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Orthodox Christian Parenting, hosted by Faithtree Resources Executive Director (and mom of four!) Michelle Moujaes, is a weekly podcast for parents and grandparents navigating the holy struggle of raising kids in the Orthodox Faith. Each episode offers honesty, encouragement, and practical wisdom from the Church—creating space to exhale, freedom from the pressure to be perfect, and openness to grow as you raise children who are deepening their knowledge and love of Christ.
Welcome to Orthodox Christian Parenting, where we bring the church's timeless wisdom into the everyday chaos of raising kids. I'm Michelle Mujaias, and I'm so excited about today's conversation because today, I get to introduce you to two very special people. They're not only dear friends, but they're really true mentors to my husband, Walid, and I. And they're advisers to countless people around the country, including clergy as well as top leaders in the political and professional world and certainly to ministry folk all over The US. Beyond the impact that they've had in so many lives, they're incredible contributors to the wider world of Orthodox ministry and specifically around family ministry as they travel the country teaching on marriage and parenting and family life.
Michelle Moujaes:And here's a little sneak peek for you. They're actually in the final stages of preparing Faith Tree's newest upcoming resource for Orthodox Christian parents, which will be available early next year, God willing. And we can't wait for you to see it. I've seen it, and I've tested it with groups at my church, and I can promise you, you can't wait for it.
Michelle Moujaes:It is so good. I'm talking about Paul and Cindy Carras, who are here from Minneapolis, Minnesota. And before I let Paul and Cindy introduce themselves, let me just tell you what excites me most about having them here today. It's not all the things that they've accomplished in business or in ministry, but what I get excited about is that together, they've raised three children who not only remain connected to the church and are marrying within the church, but who really love the church. And they live their faith with joy and integrity and real fervor.
Michelle Moujaes:Walid and I pay close attention because when we look at their kids, we see what we're aiming for. And be sure, they're not doing it perfectly, of course, but they're doing it beautifully because it's full of repentance and love and connectedness. So their story is both inspiring and deeply practical for parents who are striving to raise children rooted in Christ in today's world. So today, we're gonna ask them, what really helped them as they raise their children? And if they could go back and do it all over, anything, would they do differently?
Michelle Moujaes:Paul and Cindy, you already know that I'm your biggest fan. So welcome to this podcast. I'm really excited for our conversation today.
Paul Karos:Oh, we're excited to be here, Michelle. It's great to be with you.
Michelle Moujaes:Before we really get into, your work in parenting, can you just tell us a little bit about what's your history in the church?
Paul Karos:Well, both Cindy and I grew up as Orthodox Christians and in dedicated families to the faith, especially Cindy's family in terms of, you know, church attendance and even living some of the fasts of the church. My family as well committed to the church. Sometimes in the summer, we were quite lax, but my my parents definitely taught us the church matters and we were involved in, you know, all the youth programs and having friends at church. And so definitely for both of us was an influential part of our upbringing for sure.
Michelle Moujaes:Okay. And so do you think that the approach from your families impacted your parenting?
Paul Karos:Oh, definitely. You know, I think for both of us, you really do take after your parents in many ways. But one of the things in marriage is we try to take the best things from our parents that we experience and then, leave some of the things behind. And that's kind of an ongoing thing in marriage and parenting. What can we take in from our families that was so good and so right?
Paul Karos:And what things maybe do we want to leave behind and not bring into our families as parenting?
Cindy Karos:So in my family, for sure, the church was a priority and living the faith was a priority. So we brought that into our marriage.
Michelle Moujaes:I love it. I know, when I think of my own family, we have so many different experiences of church. Like my grandparents used to drive 250 miles to get their kids to church every Sunday, both I each know they were so committed. And I think about how does that history actually play into what we have in our own home. And I think you kind of can't avoid it because it kind of becomes the fiber of who you are, the the generational activities, if you will.
Michelle Moujaes:Alright. So then you guys have been married how many years?
Paul Karos:Just about thirty. We're all we're getting close to thirty.
Michelle Moujaes:Thirty years.
Paul Karos:It's been awesome. Thirty thirty best years of our lives, I would say. I agree. At least mine for sure.
Cindy Karos:Yeah. Me
Michelle Moujaes:too. I love it. I love it. What role does marriage and the spiritual life that you have, between the two of you really impact your children? Do you see anything there?
Cindy Karos:I think it's critical. We got married late in life. I was 35, Paul close to that, 34. And by that point in our lives, we had committed ourselves to living orthodoxy as a lifestyle. And so as we joined together, one of the really important things to both of us was finding somebody who would share that, you know, to do the kind of things that were important to living an Orthodox Christian life.
Cindy Karos:And having that to start with as a base was critical. I can't imagine doing it without it.
Paul Karos:Yeah. I would say the same thing. And, you know, by that point in our lives, were, you know, mid thirties, we had seen lots of stuff in the world and participate in lots of stuff in the world and really saw what the life of the church and a pursuit of Christ was really all about. And both of us had that desire to be with somebody who had the same goal, to pursue a life in Christ and in the church and to do that in our marriage is absolutely central, I would say, in our experience, to have that joint pursuit in husband and wife if we can. I think that's, it's a very important element for sure.
Michelle Moujaes:Okay. So let me ask you. For so many people in our audience, we know they may not be in that same place when they're starting their journey in orthodoxy. We get lots of questions about, you know, I believe this and my husband believes this, or my wife feels a little different this way or that way. So what what advice, if any, could you give to those people who are not necessarily as in sync when it comes to being connected to the church?
Paul Karos:And this is part of why marriage is so beautiful, by the way, is sometimes Cindy's stronger at certain elements of the spiritual life than me. Sometimes I'm stronger than her. And that's actually how we help each other. So we have to look at that as kind of an inspirational part of marriage. So, you know, the thing that maybe to think about would be take your own steps, work on your own inner transformation.
Paul Karos:And as we grow in Christ, you're going to find yourself being a little more patient with your spouse, maybe a little more encouraging. You're going to see your own humility growing. And over time, that it'll take care of itself, that it will rub off. Or, you know, if not, you keep doing what you can do, and that's good enough. And that's a great place to start.
Paul Karos:I don't if you'd add anything to that, Suji.
Cindy Karos:Would just say try the hardest to get on the same page with at least a few things, if not everything, to really be able to provide sort of a unified front for your kids the best you can, even if it's just one or two things.
Paul Karos:That's a great point. So start where you can, get on the same page, and let that grow over time. That's a great way to look at
Michelle Moujaes:that. And I think, you know, Walid and I always we came from two very wildly, as you know, different backgrounds. And one of the things that we like to do was to start where it was easiest. So we always agreed about safety. We always wanted our kids safe, and we always wanted them to be employable, and we always wanted them to be marriageable.
Michelle Moujaes:So we always started kind of with the most common ground and then continued to talk about those things as they got harder, which I think, you know, taking it a step at a time is great wisdom. So let me ask you about this. So I know your children, all three of your children, and I've had the blessing of being in relationship with your family, but not everybody in our audience has. So tell us a little bit about your children. And then I wanna really drill down into, some of the great things that you guys did in your parenting that seem to have borne fruit in raising kids that really are engaged in the life of the church.
Michelle Moujaes:Because for the majority of our audience, you know, we're all in the middle of the struggle. You guys are kinda done with a lot of the parenting ins and outs. You're you're closer probably to doing some grandparenting than you are to doing parenting. For those of us who still have younger children, we want our kids to be engaged in the life of the church. And we really want them to stay close and, you know, marry in the church and be with faithful people.
Michelle Moujaes:But we also live in a world where it's hard to really coordinate the day to day things that we face and the life of the church. So I I wanna dig deep into what you guys did. So start by introducing us to your children. Who do you have?
Paul Karos:Alright. So we have three three children. We're very proud of them. They're very good people. And Peter is 27, our oldest, and he's getting married soon.
Paul Karos:We're very excited. He's marrying his fiancee, Anna, who's a Romanian Orthodox Christian, and he works in the finance industry. Our daughter, Anna, is 25, and she is a biomedical engineer, is just an incredible young woman. And she's got a wonderful young man that she's been dating for a number of years, who's an Antiochian Orthodox Christian. And then our son Joseph, who is 23 years old.
Paul Karos:His job is a head chanter at the Greek Orthodox Church here in Minneapolis, and he is also engaged to be married to an Antiochian Orthodox young woman. And they're all three vibrant young people, and they have their struggles like all of us have our struggles. But we're very proud of the way they're growing and trying to navigate life. And they are probably our greatest joy together and the people they're with too. So I don't know if you'd add anything, Cindy or not.
Cindy Karos:I just thank the holy spirit for helping us Yeah. Get them to where they are. Yeah. But really, it was an act of God, and really, it was a joy to be able to do it.
Michelle Moujaes:I love it. Okay. So let's let's get specific. Each one of your children is actively engaged in parish life. So each one of them and actually, in sometimes two parish lives.
Michelle Moujaes:So if you don't know, Paul is a Greek Orthodox. He grew up in the Greek Orthodox archdiocese, and Cindy grew up in the Antiochian Archdiocese.
Paul Karos:We're a true panorthodox couple, by
Michelle Moujaes:the They are a panorthodox couple, and they participate, fully in two parishes. And I think you actually do that very beautifully. When I think of your children, one of the things that I would love to instill in my own children is this passionate desire to be involved in the community life. And I know you all have told me that when you first started parenting, you really went on a search to figure out how to do that. So tell us a little bit about that process and what that was for you all.
Cindy Karos:Well, like most, parents, you take a look around, you think, oh my gosh, I only have so much time to do what we're hoping to do. And, we decided that we would do a little research and ask some of the people that we knew how was it that they raised their children to stay in the church because that was important to us. So we did kind of a little informal survey, and what we found is really interesting. First of all, a lot of the things that we had been doing already, I mean, our kids were young, maybe six, seven, eight, we were bringing them to church regularly. We were taking them to church school.
Cindy Karos:We we were involved in just about all the activities we could be involved with. But there was one thing that was different, and that was these families had these active relationships outside of Sunday liturgy with other Orthodox families. I mean, we felt like we had a lot of really great Orthodox friends, but pretty much it had to do with the activities in the church. These people were spending lots of time outside of Sundays, with these other Orthodox families. And we weren't we were spending time with lots of really good people, but through our kids' sports or people we worked with or neighbors or really wonderful people, but but not people who shared our faith.
Cindy Karos:So we decided we should jump into that and invite some families over. And it made a huge difference, wouldn't you say?
Paul Karos:Oh yeah. And I think as we kind of reprioritized that element of our life, the social life, you know, we'd go to liturgy, see people in coffee hour. That's nice, of course, it's important. But you're not getting too close to people doing that. And that was the wisdom of these other families is that they were getting together for, you know, inviting a family over for dinner and letting the kids hang out in the backyard and run around or going to a sports game or something of a friend from church or whatever it was.
Paul Karos:And when the light bulb went on for us, it was literally almost none of our social life out of Sunday worship had to do with Orthodox Christian families. And that began that great journey Cindy just mentioned. And I would say it radically changed our family. And we got to know families. That was the big thing.
Paul Karos:We got to know couples, what's really going on in their life and their struggles, and they got to know us. And it made a huge difference. Community.
Cindy Karos:You might wonder why that's important. And at the time, we kind of were just doing it. But now looking back, having adult children and looking at all the elements of what happened in their lives, it was a critical thing. And here's a few reasons why. It in times when their friends at school really kind of bombed, they thought they had some really good friends and things changed, There were those kids at church who were really very important to them that they could kind of lean into.
Michelle Moujaes:Right.
Cindy Karos:When times, the world was changing and when things that maybe didn't exactly work with our faith, there were other people who believed that too. They weren't the only ones. And when we just wanted to get kids to church, like on a special feature of an evening liturgy or something like that, it kinda helped to know that their friends were gonna be there as well. So there were a lot of different reasons. And also just for parents supporting each other, it it made a big difference to us to have people that we could talk back and forth to and ask questions, and it was the answers came back to our faith.
Cindy Karos:So those things all proved to be super important.
Paul Karos:Yeah. Huge.
Michelle Moujaes:Did you find that your kids resisted in any way?
Paul Karos:No. I think they actually really enjoyed it. For some of our kids, there wasn't a good peer group at church. So we kind of went up two years, down two years, or up three years, down three years, and looked at families. Cindy literally pulled out the roster and then said, let's try to have these people over for dinner.
Paul Karos:Let's get involved with this group of parents. And as it turns out, many of these parents have become our closest friends. I mean, they're just beautiful people. We knew they were good people, but we never really knew them. You get to know somebody by sitting around having a glass of wine and and having a barbecue and, you know, hearing what's going on and talking about their families and sharing struggles.
Paul Karos:And that's what happens. And that's part of Orthodoxy. In fact, I remember one of the monks of Monothos tell me that communal life, the communal life of the church is part of what heals the human person to the image of God. It's hard to heal from your passions without communal life because that's how we support each other. That's how we learn from each other.
Paul Karos:That's how we're inspired with each other. So it's really a big deal. And that takes you know, intentionality. And it's not easy at first, but it becomes really easy pretty quick once you start to do it.
Cindy Karos:It does take work though, because our friends from church don't necessarily live in
Paul Karos:our
Cindy Karos:neighborhood. So, you know, it requires some thinking and some planning, but it it really makes a difference in the long run. Most of our kids' closest friends are from the church, even though they have lots of friends from other parts of their lives too.
Michelle Moujaes:I've heard you say before some of the direct ways that you helped teach your children about the faith. And the social piece was definitely a big part of that and that you really showed them firsthand how to be engaged in the community life. But one of the other things that we've tried to adopt that we learned from you is the idea of inspiring your kids towards what's actually happening. So, Paul, I I remember you telling us a story about how you would say to your kids after confession. I am so white as snow or it's like I'm in my baptismal garment.
Michelle Moujaes:Share share some of those practical things that you guys did for your children because I know a lot of them really did inspire and brought your kids into this vibrant understanding of what the, for lack of a better word, benefit was of being engaged in church life.
Paul Karos:It's really interesting. In the book that you mentioned we're writing, we're kind of writing about this, path to the summit. That's the the title of the book's gonna be about this climb to salvation, to becoming Christ like. And, you know, one of the points we make in that book is where you climb, your kids will climb with you.
Cindy Karos:I love it.
Paul Karos:And so that relates to our joy over our faith. So we have to start with ourselves. Where's our joy in our faith? Are we excited about the faith? And if we're not today, that's okay.
Paul Karos:But let's get started and let's really understand that our faith changes our entire life. It it brings peace. It brings repentance and and renewal and strength and belonging. We belong to Christ. We belong to the church.
Paul Karos:We belong to our family. So as we work on our own joy, you can't help but spread it to your kids in all kinds of ways. And you mentioned that one. So it was actually communion and that we'd get back to communion. And I still do it, by the way, sometimes.
Paul Karos:But I, you know, I would feel this joy. Of you, you, we all know it as Orthodox Christians after communion, you feel great. So I'd whisper in my kid's ear, you're, you're white as snow, fresh start, you know, thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. And then that's it.
Paul Karos:I go right back to the liturgy. It'd be a whisper in the ear, But, you know, and they begin to experience it for themselves. They really do. It becomes their own over time. I know what what you would
Cindy Karos:I'm just feeling it. I I think that it if if you have that internal joy, your kids are gonna feel it. If you feel like it's an obligation, your kids are gonna feel like it's an obligation. But there's lots of little things like, okay, here's just a silly one. Getting to church on time.
Cindy Karos:Now why is that important? Alright. So we had to work on that. I mean
Paul Karos:She's looking at me because in my family, she jokes. She said, Paul, your family is so punctual on everything except for going to church.
Michelle Moujaes:I love it.
Cindy Karos:Okay. But why does that matter? Okay. So you think about that. If you're on time to go to the dentist, but you're not on time to go to church, what is that saying to your kid?
Cindy Karos:Your children are gonna think, obviously, the dentist is way more important than God. We don't want them to have that. So we actually had to plot on how to get to church on time. Not an easy thing with three little kids.
Michelle Moujaes:Tell me, get granular, what do you mean about plotting to get to church on time?
Cindy Karos:Well, Paul, who all of a sudden became our clock
Paul Karos:I bought in I bought into the on time thing. That's what happened.
Cindy Karos:Nice. Figured out how much each of those things were gonna take, how long each of the things to get you needed to do to get ready to go to church were gonna take. And then we backed that up. And if you live in Minnesota, when you arrive at church, you have to take your boots and your coat and
Michelle Moujaes:your hat.
Cindy Karos:He planned that out too. And the goal was it was like kind of a game
Paul Karos:We made it a game, actually. We actually made it a game.
Cindy Karos:To be in our seats when we heard the words, blessed is the kingdom.
Paul Karos:Which is the start of the liturgy. The priest says, blessed is the kingdom, and we wanted to be in the seat. And and some weeks, we were. Some weeks, we weren't. But when we were there on time, they would each give we'd all give each other high fives We made it to the beginning of the week.
Cindy Karos:And it's kinda clear. Our kids were pretty little, so this was kind of fun for them. I mean, if you started this with teenagers, you probably wouldn't be giving yourself high fives.
Michelle Moujaes:High fives.
Cindy Karos:But you might think about what it takes. But I I think the message, is that we need to be the ones to help show our kids that this is a priority in our life. I think the most important thing I that we wanna say to our kids is that this is a priority, that, we need to get to church on time because God is the most important thing in our lives. And, you know, if we're gonna take the time to get to school on time or anywhere else, we definitely should be in God's home on time.
Paul Karos:Yeah. Something happens when you warm up in the liturgy. You know? I mean, a little warm up. That's why it's important to be there on time, is that it warms you up.
Paul Karos:So by the time you get to hearing the gospel or by the time you get to receiving Eucharist, your heart's warmed up, it's softened, it's open, and you're ready to receive the Holy Spirit and receive Christ, and that renews us. That's why that's why it's so important.
Cindy Karos:Well, and Michelle, it's kinda funny. Our kids now, two of our kids are chanters and one's a Sunday school teacher. They're getting to church before I would be getting to church. I mean, you know, so they're warming up the right way with orthos and, you know, so they actually
Michelle Moujaes:What what I love about that because, you know, again, with my kids, sometimes getting to church on a Sunday morning is like climbing Mount Everest. Feels It like is. A huge feat. But what I love about this is that you were intentional and you had a plan because I think sometimes as a parent, I expect things to just kinda happen. I'm like, why isn't that working out?
Michelle Moujaes:But I don't with the movies or, you know, going to the dentist or whatever, you know, I'm never late to that stuff. But Yeah. I always kind of make arrangements that accommodate the start time. And I think what I love about that is the practical application of just, okay, we wanna get better at this, so we're gonna sit down and come up with some sort of a process that allows us to do that. And I think in parenting, that's really important.
Michelle Moujaes:Never perfect. We'll never work perfectly
Paul Karos:I was just gonna say, never perfect, and it's okay. You're not gonna be perfect. Totally fine.
Cindy Karos:Well, and the the funny
Paul Karos:As long as we're trying.
Cindy Karos:The funny thing is you each have a part in it. So I may have had the first part of making sure we wanted to make that a priority, but anyone who knows me knows I'm the last one out of the door, and I'm always forgetting something.
Paul Karos:So multitasking.
Cindy Karos:It takes Great multitasking. To say to me, come on. We need to
Michelle Moujaes:get Let's go. Let's go. Is there anything else that you found remarkably helpful as you were really cultivating this love of the church and of Christ? And I know the saints are a big one in your family. Can you tell us what what did you do to make the relationship your children had with the saints so palpable and like a real relationship for your children?
Cindy Karos:Well, you know, you don't really know what you're doing when you're doing it. Kind of fun to look back and say, wow. It must have something must have happened. We used to do evening prayers when the kids were little in front of our icons. We had some icons in our entryway, and we would get together at a certain time no matter who was there or
Paul Karos:Sometimes people couldn't be there because they had some activity or whatever. It's okay.
Cindy Karos:Yeah. But every night, we would do some evening prayers, and we would read the life of whatever saint it was of the day. And, you know, it was just great to kinda learn these stories. And if you think about hearing so many different unbelievable stories of people who gave their life for the faith, I mean, not only did kids get to learn about them, but they learned about the kind of devotion and commitment. And it actually is kind of funny.
Cindy Karos:When you would hear at the end of the story, many of these stories were martyrs. And, you know, the stories were not they were gruesome.
Paul Karos:Some were pretty
Cindy Karos:tough. Some of them. We wondered, jeez, should we even share some of these details? And, we were advised, go for it, to the point where when our kids would hear the ending of a story, they died peacefully in their sleep.
Paul Karos:Yeah. They died peacefully in their sleep.
Cindy Karos:They'd be like, what? There's nothing. That's it?
Paul Karos:Don't love that.
Michelle Moujaes:I have to I have to put in a plug for something that just seems appropriate now. So as you know, you've heard me talk about on the podcast before, the encounter app, which is Faith Tree's free prayer app that we have thousands and thousands of people praying together daily. Well, actually Paul and Cindy's son, Joseph, the lead chanter that they told you about, also is the project manager for that. And so if parents are interested in walking through the stories of the saints, their son Joseph has done a really beautiful job, building up a library of the lives of the saints on that app. So I would encourage parents to go and look at the encounter.
Michelle Moujaes:You can get it in the Google store or you can get it in, the Apple store, but it's a beautiful way to have at your disposal all those, saint stories. And some of them are even told in video and they've been narrated beautifully and other ones are the Sinaxarian or the readings of the saints of the day. So I highly encourage you all to go and check out the Encounter app because I know for us, like, I don't know what saint it is today. So you have to, again, have an intentional plan to stop and kind of debrief with your kids. So that's my little plug for
Paul Karos:you, Encounter's incredible, In fact, some of our local clergy, when people wanna develop a prayer rule, they actually appoint them to the encounter app because it's pretty darn complete. It's a it's a beautiful project for you at at Faith Tree. We thank you for it. It's it's excellent.
Michelle Moujaes:Oh, it's been an honor to get to work alongside your son on it. It's been really fascinating to see.
Paul Karos:And by the way, for those of you, dads or moms that like to get a little dramatic, which I do sometimes, because I can't see, I'm blind, I would, actually read about a saint online with my ears because it's how I read my ears. And then I would tell the story to my kids, like when they're getting into bed and make it dramatic and exciting and they loved it. So, again, when they see our enthusiasm and we have to it has to be organic enthusiasm, it has to be real enthusiasm. And that takes time to develop in our lives. But as that grows inside of us, you can't help but be contagious to your kids.
Michelle Moujaes:I love it. Let me ask you this. Do you think there's anything that was so significantly different, you know, fifteen or twenty years ago when you were raising your children to today that parents would need to adjust for? Is there anything that you can think of that could really help parents thinking? Because we're in pretty unique times.
Michelle Moujaes:I mean, just the digital age that we live in presents a lot of new considerations. Any advice that you'd have for parents on that?
Paul Karos:Yeah. It's a great question. You know, I mean, we are in difficult times. And as parents, for the young parents today, I think it's it's it is a big, big challenge for all kinds of reasons. You know, it does help us as Orthodox Christians because of our incredible history to be able to know that, you know, various times in history, our forefathers and mothers have had very challenging times, whether it was the Mhmm.
Paul Karos:The pagan governments in the first few centuries of the church, you know, right? The barters and the killing, whether it's, you know, the oppression of Islam that affected many of our churches for many many centuries and even today, by the way. Or whether it's communism, which literally tried to destroy the church. Mhmm. We can know that that our forefathers have had difficult times too, and that can give us inspiration to fight the fight.
Paul Karos:So so what do you think, Sidney?
Cindy Karos:Know, like, example that's different is this whole cancel culture, you know? Yeah. And I think it's created in all of us this sort of hesitation that we don't want to be canceled. We don't want to be rejected. We don't want our kids to be rejected.
Cindy Karos:And what I've noticed is that it causes us to be a little more hesitant. And I think it's important for parents to realize that if you want your children to be a part of the church and that the church is important, we need to be strong about our faith and not worry so much about being canceled or being rejected. It's just an important thing to keep in the back of our minds. And that's why I think we have such a passion on working with parents because we just wanna give them that kind of, hey, you can do this, and don't worry about what the world is telling you right now. Yes.
Cindy Karos:Just be strong because what we've got is so powerful and so important to us and to our children and to the rest of the world. So
Michelle Moujaes:I actually one of the things that I've heard you say both to Walid and I and to many other couples and, you know, the course that Paul and Cindy are working on in the book, which you, God willing, will see very early next year. We actually I got to test it here in Los Angeles. And we actually got to do a live Zoom call with Paul and Cindy. And one of the things that resonated so powerfully both with Walid and I and with these other, you know, dozens of couples we've seen you work with is you you always have this, exhale when you say you're probably doing better than you think. I take it easy.
Michelle Moujaes:Don't beat yourself up so much. It is a journey and you will fall. The goal is to get back up. And so speak to us before we go into the questions that we have from some of our listeners for you. But how can parents exhale a little bit and not be so heavy hearted that our kids are gonna leave the church and they're gonna marry people we hate and everything's gonna be wrong?
Michelle Moujaes:Like, give us some wisdom on that, you guys.
Paul Karos:Yeah. Well, you know, I think the first thing is the fact that if you're here and and you're listening to this podcast, you're serious about your your faith, you're serious about your parenting, and that's that's 90% of the battle. Right. And, you know, in Orthodoxy, there's great freedom. There's no one way to parent.
Paul Karos:There's no one way to do things. We have great freedom to pursue the spiritual life, our family life. And so, you know, take a big deep breath because just like you said, in Orthodoxy, on one hand, we rest in the fact that we know we are God's precious children, all of us, including our kids. Right? We rest in that.
Paul Karos:On the other hand, we work out our salvation and we fight the good fight. It's a yes and a yes. And so we have to remember that we aren't perfect. We're going to make mistakes. Our kids are not perfect.
Paul Karos:They're going to make mistakes. Our kids are free human beings. And so, you know, they are free to do what they want. And so as long as we're trying and we're strategizing with each other and we're doing what we are think the Lord is calling us to do, that has that is enough. That's enough.
Cindy Karos:That's it. I actually wish I could've counted how many times I did the wrong thing. I think it might be 14,352 or something like that. And so really, does kind of bless us in our our mistakes. But, you know, saying you're sorry to your children when you when you screw up, I mean, I was a yeller.
Cindy Karos:I I feel really bad about that. I also feel bad for our first because you always do all these trying things. But anyway, I think, you know, you've gotta fall a bunch of times and know that for every time you fall, our kids are gonna learn, we're gonna learn, and hopefully, it brings us closer to Christ. And, you know, Michelle, there's a story I I remember. Paul went down and and volunteered at in a a monastery or an orphanage in Guatemala.
Cindy Karos:And when he came back, he was telling me these horrific stories about how parents had brutalized their children and that that's why they were in the monastery or in the orphanage. And what was really cool was he was sharing about how just the grace of God was such a healing, and and the the church was such a healing thing for all of these kids. And the the real main point of that, he said, is we need to let our kids suffer a little bit. Yeah. We need to let them have some pain.
Cindy Karos:We don't need to fix everything for them because how is it they gonna learn? And I remember thinking that was probably some of the wisest, experiential information for me to go forward as a parent because I I'm a fixer.
Paul Karos:Yeah. She's a great fixer.
Cindy Karos:Fix everything. And the reality is if your kid doesn't make a team or they have a bad experience with a friend, chalk it up as, hey, this is one of a thousand things that's gonna help them grow to be strong, strong people. So And, you know,
Paul Karos:we don't have to look for the suffering. It will come.
Cindy Karos:It comes it comes.
Paul Karos:But, you know
Michelle Moujaes:I think that as a culture, but certainly, I'll just speak for myself as a mother, it is so awful when I see my kids suffering. I hate it. It's so painful. I think if we can shift from a culture that's totally trying to create, you know, like the bubble boy, right, where everybody's like in a bubble and there is no pain, that doesn't really allow them to grow and struggle and become more Christ like. I mean, he suffered.
Paul Karos:That's an idea of coming alongside our kids. You know, we don't just ignore them when they're suffering. We we can come alongside them. But, you know, your point about Christ suffering and Saint Paul says that too. We rejoice in our suffering.
Paul Karos:Yeah. Suffering brings endurance. Endurance brings character. Character brings hope. So we have to let suffering do its work and just come alongside them and let them see that, oh my gosh, I've got this huge disappointment.
Paul Karos:I'm having this huge sadness, but I'm gonna be okay. I'm getting back up. And they experience that resiliency by actually going through a difficult situation and seeing that they're actually coming out the other end. And now resilience forms and strength forms in our children.
Cindy Karos:And and that's another example of of helping our kids see that we live the faith. It's not a Sunday thing. I mean, so when they come home with some minor suffering as we would we could look at it from a big picture, That's the perfect time to sit down and just say a quick prayer. Lord, please help us with this. Yeah.
Cindy Karos:That girl was really mean to me today. You know? Please help me to love her the way you love her.
Michelle Moujaes:That's Or
Cindy Karos:whatever it might be. But but to show them that God is present every day of the week, and it's living our faith that makes us Orthodox. It's not just going to church on Sunday.
Michelle Moujaes:Before I ask you some questions that came in for you this week, anything else you'd want to tell our audience, or anything that you want to share that you do differently or that you do the same again a thousand times to, really help your children stay close to the church?
Cindy Karos:I would yell less, but I'm not sure I could really control myself entirely. I think I'd have
Michelle Moujaes:It's hard.
Paul Karos:Yeah. And I think I'd have less irrelevant consequences that were impossible for Cindy to implement.
Cindy Karos:Oh my gosh.
Paul Karos:Like, you're grounded for three weeks or something.
Cindy Karos:Oh my gosh.
Paul Karos:He needs
Cindy Karos:to drive. Come on. That's okay.
Michelle Moujaes:I love it.
Paul Karos:We we did do our family prayers. It got more sporadic as they got in high school with all kinds of activities. But I think if we had to do it over again, we would have maybe helped our children develop and experience their own prayer practice in their room with their own little icon corner of their of their own to experience that presence of Christ with their own prayer practice. It would be something because our kids are are up to develop that on their own now, but we didn't really help them experience that while they were in our home. Yeah.
Paul Karos:I think
Michelle Moujaes:Let me get granular on that one. I'm gonna I'm gonna punch in on that, Paul. What does that look like? Is that conversations where you tell them the importance? Do you have like a star chart where if they pray and they tell you about it, you give them a check mark?
Michelle Moujaes:Like, what is that?
Paul Karos:So, you know, in my coaching work that I do with people, sometimes we'll talk about their prayer life and I'll ask them if they've ever had a personal prayer life. And in many cases, the answer is no. And I offer to them to just do it once with them. You know, get an icon of Christ or an icon of Christ, the mother of God, and, teach them how to maybe just read a psalm slowly and apply it to their life. How to do some prostrations, how to be silent with the Jesus prayer, and just kind of do it gently where there's lots of freedom.
Paul Karos:There's no perfect way to do a prayer rule, but to actually experience that stillness, to experience that peace and that renewal that comes from our incredible prayer life that the church has handed to us. I mean, we are the church of prayer by the way. Orthodoxy hands down is the church of prayer. It's in our history. It's in our experience and it's there for us to experience and to grow close to Christ in that way.
Paul Karos:So I think it'd be literally sitting down with them a couple of times and then they'll taste it and hopefully they get going on one. Ask them, do you want to do this? Is this something you'd like to start doing? Start very small, very short and so that it can grow over time. Maybe is that, would you add anything to Cindy?
Cindy Karos:Yeah. And you know, you did have the kids sit with an icon in silence. Silence, we don't do enough of silence.
Michelle Moujaes:That's true.
Cindy Karos:Especially in our house, but that would be an interesting practice. We used to go out into the Northern Minnesota. There's a lot of beautiful nature. We would have the kids each go into a different direction and be silent for five minutes.
Paul Karos:Five minutes and just listen to nature.
Cindy Karos:We could have done more of that, but it was kind of a fun thing to do. Yep.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that. We just have one question that we haven't answered. We had a bunch of questions, but you've answered them. So I'm gonna ask you a question from Christine who is a mother of six. Wow.
Michelle Moujaes:And she wrote in, I feel like I have no balance in my life. How can I serve all of my children and my husband and my parents and the church community and my in laws and do it well without ending up in the hospital? I am wiped out and I feel like I'm losing myself. What a precious sister, I hear you.
Cindy Karos:I think we've all felt that multiple times. Paul always says there was a time in my life where I was pretty last minute, and I'd be running out of gas. I mean, the the gas tank was always on empty and I'd be like, my gosh, we gotta stop at the gas station. Yeah. And he would say, you know, Cindy, that is like an image of your life.
Cindy Karos:And you know what? You're empty. So I think
Paul Karos:She's so giving. She and it usually comes from a giving heart. My guess is Christine is an incredibly giving person. And, you know, a great analogy of the church is this garden analogy, which we can talk about some other time, but it's really about taking care of your garden. And so and realizing that it's it's okay to to slow down and make sure you're taking care of your body and your soul.
Paul Karos:And and saying no can actually be godly, that actually say no to too many responsibilities. And that's probably a husband and wife decision to sit down and say, hey, are you feeling this out of balance as I am? And what things in our life can we just drop for a while? And that may even be some stuff at Church. Okay, because as mom and a dad, taking care of that family is your top priority.
Michelle Moujaes:That's right.
Paul Karos:And so it's to realize that if we just do what the world tells us to do, it's it's a stream that's so strong that we're going to be swept up the rapids and we don't even know where we're going to end up. We might get crashed on the rocks. And so slowing down a little bit is is a good thing.
Cindy Karos:You need to make sure you're doing some filling your tank with some prayer. Even if it's a little prayer, turn on the encounter and listen in the morning as you're getting ready or take a few minutes for yourself to fill your spiritual tank because it's impossible to give it away unless you have some something in you. And, I know for me, many times, I always felt guilty about not being able to help more people. There's a time in your life where you just gotta focus on That's your right. And I remember Paul saying that too.
Cindy Karos:And I know you you your mom of four you probably have something You're
Paul Karos:the one that should be speaking on this topic, by the way. You're the one that should speaking on
Michelle Moujaes:I'm whiny. But, you know, I heard something really beautiful that, stuck with me, and it was this. It was something to the effect of it is so critical in the life of a Christian that we respond to his invitation to bring him glory in what we do. But we can glorify him in three or four ways, but probably not in a thousand. Because once you get to that much, it's too much.
Michelle Moujaes:I I can appreciate that. And I think, again, like everything else, we just need to intentionally be working towards that kind of balance. So Christine, I'm with you, sister. I tell you, I'm the same.
Paul Karos:Can I throw one more thing in? Sure. Really take a look as a family at the extracurricular activities. It's the hardest thing of our society today on family time. And don't be afraid to cut them back, and the kids will be fine.
Michelle Moujaes:I love that. Well, you guys, Paul and Cindy, we are surely grateful that you were able to join us today and share your wisdom and your stories and your experience. You are a blessing to our lives, Walid and I, and I noticed so many people. Every time we talk to you, I'm reminded of what's actually possible when parents are intentionally rooting their children in Christ. And I know our listeners will feel the same.
Michelle Moujaes:So thank you for being with us.
Paul Karos:Thank you for having us, Michelle. What a wonderful time for us.
Michelle Moujaes:Thank you. And for everyone listening, I hope this conversation gave you both inspiration and some practical tools to help your family stay connected to the church and to live out the faith with joy and integrity. And remember, our children learn most from what they see in us, in our faith and in our love for Christ and in the example as Paul and Cindy said that we set as we model everyday life. So if you'd like to go deeper, don't forget, we always give you a download so that you can have this free digital discussion guide to help you reflect on this episode and what we've talked about with your spouse, with your friends, or with your small group at church. And please, if this episode encouraged you, would you consider sharing it with another parent or family?
Michelle Moujaes:Because here's what happens when you do. When you do that, you're helping more families just like yours, just like mine, discover this podcast and gain the same encouragement and guidance and wisdom from people like Paul and Cindy. Thank you again for joining us on Orthodox Christian Parenting. We'll see you next time.