Episode 182: The Power of Spirituality and Stories in Parenting: A Chat with Author and Christian Singer/Songwriter Andrew Peterson

In this episode, DJ Stutz talks with Andrew Peterson—Christian singer-songwriter, and author of The Wingfeather Saga—about weaving faith into every aspect of life. Andrew shares how he integrates faith into his family’s daily routines, making it a natural part of parenting and relationships.

They discuss the power of storytelling, music, and art in fostering spiritual growth and teaching the beauty of truth. Andrew emphasizes the importance of discernment in media and parenting with humility, openness, and grace. He also gives a preview of his upcoming projects, including a graphic novel and a young adult adventure book, both rooted in his mission to glorify God through creativity.

Join DJ and Andrew for a heartfelt conversation about faith-filled family life and the role of creativity in sharing God’s love.

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Contact Andrew Peterson
Website: https://www.andrew-peterson.com/
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Other Authors/books mentioned in this episode.

Katherine Paterson - The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Bridge to Terabithia Richard Paul Evans - The Michael Vey Series 
Lloyd Alexander - The Chronicles of Prydain

Transcript

DJ Stutz  00:14

You're listening to Imperfect Heroes: Insights into Parenting, the perfect podcast for imperfect parents looking to find joy in their experience of raising children in an imperfect world, and I'm your host, DJ Stutz. Welcome my heroes and heroines, and thank you for choosing to spend the next few minutes with us here on Imperfect Heroes. And I am so excited about what we're talking about today and whom I'm talking to today. Very, very exciting. But before we get started, of course, I want to let you know that you know, if you're still looking for that perfect little Christmas present, Roman is Bigger is a good choice we have. The next book will be out anytime now. It's called Roman is a Bigger brother. But this one is the beginning where it all started. And so we know that Roman has big feelings, and he's trying to find the right words to express how he feels, because he is bigger than mad and bigger than happy. And he finds that when he has the right word to really express how he feels, other people understand him better, and he feels better. So it's a fun book. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Walmart's website even has it. So feel free to get that over for your kiddo for Christmas. What a fun thing. All right, let's get started. So today, as with the full month of December, what a great time to talk about spirituality and families. How does that connection work for you? And we have so many families in this country and in this world. We've got listeners in several other countries as well, but where spirituality takes its own life within a family. And so how do you make that work? Are you conscious about what you are teaching your kids and how you're moving forward with spirituality, or is it just something that just flows and comes naturally? And so today, I'm so excited we have this amazing author. Any of you have ever heard of theWingfeather Saga. This is the man. This is Andrew Peterson. And if you have Vid Angel, I do, there's the cartoon of the whole saga on vid Angel. Whenever my grandkids come, they're always asking to watch the cartoon there about the kids. They always, "the kids and the lizards!" Andrew, I'm so excited to have you here. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about the Wingfeather Saga and then how that came about, and then we'll jump into how spirituality works in our families, and what role that played, even in the development of the saga. Cause to me, it's very clear that it's there.

Andrew Peterson  03:19

Thank you, DJ. It's good to be here. Well, let me think about that I have. I kind of came to be a writer through a fairly circuitous route. I was a songwriter first, and so and I still do. I'm a performing songwriter, so I still think of that as my main job, even though it's becoming less and less true the older I get. But yeah, I moved to Nashville with my wife when back in 1997 we got married in college, moved straight up as soon as we were both graduated, and that's just what you did. You moved to Nashville if you want to be a songwriter. So I came here and signed a record deal and started touring a lot. And pretty quickly our first couple kids were born, and we tried to tour together as a family and an RV, if you can imagine, and I would not recommend, not, not a great season. When I look back, every picture I see of us back in those days, we just look haggard and tired, and I don't, Jamie is just amazing for having gone with it as long as she did anyway. Yeah, so that was my main thing, was touring, writing songs and making records and going out on the road. But what really got me into the songwriting game was my love of stories. You know, it wasn't just I loved music. I do love music, but I really love stories. And so when I was in high school in the 80s and early 90s, I was listening to all kinds of music, but what really got my attention was any song that told me some kind of a story. And I don't mean like old folk ballads, I mean, a song that told me the story of the heart of the person that was writing the song, they would hint at certain things in their songs, certain details that evoked stories in my mind. And so that was kind of the thing that got me into songwriting. And so it was, in my mind, pretty natural to move from that to writing books. And I loved books. I wanted to be an author before I wanted to be a songwriter. So I basically just. Talked to my wife and said, you know how I'm always talking about wanting to write a story. I think I'm really gonna do it this time. And she was hilarious. She was just like, Well, I wish you would hurry up and do it and stop talking about it, because she knew that it was something that was on my mind for so many years. So anyway, yeah, it was pretty early on. It was, like, after my third record, was when I found an agent, and like earnestly, started trying to get this first book published. And that began this long, crazy season of writing a book one year, putting out a record, the next year, writing a book The next year, putting out a record the next year, and so just touring and writing and touring and writing, it was, it was just a really busy I couldn't have kept up that pace. Now. I'm 50 now, and so it's a young man's game. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think part of it was reading the Narnia books. I loved the Narnia books when I was a kid, and loved like Lloyd Alexander's Pride and Chronicles and quite a bit of fantasy, but not only fantasy, but I did love fantasy novels. And so that was the thing I wanted to try, was to write a big, epic, multi part saga, and that became the Wingfeather Saga. That is so fun, so fun. And I love this sweet little family, you know, the three little kids and mom and and then grandpa staying with them. Oh, forget was it Podo? Podo. And I just love them. And even before we started recording, I was talking to you about how I really relate to the oldest child, Janner, because I'm an oldest child, and how Janner feels this strong responsibility, and yet he doesn't like having all of the responsibilities. Sometimes, again, I can relate, but at the same time, he takes them very seriously, and he is very protective of his younger brother and sister. And you see that family dynamic of they don't always get along, but they do always love each other, and that is such a great piece of that.

06:58

Well, I would say one of the things that when we're developing the TV show, The Animated Series, one of the things we were really strong about was making it clear that this family likes each other. They don't just love each other. They actually like each other. You know, it's really easy on a lot of movies, and I can't think of anything specific right now, but there's a tone, you know, where the kids are kind of smart alecky and the parents are kind of disengaged or whatever. And that just wasn't really my experience as a parent. We actually really like our kids and they really like us. We hang out and get along really well, and at the same time, it's not perfect. We've gotten in arguments and have had plenty of failings, but there is this undercurrent of affection that we wanted to convey, because in the books, it was important to me that the parents were engaged. I think it's so I get why it happens, but in so many young adult and middle grade stories, the parents are kind of oblivious to what's going on. You know, you'll have these scenes where a kid will come and tell the parents some crazy thing that happened, and the parents kind of not listening, or doesn't believe them, or whatever it may be. And I'm like, man, if my kid walked in the door and told me that I would stop what I was doing and ask what was happening. Let's get to the bottom of this. And so, so I really wanted to write a story where the family worked best as a unit at the same time, it's really hard to write a story where the family is all there together, because it's hard for Janner and his siblings to learn anything if their parents are always there to get them out of trouble, right? That's part of the reason why I think a lot of stories have are about orphans or kids who are off on their own, is because it's on them to figure this thing out, and that happens in book two. But yeah, writing a story where the family was engaged, where there were real stakes, but that the parents really respected and listened to the kids, and vice versa, the kids really respected and listen to the parents, even though there was tension, and they were human and they're flawed people. That was important to me.

DJ Stutz  08:45

Yeah.  Well, and it's the joke around here. It's like the most dangerous role you can have is to be a parent in a Disney movie, because you're getting killed off right at the beginning. Yeah. And so there are so many Disney and then other Nickelodeon and some of those others, where there are shows for kids, but the kids are off solving problems without their parents, or their parents are just idiots, and so they're having to work around these stupid parents. And so, you know, that breaks my heart, because, yeah, I think it sets a tone, and we can see it sometimes where kids are feeling like, Oh, I'm supposed to go against my parents. Oh, I'm supposed to not like them, or I'm ju st smarter. I'm just smarter than my parents. 

Andrew Peterson 09:28

They would never understand that kind of they would never understand, yeah, and when, actually we do, I've said many times I was like, the biggest mistakes I've made as a parent, or when I forgot what it was like to be a kid. And so my wife and I both try really hard to empathize and to remind ourselves, man, what was it like to be 10? Oh, that's right, it's super hard. Your friends really matter to you, or when you're 10 years old, or if somebody said that to me, so I think that it's not a given that the parents aren't going to understand. Actually, I think they will, and just got to give them a chance to and so that was one of the key things in the story. But. Also, you were talking about being the oldest sibling. I'm a middle child, and so I was thinking a lot about the dynamics in my own family when I was growing up. But then we have three kids that a wing feather kids are loosely based on, and so watching their dynamic, there are certain traits that I kind of stole from my kids, and I slapped them on the Wingfeather kids, while at the same time making very clear to my children, these are not you. You know, they're gonna make choices that I'm not looking at you and saying, Oh, I've seen it. Then make these bad choices. I'm gonna write it in the story, whatever. That's not the case. But I did really want to make sure that it felt real. You know, I don't know if you're familiar with Katherine Patterson. She wrote Bridge to Terabithia and, Oh, damn Yeah,The Great Gilly Hopkins and one, like three Newberry Honors, like, she's just is literally a living legend. Like the Library of Congress named her a living legend. And I had the great honor of hanging out with her a little bit this past week. She's 93 Yeah, it was very fun, but she's a wonderful, brilliant, brilliant woman. I've read several of her books over the years and loved them, but The Great Gilly Hopkins is about a little girl who is a foster child, and you're in her head the whole time. And man, she is a rascal. Her language is salty and she's mean and she's plot, figuring out ways to like, punish her teachers for being nice to her, that kind of thing. And it, the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking, Well, firstly, this probably wouldn't be published in 2024 and I'm so thankful that it was published when it was, because it's so powerful to see the change in this little girl's heart over the court her response to love. And that, what I loved about it was that it felt real. Is like she talks the way kids talk. She feels things the way kids feel. So Catherine Patterson's secret weapon, I would say this is true of Kate de Camillo too, is that they're really connected to what it feels like to be a kid. And so whether or not I pulled it off, one of my goals with the Wingfeather books was to make it so that when a kid was reading Janner's story, if they're an older child like you are, then they recognize their own hearts a little bit in the characters of Jan or Cal or Leely, so really drilling down into the muck, you know, like what's really going on deep down in there? Because it's not all super attractive, you know, we've all got brokenness in this, and so acknowledging that brokenness in the characters is part of what makes me love them. 

DJ Stutz  12:23

Yeah, yeah. And even, like with my Roman book, Roman is Bigger. Roman's a real kiddo. He happens to be my grandson, and then then the next book, when he gets a little brother, he really does have a little brother named Niko, just like the book. But a lot of the things that happen to them, that's not really them, but right, it's just having the fun of them being involved in that. So it's a lot of fun. But I really do appreciate books and series. Michael Vay, I don't know, Richard, Paul Evans, he wrote, yeah, Michael Vey.  The 10th one's coming out. Got it pre ordered, but it is about a young man, a teenager, and he has Tourette's, and I love that he has this disability that he's overcoming, and not only overcomes, but becomes the hero of the story. And so your little Leeli, she has this crutch, and she gets around with this crutch, but she doesn't let it hold her back, she still gets out and has this full life and is involved with her brothers and goes on the adventures and is accomplishing all of these things, even though she has a disability or an injury. And what could be? Poor me. Poor me. Poor me. My life is horrible, especially in the time or I don't know what time, what time is Wingfeather?  It's really, Where?

Andrew Peterson 13:46

That's a great, yeah, exactly. It's, it's in another world, pre electricity, yes, yeah.

DJ Stutz  13:51

Yes, pre electricity. But, and so it could have been very difficult, because they don't have all of those things that we have to help people. But just overcoming. I love that message of overcoming and not letting it, not spending your life poor me, poor me, but saying this is what I got. Let's go.

Andrew Peterson 14:12

Yeah, where we are. Yeah. I have several friends with disabilities, and it just didn't occur to me this wasn't on purpose, so I'm not tooting my own horn here, but one of them, who's his wheelchair bound, told me that he really appreciated that you kind of forgot that Lily needed a crutch as the story went on, she was just this character. It wasn't the most important thing about her by a long shot. And I think that was not because I'm I'm so sensitive. I think it was just because that's how I think of my friend in these situations, who they are, is the thing that I'm thinking about, not this feature. Yeah, so I was thankful to hear that from those friends. But yeah, Lili is one of my favorite characters, and she it takes a while for her to really show up in the story, because it's hard when you're writing a story and you've you've got these fangs, but you've also got this little eight year-old girl with a crutch. And the main character is Janner, of course, but I had in my mind a scene where, I'm not going to spoil too much, but I was like, by the end of this story, she's going to be riding a dragon, and I wanted that to be this beautiful picture of how this disability that she has was is also the secret sauce that allowed her to communicate with these dragons, so it ends up becoming a strength and not a weakness. So anyway, if you want to see that happen, you got to get to book four. But there it is.

DJ Stutz  15:27

There you are, there you are. Well, I've only done two, so we'll get there. So let's go ahead and talk maybe a little bit about, because I see so much to me, and maybe it's just the way I look at things. But I just as I read that and as I watched the cartoons with my grandkids, I just see a lot of spiritual concepts to me, things that turn out to be spiritual concepts. As I watch this with my grandkids, I just see a lot of what relates to me. And I am a spiritual person. I am a religious person. And so I just pick up on some amazing, wonderful spiritual concepts that are just woven throughout the story. And so was that on purpose, or did that just happen? Or

Andrew Peterson 16:15

That's a great question. Um, well, I am, I'm a Christian. And so there are certain things that I believe to be true about the world, and so those things just are naturally flow out of who I am. I didn't sit down to try to go I'm going to write a story that is spiritually resonant in this way. I just kind of wanted to write a really great story and trust that it's impossible for what the author, any author, for what they believe to be true about the world, to not show up in what they're writing. I mean, if it doesn't show up in what they're writing, it means they're not being terribly honest. So I wanted to write an honest book, and so part of that is my own experience as a songwriter. I mean, Leeli is the Song Maiden of an Era, it is her grand title, and she's got this whistle harp that she plays, and she discovers over the course of the book that, well, there's a scene in season two where she wishes she could shoot a bow like her brother's, and her uncle says that whistle harp in your hands is more powerful than 10 bows. And that's in the real world. The way that I have chosen to shed light in the darkness is through music and through stories, and it's like the weapons that I use, quote, unquote, are a guitar and a piano and hopefully a well, well written line or two. And so getting to share those sheds a kind of light in the world. I believe the way that I think of my calling is that I want to try to tell the truth as beautifully as I can. And so to try, whether it's songs or music or conversations, the truth doesn't really need my help to be beautiful. The truth is beautiful. Truth with a capital T is the kind of truth I'm talking about, right? But it is important to try to draw attention to goodness and truth and beauty, I think. And so that's what I wanted to do with these stories. So, yeah, you know, they call those the transcendentals, but these three beautiful things are three important things, truth, goodness and beauty. You don't always demonstrate those things by just telling somebody this thing is true. One of my favorite quotes that I don't know who said it, it gets attributed to me now, which is hilarious, because somebody probably googled it and heard that I said it. So that's giving me a lot of credit for something I didn't do. But the quote was, if you want someone to know the truth, tell them. If you want someone to love the truth, tell them a story. And I just think that's marvelous. And so, yeah, that's the idea. Is, like, you can tell somebody this thing is good, or you can show them this thing is good by writing a story about it. And the way you you show that it is good is by telling the truth about it. So for example, if I want to show the power of sacrificial love, I can't just tell somebody that sacrificial love is important, but you can write a story that demonstrates that the tiniest act of love can just trump evil, right? A tiny act of love or light or self sacrificial love is just this like thunderbolt in the darkness. And so the only way to really get a reader to feel that is to demonstrate it in a story. So yeah, that's how I approached it. I just sat down thinking there are certain things that I believe to be true about the universe. I'm going to trust that those things are going to come out in a very natural way, and what I'm writing, and the story has to come first.

DJ Stutz  16:15

Yeah.  So you've got these three amazing kids. How my own kids? You mean, yes, your own? Yeah, you are amazing children. They are, yeah. And so I'm wondering, How did spirituality come into play as you and your sweet, patient wife work together to bring faith and spirituality into their lives.

Andrew Peterson 19:43

Sure. Well, I mean, I think that there are a few things I would say to that.  The first thing that pops into mind is a mentor of mine, who is a professor at the College that I went to.  He taught a lot of classes on family life, and he was a pastor and really wise man who died. But one of the things he quotes that I kind of hung on the bullet board of my mind was he said Christianity ought to be as ordinary in your home as dirty laundry and corn flakes, which is great. So as a Christian, I see that as I didn't want our kids growing up thinking the only time this matters is on Sunday morning, when we're going to church, like this is something that matters throughout the week. This is actually something that shapes our lives. And if it's true, then it's true all the time. And so I just, I didn't want, I wanted to make sure that it was integrated. I grew up with this, like the way I describe it as a the word segregated has a lot of baggage, but what I mean by this is like my imagination was sequestered into two different realms. And so when I was a kid, and so as a pastor's kid, I would go to church, and I would be told all these things that I was supposed to believe and these things that were supposed to move me or whatever. And then that was in one box, and over here was this other box where there were the movies that I loved and the books that I loved and the music that I loved, and and I was always being told that I was supposed to be moved by this thing over here. But what was really moving my soul was a beautiful sunset or a great song or a movie or whatever, you know, I mean. So I was curious about that when I was a kid, I was like, What's going on here? Why are these two things separate? So I just assumed that if I wanted to become a Christian and, you know, serve God in that way, then that meant that I had to abandon all of these things that moved me and that I loved, and as it turns out, that's not true. It's just not true at all. Yeah, in fact, my faith is actually the thing that animates and connects me, even in a deeper way, to the songs that I love and the movies that I love. So when I was a kid watching, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Star Wars, and I was feeling the the flutter in my stomach of adventure and mystery and and getting these pictures of heroism and and bravery, sacrificial love, that kind of thing. All those things were hinting at the thing that my parents were trying to tell me in a different way, right? And so integrating those two things was part of what I think was from Jamie and I to do with our children was just to say, you like to play the guitar. That is great. That is not separate from the thing that we do on Sunday morning. That is actually an expression of what we do on Sunday morning. Sunday morning is like, it's all tied together. I think that's what I would say.

DJ Stutz  21:48

Yeah, I would agree. It's funny how you bring up movies and stuff. One of the movies this will date me, but when I was younger, way younger, that came out and it and it brought an idea to my mind that I hadn't processed before. Was Sister Act.   

Andrew Peterson 22:54

Oh yeah, I remember that movie, yeah.

DJ Stutz  22:58

Yeah. And how she would take songs that were secular, just fun songs, you know, even a little older than I was, but, you know, not far and like, I will follow him and some of those, and it was how she related it to or the character related it to faith, and made those things happen. And that really kind of opened my eyes in so many ways that I could find faith enriching experiences in Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and Pirates of the Caribbean or whatever. 

Andrew Peterson  23:34

Sure. 

DJ Stutz  23:34

Find that you could find that you could find that in your music, if you just maybe change the perspective a little bit. You're not changing the words, you're not changing the sound, but you're changing the perspective. And then all these things open up to you and your world. And if you can bring your kids in and help them see that God is all around us, and we can find him in the most unexpected places. 

Andrew Peterson 24:03

Yeah, yeah. He speaks like, Well, I mean, one of the things Christians say is, all truth is God's truth, and so, and it shows up. He does. He doesn't need us to make His truth known. He invites us to participate with Him in that. That's kind of great. But the culture that I was in growing up, it was a lot of scanning the horizon for whatever was dangerous, and there's and I'm not saying that there's not dangerous things. Wisdom teaches you what is good for you and what's not just like you know you you want to watch what your kids eat. You don't want to feed them sugar constantly. So in the same way the media that we consume, you want to be careful and be thoughtful about the media that you're consuming at the same time. Rather than I tried to teach my kids to scan the horizon for these glimmers of truth, not just for these. I actually do think there is a darkness out there. But when it comes to a song like you're talking about in Sister Act, yeah, it's there's really great music, and they may be telling the truth in ways that we need to hear, you know? So I think that's important. Um, but, but sometimes they're not always telling the truth, right? And so part of the journey is being wise enough to know the difference, which is why, as a Christian, we have scripture and we have the church and things like that to help us understand how that works. Anyway, it was just so it just opened the door to so much more fun with our kids. You know, to be able to watch certain movies. One of the best things about being a parent is curating the music and movies your kids get to listen to and watch. Oh, yeah. Like, I could not wait till my kids were old enough for me to introduce them to Paul Simon and Counting Crows and bands that I love, and to just go on a drive with them and point out the great beauty that I find in these different things, you know. And it's like a fun thing to teach your kids a good discernment. Teach them what great music is, teach them what a great movie is, or a great book. I've said for years, like I would rather my kids read a really great book by someone who's not a Christian than a really bad book by someone who is and so teaching them that. And one of my favorite examples of that was when my daughter, who's now a professional touring songwriter, she's amazing, way better than I am. And when she was like five, and she grew up listening to Allison Krauss and Patty Griffin and Emmy Lou Harris and all these great, great singers, yeah, and somebody gave her this kid CD of Christian songs, and I was just like, Oh no, we're gonna have to drive around in the minivan listening to really bad music for the next month, you know. And, and before I could stop her, she ripped the cellophane off and put the CD in the in the CD player, and it was just as bad as I was afraid it was going to be. And, and within about 20 seconds, little sky was five. She goes, This is bad. Can we listen to Allison Krauss instead? And she popped it back out. I was like, yes, that is my girl. So I think that's the thing that we tried to do at home, was just to give our kids these tools to understand what is really great art, and understand that the Lord God can speak throu gh all of that anyway. 

DJ Stutz  26:55

Yeah.  And I find it so, I think, insincere when people will just shove spirituality into something, and they do it very poorly. Don't spend really that much time at it. They think, oh, but it's about God. It'll be fine, but quality matters, and sometimes what? What is the lesson then that we're teaching our kids is that spiritual songs are hokey and silly and poorly done, and so when they equate that with their own actual spirituality, what lesson are they going to learn when they're making that understanding and that and finding that balance?

Andrew Peterson 27:37

Yeah, yeah.  It's true. And I think one of the frustrating things that I experience is this idea that sometimes Christian music, which, you know, I've made Christian music for many years, gets a bad rap, and people don't like what they hear on the radio, and they're just kind of like, oh, Christian music is all bad. And I just kind of want to be like, Oh no, it's just not popular. The good stuff is just under the radar. You got to kind of dig for it, you know. And for that matter, as if mainstream music is so great all the time, you know, like people bash Christian movies with good reason, because sometimes they're not very good. But then when I'm flipping through Netflix trying to find any movie to watch with my wife, I'm like, these are all terrible. Yeah, it's just people make bad art. But then sometimes there are these great works that rise to the surface. And as a Christian, I don't know that Christians need to be terribly embarrassed about the art that we've made, because that includes the Sistine Chapel and Notre Dame and Les Mis and not to mention a ton of great modern authors that are doing really excellent work. But I think in those cases, it's that they weren't trying to create propaganda. They were trying to make art, you know, right? They were trying really hard to make something beautiful. And I think that's the key.

DJ Stutz  28:45

Well, I think it's fun. You brought up Les Mis because I don't know if you've read the whole novel.

Andrew Peterson 28:51

I haven't actually read the novel. I've just seen the play.

DJ Stutz  28:53

Oh my gosh.  Yeah.  Well, so the first, I think it's like 200 pages of the novel. It's about that much, but it's about the priest that winds up. Oh, letting him go, but it's the priest's story, which is phenomenal. I mean, nobody's made a movie about father, I think it's Bienvenue or something like that, okay, but nobody's made a movie about that. And yet it is such, oh, an amazing piece. 

Andrew Peterson  29:20

Oh, I need to read the story. 

DJ Stutz  29:22

Oh, my just read the first and then there's, like, some commentary and social commentary, and there's history about the Battle of Waterloo that's included in there. And so it's all these different sections. And I think people think that the whole book is really just about Jean Valjean and Claire and the whole story there, but it goes into so much more detail about the different care. It's very, very rich reading. And highly suggest picking up the book and going beyond play and the movie. Yeah, it's, it's pretty cool. Pretty cool. All right. Well, thank you. So much and so I just want to thank you so much. I was so excited when I, Oh, I can make this connection. What this is so cool. So I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to come on our little podcast, of course. So if our followers want to learn more, find out more about your music and about the Wingfather Saga and all that. Where would you have them go?

Andrew  Peterson 30:28

Yeah, you can go to WingfeatherSaga.com and that will send you to all the links where you can watch the show Angel.com is, where is the actual platform, and then Andrew-Peterson.com is my personal site, and all of them funnel to the same places.

DJ Stutz  30:42

So, oh, okay. Oh, so amazing. We're gonna have all that in the show notes. So if any of our listeners are interested, just, oh, excuse me, just scroll down and all of that's going to be there. So we're really excited. And are there any more books coming with wing feather or what do you have any other series you're interested in?

Andrew Peterson 31:04

Yeah, great question. So we put out a couple of, like, ancillary books. There's pembrokes creature pedia. And then last year, I published the Rangers Guide to Glywood Forest, which is a really fun side book. And then we have our first children's picture book just came out from the series. And then we're working on a graphic novel of book one right now, which is really fun. So lots of lots of fun stuff. But apart from that, I am about three years late on a young adult adventure story that is not a wing feather book. It's its own thing, three years late turning it into my publisher. So I'm working on it, but it's just taking a long time. The show has made things very busy, and I'm still touring and but, yeah, I'm working on a new book.

DJ Stutz  31:42

Oh, that's exciting. I can't wait. Can't wait. Maybe we'll have you come back when that's ready to go live or Thank you. Yeah, whatever. Thank you so much. Alright, so I ask all of my guests the same question at the end, because we know there are no perfect parents, but there are parents who do seem to be more successful, maybe than others. But how would you define a successful parent?

Andrew Peterson  32:06

How would you define a successful parent? Well, I have to make all kinds of caveats in this. All three of our kids are married now, and we love all of their spouses, and I'm a grandpa now. My oldest son and his wife gave us our first granddaughter about 18 months ago, but she's awesome. But what, what I've learned is that you keep making mistakes. Isn't that amazing? I'm 50, and our kids are grown, and you still step in it sometimes, and you're like, oh, man, I'm such a doofus I said this thing, or, you know, whatever. So I think that my answer to that question would be the most important thing you can do is keep a good, open line of communication with your children. Don't try to be perfect. Try to be humble enough to admit when you've made a mistake. So one of the best things like I could tell story after story about times that my kids told me, hey, when you when you do this. This is how it makes me feel. Or here's the thing that happened, and let me tell you my experience of that, and, oh my goodness, conversations I probably never would have had with my own parents, just because our relationship was different. And I've been so thankful that the lines of communication are open so that when we do make mistakes, we can work it out. I think that's the thing is, like, I love the title of your your podcast, you're not going to be perfect, so our only hope is mercy and forgiveness. You just have to be merciful to each other, and that's the garden where we're going to grow best.

DJ Stutz  33:30

Absolutely, I've always felt like if we truly saw the eternal big picture, we would never scream for justice. We would always scream for mercy. 

Andrew Peterson  33:40

That's good, yeah. 

DJ Stutz  33:41

So anyway, that's just, you know, crazy DJ, but, but I really feel strongly about that. Well, Andrew, thank you so much again for joining us and being a part of us and talking about your saga as well as spirituality, and how all that comes to play in so many pieces of our lives, and actually, every piece of our life, spirituality is there and so thank you so much for being here and for everyone until next time, let's find joy in parenting. See ya.  Thank you so much for sticking around to the end of today's episode of imperfect heroes. Parenting is truly one of the most rewarding journeys we can take. But let's face it, it can be incredibly challenging, and sometimes we make it harder on ourselves than it needs to be. The good news is that with a little bit of work up front, there are practical steps you can take to bring more peace and joy into your family life. I am passionate to share these strategies and insights with you. If you're ready to step on the path to joyful, effective parenting, I invite you to schedule a family checkup. Just click on the calendar link in the show notes below. Schedule a time that works perfectly for you, and let's work together to create a more harmonious and happy environment. And remember. Every small step that you take today makes a big difference. So thank you again for joining us, and until next time, let's find joy in parenting.