Abundance 01: What If I Don’t Have What It Takes? Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura Wifler: Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Risen Motherhood. We are so excited to be back in your earbuds. It has been a long time.
Emily Jensen: Yes, it has been a very long time, but we're excited. Now, we've said “excited” a million times already. We're not supposed to enter with that on the Risen Motherhood podcast.
Laura: We're committing to not starting with “excited,” Emily.
Emily: Let's completely start over and just jump in.
Laura: No, we’re going to keep it in! People are going to hear this. We're going to keep it in. [Laughter]
Emily: Well, new intro.
Laura: Okay, pretend like that never happened.
Emily: One of the things you and I have been talking about behind the scenes, Laura, is just how much it feels like our season of motherhood is changing. I mean—when we started Risen Motherhood, we were recording out of our basements early in the morning, and we had babies, toddlers, pregnancies. And it just felt like most of our questions were important, but they were about things like food and sleep and discipline—how we were spending our time. It was very focused on those little years.
I've noticed that my questions are starting to change quite a bit. I'm really getting out of touch with what happens in those little years.
Laura: I know. I was on a podcast recently where they were asking me to talk about motherhood, and the host was a young mom to one child. Honestly, it was wild because it was one of the first times that I realized there is quite a bit of distance now between my life and what a first-time mom's life feels like. I found myself not being able to remember—which was shocking—feeling like, "I'm not sure what I did, or I'm not sure how I walked through that."
Then also there were a handful of times where she dropped some names of things, and I was like, "What is that? What is that gizmo? We did not have that when I had a baby." It has only been six years since my last baby, but it feels like it's been a millennium.
Emily: We were joking the other day at the pool. We were looking at our trusty—like almost what?—eleven-year-old Bob stroller. [Laughter] We were realizing how vintage and old that looked. How come we look around—I don't see those around anymore!
Laura: We don't see Bobs anymore. Like, Bobs were the stroller.
Emily: They were cool.
Laura: When we were young moms, that was the pinnacle of the stroller that you would buy—like, you would save up and you would want to get that.
Emily: Now I don't recognize really any of the stroller brands.
Laura: No, they're like an antique.
Emily: That tells you about us and—
Laura: We still love our Bobs, okay?
Emily: I do. It's great. Anyways, I think, you know, now that we have all elementary age kids—and you and I both have kiddos going into fifth grade next year. I really am starting to ask questions about tweens and teens and thinking ahead to middle school. There's just a lot more questions about “How do I parent through this stage?” In some ways, I feel like that new mom feeling all over again, because some of the issues and questions and the way that you parent uses different strategies than I was using when we had babies and toddlers.
Laura: Yes, and everybody says this, but it is much more about emotional questions, attitude questions, discipline questions than it necessarily is about “What foods should I buy? Or what products should I buy?” It felt much more tactical. Now, it feels like this vague, ambiguous, constant reevaluation of how we're engaging and communicating with our children and how we're spending our time with them.
Things like navigating friendships, their freedoms with different things, thinking through character issues and just even burnout and disillusion as a mom and realizing how things are changing. Some of those are big questions that I think we're walking through.
Emily: It's amazing because I think—at least my perspective was, "Oh, the kids are going to get a little bit older, and suddenly I'm going to have more freedom. The way that I spend my time is going to be able to change because I'm going to have all this capacity now." I think some of that is true; the way that my actual hours and my day look are different than they were when we had babies and toddlers.
Yet, I think that question still remains of like, "How am I going to spend this time, and am I spending it well?" Because, in some ways, I feel like life as a mom is just as full and just as demanding as it was back then. It just looks a little bit different. I think I wasn't quite prepared for that. It's amazing to see how the same questions persist throughout different stages.
Really, the common theme that we think all moms feel at different stages of the game is the sense that we feel weak sometimes. We feel like we're lacking what we need to be a good mom.
Laura: It's going to come out differently for everybody. I know that, for those of you who have been longtime listeners of Risen Motherhood, you know that I'm a much more Type A personality. I'm kind of a go-getter, big dreamer, nothing's too hard, “If it's hard, how do we make it harder?” type of person. Yet, it still feels like I experience weakness and insecurities all the time.
And in particular with motherhood, a feeling in this stage of the middle years of a lack of discernment for how to spend my time, because, as you just said, Em, it has freed up—like all my kids are gone during the day when they're in school, and I have space and margin. But also, I'm filling that up with good things. And how do I know which good things to fill it up with, and how do I be diligent and do work for the kingdom that's not just going to matter tomorrow or this summer, but stuff that's going to matter in a trillion years in heaven? I'm asking big existential questions like that. I'm often really struggling through an insecurity of feeling like, "Hey, I'm maybe not spending the time that I should be and the ways that I should be on the things that I should be. Or maybe I'm just not doing motherhood right."
I think a lot of us feel that way, especially as we see our kids get older. If you didn't experience it in the baby stage, in this new stage, you can start to feel like, "I'm not very good at this either," or “This feels more significant in some ways—more long term; the impacts of our weaknesses are going to affect our kids a lot longer.” And then just that general sense of “I'm not using my talents and my gifts as well as I should.”
This comes out in things like, "Should we be hosting more? Or should we be leading a small group? Or should we be serving at church more? Volunteering at school?" Again, going back to the question of "What's going to matter for eternity?"—those are questions that I'm really working through and feeling like I'm coming up short.
Emily: It's kind of like that classic midlife crisis thing that you hear people talk about, where—I think it's getting to a certain point of life and thinking, "Oh, I thought I would be further along by now. Or I thought that I would have this figured out by now. Or I thought I would have accomplished more. Or I thought that my life would look a little bit more impressive.”
My husband and I have been talking recently about how—we had this kind of ideal vision for what our lives would look like, what our kids would be like, how big our family would be, how we would spend our time, and so, ten plus years into being parents, we're now looking at the life that God actually gave us versus the life that we imagined. I do think there is this bit of internal "Oh, goodness, did we mess something up? Did we make a mistake?" Like, how come it doesn't look like our ideal?
What we have been grappling with lately is recognizing, "Wait a second, were we really putting what our family and life looks like in the Lord's hands and trusting him? Or were we crafting this nice picture—that was good and there was nothing wrong with it—but now we need to adjust to the actual life that God gave us? And be thankful for it and walk in that and know that there are limitations.”
Because I think that has been one of the things that has really shook me, especially in the last year or so—really coming up against my limits and recognizing, "Okay, I thought I would have more, more, more capacity." Actually, I feel like I'm needing to simplify my life, and I'm needing to invest more care in myself and take better care of things so that I can care for others as well. That's kind of jarring, you know?
Laura: Yes, I think when you hit on this idea of looking back in your life and saying, "Did I mess something up? Did I not do something right? Was there some sort of insufficiency in my foresight or my abilities to not craft a life I want?”—I feel that as well. Especially—I mean, you and I are both—Emily always likes to say, "We're near forty." She's been saying that for several years now. [Laughter]
Emily: We're getting closer every year. [Laughter]
Laura: By the time the show comes out, we'll both be thirty-seven, and so it does feel like we're getting closer. There is that element of looking back over your life and saying, “Did I miss something?”—which is not helpful at all, and we're going to talk through that. It's interesting that you would bring that up, because I think Mike and I—my husband and I—are having a very similar conversation.
To summarize all of this, moms just feel weak. It is just a reality that I think you might feel strong prior to motherhood—some of us may, some of us may not—but all of us are kind of leveled with motherhood and see our weaknesses. That is what we're going to be talking about this series—this season. We titled it Abundance, and we're going to talk a little bit later on why it's called Abundance. For right now, we're going to talk through: what is weakness exactly?
We really like J.I. Packer's definition of it. He says, "It is a state of inadequacy or insufficiency in relation to some standard or ideal to which we desire to conform." Essentially, in layman's terms, it's just a feeling or a knowledge that we do not have what it takes. We don't have enough. I have been really wishing there would just be a book on this that I could read about. [Laughter]
Emily: Oh, my.
Laura: Is there one, Emily? Could there be one? Do you know of one? [Laughter]
Emily: Laura, I wrote a whole book on this topic.
Laura: Oh, no way. I had no idea.
Emily: I struggle with this so much I wrote a book on it. [Laughter]
I did hear that, a while back—that there's two reasons why people write nonfiction books, and one is because you're an expert on the topic, and you're like, "I have so much to share. I have to get this out into the world." The other is because you know nothing about the topic, but you really want to learn. So, write a book on it, and you will learn more about that topic.
I really found myself in that latter category of having walked through a really significant—I guess shake-up of my life when our son had his first seizure. That would have been two and a half years ago now. To me, it was kind of like this domino—it got pushed over, and then a lot of other things started to topple underneath that. I still feel like I'm walking in a journey of grief and processing through things since that happened.
What was interesting is, as I processed that initial traumatic experience, and I was talking with my pastor, counseling through that, I just kept recognizing how much the theme of my life and what I thought about myself is: "I am just such a weak person." After recognizing that, I remember my pastor suggesting to me, "Oh, you should write about that." I was like, "No, I don't want to write about that." [Laughter]
Some time passed, and I did come to this place where I was like, "You know what? I think it would be helpful for me to process a lot of what I have experienced—the areas in my life where I feel like I'm really lacking, I'm really insufficient, I'm really struggling—and process that alongside Scripture.” I think a devotional format for me was the best way to do that.
I remember sitting down at first and writing this list of like forty ways that I felt weak, or I don't know—it was like fifty—or just even common experiences that other people have that I haven't experienced. I just started chipping away at that. It was so helpful for me—like therapeutic for me—to see how the Lord meets us in the midst of those different weaknesses.
It really helped me start to sort through "What aspects of this are maybe not so good, and I do need to fortify my faith? Then, what aspects of this are just the limitations that God has placed on our lives? I actually don't need to feel so guilty about this, but I can accept it and turn to the Lord in it.” I think it helped me so much to uncover a lot of that and bring comfort and find hope in God, knowing he can handle all of my insufficiency, all of my not-enoughness, all of my lack.
I can come to him with all of that. I think that was just such an encouragement to me, especially in the midst of social media world right now, where, I think it can feel like, "Hey, I should always just be able to muster up new energy, find my inner source of strength, make the life I want." Like, “If I don't like where things are going, I could always just quit my job and move off grid and have a homestead.”
There's this sense of: “If you're lacking, that's your problem. You're probably a baby, and you need to get yourself together and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and knock it off.” That was how I felt. And to realize, "That's not how God is thinking of me and speaking over me” was just—I don't know—it was so helpful.
Laura: So, you've written a book about all of that . . . [Laughter] I'm trying to help you here. [Laughter] So tell us what exactly—how this book took shape and what's in it—which is everything you just said.
Emily: There are thirty devotions in this book, obviously all rooted in Scripture. And a lot of them are memoir-style, mixed with biblical exposition. There are a lot of good verses to look up in there to get context. Then, I really brought the whole book together with this theme of Jesus Loves Me and the whole hymn. You guys might not know this—I did not know this at first—that that is a whole hymn. It's not just like the one part that we sing to kids.
Laura: Like a VBS song or something.
Emily: Yes.
Laura: It's a real hymn with four verses? Or three?
Emily: Oh, four. Anyways, it was just really cool to even—I do a deep dive on that hymn in the beginning of the book and talk about why that hymn is so personal and special to me. Really, what's neat is that that hymn just recounts the whole gospel, from cradle to grave.
It talks about how Jesus sees us. He stays with us all the way to the end. No matter what weakness we're facing, his strength is sufficient for us. That's the theme that ties it all together.
Laura: When you get this book, there are thirty devotions. Do you read them all at once? Do you do it like a Bible study?
Emily: They're titled topically. I think you could do a variety of different ways. If you're the type of person who loves to start at the beginning and read all the way through to the end, you could definitely do that. I think they are put in an intentional order that they build on each other. They are categorized a little bit and explore different facets at different stages in the book.
But I also think it's something that you could pick up and be like, "This is what I'm feeling right now," and read two or three at a time and work through the Scriptures on that—process through that. I mean, I would love for somebody to do a little bit more of a journaling study in their own time along through that. That’s really how I worked through it when I was writing it—to look at a passage in Scripture and really think deeply about how this applied to that facet of weakness.
I would love to see women be able to look at those verses—I have a lot of different things that you can study alongside the one verse that's prompted at the beginning of the devotional. But then there's a section of questions on every devotion that looks at our own weakness and answering some of those questions and then looking at the ways that God is strong in the midst of that. I think it could be really helpful if it's something you're wanting to process.
Laura: One of my favorite things you did was the way that you titled it. All of them start as “When you're . . .” So, it could be—these are some of the topics just reading through the list here: “When you need compassion,” “When you're tired of being sick,” “When your mind is fading,” “When you need help,” “When you drop the ball,” “When you want to be the best,” “When you're under the influence”—all that kind of stuff.
Like you said, if somebody wanted to go through and just be like, "This is the way I'm feeling today," it's a very easy devotional to pick up. The other thing that I like is—I've read every word of this book, you guys. It's really good. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy. Even if you're someone who the word “weakness” is maybe a word you bristle at—maybe you're the one who thinks of it as like, "Oh, that is for people who aren't strong enough. Or that person just needs to get a little bit tougher."
This book still will very much meet you where you're at. And she has several devotions in there where I just felt very seen. It just felt like it was a devotional that was written specifically for me. Even if you're somebody who—maybe the title doesn't resonate with you—it's still a book that I think is incredible to have on your bookshelf, as a reference point and something to work through as a devotional for a month. Or take even slower with it if you want.
There are definitely devotions that you're going to want to chew on. It would be tough for me to see someone rip through this book. [Laughter] I would be like, "Maybe you need to slow down a little bit."
Emily: I’m probably not known as like—my style of writing probably is more—
Laura: —You are more personal in this book than you are often online.
Emily: Yes, this is very, very personal and vulnerable to me. I try not to think about that very much, because that makes me not want to release it. [Laughter]
But I hope it's helpful for you because I poured my heart out there.
Laura: Yes, it's very relatable. It's very interesting to read. It's something that—I think what you're saying is like, “You do bring the meat.” There is steak in here, and you're probably not going to breeze through it the way you might some other books, which are fine. That's great, but it's just a different style.
Anyway, all of this to say—this is why we are talking about abundance in this mini-series, because what we want to do is show a lot of what Emily has shown through her devotional, which is how Christ is sufficient. He is more than enough for us in our weaknesses.
We wanted to look at that side throughout this whole mini-series and talk about how—hey, as moms, we feel weak. We think that's a universal feeling in motherhood. But we also know that Christ meets us in our every need with not just some or a little bit or even just enough, but it's far more than enough. It's abundant.
Emily: I love this picture in Scripture where Jesus is feeding the 5,000—which actually was probably like 10,000 to 20,000 people.
Laura: Yes, with wives and kids.
Emily: Just imagine the multitude that was there if you start counting more than the dads. It's amazing, because when he's done multiplying the fish and the bread to feed everyone—Scripture tells us that it wasn't like Jesus just took the edge off of their hunger. The Bible tells us they were all completely full. Then, after that, there were still twelve baskets of food left over.
I was looking up this number, and twelve is one of the biblical numbers that symbolizes completeness. It's that idea where—part of the reason why Jesus does this miracle is to illustrate something about himself, because he is the Bread of Life. He is the One who truly nourishes us and takes care of our souls. It's showing us, like—Jesus is not just like “a little bit enough” for you. He's not just going to kind of take the edge off your needs. He is going to be completely, fully, totally enough in a completely perfect way. I just love that story when it comes to thinking about Christ's abundance.
Laura: It reminds me too of Job—how he loses all of his possessions. But then, by the end of the book, the Lord has restored everything like double, or I don't know—maybe even more than that. I mean, just incredibly more than enough. This is a foreshadow of a picture in the New Testament when Jesus talks about, "Hey, whoever loses all for my sake—you will be granted it back in heaven, and it'll be one hundred-fold."
I've been reading a lot in Philippians this summer. That's been the main spot that I'm taking. I know you guys are listening in the fall, but we're recording in the summer. Paul keeps talking about "I consider everything a loss compared to the gain that I have in Christ." That is what God gives us. Like, when you compare those two things, it is so much more. It is so much better.
It's not just, "Hey, it's going to meet it." It's going to make it satisfactory. It's just far beyond, especially when we look to heaven and to eternity and what awaits us there.
Emily: Or even just comparing that opposite, right? Where Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy. Satan brings death. Sometimes we're like, "Okay, Jesus brings life.” You know what Jesus says? He brings life abundant. It's not like, "Oh, he just balances out Satan's death with life," but he gives us so much more. I think we just don't always consider that deeply in the midst of our everyday motherhood experience.
Laura: I think it's important to remember that this concept of abundance isn't that "Hey, Jesus is going to take away all of your suffering” or that “You're going to have this easy-peasy life and nothing bad is ever going to happen.” It's about knowing that, in the midst of these hard things, Jesus gives us a deep joy, a deep peace, a deep rest, no matter what we're facing. Whether or not our circumstances change, we know that we have the Holy Spirit in us and that he is leading us. He is guiding us, and we have his presence both today and forever.
That's the thing to look forward to—that we have that eternal hope of heaven waiting for us and that the work that we do here—it matters. We may not feel like we have the gifts or the skills to get it done, but we know that in Christ, we do. He provides us what we need. Those are the things that we're looking to throughout this series.
Emily: One of the people that I love coming back to in the New Testament, when it comes to this topic of weakness, is looking at the life of Paul. Particularly when he's writing to the church in Corinth, he gets real with them about a lot of the struggles that he's faced, and he's acknowledging like, "Hey, even though I'm an apostle—even though I'm someone who's chosen by God to help start and prepare the gospel in the early church”—he's had this experience with seeing Jesus face to face. He's had this incredible transformation. He has this incredible history with the law, and he's a Jew among Jews. All of those things—he acknowledges he still doesn't have it all together, and he still struggles and feels incredibly weak, and he sees his lack. He talks about how, even in the midst of this, he's faced all these trying circumstances and his ministry has not been all wins and celebrations. He's had real heartbreak—real trials and tribulations.
He doesn't also seem as impressive or compelling as other teachers or speakers. He even writes about that, but this is what he has in his heart that he received from Christ: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.’ Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may reside in me."
That's an often-quoted verse, but I think it is helpful to know that, essentially, Paul is summing up like, "Hey, no matter what my circumstances look like—whether things are hard or easy, whether I am feeling and seeing all of my weaknesses or things are going well—in all of those circumstances, I have learned how to be content because I know Christ. Because I know that he is the one strengthening me and propelling me and equipping me for ministry." That principle really holds true for moms too.
Laura: We want to talk through a few of those principles and a few practical tips for how they play out in our lives. I think that one big thing is just recognizing, "Hey, we all feel weak in motherhood. We all feel like we lack something that we need—or probably many things that we need—and yet God has grace there for us. He doesn't expect us to have it all together and to always know what to do." I think that's something that we put on ourselves that is not an expectation from God.
Some of these weaknesses—some of them are purely human limitations, and some of them are areas that we need to strengthen or fortify. It's important, I think, to recognize some of those differences. For me—just like Emily is talking about with Paul and him saying, "Hey, these weaknesses have been for my good"—I think for me, as I have felt them more acutely in these days of motherhood, it has been good to remind me of the realities of being dependent upon Christ.
And also, to have fresh appreciation for my church family and recognizing that, in many ways—in our areas of especially human limitations—God provides others where we might lack. I have been really blessed by other people, as I've been able to ask them, "Hey, what would you do in this situation? I have no idea what to do.” Or “Hey, can you talk to my kid about that? Because I don't think they're going to hear me.” Or “What did you end up buying or doing?” Or “How did you navigate this?"
That has been just a huge gift to me as I recognize, "Oh, I can't vet every movie there is in the world. Or I can't always know what stuff's going on at school." Just being really thankful for other moms and other parents that have gone before me—or some who are really peers—being able to just walk in God's grace for that, and also knowing that, in areas that I mess up in, there is grace for that too.
There's no thing so big that I'm going to completely ruin my children. But knowing, with a heart that wants to follow God and wants to be faithful to him, there is always a way forward. We're never too far gone.
Emily: It's also humbling too, isn't it, when we realize, “I don't know something, and I need to ask someone. And this is related to my own children; I don't know how to do this”—it's just putting ourselves back at Christ's feet and saying, "I think I'm hot stuff sometimes. I think I have it all together, but I don't, obviously, and, Lord, here is my most honest self. I don't know, and I need your help."
I think for me, another big area that I need to remember is: when I'm out of my capacity and I'm out of willpower, Christ can and does give us strength to respond according to his will and his ways by the power of his Spirit.
I mean, I think often I'll get to the end of myself in terms of patience in a certain area of parenting and discipline—of like, "Okay, I've tried this, and I've tried that, and I've told them over and over and over again. I've come at it from this angle, and I've come at it from that angle. God, you know what? That's all I know what to do. I am tired. I'm tired of being consistent. I don't want to repeat myself on that again. I have done everything that I know, and it seems like it's not helping and it's not working.”
Whenever I get to that point, and I just feel like "I can't muster up any more energy. I have no more strategies. I can't be consistent anymore"—when I come to the Lord, and I ask for his help, and I pray about it, I'm always amazed at the renewed strength and courage that God gives me to keep going, even if the struggle doesn't go away.
Perhaps—I don't know, over the course of like a few days or weeks—some new idea will come to my mind. Or something will happen in my kids' life and someone else speaks into that area, or a situation comes up and it provides a different way of parenting through that that I hadn't thought of before. Basically, I feel like, for me, prayer in those times is a way to help me think creatively again about the situation or persevere in doing what's right.
It's just really that relying on the Spirit again and acknowledging, "Okay, I'm out of my ability here. God, I need your help." It's so funny to me—I'm like, "Why do I wait until I'm at the end of myself? I could just do that at the beginning." [Laughter]
Laura: It's so true. Another one is just knowing that, when we are in hard circumstances or when we wish things were different, we can always have joy. We talked about this a little bit at the beginning of the episode, but we just know that God always sees us. We know that he's always at work in our lives, that he's working for our good and his glory, and that he's not making mistakes with what happens in our lives.
The older I get, the more I realize nobody has a perfect life. There is not one person on this planet who has escaped suffering or difficulty. I think there is an element of just remembering that this story is not over. This is really unique and special to the Christian life—to know what is ahead.
I was reading a poem recently about somebody wondering what they'll come back as in their next life. It was a high contrast to me, I think, to see that they were just guessing, "Maybe it'll be like this. Or maybe it'll be like that." I was like, "I am so thankful that I have a sure hope to hold onto—that it is real, and it is tangible. It is something that I can bet my life on and that I do not have to worry if this is real or not but that I know that there is so much more at work than what I see.
I was really thankful in that moment for the reality of the Christian life and the hope that the gospel gives. We always have that to hold onto. That gives our lives meaning and purpose. Those are things where—even the hard circumstances and our weaknesses—that it gives all of those things purpose. To look forward to one day when, yes, our bodies will still have limitations, but we won't experience weakness the way that we experience it now. We will be fully content.
We'll be fully happy with everything that the Lord gives us in the ways that we are someday. I think that's a hope too—to just know that, someday, we are going to shake off this feeling, and it's going to be a distant memory: what life was like here on earth.
Emily: I know we've barely touched the surface today about how to deal with your lack, how to deal with your weakness, how to get excited about the abundance of God, and what life abundant in Christ looks like. That's why we have a whole series on it. We hope that you'll stay tuned with us because we have some interviews with some great women talking through times in their motherhood where they felt like they have lacked time. They've not had enough patience. They've not known what to do or had enough wisdom.
We're going to be doing more of a deep dive into the sufficiency of Christ and what that means for us and talking more about our limitations. We hope that you guys will join us through this whole series and, yes, be ready to get honest about your own weaknesses in motherhood.
