Ask Us Anything! Fall 2024 Edition Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Laura Wifler: This is the Ask Us Anything episode. Get ready to be real, to be raw, to be vulnerable—to tell people all the things that they're just dying to know. It's your favorite thing.

Emily Jensen: I told Laura before we came on—I was like, “There's twenty-three pages of questions.” [Laughter]

Laura: We get—we get like—I don't know how many questions, but bajillions, it feels like.

Emily: We do our best to try to find the ones that rise to the surface—that we get multiples of.

Laura: Repeated most often, yes.

Emily: We're sorry if your question doesn't make it here today, but we do read all of them.

Laura: Hopefully a version of it makes it. So it might not be your words, but a friend of yours or something like that's words.

Emily: Yes. A lot of times if we don't answer something, maybe we already have past content on it. Definitely, yes, make sure you search our archives—search podcast episodes. We've got a lot of resources out there.

First question is: “What words of encouragement are good for friends with special needs kids?” This person particularly emphasized that they're just concerned about their friend's heart. They recognize that having a child with special needs is stressful, and they feel like they don't have a way to relate, but they want to be careful and act interested without causing unintended hurt. Laura, what do you think?

Laura: I think having a couple of go-to questions can be really helpful. Some of the questions that I think help a mom be able to respond with a lot of detail if she wants to, or maybe she can be shorter about it if it's maybe too hard or their grief is too strong at the time. Some go-to questions that I will ask other parents are something like, "What's your child working on in therapy right now?" That's a great way, then, to celebrate wins with that mom when they answer or to follow up later and say, "How's it going with the feeding therapy?” or whatever. 

Another one is, "What doctor appointments does your child have coming up?" That allows a mom to share if maybe there's a big surgery on the horizon that they need prayer for, or it also allows her to just say, "Oh, I don't know." She can get out of it if it's too hard in that season. Then lastly, I think I've been blessed when—especially my closer friends have just said, "How are you feeling about your child and disabilities? How are you feeling about her progress?" Just allowing me space to talk about it and allowing me the opportunity because I think sometimes people—it feels like they forget that disability is an ongoing grief. It's something that you're constantly re-entering and finding new things to grieve. When someone offers you space for that, it's a huge gift. It's something that I think helps show that you remember and you care for them.

Outside of that, I know we had a lot of questions about disabilities, friends—makes sense. Emily and I both have children with disabilities, but we couldn't get to near all of them today. If you do have more questions or you want more on this—as I was reading through them, I thought, "Oh man, I've answered most of these through some of the resources that I produced." Not to just toot my own horn and send you there, but genuinely because I desire to help moms who have children with disabilities. We'll put a link in the show notes with a link to my resources that I have about disabilities that you can go to. A lot of the questions that were asked for the AUA show are answered in that. Not all of them, but some of them. Sign up for that if you want to. Emily, what else would you have?

Emily: Yes. I don't know any mom that's offended when you say nice things about her kid. I have been so blessed so many times when friends or even strangers have come up to me and been like, "I saw your son doing this. It just brought so much delight to my heart." "Oh, I noticed that last year he was still using his walker, and now I'm seeing him walking, and it's so fun to see him walking." It's just a great way to break into a conversation where—it doesn't have to be this sad, hard thing. It can just be something that's delighting you about their child.

I think something I've noticed is that people will talk to me about my typically developing children and some of the things they're good at and some of their good qualities. It just brings an extra special moment to my heart when they bring that up about our son who—maybe the things aren't as easy to talk about. This is another random thing that you can do to be gracious and just take the load off of a mom a little bit—especially if you're with a friend and she's in a public situation and she seems like she's struggling—it's just to be gracious if and when her child has challenging behaviors, or you can tell that it's a really difficult situation. I think that I've been—and you've been in this too, Laura—where there's like just a lot of awkward moments.

Laura: All the time.

Emily: I've had to leave the pool. I've had to leave the park. I've had to leave the family gathering. I've had to leave the church service. I've had to leave a million places with a child who's pulling my hair or screaming or kicking or doing something just that's embarrassing. I am so blessed when my friends who are there or people who are around—other moms—are not giving me dirty looks, not giving me death stares, not being weird about it—but they're being gracious and kind. 

I had this situation recently where I was like, “Okay, we're going to try to bring our son with disabilities to a football practice because we're all trying to go as a family.” My husband is like, “I don't think this is going to go well,” but I was like, “Oh, let's just try it.” Of course, it did not go well.

He did well for a little while, and then he wanted to go get everyone's water bottles. He wanted to go get everyone's footballs. I couldn't explain to him why you can't have those things and throw them onto the field. It resulted in a little bit of a meltdown. It was just so interesting because there was this mom there who was nearby and was watching what was happening. Not often do moms say something to me when they're in that situation, but she just stepped back—like really positive. She's like, "You're doing such a great job. And I know you know what he needs, but is there any way that I can help?"

Laura: That's so kind.

Emily: My answer was no. I had no idea how she would help, but I was just really blessed that I felt like she saw me struggling. She didn't assume she knew something about my child or like, "Here's how you fix this situation." She just offered help and a word of support. I felt seen, I felt supported, and I don't know—it's just a sweet thing you can do. 

The next one is: “How does one know when they are done growing their families?”

Laura: Good question. We actually have an incredible download on this. It's called the Family Planning Workbook, and it looks at what Scripture says about children. Then you go through a bunch of questions that will spark conversation for you and with your husband so that you can have conversations about that. It is free to anyone on our email list. You can sign up—you can head to risenmotherhood.com/library, and you can find that free download right there.

Emily: The next question is: “When you look back on being a mom of young children—the infant and toddler years—what do you wish you could tell yourself as that young mom?”

Laura: Honestly, I wish that someone would have maybe even said, “It is okay that it feels really hard and that the days feel really long.” The whole saying “The days are long, but the years are short” and “Enjoy every moment”—there's lots of online memes about that and lots of people who are correcting that and yada, yada. I think it's like, "Hey, don't say that." There's part of me that's like—I think it's important to acknowledge that those are hard years. They're confusing years. They're years that I feel like, for me—maybe not every day, but overall—felt pretty desperate. Some of that is because I was raising little kids. I had a child with disabilities and also life circumstances. I feel like my life is a lot more calm—and just even external outside circumstances that were occurring during that time where I feel like life hit me like a hurricane.

That being said, I think that I wish that I just would have had more compassion for my young self and would have had more kindness and would have just said, “You don't have to try so hard. You don't have to get it all right. You don't have to be perfect. You're not going to get it all right.” It's like—you logically know that. I think, as I look back, I think that I wish I would have rested more and enjoyed my kids more. I don't know. I think I'm a person that runs a hundred thousand miles an hour, so it might not be helpful for all moms to hear that. I think for me that would have been.

Emily: Mine's probably similar. I wish I could go back and tell younger Emily, “You're doing a way better job than you think you are. Don't be so hard on yourself.” We have it in our intro: “When you feel like the worst mom on the planet.” I really felt like that in the young years. I felt like I was a really bad mom.

Laura: Oh, I hate this for you. I don't think I thought that. I had moments.

Emily: I just always felt like, “Oh, I'm not doing good enough.” I look back, and I'm like, yes, I wasn't perfect by any means, but I actually look back and I have few regrets about those years. I look back and I see so much of God's grace. I was trying really hard. I was honoring the Lord with my decisions. I was being as consistent as I could be with discipline. I was showing up for my kids. I was doing my best in all these different areas. I feel really—I look back and I'm like, “I have a lot of good things about those years.” I'm like—it stinks that I spent them thinking that I was doing such a bad job because, again—I don't like saying it in a weird prideful way, but I don't think I was doing that bad.

Laura: Most moms are not doing a bad job—because many moms are yeah—incredible.

Emily: I was loving my kids. I just have—I don't know—a heart for those of you who feel like you're with your kids, and you're trying to make the fun memories, and you're trying to nurture them well, and you're trying to feed them good foods, and you're trying to be consistent with discipline, and you're trying to do all these things, and you feel like, “I don't know if it's enough. I feel like I'm really failing”—maybe you're not. 

I think the other thing that I waited too long to do was accept help—like really tangible, consistent help. It wasn't really until we had five kids and most of them were in school that I finally figured out regular daytime child care is really helpful for me as a mom and gave me margin to do some of the things that I was trying to do in—like, okay, before the kids wake up and then during nap time and then after bed. 

And that's great. Those times are useful, but it wouldn't have been that big of a deal for me to be like, “Okay, yes, I have a morning a week that I can go exercise, or I can go drink coffee and sit by myself.” I think when I was a mom of young kids, I felt like that was just like, “I can't let that go—that time go with my kids. That would be too selfish.” I'm like—they would have been totally fine. They might've even loved having a babysitter there for a little while that they enjoyed or spending an extra morning at Grandma's house. I just had a lot of guilt about that stuff when I was a younger mom.

Laura: Yes, there's a real loss of compassion, I think, for ourselves as young moms where we just can't see it, I think. To any friend, you would be like, "Go have that cup of coffee. Go get Grandma to babysit the kids." But to receive that ourselves is just really hard. I don't know how to even look back and like—

Emily: —I wouldn't have received it. [Laughter]

Laura: How do you get that through my thick skull? I don't think I could have.

Emily: I'm pretty sure somebody probably told me some version of all of those things.

Laura: I know when I see those memes and stuff of like “Nobody ever told me . . .”
I'm like, "Yes, somebody did; you just didn't hear it."

Emily: You couldn't hear it.

Laura: You couldn't hear it. Next question is: “Who wrote all the different parts and chapters in the Risen Motherhood book?” We assume they're talking about our green book—our original Risen Motherhood book.

Emily: I think our names are there.

Laura: Yes. Our names are in it. If it's not noted, it's co-written.

Emily: Yes, it's co-written on the cover, and then we have several chapters that are co-written. I don't have the book in front of me right now, but then we have 16—and then in the linen book, 18 or 19 chapters—that are all individually written.

Laura: Correct. Four or five that are co and then, yes.

Emily: Then with Gospel Mom, which is coming out soon—

Laura: —We did something different.

Emily: We did something different. We literally co-wrote the entire book.

Laura: Crazy. It turned out so much better because we did.

Emily: Yes, and it was fun because we've worked together so much longer now that we just know how to seamlessly just blend our voices. Usually, our technique is we just assign out one person or the other to take the first pass and then the other person has free reign to come in without tracking any edits.

Laura: Overwrites.

Emily: We call it overwriting, which may not even be a thing. It may just be a thing that we made up.

Laura: Yes, I don’t know.

Emily: Can change it however they want.

Laura: It doesn't track changes. That is a lot of trust that I have in Emily to let her go ahead, and it's actually—it's more trust that she has in me to let me go in and just like do, do, and not track anything.

Emily: Then, that's where the melding of our voices comes together, and sometimes there's whole sections that are added in or things are reorganized and then we have a piece that's fully ours collectively. At that point, we're able to go through and track changes and make really specific edits so that each person can see—oh, if you change this word here, we both want to be aware of it. It's an interesting process, but Gospel Mom—I think the concept behind Gospel Mom was really things that you and I built block by block, conversation by conversation over the years. It's hard for us to even say anymore where one person's thoughts begin and the other person's end. It's just—I don't know—it's ours.

Laura: When we were putting together A Million Tiny Moments—our book that comes out next spring—I remember flagging a couple and being like, “Did you write this or did I write this?” I can't even tell.

Emily: I don't know.

Laura: Yes, I'm like, “We'll give it to you.” We're just like—whatever. I think that is such a joy that we have that trust and relationship with one another. Generally, we do have different voices, but there's a Risen Motherhood voice that I think we've developed, which is fun to see it come out through our books. 

Speaking of the books, you can actually now pre-order Gospel Mom and the workbook, Becoming a Gospel Mom. They release on October 15th and the Becoming a Gospel Mom is a really fun thing because it's a workbook. It's basically like a Bible study. It's the closest thing that you're ever going to get to a Bible study.

We just want to encourage you guys to pick those books up, especially in light of Risen Motherhood sunsetting and closing. These are our legacy pieces. These are the books that we really felt like—we could not end without publishing these books. We really worked hard. I've said this before, but this is our brains in a book, and it truly is the blending of Emily’s and my ideas, and the—I feel like we almost need to trademark our process in some senses—but it's really what we've built over the years, put into books. The other book, A Million Tiny Moments, that I mentioned earlier—that book will come out in March of 2025.

Definitely keep an eye out on that book. It's a little bit different. It's going to be lighter. It's got these nice light entries—

Emily: —poetic, reflective—like “I need a pep talk in the moment” type of writings versus “I'm ready to think really hard about the gospel of motherhood. I'm going to figure this out.”

Laura: Correct. Yes.

Again, all these books are part of our legacy collection. We encourage you to check them out, and you can see how we've written. A Million Tiny Moments is labeled. Each person's entry is labeled, to go back to the original question. You'll know who wrote what.

Emily: Next question is about marriage. We had a lot of questions about marriage and husbands, which is a motherhood-adjacent topic.

Laura: Yes.

Emily: If we know that—

Laura: We've debated, “Should we talk about marriage or not?” It's hard.

Emily: It's intertwined, but at the same time, it's a whole other thing in and of itself. There's a whole lot of other issues. The question is: “How do you incorporate quality time with your husband in the midst of a busy work schedule, raising kids and leading ministries, volunteering, working, and all the other life things happening?”

Laura: When my husband and I were first married, especially with our little kids, we had very little time. We were ships passing in the night at moments. This was something we really had to fight for. For me, it started because I had to redefine what date night or even quality time meant or looked like.

I think, often, I imagined it was getting away from the kids, and we leave the house, and I feel a little bit fancy and all that stuff. In the season of young children, it is perfectly okay if date night is thirty minutes on the couch with intentional questions or even just—I remember my husband and I got into like—not board games but card games. We would just play for thirty minutes, and sometimes it would be—we were tired and didn't really want to, but it always—we were glad that we did. I think that is something is—allow the relationship to look different in different seasons and don't have expectations for what quality time looks like.

It can be in the car and trying to talk with the kids around, and I know that's not great time—like most people would say, “Oh, that's not totally quality time.” But if you can get it, and you can try to maximize it, it counts. Another thing I think for me in that season was especially—really being willing to swallow my pride and to tell my husband what I needed. I think that as maybe you grow distant from one another, you feel like, “Oh, we're really just taking care of our kids and trying to keep the house going.” You can start feeling resentful or you can feel bitterness or you can feel anger or feel like he just doesn't want you to feel lonely—so many things. I really found that it was such a gift when I would be the first one to say, "Hey, are we off?" or "Hey, I just want to hold your hand,” or “I just want to be next to you."

Guys, that sounds so easy to say—like, “That's silly. Why couldn't you say that?” But when you're feeling abandoned or lonely or something like that, saying that is really hard, and it feels so vulnerable, and there's that risk of rejection because you've told yourself that all these weeks of being distant from one another, “Maybe that's what he wants,” or I don't know—you get these weird ideas. I think stepping back, trusting the Lord, knowing that your husband can't meet all your needs—only Jesus can. I think it feels risky, but it's also, I think—being willing to vocalize it is really important, and you're going to have to vocalize it again and again and again. I think women are just more relationally in tune, and so we have to maybe sometimes be the most courageous and the first ones to be willing to be vulnerable.

Emily: It seems like that communication piece is so key, even at a macro level. I know that we've gone through seasons of our marriage where there's all this stuff going on, and we're super deep in things, and maybe we're not connecting in the way we want to and in a situation that's not the heat of the moment—that's not when tensions or emotions are high. Or maybe even it's a talk that we have scheduled on the calendar—like, "Hey, can we stop and just talk? Is this really what we want for our lives? Is this really what we want for our marriage? Is this really what we want for our family? Do we think that this is contributing to a healthy marriage?" What kinds of things we need to put in place and to be able to have those conversations that are more high-level.

There is that sense of like—how are we going to make time to talk this week, or how are we going to make time to have that quality time even if it's on the couch after the kids go to bed? But sometimes, it's needed to have these bigger conversations of like, "Hey, if this is a pattern that we don't see an end to, and we are like ships passing in the night, and we aren't growing in intimacy—what needs to change in our relationship?" I think it takes so much prayer to enter that conversation. I know there have been times where I've just told myself, “I'm going to pray about this for two weeks before I even say anything,” or “I'm going to pray about this for two months” or whatever and get counsel and then come into that conversation and see what the Lord would do.

Because sometimes it's the little tweaks—sometimes it's being more intentional about the conversation in the car, and sometimes life needs big tweaks, and that can be true too.

Laura: Related question is: “How do you get out of the bitter mindset of ‘I do way more than my husband with the house and with the kids’?”

Emily: Laura and I have both been there. We totally get it. We know that there are seasons—especially if one spouse is working significantly more hours than the other—it's just practically challenging. It's practically challenging. There are very real things that you have to sit down and work out, like “Who is going to do what?” We've said this over the years: there's not a biblical template for who is supposed to unload the dishwasher and who is supposed to fold the laundry and who is supposed to answer the school emails. You work that out between you and your husband of what makes the most sense for you and your family.

I think for me over the years, it's helped not to think of him versus me, but like—we are an us. We collectively are responsible for these children, for this household, for these responsibilities. In some seasons, I am going to do more of these types of things, and he's going to do more of those types of things. Some seasons—I remember when my husband was opening up one of our businesses. I was doing everything, it felt like, in some sense for the home then. He was not able to handle a lot of those things. Now, we're in a little bit of a different season. I think, whenever we get into those situations, sometimes it's acknowledging, “Okay, we're in this season, and I need to do these things for this period of time, but then that's going to end and we can reevaluate.” Or if I couldn't do something, it was coming to him and being like, "Look, I have too many things on my plate. I can't do all this alone. If you're not able to help, that's fine. Can we hire a lawn service then? What can we do creatively because something has to give?"

Going back to that previous question—you have to communicate. You have to say things. You have to speak up and say, "I have too much on my mind, and I don't feel like I can handle all of this well." Sometimes for me, it's been like, "Hey, there's emails coming in about football. Are you reading those and taking care of that, or am I doing that?" Being super, super clear so that it's not like, “Well, I was secretly expecting him, and he didn't know that, and now I'm bitter or whatever.”

Laura: Yes, totally. I think that something that helped me a lot was—I started out as a stay-at-home mom, and then, as Risen Motherhood grew—and just doing other writing and author projects—I started to work a lot more. In fact, to like a full-time job, essentially. It was really helpful for me, I think, to get perspective of how exhausting it is to have a full-time job and then come home and enter in with the kids. Because I think that, as moms and wives, we expect our husband to just come home—"You have the car to decompress—like you're on, Babe.” You hear pastors say that and stuff, like, “That's your decompression time. Now go,” and it's true. It's true; there's just a decision that needs to be made, and they're in—they need to be in the game.

It gave me more kindness and—compassion seems to be the theme word for me. Some compassion for him whenever I started realizing, “I am really tired, and I need more than fifteen minutes to decompress before my kids get home because I've just really been in deep with my work.” I think that's something to keep in mind or as a reminder. Then, from there, my encouragement would be to talk to your husband, number one, about what his expectations are for decompression: “What does that look like? Do you want an hour of TV? Do you want music? Do you want to go chop wood in the backyard?” It's my husband's thing. Whatever it is, find out—like really lay it out.

What is he hoping for? Then—I'll never forget the time I finally asked my husband, "Okay, what do you want the house to look like when you come home? What's your expectation?" I had in my mind that it needed to be perfectly clean and picked up. It should look like kids weren't even there. Dinner should be going—whatever. He was like, "I don't care." My husband genuinely doesn't care. Now, some husbands I know have particularities, but find that out because I think sometimes as moms, we're putting pressure on ourselves where your husband is like, "I do not care about paper plates. Go for it. This is a short season with little kids. Let's do paper plates.” Or “I don't care if the house is a mess. I'll help you pick it up after they go to bed."

Just figuring out there the comfort level with some of those things, because some of the stress about saying “I do so much more”—it's like, well, yes, because you're the one who cares, and that's okay. I think that's important. That might sound harsh, but in a marriage, I think it's really important to figure out—what does he care about? What do you really care about? Then, what's achievable? Because I don't think we're honest about those things all the time.

Emily: I think for that decompression question to—like, as a mom, you can have time to decompress.

Laura: 100.

Emily: It's asking the question, "Hey, honey, yes. How can I help you in this?" Then also like, "I may need time." I think sometimes the bitterness comes because, as moms, we're not resting. We're not getting help. We're trying to do everything ourselves, and we're not having the margin to play—go back to our Whole series—to play, to learn, to grow, to think about different things, to have space. We don't mean in a selfish way, but that's an okay and a good thing to ask for so that you can love your family well. Sometimes I think that can relieve a little bit of the bitterness valve when it's also me speaking up and going, “Yes, I do need, again, that extra childcare or whatever those things are." Because it's not like one spouse gets like rest and the other spouse doesn't.

Laura: Right. Good point, good point. Next question. A lot of questions asking about how we met. They’re saying, "Hey, I know you’re sister-in-laws, but who is married to who’s brother?" We know it's confusing. Emily is married to my brother, Brad. I have two brothers, and she is married to my middle brother. We met because Brad brought her home one day [Laughter], and we did hit it off pretty instantly. I would say Risen Motherhood grew us together very deeply—perhaps more deeply than if it wasn't around. We've been through so much together.

Emily: Yes, whenever you work together and travel together—and our families are together and like do everything together, and our kids—like our oldest sons are BFFs. Yes, we just have a very close—a lot of our areas of life overlap.

Laura: Then, a lot of follow-up questions went something like this: “How do you cultivate such great relationships as sister-in-laws, and how do the other siblings or in-laws fit into the relationship?” Then someone even wrote, “Does everyone get along that well? Really?” [Laughter]

The answer to that is yes, really. We know that it's a huge gift. We know it's rare. We know this isn't something that happens a lot, and we are extremely grateful for it all the time. We praise God because ultimately, it is his kindness to us. We do think there are some things that have helped with our family relationship, especially as we've watched other families work through things. I think I've thought a lot about it— like, "Why does our family get along so well?" If you don't know, I'm next-door neighbors to one of my other brothers—my older brother. We literally live within 60 feet of each other and do things all the time together as well.

Brad and Emily live, as a crow flies, like a mile. We spend all—we spend lots of time together. We have other friends too, I promise. We're a very close-knit family, and Emily's going to weigh in here too. I think one big thing is we believe the best of one another. We always try to assume that person has good reason for the decisions that they're making for—if someone says something too harshly or maybe in a way that wasn't received well, like just knowing their heart and knowing that's not their intention. Just really trusting that each family is desiring to follow God.

My parents are really pretty big on that—allowing each family to flourish individually and differently while yet knowing, too, we have the same highest value, which is to honor God with our lives. I think my parents have modeled that and given us freedom as adult children. I think you would say that—right, Emily, even as an in-law?—which I think has been a gift. 

Then, another thing that my family, I think, models really well is we keep short accounts, and we say we're sorry to each other. If we have hurt one another, we will say, “Sorry”—the actual words—and we will ask for forgiveness because I know a lot of families—those aren't really words that they share. It's just assumed, or it's swept under the rug. I've been thankful because there have been times where I've had to say sorry to Emily or other things—other dynamics in the family where we've had to come back and say, “We're sorry.” Then also like—maybe someone doesn't say sorry, or maybe they didn't see it or whatever. I think we're good about keeping short accounts. Again, going back to that “believe the best” piece. I could go on and on, but I'll let you go in.

Emily: Yes, I think I really value a lot—and I think what I'm learning and we're all learning together is—to make room for differences. I think sometimes, even within a family, being different from one another can feel like, “Is somebody doing something wrong?” As life goes on—when you start and you're all young married couples, it feels like things are pretty similar. It's like, well, we all graduated from college, and we're all living in the same place. Then, life goes on and people have different amounts of kids at different times, and they have different challenges, and they get different jobs, and they move to different things. Your circumstances change.

Those changes, I think, don't need to be threatening. We don't need to feel like we're in competition with each other. Things like vacations and lifestyle choices and house sizes and what activities the kids are in—it can be really easy to look around, even within your own family, and stack yourself up and be like, “Well, they're ahead of me in this way, and I'm behind in this way, but we're ahead in this area, and they're behind.” That's just a really divisive mindset, and it's a really unhealthy mindset. 

I think it's really been nice to leave room for each couple to be who they are and to not have to even understand everything that the other couple is doing in order to love them and get along. I like that there can be freedom, to your point, for each couple to be who they are and to go where God is leading them and to say, "We wouldn't choose that, but we're excited for you guys to do that, and we see you honoring God." We do have hard conversations where it's asking questions of one another or encouraging or challenging one another but, ultimately, it being okay that we're all doing different things, and we're all going different places. And giving each couple room to do their own thing, I think, has been super helpful versus assuming we all want holidays to be the same. We all want family vacations to be the same. It's okay if we don't want the same thing, and we can try to give and take there and see where there's win-win.

Laura: I think give and take is big—of compromise. So, we could go on that for a long time, but really, it is great. But just also know—we have to say sorry to each other. We've said things we regret. We have not always been kind, and so I don't want it to come off either as, "Oh, they're this perfect little family." There's pain, and there's deep sorrow, and there's deep grief, and a lot of us have experienced it in a variety of ways, different from one another. We've experienced it together. It is not this Brady Bunch. It's very real, and it's very raw, but it's a group of people who say, “We love each other, and we value Jesus the most, and so what does that look like in our daily lives?” We're just asking that question over and over again.

Emily: Okay, totally switching gears here.

Laura: Here we go.

Emily: “What is your go-to weeknight recipe?” Laura, go.

Laura: Probably this Indian slow cooker butter chicken. It is so good, you guys. You're going to die. It's so good. It's in a slow cooker, which I love, so it makes it really easy.

Emily: Wonderful. I don't meal plan anymore.

Laura: I have slowed down a lot too.

Emily: I don't like meal planning. I have never liked meal planning.

Laura: Yes, it's the worst.

Emily: It's the right thing to do. I'm telling you it's the right thing to do, but I'm also saying we're thriving not meal planning anymore. [Laughter] You know what I do? I keep meat on hand. I keep vegetables on hand. I keep carbs on hand. Maybe each week I'll be—in my head, I know that I have these meal combinations, but I'm now very simple and boring in this area. No complex recipes. I rarely reference a recipe. If we are craving something like butter chicken, I will whip out a recipe. If we're craving something like—oh, we really want those carnitas that my husband makes—we'll follow a recipe, but most nights of the week, guys, I'm roasting pork loin with cut-up potatoes and carrots on the side, and then I'm making a box of mac and cheese, and we're having fruit, and we're having a salad. There you go. That's our meal.

Laura: Emily's a wizard, though, with seasonings, I would have to say. You've gotten a lot better.

Emily: All those non-recipes. I'm just having fun over there.

Laura: I had some of her chicken the other day off the grill, and I was like, “What is this magic?” It was so good. 

Okay, next one. This one is just for fun. “How did you guys find your personal style?” Emily's going to be your go-to gal on this, I'll be honest. If you guys have seen anything that I wear, I do not like bright colors. I am just a neutral, classic girl all the way. I have learned through purchasing blue sweaters or purple or whatever that I do not like feeling like a beacon of light in a room, and I just want to blend into the wall. I wear lots of jeans. I think one of the big things for me, in general, is I have a good eye for proportions, like in design and things like that. Not necessarily in clothing and fashion, but I have learned what works for my body type, and I think that was huge to make sure that whatever I choose—like, my boring clothing still looks interesting. Does that make sense? Emily? I'm looking to her for affirmations right now. Is this really?—I don't know if I can say that.

Emily: That's a real thing. If you're like, “Hey, I'm wearing something wide and flowy on the top,” you might need to have something a little bit more structured on the bottom. I think it's learning to balance shapes.

Laura: Knowing your body type.

Emily: Yes.

Laura: I know my best asset, and I try to show that off. Then the rest we try to cover. [Laughter]

Emily: I think—this is a huge thing I've learned over the last couple of years—to keep track of the outfits that I feel the best in—

Laura: —Ooh, that's a good one.

Emily: —then to try to really think through, after the fact, “Why did I like that outfit so much?” To try to communicate that: “I like the way it felt on my body. I like the way it made me look. I like that I felt feminine in it.” Whatever those things are—there's different words. Some people are like, “Oh, I like that I felt funky.” “I like that I felt casual.” “I like that I felt polished.” I've learned over time now—I can almost tell by looking at a shirt now online, “I'm not going to like the way that looks on my body.”

Laura: Wow, that is impressive.

Emily: Because I've tried a bodysuit tucked in seven different times, and every time that I've worn that, I have felt uncomfortable all day. But whenever I wear—

Laura: —It's probably because of the wedgie.

Emily: What? Probably the wedgie. [Laughter]

Laura: Yes, sorry.

Emily: There are real reasons why bodysuits are uncomfortable.

Laura: Let's just—yes.

Emily: The more that I think about “Oh, this outfit made me feel good—why?” and I've answered that question, then I can learn from that. Or “This outfit didn't make me feel good. I felt uncomfortable. I was adjusting my clothes all day. Why?” Often, it's like—there's certain necklines. I cannot stand a boat neck. I just can't do it. It's just a personal thing. I've noticed any time I ever buy a shirt with a boat neck, I am fidgeting my shoulders all day. I'm pulling it up. I look in the mirror, and I'm like, “Why is there so much skin over my shoulder showing?” It just feels so awkward on me.

For some people, that's not a big deal. When I see a shirt now online, if that's a boat neck, I'm just not even going to buy it. I know that I'm going to like a crew neck. V-neck I don't really like either. Anyways, it's like learning some of those things. I feel like the other thing about personal style—I don't think there's a quote anywhere, but this is the way I would describe it: “It's somewhere between who you are and who you aspire to be.”

Laura: That's a good quote.

Emily: It's this idea of like—okay, I have this thing in my mind. I want to dress—you and I will joke about certain styles, like royal style. I'm like, “Okay, that is so cool to me. I'm not going to wear that in Central Iowa.”

Laura: Emily's dream is to dress like Kate Middleton.

Emily: Yes, exactly. I'm like, that's great. I aspire to be Kate Middleton.

Laura: In central Iowa.

Emily: At the same time, knowing like, “Okay, so what elements of that fit into who I actually am and what my life actually is?” Trying to piece that together, I think, is really helpful. We've been throwing them around, but I think trying to find your style words—trying to say, “What words describe how you like to look?” Is it elegant? Is it feminine? Is it funky? I don't know. There's all of them out there. You can just Google style words—classic, effortless, feminine. I think if you have three to five words and then with every outfit—even if you're home, and you're like, "Hey, I'm just running errands today. I'm wearing athleisure." 

Maybe your words are classic, feminine, and sporty. In that outfit, you're like, “Does this outfit have an element of each of those words?” Maybe feminine would be something like the color choice is pink. Maybe you've added jewelry to the athleisure outfit, or you have a purse, or you've got some floral detail. There could be some way to say, “I'm going to wear this athleisure outfit, but I'm going to make it look like my style words.” There are all kinds of things like that.

Laura: I feel like I'm the type of person, though, that's like, “Give me a picture.” Emily did this for me a long time ago. She put all my clothes—I put on all my clothes. She did not put my clothes on. I put them on, and she would tell me what to do. Then she took a picture, and then I could just wear that to work each day. This was pre-babies. That is my favorite way. This is so interesting, but also, I'm like, “Whooo-uh,” and so, I think I'm the type of person that just wants you to show me the outfit. I like that on her. Does she sort of look like me? Great. I will wear that. I always just ask Emily, “Does this work or not?”

Emily: I think outfit formulas are part of developing your personal style.

Laura: Yes, I know some formulas because you've helped me with them.

Emily: Then, when you find a formula and you're—like, for me, I'm getting to be a jacket person. I just really love wearing jackets. That's becoming now part of my personal style because I'm like—that's part of my formula is I put a jacket over it.

Laura: You did have a jacket on earlier today.

Emily: I did. I took it off. It was a little hot, but usually I’m a jacket person. 

Laura: Formula!

Emily: But for you, maybe it's like button down and jeans.

Laura: —Love, love.

Emily: —with Converse. You get that formula—for some people, it might be a midi dress and sneakers and a jacket.

Laura: That's the thing is—I look at other people sometimes, and I think, “That is so cute.” Then I put it on me, and I'm like, “Why do I look like a frumpalump?” I just—

Emily: Well, I think there's some elements of personality that go into this.

Laura: How does your personality matter to what you wear, though? That's what I don't understand.

Emily: There are elements of body—like literally, the lines of your body. I think personality would be—there are just—whether you are more formal or you are more fun. I do think there are some people whose personalities—it's like they can wear—like we always talk about Ruth. Our friend Ruth has beautiful personal style, and she can wear the big turquoise ring and the gorgeous flowing kimono and these big glasses. I love that on her. I guarantee if I put all those things on, you'd be like, "Emily, who are you dressed up as today? Is it costume day?" I think, for me, those things would be overpowering. You have to go, “Okay, for your personality, what matches?”

Laura: I hear what you're saying. Yes. I'm like, “That is true,” but my brain is not computing how someone's personality matters to what they wear but okay. That is—I will believe you.

Emily: It’s like their house—like their personality and their house. 

Laura: I guess so. Home design helps me sometimes. Fashion just—it's interesting to a point. Then I check out, and that's how Emily feels about home design. It's interesting to a point.

Emily: Then I’m like, “Meh.” I just send it to Laura, and I'm like, “You just tell me what to do.”

Laura: Yes.

Emily: Okay. I can talk about this all day. Make me move on.

Laura: Next question: “What was your first job, Emily?”

Emily: I served samples at Sam's Club.

Laura: Oh man, that's so fun.

Emily: I had a friend whose mom served samples, and so—I couldn't drive, but we would go together and serve samples. I was a babysitter and stuff too, but that's the first time I got a printed check from an organization.

Laura: That's funny. Yes, that's what I was going to say is—I never really was a babysitter, but I worked for my dad for free. But I still worked for him. I don't know. Then, my first real job with a printed check, as you said, was Sears Portrait Studio.

Emily: Wow.

Laura: I would take family portraits.

Emily: Wow.

Laura: I had a little remote that could control a camera, and it would move around, and I would bring down backgrounds and pose them.

Emily: You're a photographer.

Laura: I'm a photographer! No, it was like a—

Emily: What you’re saying is—you are photographer.

Laura: It was a formula that I executed on.

Emily: That's funny.

Laura: Anyway. Next question is: “How do you think about social media as a mom?” We had a few questions on social media. We just wanted to mention this one is—that we have done a whole mini-series on this. It's called Wake Up. No, that's the workbook. The workbook is called Wake Up.

Emily: I think it's just called “The Social Media Mini-Series.”

Laura: I think it’s called “Social Media.” It’s just called “Social Media.” So, check it out. We'll link it in the show notes, but we do a deep dive, and, you guys, this is most honest Laura speaking. That is my absolute favorite mini-series—the one I am most proud of that we have ever done. Go listen to it because I think it's—I want to say revolutionary? That might be a little strong.

Emily: Might be a little strong. [Laughter]

Laura: It feels strong. I’m just going to leave it at that. Go check it out. Next question. What is it?

Emily: “What has been the most helpful thing in coming to terms with your changed body after you finished having babies? I'm realizing my body is no longer twenty, but I'm getting close to forty.”

Laura: This is our last question. Let's make it a good answer. I think a lot of things.

Emily: For me, I'm just like—I'm learning to be okay with accepting my forty-year-old body doesn't and can't and should not look like a twenty-year-old.

Laura: Amen.

Emily: Those are not where my goals are any more. I don't have goals of looking like I did when I got married. I don't even think even if I went on some special diet or some—I don't even know what I would do, but my body is in a different stage. My hormones are in a different stage. I've had five kids. I'm going to look different. My time is different. All kinds of things are different. For me, I think that I want to control what I can control. I'm not going to have younger people hormones, and I'm not going to reverse back the clock. I'm going to have wrinkles. My skin is getting saggier—all the things. But I think health has been a big focus for me because instead of thinking as much now about how my body looks—and I'm saying that knowing yes, I still have insecurities.

Yes. Some days I'm still like, “Oh, my skin hangs over my jeans in this weird way,” or “I wish my arms looked different” or whatever. I have those insecurities, but I think instead of focusing on “I want to change those,” I'm starting to think about "How can I prevent disease so that I am around and fully engaged and all those things as a grandma?" I want to have those fun years with my husband, Lord-willing, if we become empty nesters at some point or our situation changes. I don't want to be dealing with major health problems. What does it look like to be doing things now to steward my body well into that season, knowing that anything can happen and there's no guarantees and all of that stuff? I've just found it to be really empowering and exciting to make changes in those areas and feel my body feeling energized and healthy and better rested and all of those—and stronger.

That to me has been really fulfilling, and it's helped me overlook or more quickly steer away from some of those—like I'm trying on swimsuits and that's not fun, but it's getting easier for me to just be like, “Yes, but I'm eating a lot of veggies, and I feel really good about my nutrition right now.” I don't know—does that make sense?

Laura: Yes, it totally makes sense. I think that is a mentality shift of—when we're young, I think a lot of times, you're thinking about thinness or jean size or just being generally skinny or whatever. Then, as you get older, I think—and that's your value. At twenty years old, your value is “Do I look good in a bikini?”—or a one-piece. Whatever you're wearing. Then, when you're forty, or we're—at the time this comes out, we'll both be thirty-eight. I think when we're thirty-eight, we're thinking much more about, yes, “Am I protecting my body against diseases?” You're seeing parents, and you're seeing other people around you—people you love and are your age—get cancer. You're seeing them having struggled with arthritis or just all sorts of different things are coming on. Your value starts changing because your own body's hurting too.

It's less about “Am I skinny?” or “Do I look really good in these clothes?” It's much more about “How do I feel?” and “How can I prepare my body for the next twenty years where I can see we're falling apart?” That's just going to happen. I do think there's a real value shift from twenty to forty or young motherhood to older motherhood. I feel like with aging—you and I have a lot of thoughts. We talk about this all the time. I think something else that has been—I'll say maybe two things. One is: I decided this a long time ago—maybe ten years ago—I was like, “I would rather carry around ten extra pounds and eat food and enjoy it and not hate myself because I'm being so restrictive about my food than have to really heavily restrict what I eat in a way just to be thin.”

Now, food restrictions for health, for healing—I think there are real places for that. But if it's like, "Hey, I want to go on a diet"—I was like, "No, I'd rather just carry ten extra pounds and enjoy my food instead of feeling like I'm restricting out of desire to be thinner." That was a good spot for me to get and feel like there was just freedom there of where my body wanted to be in terms of weight and then what my lifestyle looked like with eating. I think now, you and I have both learned a lot more about nutrition. I know I'm working on a lot of things with healing with chronic pain. Again, I don't want to say food restrictions in order to heal or for your health is wrong; I'm doing that right now.

That being said, the other thing I think that was really helpful for me and pretty transformative was—at some point throughout Risen Motherhood, I think I just learned a lot about Jesus and the fact that he kept the scars on his hands. After he raised from the dead, he shows Thomas his scars, and he could have erased those—he could have come back with this perfectly perfect body. I don't know if Jesus has other scars from his time as a carpenter or times he fell as a kid or—I don't know what the rest of his body looks like, but the fact that he would keep a mar or a blemish on his body—his resurrected body—was just incredibly compelling to me, and something that I thought, “If that's acceptable to Jesus—the Savior, the King of the universe—then I need to accept that in my own body.”

Ever since then, I think that I've thought a lot about how keeping the marks of life—the marks of the fall, evidence of a life lived—how important that is as our testimony. Yes, scars—like, I had an appendectomy two years ago, so I have the three scars on my belly and other things—but also things like wrinkles, things like—I don't know— what do they call it? Turkey neck or what. All the things that we're going to get just through naturally aging—through living a long time. I think that it feels really exciting to keep those things present and keep them visible in order to be a testimony to a watching world that this world isn't our final home. I think when I got to that point of— it's really a mind shift change from “Hey, I want this eternal youth now here on earth. I want to look really good so that I have this acceptance.” Instead, to say, “No, I'm aging because I'm one day closer every day to meeting my Savior, and I'll get my perfect body then.” I know I'm going to get the best body in the universe at that time. I'm okay if it means that my marred, imperfect, aging, wrinkled, shriveled body reflects that I live in a fallen world, and that this world isn't where I'm staying. I think it’s a signal. I think that that's something that feels—it's just a mindset shift change that I wish I could pass out to moms and be like, “Try this out because it really will change how you feel about your body.”

Emily: We're a little bit on the front end of this. Yes, we don't know—

Laura: —Yeah, talk to us when we’re sixty and how we'll feel.

Emily: —how we feel, but I do think—just like in Scripture where it promises suffering. Scripture promises trials and tribulation. It's not like if you're going to suffer or if things are going to be hard; it's like when. The same thing is true for our bodies changing. Scripture says, “Don't be shocked” because we are literally wasting away and decaying. It was interesting—I was reading this article a while back about a guy who's literally trying to like live; he's trying to prolong his life indefinitely. He has a ton of money, and he's doing all these different cell reversal—like any technology that is available. He's biologically like reversed his age.

Laura: Really?

Emily: Yes, it's fascinating. I'm like—I know scripturally, he can't beat out the fall. He can't beat out death. You can't beat out God. I think it's a little bit like Tower of Babel but like our own bodies, where sometimes we just are thinking in our pride, “I can reverse the curse through all these external things.” Maybe it isn't really that way, or maybe I'm not really aging, or maybe my body can go back to looking the way it did at twenty or better. It's like, okay. Fine. I guess you could do that temporarily. You're not going to hack the curse. Only Jesus and what he's done for us on the cross does that. And like you said, the body that we're really longing for—the only eternal life we're going to get—is after his return, when we're with him forever. I think it's so freeing to accept that and to go, "Yes, that's a normal part of it—wrinkles. That gray hair is part of it.”

Laura: I love it whenever I meet a woman, and she is just like—I remember, there was like a teacher who like threw his leg up on a desk and was like, “I'm 50!” and was like just super proud of it in high school. I think that there's something when I meet a woman who doesn't mind aging, and she's not like, “Older woman?”—super offended. Again, I have been called the older woman actually a couple of times now, and I'm like, "Thank you." Maybe it changes if you get called all the time or whatever. But I'm like, "I think that's a sign of respect and honor." My mom, for example, is like, "Heck yes, I'm the older woman." I think there's just something of accepting that and being like, “It's not offensive to be old.” I think that that's often, though, how we feel. Anytime we say someone's mature, old, whatever—that's like an offensive term.

I'm like, "No, Scripture says gray hair is what? ‘A crown of glory?’" Now I can't remember what it is, but something like that. That means that we should be proud that we've grown old. We're one day closer to heaven. I don't know. I don't want to live forever. I'm like, “Take me, Jesus.”

Emily: It's okay—I think I'm learning—the older I get, the more I'm like, “Okay, it's good also for me to grieve and let go of things that I'm sad about that I don't have any more as I'm getting older.” There are changes. There are things that you never get back or can't re-experience again.

It's also okay to say, “That was fun. I wish I would have appreciated that more than I did. I'm sad, and I miss that because I won't ever have that again in this life.” I think acknowledging that is part of what allows you to then move forward to the next step of like—okay, so then in my life right now, is there something that I'm not appreciating? Is there something that I'm not making the most of? Is there a gift that God's given me in this season that I'm not realizing? Part of that, I think for me—and you're on this journey too—is recognizing, "Oh, I still have actually a lot of power to shape my health right now.” That it's not impossible—because it's harder when you're trying to turn the whole ship of your health when you're in your seventies or something like that—and going, "Oh, okay, maybe this is something that I will look back on decades from now and be like, ‘Oh, thirty-eight was still young.’" It's all perspective.

Laura: I'll be curious what our thoughts are when we are sixty or seventy, if we make it there. They may change, and I don't know—I'll be curious what they are. But anyway, with all that—woof, the doozy of a show. Lots of questions in there. Hope you guys enjoyed some of these. You can check out our show notes for any of the resources that we mentioned today, because I know we mentioned a lot of different things within there. Head over there if you want more information, and we will be back in just a couple of weeks, actually—probably. I don't know. Three, four, or five weeks? Something in there. Emily always hates when I say time. [Laughter]

Emily: I don't know.

Laura: She's like, “Ah, pressure.” No, something in there. Give us grace. We'll be back in a few weeks with our fall mini-series about Gospel Mom. We're just going to be talking about foundational skills of what it means to be a gospel mom. We cannot wait. So definitely tune in and watch for that when it comes out!