Abundance 02: I Don’t Have Enough Time—An Interview with Gretchen Saffles Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily Jensen: Hey Gretchen, it is so fun to have you on the Risen Motherhood podcast. Welcome.
Gretchen Saffles: Thank you. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.
Emily: For those listeners who don't know you as well as Laura and I are privileged to know you, would you tell them a little bit about who you are, the various callings that God has put on your life, and what is on your plate in this season?
Gretchen: Yes. I'm a wife and a mom to three children; I've got two boys and a little girl who I had last year. I am also the founder of an online ministry to women called Well-Watered Women. Our entire purpose is to create engaging and theologically rich resources to grow your love for God in his Word, and I love doing that. I love writing; I'm an author with Tyndale House Publishers.
Apart from those things, I stay at home with my kids, and I work from home four mornings a week. I spend the rest of my time caring for them, tending to our home, and really just seeking to live for Christ in my everyday life.
Emily: Thanks, Gretchen. That's so fun to hear. I know I've told you this story before, but I have to say again that I was thinking yesterday about how I found your Well-Watered journal on Etsy I think in 2015—maybe earlier than that.
Gretchen: Yes.
Emily: I don't remember what year it was, but it must have been not too long after you started. I remember buying one for me and then for my sisters-in-law Laura and Becca and following your ministry from the very beginning and—
Gretchen: —Wow.
Emily: —being so encouraged by you. It's so fun to me to think about us sitting together and talking today, because I think our ministries have really started around the same time, and we've grown up together in this world. [Laughter]
Gretchen: Yes, absolutely—grown up and even just had to navigate a lot of different things we didn't know were coming. Especially in this conversation talking about time—our time has changed, right? We've had more kids since then, our responsibilities have changed, our seasons have changed. I've moved, and so many things are different, and yet the mission remains the same. I'm really excited to talk about this.
Emily: I know. I was talking to a mom recently about how—just because something works in one season or in one point of life, it doesn't mean it's going to work three months from now or six months from now or two years from now. I think that that's the nature of motherhood; we have to keep reevaluating as things change—as our kids grow—because no schedule that we set seems to last forever. [Laughter]
Gretchen: No.
Emily: It's good if it lasts for a couple months.
Gretchen: A couple months, sometimes a couple of weeks, sometimes a day. Being willing to shift and to change and to hold those things with loose hands, I think, is not something you learn once, but you continue learning over and over again.
Emily: I love that. I wanted to dig in a little bit with you and see—when was a time in motherhood when you felt like you did not have enough time? I think that's a common sentiment. It's like, “Oh, everybody only has twenty-four hours in a day,” but we can tell ourselves, “If I just had more time, if I just had more hours, if I could just stay up later, if I could just get up earlier, if I could just hack my schedule—then I could do all the things that I wanted or needed to do.” I think that it’s just a scarce resource for moms. I'm curious about a time in your life or your motherhood where you felt that, and what circumstances led you to that belief—like, “I don't have enough time in motherhood”?
Gretchen: There are so many. I could talk about yesterday or last week or this summer, or I could talk about times where it has been exacerbated to the nth degree, and I felt like I was just drowning in things that needed to be done—things that were left undone around me—and felt like time was a trap—like it was elusive, and it was constantly slipping through my fingers.
This is almost a daily struggle. I think that, as moms, because we have this responsibility to care for our children and to care for our home and whatever it is that's currently in your life, we're constantly having to navigate “How am I going to spend my time? What are the right things that I should be doing with my time?” I know that we also struggle with so many things that just cry out for our attention, like social media and things that we want to zone out of.
I could talk about all those things, but I want to share one specific season, which was actually last year. I had my third child, and leading up to giving birth to her, as a mother you think, “I've had one, I've had two—third is going to be so easy.” I could not wait for it because I know how the newborn stage goes. I know how birth goes— all of these things. Nothing went as planned, which, we all know—no birth story's the same. No child is the same.
Leading up to the end of my pregnancy, I was having a lot of different symptoms— had to be admitted to the hospital several times—and gave birth right at thirty-seven weeks because of atypical pre-eclampsia. Already, the start of that season was not what I expected. I was already limited just because of symptoms that my body was showing and needing to take care of my baby.
After that sudden giving birth early, I had some crazy things happen in my body due to a thyroid disorder that I have. I normally have some sort of autoimmune response after birth and ended up back in the hospital for about a week with all of these crazy things that were just going on in my body, which, as we know too—what affects our body also affects our brain and our thinking and our emotional life and our spiritual life.
I was drowning in the belief that I needed to bounce back quickly since this was my third baby and that I was not allowed to ask for help—that I didn't need help because I should be self-sufficient by now. I felt like my limitations were crushing the unrealistic expectations I had placed on myself.
The misguided belief that I should be able to handle everything really spiraled me into postpartum anxiety and depression, and it caused me to have to take a huge step back from everything and reevaluate: “What am I believing that is incorrect? What am I thinking that I need to do that is actually not the most important thing in this season?” And to realize that I was wanting to add to my plate without being willing to take away or adjust to the new season that I was in.
That season—I think a lot of times, you think of the newborn stage as just right after you give birth, but it lasts for months and months. During all of those months, God was doing a lot of sanctification—a lot of pruning of my thinking, my time, and my schedule.
Emily: Wow, thanks for being vulnerable and sharing that with us, Gretchen. I'm sure that there are a lot of moms listening who are potentially walking through that right now. I know for me, there was a tendency in those postpartum seasons to think, “There's something uniquely wrong with me because I'm not able to handle this, but other moms are. I am not able to do much more right now except for just care for this baby and my other children and just try to get by every day, but it looks like, on social media, other moms are doing all these activities, and they have a lot of stuff together, and they're already cooking their homemade bread again” or whatever those things are.
There is this real sense of—not only do I feel like I don't have enough time, but I feel like “Ooh, am I wasting the time that I have because I'm not living it to this fullest potential”—whatever that idea is that I have in my mind? I know we'll dig into that a little bit more, but I think that's a common feeling that we have as mothers, especially in that vulnerable stage.
I'm just curious, as you look back on that season, more specifically, what were some ways that you reacted to or tried to deal with your feelings in that season of going like, "This isn't the way I wanted to be spending my time as a postpartum mom"?
Gretchen: I'm going to be completely honest with you because my first response was not, "Okay God, I see that I need to let go of so many things." My first response was to hold on as tightly as I possibly could and really to cower and pull back in fear because I didn't want other people to see how much I was overwhelmed and how inadequate I was.
By the time I reached bedtime during that season, my anxiety skyrocketed because I felt like I didn't even have time to sleep. I had so much that I needed to do and was barely able to get dinner on the table. Most of the time, we just ate takeout—Chick-fil-A. I recently learned that—in that season when I felt anxious, but I also was feeling depressed—that depression is a response to numb our feelings. We don't want to feel the things that we are feeling.
I was so overwhelmed by my lack of time and by all of the things that had piled up that I felt like I needed to do; caring for my children, keeping up with our home—even just brushing my teeth felt really hard during that season (and I probably didn't brush my teeth very often). I responded in my human nature, which is: I wanted to be in control.
I wanted to be able to get back into gear, to bounce back, to be myself again, but my body's limitations—the time limitations that were placed on me and the needs around me of my children, of my newborn baby—all of those things outweighed this feeling of “I've got to get back to my normal schedule.” I was frustrated at my lack of time and my limitations, and I struggled with the belief that this was going to last forever.
This misunderstanding of time—it impacted my view of God because I was so focused on my limitations and on these unrealistic expectations I had of myself that I began to impose those limitations on the Lord. And so, in that season when I felt so overwhelmed by everything around me—and I've done this before in other seasons too where it just felt like the needs were far greater than the time allotted for me to actually do anything for them—I will pull back even in my Bible reading and just focus on one particular Psalm.
A few of the Psalms that I meditated on and clung to in prayer during that season were Psalm 121, Psalm 136, and Psalm 139. Each of these psalms was a balm to my heart, and they also exposed misguided belief because when I was feeling so exhausted, I would think, "Surely God must be exhausted too." When I was feeling overwhelmed, I started to think, "Surely God must be overwhelmed."
These Psalms re-instilled the truth that God is not bound by time. God who is Spirit— he has no limitations. I love Psalm 90:4 that says, "For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night." Time is not the same to God as it is to us. Psalm 136 reminds us over and over and over that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever. It's this repetition in every single verse.
One specific phrase that I said to myself so many times from Psalm 136 was, “This will not last forever. The steadfast love of the Lord will last forever.” This was such a good reminder because I needed this eternal hope that it's God's steadfast love that will carry me through this season. It is not my own grit; it's not my own endurance; it's not some time hack or new system that's going to just automatically change everything and I'll be able to get everything done all of a sudden.
No, it was this dependability on God. I needed to depend on his dependability, on who he is—and who he is is faithful, and his steadfast love carries us through those seasons.
Emily: I really appreciate you walking us through that, Gretchen—the picture of what your heart was clinging to and was believing and how the Lord really renewed your mind and your heart with his Word—with truths from his Word.
You're so right that when we're in those seasons where we're just totally overwhelmed and feel totally weak—and even just the idea of reading the Bible feels like "I don't have enough time for that” or “I feel overwhelmed by that"—there is a simplicity of saying, “Just pick a couple of Psalms to meditate on.” Listen to them; read them over and over again. It's fine if it's the same ones every day for a while.
I know when I've been in seasons of overwhelm, it has really helped me to simplify my quiet time—my devotional time—and say, "Yes, right now, it is really hard and overwhelming to try to have this prayer time and a journal time, and I'm reading a devotion, and I'm reading three chapters of Scripture, and I'm doing inductive study.”
Gretchen: And I'm reading books and all of these things. [Laughter]
Emily: Yes. It is okay. I know Gretchen and I—we both are in public ministry, and we have seasons where it's a morsel of truth for the day, and it's the same morsel over and over again, and God is doing work in our hearts. I think that's normal. I think that we go through those seasons, especially in motherhood, and to your point, Gretchen, it's helpful to know this is not forever.
Seasons do shift and change, and it's just—I guess even as you're talking, I'm thinking about—in my heart sometimes, when I get in those spots, it's like this—I have to go, "What do I think is going to happen if I don't get all of these things done or I don't sustain my life?"
I think for me, there's also this identity piece of “Who am I if I'm not a super wife and a supermom, and my house is perfect, and I've got these meals on the table, and I'm running ministry and all these different things—am I valuable? Do I have worth? Am I being a good-enough mom and a good-enough wife?”
I think that just turning back to the Lord—right? He even meets us in those deep hard questions of identity when we're not able to do all the things that we used to do. Or even we get a slice of time where we're supposed to do something, and we're just reeling from our feelings, and that time is clicking away, and we're like, "I'm not even doing anything right now. I'm just staring at my computer." [Laughter]
Gretchen: Right. We find so much of our worth in being productive and being able to show what we did that day. I need to be able to show this long list that I completed or have something that will just be able to be evident to someone else of how I used my time.
In motherhood, you don't—you can't—write down all of those things because you're not going to say, "I changed a diaper at this time. I wiped a nose at this time. We had to change clothes at this time because there was a diaper blowout." All of these different things, but so much is being done. But what's more important is God's doing a work in our hearts.
A lot of times, I focus on the outward appearance of what I'm doing with my time rather than the things that God is doing within me and the ways that he is pruning and growing and sanctifying and changing me to be more like Christ and more in love with my Savior than I am in love with the things that I do and the way that people perceive me as a mom.
Emily: It puts a different definition to the meaning of our lives. Who is the Lord over our time? We tend to think, “It's me. I'm the Lord over my time, and I need to organize it, and I need to be super productive, and I need to be able to have a report that shows what I did with it.”
If God is the Lord over my time—and all of my time exists to serve him and what he brings into my life and what he ordains and at his leading—then it's not unproductive if we just spent the last forty-five minutes as we were trying to get out the door patiently meeting children with issues and training and correcting and changing diapers and thoughtfully packing snacks and all of those things.
That is meaningful time used for the Lord, even though I think, in the world's eyes—and honestly even in our own eyes sometimes—that feels worthless. That feels like forty-five minutes just out the door—just drained.
Gretchen: Yes. We live in a culture that idolizes productivity—that idolizes time management. Just Google “books on time management” or go to the top sellers on Amazon, and you're likely going to see several books on that. Even as a Christian, I think we can fall into this trap of thinking, “If every single moment I am not doing something and being productive—"
I remember even when I was nursing my baby, it would feel like, "I have to be doing something right now. What can I be doing on my phone that's productive? Can I be writing something? Can I be making a list?" All of these different things that we're like, "Oh, I need to find a new app for that that's going to help me make this thing easier in my life."
We grow to a point where we idolize that so much that we miss out on even these spiritual disciplines like stillness and meditation and prayer. It may not even be Bible reading in that kind of season; it may be listening to your Bible—turning on the audio Bible and just letting God's Word wash over you and listening to it when your eyes feel so tired—realizing that what is most productive with your time may not be what's most effective.
I love the quote by Martin Luther. He said, "I have so much to do. I need to spend the first three hours in prayer." That's my paraphrase of it; he said it even more eloquently. Basically, he's not saying you have to spend three hours in prayer right away; he's emphasizing the importance of spending time with God first. That is the fuel for our ministry. That's the fuel for our life.
It's not what is the leftovers of our life—it's actually what helps us to live a way that is effective for the gospel and for the kingdom of God.
Emily: That's such a good word and good reminder because sometimes in motherhood, it feels like just sitting is a sin. It feels like if I am not maximizing every moment, I'm failing. It feels like the mom who gets the most done wins, and that's just not God's economy of time. Honestly, I love what you're saying about stewardship—of saying, "How are we measuring or thinking about the way that we're using our time?" Is it that we got the most things crossed off our list, or are we doing things in the most effective, kingdom-minded way possible?
If that's what we're thinking of with stewardship, that leaves time for meditation. That leaves time for prayer. That leaves time for rest. That leaves time for sitting, pondering, laughing, enjoying, gardening, baking–things that are simply for delighting in our God and saying, "Thank you, God, that you gave me this moment."
It's just a totally different paradigm, and, to your point, I think we can so easily slip into it. As we're talking about God and his view of time, what do you love about God's abundance when it comes to that and all the things that there are to do?
Gretchen: Yes. There's so much comfort in knowing that God is not bound by the realm of time like we are. He's not rushing to beat the clock or finish what needs to be done before exhaustion overcomes him. Psalm 121 reminds us that God never sleeps, and he keeps watch over us.
In Psalm 90, like we read earlier, it reminds us that he is from everlasting to everlasting. He has no beginning and no end. I was spending time—actually last night before I went to bed—in prayer and thinking about that—how I cannot even fathom how great God is. I can't fathom, Emily, the fact that I can pray to the Lord and someone else can be praying to the Lord in Africa or in India or in Minneapolis, and God hears us.
I can't fathom the fact that God numbers the hairs on our head. I think about—I brush my hair at the end of the day, and I'm like, "Well, lost these strands," but God knows. He sees every blade of grass. He sees all the clouds that are rushing in right before a storm. God is not limited like we are. Realizing that—that our limitations are actually a gift of grace. They keep us in a posture of dependence on him.
The truth is, when we try to do everything, we do fail. We can't do everything. We are not God. We have not been set up to be God. We are the created, and he is the Creator—and so realizing that he is the giver of abundant grace. One of the things that I have thought of so many times, especially when I read the Old Testament, is how God provided the Israelites when they were wandering in the wilderness with manna every single day.
They could not store up enough manna for the entire week or for the month. They only were able to store up exactly what they needed, and then God would give them exactly what they needed the next day. It's so beautiful to see God's provision but also this reminder that God doesn't provide just once—he provides over and over again. In the same way, he provides the exact amount of grace we need for each day.
I was reading something the other day—I can't even remember what it was—but talking about Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus tells us, "Don't worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow's going to worry about itself.” Sufficient for each day, God gives us what we need. There's enough trouble for today for us to navigate and to walk through with the Lord's help than for us to borrow what could be tomorrow—because that's what we do.
We harp on, "Okay, this is what could be tomorrow, so if I can think it up, then maybe I can control it." Instead, Christ calls us to seek first the kingdom of God. That seeking first of God's kingdom is in this present moment. We will never have tomorrow because when tomorrow comes, it's going to be a new today.
When Friday comes, it's not going to be just Friday in the future—it's going to be this moment right now. God has only given us this right now, and he's also given us his present grace. I also find so much comfort knowing that Jesus, the Son of God who took on human flesh—he experienced the constraints of time while on Earth.
He was actually in a body, and you see him—you know that he's in one place and all these people are crowding in on him, trying to touch him, trying to talk to him, begging for healing and whatever it was because even John says that we don't know everything. If there was a book to try to contain all the things that Jesus did, it couldn't contain them.
I find so much comfort in that—knowing that even Christ—who experienced the constraints of a human body, who experienced the constraints of time—that he said that his will was to do what the Father sent him to do. What was most important to Christ while he was on earth was not being the most productive person ever because we see him sitting with little children. We see him literally catching fish and making breakfast with the disciples. We see him breaking bread and eating dinner.
We don't see Jesus rushing to and fro from one place to the next trying to get everything done. We see Christ living in the fullness of his grace and extending that fullness of grace to his followers, and he does the exact same thing for us today. Even though we live within the boundaries of time, we have been given the exact amount of time we need to accomplish exactly what God has called us to do.
Emily: What a good reminder for those of us who want to live outside of the limitations of our time and space that God has placed us in—to remember: Jesus walked in this as well, and in doing his Father's will, he did that moment by moment, task by task—and going out into the quiet, right places to pray—and to just follow what that looked like.
I think we can have a lot of hope that if our Savior didn't have to be in all places at all times in the way that we might sense that in our modern culture, then that is not what is required to obey God in his kingdom and to make disciples. I love that. I'm just curious what you would say to a mom listening right now who feels like she does not have enough time. Maybe she's in that spot like you described earlier in the show. I know you've already provided a lot of encouragement, but do you have a specific word for her?
Gretchen: It's very likely that your to-do list is a lot larger than your capacity and your time and the energy that you have to complete it. Most of us have that same problem, and when it comes to time, we often feel like we just don't have enough of it. It's a scarce resource so we prioritize—we systemize.
A lot of times when we do that, we push to the side the things that matter the most. We push aside time for Bible study. We push aside time for prayer. We push aside time for fellowship with other believers because that was something that was vital in that season where I was overwhelmed and felt like I was drowning. When I wanted to turn inward, God reminded me of the importance of the body of Christ—of turning outward and asking for help.
There were times when friends came over and they did laundry for me. They went to the store for me. There were times when friends came over and let me just cry on them and just not have to say everything—just someone to cry with. During these seasons, it's easy for us to get it backwards—to think that we have to find out ways to make the most of our time when really—sometimes that looks like just sitting and listening to God's words.
Sometimes it looks like blowing bubbles with your child without feeling like, "Oh, I need to pick up this mess while I'm doing that. I need to be productive while I'm spending time with my child." Or instead of watching TV, sometimes in that time, it may look like just reading out loud with your kid or getting together with a friend and sharing but also listening. What we need most in those seasons is to spend that time with the Lord and to remember that—I love the story in Mark 1:35 where Jesus goes away. You literally see him—Jesus goes away. He rose very early to spend time with the Father, and then the next verse, the disciples interrupt him. They're like, "Jesus, where are you? We've been looking for you. Hello, what are you doing?" Is this not the life of a mother? [Laughter] You get that five minutes. There's so many days I wake up and everything's quiet, and I'm just so excited. Literally, I sit down, and I open my Bible, and I hear “boom” upstairs, and that's my child. Literally, he jumps out of the bunk bed every morning.
There are times where I literally just splash coffee everywhere because it scares me every single day. I should know to expect that sound, and I'm interrupted right away. Jesus—we see him not scolding the disciples, not saying, "Excuse me, like this is my time alone." Instead, Christ—that time fueled him, and he responds with, "Okay, this is where we're going next." We see this not happen just once, but many times in the gospels.
Don't neglect what matters eternally. This may be a season too where you need to re-prioritize and realize that you cannot add to your plate without taking away something or without shifting because you are not God. You are the created, and you have a faithful, dependable Creator.
Instead of focusing on your limitations or where you feel like you're failing, refocus on the Lord and what he has called you to do in his Word—on delighting in him because he has called you to delight in him, to abide in him, and to know that he is going to guide you as you follow him and walk in step with him.
Emily: Thanks for that encouragement, Gretchen. It was just a joy to hear your story today, and I am so grateful for your vulnerability because I don't think anybody wants to be the one that has to raise their hand and say, "I'm needy. I need help. I can't do enough. I'm not enough." And yet, that's probably the reality of what a lot of moms are feeling and facing.
It takes just one or two people to raise their hand and say that—to give that courage to others to be able to reach out for help—to know that there is abundance found in the Lord and that there are others who can come alongside you and walk with you and help. Thanks for being on the show today, Gretchen.
Gretchen: Absolutely. Thanks, Emily.
