum, Oh Tanenbaum, and that's the only memory that I have of my parents interaction together and they divorced after that. Then I ended up living with my mom, while my father disappeared for probably five years or so didn't want to pay child support or anything and just kind of Adios. And my mom is trying to raise us on welfare and food stamps. in California.

 

Rodney Olsen 

You mentioned that no one really believed your mom's story of abuse and these days, it's becoming more common that we hear of stories and that people are getting help. Do you think that life could have been very different for your whole family at someone believed her back then in that first place?

 

Meg Glesener 

You know, hadn't even thought of that. But yes, it could have been so different for her because not having the people that raised you and my mom was young, she was 20. And by 25, had four kids and If her parents would have believed her, maybe my dad would have gotten some help. Right there at the beginning. It could have Yeah, it could have been really different. Maybe he would have gotten the help that he needed. Maybe she would have had a completely different life. Maybe they would have separated, who knows. But instead, we ended up. It started 15 years of raging alcoholism for my father and with my mom, we were on food stamps and she was in and out of a lot of bad relationships. And because she was so kind of in her own world, we just were kind of on our own. And my mom would say that I raised my younger brother and one of her boyfriends was sexually abusive to my sister and me. You add up a checked out mom, who has no way to deal with anything, and a really needy situation in and out of relationships. And then my dad came back about five years after that, and he took two of the kids so that he didn't have to pay child support. And so I was left with a couple of siblings. My dad was kind of out of the picture. I don't remember a parent ever coming to a parent night or anything at school. I don't remember getting help with homework I was, I really hardly have any memories of my early life. And I think trauma plays a part of that. Another awful thing that had happened is that I didn't realize until I was I think I was my second year of college, I had a flashback memory. And the flashback memory was being sexually abused by my own father, which is horrific, and to be able to process that and so I I just mentioned that because I think because of that and the other thing with one of my mom's boyfriend's I think I hardly remember anything really before fifth or sixth grade besides a loving grandparent, you know who came from Tennessee and would take us to Disneyland and that sort of thing. So besides that, it's just so, such a blur until I got a little bit older.

 

Rodney Olsen 

If you put yourself back in that situation and start to imagine it as a child, did you know that something was was not right? Did you hear stories from other kids at school and realize that your family was different? Or did this just seem normal to you?

 

Meg Glesener 

It seemed completely normal. And Rodney I didn't realize till college that my home wasn't normal. You know, as I entered middle school, I live with my mom still. And we lived in kind of an area that had a lot of gangs. And she was spending, I don't know four or five nights away at her boyfriend's house and I would watch the kids. You talk about darkness knocking on the door. There were so many people in that apartment complex doing drugs and They would go down, we live right by this river bed right across from a cemetery and they would go down into the river bed and do drugs and I just really wanted to be accepted into. And I said, I'd like to, you know, come and they said, No, we don't want to, we don't want to mess you up. You're You're nice. And so there's little steps along the way where I do feel that there was some kind of presence if you will, protecting me along the way I could have. I could have brought guys into the house, I could have done anything. I mean, I'm alone as a teenager in a house. When so my relationship with my mom wasn't that great. And I really turned to sports for really felt good to be good at sports and that kind of thing. When I was a freshman in high school, my relationship with my mom came to a head one day and she was mad at me and she yelled at me about something she she thought I was giving my brother the wrong medicine and said Why are you trying to kill my son when I got the wrong medicine? And she had been out that night and she was yelling at me for no reason, and I just lost it. And I said, Hey, I'm the one who does. You know this and, you know, like, I've paid for my clothes. You're not grateful, blah, blah, blah. And I ended up throwing a shoe at her. Because I said, well, you here's your shoe back and I walked barefoot to my dad's house, walk seven miles, barefoot, stubborn. And when I got there, because we had all lived with him a couple years before, that is a trial year and he was so angry and so drunk, I just thought, I don't want to ever go back to live with my dad. She would threaten us all the time. It wasn't one of those nice situations where people speak nice about each other. No, they both spoke awful about each other. I didn't even know they liked each other at any point until my mid 30s. When I asked them about how they enjoyed each other's game playing game. I got to my dad's house. I he said You can stay here if you want. And I really wanted my mom to apologize. I want her to apologize for being rude for not being thankful for all that I'd done for her with taking care of the kids. And she never apologized, and I was so mad. And I was also scared because my dad was so mean, I remember sleeping under the bed, in my dad's guest room with stuffed animals piled around me and wishing my mom would call. Call mom, call back. She never called she called Five days later. And I had already made that decision. I will never let myself be in that situation. Again, I won't be vulnerable to my mom. She called Five days later and she said you can come back and I said, No, thanks.

 

Rodney Olsen 

You mentioned that you threw yourself into sport as a way of coping because you really didn't have much of a choice between living with your mom or living with your dad. Either choice is not good. So you try to focus elsewhere and that was with sport. What sort of sport did you play? How did you go with it?

 

Meg Glesener 

I played volleyball and basketball and softball. And there was one thing my dad was good at was volleyball and he would take us to the beach on the weekends. So, though, you know, alcoholism, colors, things, that wasn't all bad. We did have some good family times where we'd go play volleyball on the beach. I was really good at that. And so that is one thing that helped immensely in high school, being known for being good at sports. And it took a few years for the whole friends thing to come along. It was it was devastating. I mean, it was really hard to be alone, and eventually ended up getting friends in the sports world.

 

Rodney Olsen 

Was it difficult to form close friendships? You mentioned that you'd moved around a lot. Was there something in the back of your mind that, hey, I might not be here long anyway, so was that difficult in forming those relationships?

 

Meg Glesener 

It was really difficult. I remember sitting in that lonely phase of my life, and I saw these popular girls and a couple of them played volleyball. And you know, they were sitting in this one part of the school. And I remember thinking, by the time I'm a junior, I want to be in that popular group. I want to be the best on the team. I hope to please my parents, I remember having these unspoken goals in my mind. And by the time I got to junior year, I had all of those things. I was standing there with those popular girls feeling completely, like I was not part of the group, you know, imposter syndrome. And plus they all felt closer and I didn't feel like they like me No, so is completely alone. I was MVP in sports. I was doing well. But there was this emptiness. Inside there was an emptiness and a longing inside. I did meet a girl in one of my classes and she was So nice to me. And anyway, we went to a dance together. And then after a bunch of us went over to my friend's house to spend the night and while we were hanging out this guy open his Bible and shared some Bible verses and talked about Jesus, and how He loves us. And I didn't know it at the time, but this is how I would describe it. There's a verse in the Bible, Revelation three, verse 20, that says, Behold, and it's it's God talking, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him. And he with me, at that moment with all the loneliness and the brokenness and things that have come up, I knew that the Lord was knocking on the door of my heart and this guy, Lance at this party at my friend's house said, who would like to give their life to Christ and I remember in my heart thinking Me, me, I want to and I said out loud I do. That night at 16 years old, in my friend's bedroom with this co-ed group, I gave my life to Christ. And I know people have different experiences. But for me, when I woke up the next day, I was a new person. The Lord had come into my heart and there was a burden lifted, there was joy. There was really the whole I almost feeling like birds singing, it was a new day, Rodney,

 

Rodney Olsen 

I suppose the experience that you'd have of anything to do with religion or faith in the past is this religion that your parents had grown up in, which is the thing that caused them to, to have to get married and and it was a bunch of rules. So how did this change in your mind you're talking about this idea of Jesus saying, hey, look, I'll come in and eat with you. And that's a very intimate thing to do. That's a very relationship based thing. It must have seen very different to any of the religion that you'd seen before that.

 

Meg Glesener 

After my parents got divorced, we lived in Tennessee with my grandparents for a year, and went to Catholic church every week and went out to brunch afterward. And that was really the only church exposure I had. I think my dad took his experience with the Catholic Church and he felt like when he was in college, nobody had any answers. And then he just thought it was a bunch of BS. My mom, I think, felt abandoned. And I never went to church once growing up. So I really didn't have a frame of reference. But when I heard the Bible being read, there was something that sparked in my heart. And yeah, a little piece of me thought, This is too good to be true. I can receive Christ and he's my Lord. And I can Go with him to heaven and forgive me for all my sins and cleanse me. It really seemed almost too good to be true. And it is not. It is not. It's the truth I've seen. I'm 53 now and I've seen seeing that to be true. Once I gave my life to the Lord. I thought I should probably tell my dad, there was a really dramatic situation that happened. So his his alcoholism came to a head my sophomore year, he was dating my stepmother. And she would visit and she gave him an ultimatum and said, You need to quit drinking or I'm going to leave you and my dad was just devastated. And he locked himself in a room and he had a harpoon and I don't I mean, who keeps a harpoon? I had a harpoon in his room and he was threatening to take his own life. And my stepmom who is very intense and rules oriented. She piled the kids in the car, because she had two little girls. And my brother and sister and I, we just hopped in the car and my dad said, Okay, I'll go in. So my dad went into a clinic. And he was sober from that point on and he's sober To this day, which I'm grateful for. But yeah, their marriage was not the healthiest or the best. We had 10 foot pot plants in the backyard, you know, hello, 60s left over. And I remember smoking a bong with them in the living room. And just they said, We here you drink so that you know you can do at home safely. I think they were trying to be good parents, but there was a lot of screwball stuff but the thing that affected me more than all that was the anger and the yelling and it probably because of the trauma, I went through younger. I'm just very sensitive still to this day. When I got saved. When the Lord came into my life, I thought I should tell my dad Add that I'm a Christian now. So I came to him and said, Hey, dad, he was in a good mood. I said, I, I wanted to ask you about God. And he was like, What? And I think his first time we'd ever talked about God and he was all sudden, his angry, Mr. Potato Heads, angry eyes, you know, came on. So I just said, I want to know about God. He's like, I'm the one who puts the food on the table. I pay the rent. You know, God, there's no place for God in my house. And I was too intimidated by him to tell him at that point that I was a Christian. I ended up getting a full scholarship for volleyball at a Christian college. And it was maybe half an hour away. I went in and tested. I did one test. They're like serve. They're like full ride, offered me a full ride for college. And I told my dad about it. I was like, Dad, I've got this full ride and well, what college and To Azusa Pacific, because now you can't go. It's a religious school. So I was only 17 when I started college and so I didn't go, I didn't take the full ride and I ended up putting myself through school without any financial help from my parents. I had never really been to church at that point. Still, and I didn't have a reference for that. But I knew the Lord was in my heart and I'd open my Bible and read it. And at home, I would just hide my Bible. I mean, I would read in my room with the door closed and be afraid if my dad walked by is he gonna say something? It's gonna do something because my Christian friends from that group that I went to it was a campus life group had gone to a different college. I thought I better find some Christian friends I you know, a better set myself up and meet meet some people. And so I signed up I went to Cal State Fullerton in California and I signed up for every Christian club. The first one that I went to, I walked in the room, and I met people and I thought, well, they're they're just not talking about God. It wasn't like, you know, you get this cheesy feeling sometime for people are over emotional or something. I was looking at these people and I thought they really know God. And I started really growing in my faith. And college was just a great life changer for me. So many things started changing for me in a good way. I wanted to go to church, I was invited in my I told my dad, Hey, Dad, I'd like to go to church. And he said, Well, you can go once, but if you ask me to go again, you're not welcome to live in this home. And he said, religions, a bunch of propaganda and a bunch of BS. And he said, I would rather that you told me you were on drugs, then that you were a Christian.

 

Rodney Olsen 

That's a pretty tough thing to have to deal with. Of course, you took that opportunity to go to church, once. What happened when you decided that you'd like to go back?

 

Meg Glesener 

I went to church, and it was so cool. I was listed hearing people singing praises, and I just thought, this is where I should be. I had asked this older lady who I had met, and she said, wait till you're 18. But I thought, I'm tired of hiding the Bible. I don't I want to keep growing. And so I decided, yeah, like you said, I decided to tell my dad and again, waiting for him to be in a good mood, like, Hey, Dad, I would love to talk to you. And he's like about what I think he knew called my step mom down. They're sitting there. We're in the living room. They're looking at me right at me. So what do you want to talk to us about? And I said, Well, I want to go to church. And they said, Well, you know what that means, don't you? And I said, Yes, of course. It's really hard to say this. I'm sitting next to adults. Yeah, I'm still a teenager and my my dad said, That's not Good enough Meg, we want to date. And I said it was a Monday and I said, All right, Wednesday, and they both would not let me say goodbye to my younger sister to sister two years younger. And my step sisters were about six years younger. They wouldn't let me say goodbye, I called mom and I said, Hey, Mom, I'm really grateful to my mom for this. I said, Dad, won't let me live with them. Can I come back with you? And she said, Yes. And she was living with a boyfriend at the time. So I moved in with my mom. And I never got to say goodbye. My sisters. My sister told me that she thought I left because of her and my parents told her that I loved God more than I loved her. And she didn't even realize that until our 40 is when we had this conversation. So I moved in with my mom and I started really growing in my Faith. And I was going to church and somebody was taking me aside and discipling me and I thought maybe I'll do a walk on for volleyball at the college. But I realized, you know, my sports are going to end but my life with God is not going to end. And at that stage of my life, I decided, I'm think I'm done with sports.

 

Rodney Olsen 

When your father had said, hey, look, you're not going to be welcome here if you continue on with this God stuff. When you came to have that conversation, was there a part of you that thought, surely he can be serious? He was just saying that, but he's gonna say, Oh, look, we don't agree, but you're welcome to stay here. Was that how you thought it would be or having known him for so long? Obviously, you realized what this might mean?

 

Meg Glesener 

That's a great question. There was a little bit of both, I suppose I was hoping that they would say that's fine. I mean, there really wasn't hardly any transition time before. They said That's not good enough we want to date. And that is another good thing my dad taught me is he's a man of his word and I keeping your words important, but no, I knew he was serious and he meant business.

 

Rodney Olsen 

You're living with your mum back again and you're starting to head off to college, you're starting to meet people, you're starting to grow in your faith. What comes next? What's the next step in your story?

 

Meg Glesener 

The next step in my story is my dad, I would just kind of, I guess, spend time with him over time. He he didn't want me to contact him, but I would still send him you know, a Father's Day card or different things like that had been a few years where there was just no contact besides written on my part, or a phone call, and he softened up a little bit over time and he said, Okay, I guess we can get together for lunch. So I planned on lunch with my dad and I was I came over to the house. The house where I'd gotten kicked out of and my step sisters were there. My dad was late, which was really unusual. I had determined in my heart I am not going to bring up God. It's I'm just going to sit here and you know, nervous and I go inside the house my stepsisters let me in. And I'm sitting in the living room with my sisters. And they look at me and said, Meg, tell us about God. We want to know. And so

 

Rodney Olsen 

Wow, wow.

 

Meg Glesener 

Right. So I answered their questions, and that we were having this incredible conversation and, and they said, I want to become a Christian. And so we planned in the middle of the lunch to go for a bike ride, which we did, right there in this complex, a house beautiful housing complex. And they got on their knees in this park with their little bikes at I think nine or 10 years old and gave their life to Christ. That's one way. That's one thing that happened. And I met my husband through that Bible study that I was going to. We started dating toward the end of my college years. And as I was growing in my faith, I would bring my brother, my brother had been kicked out for not looking for a job and he was struggling, he was living with a guy who was wasted on drugs. He started coming to church and my brother turned his life around my mom, who had been for many broken relationships and so much hard time and she had even been in a mental institution a couple of times because she couldn't handle life. It was so hard for her. She started coming to church with me and she gave her life to Christ that a good old fashioned 10th meeting. And all through college I was involved with this beautiful ministry if you will, and got to spend a lot of time with many college, young women, many gave their life to Christ and so many learned, learn how what it means to be a Christian. So I got to see God use my life and that choice all through college to affect so many people. And then right after that, my husband and I, we got married. We got married right after college the summer after I graduated from college.

 

Rodney Olsen 

It's an amazing story. I'm just wondering if I can take you back to that time when those young sisters asked to, to know about God and they said, We want to know this Jesus. How did you feel at that point, knowing that if they went ahead with this step, it would make a huge difference in their life, but it may also bring rejection from your dad.

 

Meg Glesener 

I hadn't really thought at that moment about whether they would be rejected. From my dad. I probably should have. But I, I know after that time I planned a time with their twin girls. I came a couple months later and brought them Bibles to the house. So I met them and they had Bibles that they would read on their own. And I don't think their mom ever talked to them about it. But one of my sisters told me that when her mom was going through her room, she found it and just threw it away. So maybe she was a little softer than my dad was about it.

 

Rodney Olsen 

Let's fast forward. What does life look like for you now? What does your family look like now?

 

Meg Glesener 

Well, my husband, Mike and I, within a year of marriage were both two very purposeful people and we got sent up from California to Seattle area to plant a church. And so that's how we got up here in the Pacific Northwest. We have as of last week, Heard that we have grandkid number five coming along the way we have eight children and a couple of them are married and we have two teenagers left at home. We have a senior and a freshman and we're about to start a virtual homeschool on a personal level. I'm a youth leader at church. I love working with youth and we've had so many families live with this. Over the years we've opened up our home to invite people in. One of the people that we've had come into our house more recently, is actually my dad. My dad would still say he's a pretty outspoken atheist and he has said to me his words, mag I really hate Christians but there's nothing I hate more than born again evangelical Christians. And yet I would say to this day, my dad now he loves my husband more than anyone else besides his His Son, dad says since regretted skipping our wedding because it was Christian wedding, and he loves us dearly. And when he ran on hard times, a couple of years ago, his marriage to my stepmom just was just over and then they lost everything they had so much. And they had kind of lost it all. And it's sad. You don't want that to happen to anyone. But without hesitation, my husband, Mike, and I said, Dad, you can come live with us. And so he moved up here, and he lived with us for a year and I just can't help seeing how God has a sense of humor and he also has a plan and my dad who was his heart and angry guy within 24 hours really of living with this just seeing that. No, we're not perfect. You know, we're not poor. We got our struggles. Life's not perfect. with being a bet with eight kids, there's all kinds of ups and downs and so much happening. But seeing the love in our home, and I but I do know that we have a ton of love in our marriage and with all the kids that that is the rule of our home. And so just seeing that and being here, I saw his angry stance with this chest stuck out, it just melted away.

 

Rodney Olsen 

It's interesting that the tables have completely turned from someone who said, because you don't believe what I believe you have no place in my home to being welcomed back by that same person who says you don't believe what I believe but you are welcome in my home that's got to have had an effect.

 

Meg Glesener 

I think it really did. And one time when he's still an angry fellow and you know, I think he just doesn't have a lot of strength and he had his own difficult story. But when something hard comes into his life, he backs away from it. Well when you back away from all the hard things, you end up being alone. And he's alone right now. And I love him and he has softened up a bit over time. But it's, it's a blessing for me. It was a blessing to be able to give that to him. And once we had a conversation while he was here, about all the stuff that happened in the past, and he said, I didn't let you go to college because it was too far away. And I said, Dad, your response to that? and kicking me out of the house. He said some other reason for it. I said, that changed my entire life. But he remembered it all differently. It was a it was gaslighted.

 

Rodney Olsen 

You've created this family home that is so different from the one that you grew up in. You've got eight kids. And you've mentioned that you welcome a range of people in and maybe you can tell us some of the people that have been welcomed into your home over time apart from your dad, but was it difficult to be able to create that safe place having not seen it modelled in your own childhood?

 

Meg Glesener 

It's a great question. What I haven't mentioned yet is the probably the number of Sorry, I'm getting emotional. I'm probably the, probably the greatest blessing in my life around me. It's my dear husband. And when you learn growing up that the people who should love you, and you should be able to trust the most for whatever reason, and your home is a place of harm, and it's a place of brokenness and pain, and not safe and you don't know who you are. And you marry somebody who is loving, and kind and patient and consistent. Then I know everyone's got their own trials, but my marriage isn't one for me. We just celebrated 31 years of marriage and I am so grateful for my husband. I learned something different about love. If I did something wrong, he wasn't upset. With me, we would talk about, talk about it later. And so having that is a foundation of the home having my husband be so loving and kind. And of course, you know, when you're a parent you like, I'm not gonna be like my mom or dad, and then you end up noticing. I've got the negative tendencies of both of them. So yeah, you have to fight against frustration, and yelling and checking out and all the things that come with human nature, and with being a parent, but over time as you choose to bring those things to God. Again, and again, there's new habits form, there's a new environment form, there's a new new things for him and my husband and I've been very purposeful over time to set a direction for our home and to have values that we're working on with the kids reading. Like we read Seven Habits of Highly Effective People with the kids. What do you want your worldview to be? Well, how do you look at things, spending time with them? listing so many things in our home. And so you asked about people who've lived with this. My sister lived with us. She was on the East Coast, bad relationship after bad relationship. And we said, all this, my mom and all the siblings ended up talking together and said, Hey, Kimmy, why don't you come live with us? I drove out there. We collected money, we packed all our stuff. And we drove over to our home. My my brother, lived with us for a summer he graduated from college. He came up to stay with us, and I knew he had graduated from college. So I threw a party for him, right, just a normal thing you would do for someone graduated from college. And he said, Meg, and this is just about God and not about me, but he said, Meg, I've had more love in your home for three days than I've had my whole life. Can I live with you? And and we said, Absolutely. He lived with us for a year we had probably 10 different college students live with us. Over time, males and we teach them how to be young men until we got preteen girls and we decided, Okay, we're done having young men, we've had families, a couple of families live with us over time we once we even had a homeless person live with us. Oh, and we had a couple of Muslim fellows live with us to just kind of invited them in Rodney and I, I think that's one of the big problems in our, in our world today is so many people, maybe they're overcome with their own weaknesses or flaws or, or just trying to struggle with life themselves or depression. But we don't open up our homes. We don't open up our friendship group, we keep the same little clicky group and there's so many hurting people around.

 

Rodney Olsen 

I'm sure it's not lost on you that your family life now and your home now is so different to what you grew up in and by the sounds of it, you're offering that kind of love, that experience of what family could be, to so many people, I'm interested with eight children, I'm sure that they're not all doing exactly what you would like them to do. How do you deal differently to what your dad did? How different is it the way that you treat your children when they don't agree with everything that you believe, as it was to your dad?

 

Meg Glesener 

Well, your a parent Rodney, you know, it's a learning experience, right? It's a learning experience through every stage of parenting and dealing with or, you know, kids, teens that have different opinions. That's a different dynamic. And I will fast forward to having kids that are in college and post college, for me is probably been the hardest part because some of them are, they're choosing life and they're figuring out who they want to be. And you quickly see that if you are still still trying to parent them when they're trying to live their own life. Right, then they don't want you in your life. Or you have a friend who's starts being bossy with their grandkid. And you see their kids restrict them from having any time with their grandkids. And you're like, I'm not going to do that. So I think what I have learned is to be a listener. Each of my eight kids are different. They all have a different path. Some of them are embracing their faith wholeheartedly. Some of them are at different stages. And you know, it's true. You love them each the same amount. You can't love one more. I don't love one, more or less, and I'm learning and I'm still learning how to come alongside them in their life to support them. And once you get that down, then you quit being so worried about all the choices they're making. So yes, I I've had to learn how to deal with differences in a different way. And I'm still learning that.

 

Rodney Olsen 

On top of all these things that you do and we're all wondering now how you find time  for what you're doing, but you're also as I mentioned, you're producing and hosting your own podcast. Maybe you can give us a little bit of an insight into how that started and what it's about.

 

Meg Glesener 

My podcast is called Letters from Home. One thing that encourages me so much, Rodney, is when I hear stories like stories on Bleeding Daylight, I love the stories I just listened to Shea's story today. So many of your stories have really resonated with me and for me when I hear great stories, and especially faith stories, it ministers to me personally and I was thinking, if it means so much to me the stories of people in lives that I know maybe it would encourage and bless someone else. I didn't really even hardly know what a podcast was and I googled how to start a podcast. And when I was thinking about doing the podcast, so many faces came to mind of people in my life, who inspire me. And so I'm working away on that list to get the podcast stories out to so many. And I have so many people on my heart. As you know, there's so many, so many great stories in the world,

 

Rodney Olsen 

And you get the opportunity to bring those stories to life. I'm wondering for those who you've interviewed and chatted to, have there been some who thought, look, I really don't have a story to tell and yet you've been able to draw that story out that's been a blessing to others?

 

Meg Glesener 

For sure, I interviewed 11 year old twins and one of the girls she started a cupcake business because she was downtown with their parents and saw a homeless man and he was hungry and they're just kids right there eating cupcakes and Mom, can we can we buy a cupcake for him and the mom went with it. And it turned into a whole cupcake business where they donate 10% to Hope Linc to help with the homeless, beautiful stories like that my son, my son almost died four years ago when he had encephalitis which is an infection in your brain. He was acting crazy on his job. They thought he had a mental break. He was put into a hospital ward falsely. And that's my first episode. And so yes, that's that's one where maybe he didn't think he had a story to be told. And he's grateful and it's been freedom and a blessing for him to be able to take the shame away from what he went through and how God in 50 days got him out of that place of the mental institution into a place of healing and back in college. So, yes, God's used us to help get many stories out and we got a lot a lot more to share.

 

Rodney Olsen 

What I love about your story is it's this complete change of what was and redeeming it for what can be. And I'm sure that there's still plenty to come in that story as you continue to journey alongside others. We haven't even touched on the fact that you spend a lot of time discipling others and drawing them closer to Jesus, as well as doing that within your own home. But I just want to say thank you so much for sharing your story so openly. And honestly, it's been a delight to have you on Bleeding Daylight.

 

Meg Glesener 

Thank you, Rodney. We'll just keep trusting God's gonna keep knocking down those doors of the darkness to get the light going forward to this hurting world.

 

Emily Olsen

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