The Surest Seat: Helping Your Kids Grow, Find Belonging, and Trust Jesus, Conversations with Heather Holleman.
Episode 10: This Seat’s Saved: Helping Kids Who Feel Left Out with Heather Holleman
What happens when the seat you hoped for—the one that seems to promise friendship, acceptance, or belonging – is saved for someone else?
In this episode of The Sublime Soiree Podcast, we welcome back our friend and mentor, author and professor Heather Holleman, to talk about This Seat’s Saved, the first book in her Elita Brown Series.
As Elita prepares to enter seventh grade, she finds herself facing experiences familiar to young people, and – if we’re honest – adults too: exclusion, comparison, jealousy, insecurity, and the desire to belong. Heather explains how fiction can give young readers a safe way to recognize and process these difficult emotions while discovering what really matters.
Heather also introduces us more fully to Mrs. Berkley, the wise, grandmotherly mentor who befriends Elita. Her example leads to a rich conversation about spiritual mentorship and the opportunities we have to intentionally invest in younger generations. Sometimes that happens through Bible study and prayer, but also through ordinary things like sharing a meal, offering a ride, opening our homes, or simply being available.
Finally, we talk about Elita’s experience with bullying and false accusations and how those difficult situations can become opportunities to seek God, ask for help, practice kindness, and even learn compassion for those who hurt us.
Through it all, This Seat’s Saved reminds young readers, and the rest of us, that the most secure seat isn’t found at the popular table. It’s the seat we already have with Jesus.
In This Episode:
- Why experiences of exclusion, insecurity, and comparison can feel especially powerful during the middle school years
- How fiction can help young readers process difficult emotions and conversations
- Why embracing our God-given design can free us from trying to be like everyone else
- What Elita’s struggle with jealousy teaches us about trusting the unique “seat” God has given us
- How being seated with Christ changes the way we view comparison, provision, and belonging
- Why Mrs. Berkley offers a beautiful picture of spiritual mentorship across generations
- Practical ways adults can intentionally encourage and invest in younger people
- How Elita’s experience with bullying and false accusations can open conversations about seeking help, showing kindness, and trusting God
Reflection Questions:
- Where am I most tempted to compare my “seat”—my relationships, possessions, appearance, achievements, or circumstances—with someone else’s?
- What gifts, interests, opportunities, or assignments has God uniquely placed in my life that I can embrace rather than compare?
- Who is someone younger whom God may be inviting me to encourage, mentor, pray for, or simply spend time with?
- How can remembering that I am already seated with Christ change the way I respond when I feel excluded, jealous, misunderstood, or overlooked?
If this episode encouraged you:
- Follow The Sublime Soiree Podcast for more conversations designed to help you slow down, feel seen, and draw closer to God.
- Share this episode with a parent, grandparent, teacher, mentor, or young reader who could benefit from the message of belonging and identity in Christ. You can find discussion questions for each book here.
- Continue the conversation by joining us for the next four episodes as we explore each book in Heather Holleman’s Elita Brown Series, beginning with This Seat’s Saved.
- Visit Heather Holleman’s website here to learn more about her books and her ministry.
- Visit our website, You’re Invited Ministries, here to learn more about our book.
