Whole 03: The Surprising Value of Learning in Motherhood Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily Jensen: I still remember driving home from the hospital and having our first son in the back seat and thinking to myself, “I can't believe they let us go home with him, because I don't know what I'm doing.” And looking at my husband, being like, "Do you know what you're doing?" And really truly feeling like, "I don't remember—when am I supposed to change the diaper? How am I supposed to swaddle? What's the whole rhythm with feeding and sleeping and all the things?"
Perhaps previous generations of mothers came into motherhood knowing more, but I do think it's a common experience that moms enter motherhood now and feel like “There's a whole world of things that I need to learn.” It's really normal to then go into a season of months or years where a lot of the things that you're focused on learning and growing in knowledge of are related to your kids.
Laura Wifler: For sure. You feel like you only have a limited amount of time to do research and to grab books. So what's it going to be about? Well, it's going to be about this huge thing that has just overturned your life. There's an element that I think is so right and so good—that moms are saying, "I am eager to learn about this. I want to care for my child while it's in their best interest. I want to do a good job." That totally makes sense.
I remember doing a lot with—probably the young moms who are listening are going to be like, "What is this stuff? You guys are so old"—Baby Wise. Remember that? And Twelve Hours by Twelve Weeks. There was like a co-sleeping book—there were like all the options for sleeping. But there were like three books that were really big where everybody was reading all three and then deciding what kind of sleeper they're going to be. Baby-Led Weaning—that was huge. I don't even know how babies are fed now. I wouldn't even know.
Emily: How do they do it? Did they put food on a plate and then get it in their mouth? I'm just kidding.
Laura: I remember you were supposed to put the whole avocado on. You weren't supposed to put it on a spoon. There was no baby food. I don't know—it might be like, "Give him the whole cow." I don't know. [Laughter]
Emily: I remember trying to learn also how to parent. There was this whole world of reading books because I don't know how to respond when they look you in the eye and they say, "No," or they're having a tantrum. What do you literally do? Break it down for me.
Laura: What do I say? Give me the script.
Emily: Step by step. How do you handle these different situations? I think that that type of content has exploded even more so than when we had babies and toddlers. It feels like sometimes on my Instagram, every other reel is, "Here's how to talk to your kids about this, and here's how to talk to your kids about that, and here's how to respond with that." There is this real need we have to be practically equipped. If you didn't take a bunch of childhood development classes—
Laura: If you don't have a mother-in-law nearby or a mom nearby or someone who's helping you from your church—
Emily: —You’ve got to learn about all that stuff.
Laura: You’ve got to learn. No matter what, you’ve got to learn, but it depends on where you get it, I suppose. We want to pause and say: this whole episode is about learning, and, as you guys all know, this whole series is about becoming whole women—not just focused only on motherhood but seeing all the different ways that we can be interested in things and honor ourselves as women of God. Yet, it is right and good to want to spend time studying up and learning about how to take care of our children. But I think for you and I, Emily, we've talked a lot about how we really didn't learn anything about any other topic.
Emily: Everything else put on hold for five years.
Laura: It was like motherhood and the gospel, right? That's how this whole ministry started. It's like, "Oh, let's talk about what we're learning. Let's process it out loud." That's so great, but there's also an element that—sometimes as I look back and think, I think I could have spent a little bit of time learning about other things and broadening my scope. I don't know.
Emily: We definitely can see in Scripture that God created us to be learners. I think that is just baked into how our brains work, to how we grow and develop. We desire to grow in our knowledge and in our understanding of things. We see that in Adam and Eve. We don't know all of the specific ways that they learned. Was it from experience? Was it from talking with God as he walked with them in the cool of the day? Was it through trial and error? Was it through observation?
Probably all of those ways and more. They weren't sitting around reading textbooks about how the world worked, but they were learning about how it worked. We see that even throughout Scripture—it's God's design that we would grow in our knowledge of things, in our knowledge of who he is, in our knowledge of people and how the world works. Even just science and math and all of those different things—it's a way that we worship him.
I like to think about that. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.” One of the ways that we love God is with our mind as we gain an understanding and knowledge and facts and all of the different things. We are loving God as we are growing our minds, and we're thinking more about him.
Laura: I always think it's interesting—as we were talking about this show, I was like, "Oh, learning is such a good thing. It's the way God designed us." Yet, we see the Fall is actually because there was a natural curiosity from Eve to say, "Could life be a little bit better? I want to learn if there's something on the other side."
Emily: And the tree that was off-limits was the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Laura: Yes, you're right. It's all about learning. I thought that was really interesting. I was like, "What does that mean?" as we were talking about this show, and I think that there is something—that this signals to us, though—there are things that are not worth learning about and that we can waste our time to a point that it leads us down to the path of death—of literally drastic, quite life-shattering circumstances that we can begin to cultivate if we are choosing to apply our minds to things that aren't worth learning about—if we're not using discernment about these things. I feel like you had some stuff that you were sharing about how curiosity can go awry in motherhood. Maybe we'll pit stop here and then keep going.
Emily: It's interesting because I think most of us in the social media age have heard of the phrase "doom scroll." You guys know what that is, yes?
Laura: Oh, I know what that is. You're talking to the audience. I'm just listening.
Emily: I think there can be this sort of doom-learning mindset that we go into where—maybe the verse that it brings up for me is that one from 2 Timothy 4:3-4 where it says, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but they'll have itchy ears . . . they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions."
That's really thinking more in a theological context, but I also think that there is this thing where, out of a desire to gain a sense of control and security, we would be like, "If I could just know things that others don't know, then I have some more type of control in this life that I have—in motherhood, in my family." It's almost like information and hearing things that soothe us and fit our paradigm and tell us exactly what we want to hear becomes a form of capital that gives us power.
It's like money or influence, except for it's "I know something extra special and interesting about motherhood or about how the world works or about how to do this parenting thing that other people don't know because you guys haven't awakened to it yet," or whatever those things are. I think in that, we can distort learning instead of being accepting that there are things that we can't know. We aren't just out there looking for information to soothe ourselves or to give us a sense of security.
We're not going to be able to fully know everything, but we can rest in God in faith and be humble not only toward God but towards others. I think it's interesting that there's this verse in Ecclesiastes that says, "For with much wisdom is much sorrow. As knowledge increases, grief increases" [1:18]. Learning and gaining knowledge is listed among the vanities—among the things that we can throw ourselves into and pour ourselves into.
We can become amazing at research and amazing at uncovering and amazing at watching this YouTube video and then reading this article and putting all the pieces together. There can be a vain striving in that, and there can be the sense that, as we are going deeper and deeper and deeper—deeper into the rabbit hole—what are we really gaining? As we've gained that knowledge, are we also increasing in sorrow?
There's a risk there. I think there's also a risk. I think the verse that talks about—oh, it's also in 2 Timothy, where he warns about women who are always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. I think we also see that today in the culture of “do your research” and learn about everything. Of course, we're saying some of that is good, but I do think that there is a point where we're using our brains to become experts in things that are going to pass away and that don't matter eternally. There's a balance there. Are we willing to chase down rabbit holes of things of the Lord? Are we interested in our Bibles at all or are we only interested in uncovering whatever this thing is that’s going to just help us so much if we could just figure it out?
Laura: It's a very good caution. It's sobering when we think about learning because, as we're talking about this, it's clear that humans have a natural bent to want knowledge and that's good but can easily be turned into something disastrous. I think there's a good warning with that. I like what you're saying—are we learning about the things of God and the things that he delights in and he says are good? There are so many things under that umbrella. But then there are other times where, naturally I think, we want to delve into things that are not edifying or good for us and so we have to be cautious. Or there can be a time where you've spent too much time on something.
Emily: Yes.
Laura: To keep us going here—with redemption, I think that Jesus gives such a beautiful example of what it means to be a learner. I think it's so wild that the God of the universe also spent time learning. In Luke 2:46, we see him as a child. He's sitting there at the temple; he is listening. He's asking questions. Hebrews 5:8 states it completely explicitly: “he learned obedience from the things that he suffered.” Even just his life experiences—he's taking that to heart and he's learning. We see in Christ's example that God uses the things that we learn to help us serve others, to fulfill our mission. God doesn't waste anything.
Then, Jesus even turns around and he charges us to become learners ourselves. We think about where he states it again, explicitly, in Matthew 11:29: "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me." Matthew 28:19, the Great Commission, says, "Go and make disciples of all nations." Basically, we're commissioned there to go and make learners. The word “disciple” is someone who sits under the teaching of another—it's someone who is learning. How can we go and make learners if we are not learners ourselves?
Something I think is important to remember, too, is that biblically, we consistently see Scripture—in contrast to what Adam and Eve did and many others have done—Scripture upholds people who love learning about the things of God. When David talks about, "God, all I want to do is meditate on your Word day and night," he knew God because he learned about God, and that was considered a very good thing.
Emily: Ultimately, even though we don't have clarity on, like, "How much will we know when we get to heaven?"—we know that, for now, we see in a mirror dimly, but eventually, we will see face to face. First Corinthians talks about this. It says, "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known" [13:12]. There's this sense—and I forget what the other verse is; I'm getting them mixed up in my head—but there's one about "You see with a veil, and then you're going to see with unveiled face" [2 Cor. 3:18].
There's this sense that there is a limit to how we can know and understand things in this life, but that limit is going to be removed in heaven, and we're going to be able to more fully understand God and his grace and Christ and all the things that God has made. There's a lot of speculation and mystery about that—about what learning is going to look like in heaven. I think that we know this is going to be made perfect, and those distortions are going to no longer exist.
Laura: We won't know everything God knows in heaven. We know we won't be God. I think that we can have a pretty good assurance that there will be some learning, some surprise, some delight, some wonder that's experienced in heaven.
With all of this said, we wanted to pull together just one bigger example from Scripture. So much of Scripture, as we talked about, talks about loving God—learning about him. I want to take a second to zero in on Daniel for a hot minute because, as I was prepping for the show, I was struck. Daniel has these three companions, and I'm not even going to mention their names because I will ruin them, but they are chosen for the service of King Nebuchadnezzar.
If you haven't read the book of Daniel recently, go reread it. It's just a fun read—some prophecy in there. There's history; it's fun. Daniel 1—it says this, "To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning, and Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds" [v.17]. A few verses later, it then says, "In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, the king found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom" [1:20].
I thought this was so interesting—God doesn't just make them experts in himself and his laws. It says, "In all kinds of literature and all kind of learning." I think that that is encouraging to us to say, "Hey, we aren't confined to be just these little Christian robots that we're only going to learn about theology." We want to learn about theology; we want to learn about God. That's an important facet, but also, we can take the things that we've learned as doctors and nurses and teachers and business people and all the different careers that I'm sure people are doing out there who are listening to this podcast—of all the different education; of all the different experiences in areas of science, psychology, and sociology; and all of the things—we can take them and we can have them help inform our study of God's Word and our study of our life. They inform the way that we live holistically. This is going back to our theme of—we are whole people; we are not just mothers. I think it's important that we carry the weight of both and recognize that we're learning from the book of Scripture—learning from the Bible—but we're also learning, in God's design, from the book of life—our lived experiences and the knowledge we gain.
Emily: Yes. Even though we have all these opportunities to learn, first and foremost, in God's Word and then also just in things around us, it is still hard in day-to-day life and motherhood to be like, "Okay, I'm going to take time to learn something outside of what I absolutely have to." That can be for a lot of reasons. We think sometimes it's because we might feel like we don't have anything to learn. We might feel like we're a little bit of an expert in a certain area, or we've already arrived at a conclusion and there isn't much more we want to add to that.
Or maybe we can't see how we could possibly learn from someone who—"Oh, they're a little bit too old for me to listen to them,” or “Someone is a little bit too young to listen to." It's amazing to go back to Jesus and think about all that he learned, and the humility and the willingness that he had. This is, again, God as man, learning from others. If he humbles himself and is able to learn in that way, then we definitely still have things to learn. We have not arrived yet.
Laura: Yes. Another one I think that can often hold us back is that we don't want to look silly, or we have this fear of man that "Oh, we don't want everyone to know that we actually don't know those kinds of things." I think sometimes this can happen a lot too when we're trying to learn a new skill or a new endeavor, and so our skill sets are on display. This is where we want these results more than we actually want to do the work. It's important to remember that God doesn't ever promise results in our life.
He doesn't promise that "Hey, all this stuff you're going to learn is going to work out and you're going to be the very best in your field. You're going to be the best and the brightest. You're going to be delivering TED Talks." Those are not promises that we find, but we do find that we are supposed to be people that work hard, that are industrious, that are not lazy, that we apply our minds and our lives to the world around us. I think that that's something that we can remember: it's not about us. Our identities are in Christ. It's not about whether or not we're going to impress other people. We can still go ahead and continue to learn and grow.
Emily: Any time we're learning and growing, I think it's hard because we feel uncomfortable for a time. If you learn something and you realize it changes the way that you should be doing your life or the way that you're going about this or that routine or the way that you're approaching your health or whatever those things are, there's going to be some uncomfortable changes. Sometimes we don't want that. I know that I felt that in motherhood before, where I'm like, "I am at capacity for the amount of change and craziness that I can handle. I can't then have this big area of life where I've learned a new thing also change."
We get that—that there are times when that's really challenging, but we have to realize that's one of the things that can happen as you get older that maybe always isn't the best. We can get stuck in our ways and feel like, "Well, I would rather just stick on with what I knew before versus learning something new and there being the possibility that I may have to change something." I really go back more and more to this idea that Christians pursue truth, and we're freed by truth. As Christians, I feel like we should be the most hungry for knowing what the truth really is—if we can find it, as God allows—knowing that any change that comes about as it's more and more in line with the truth is going to be freeing for us.
Laura: In all of these, as we overcome those barriers, I think a cool facet of this is that we're actually showing a good example to our children of what it means to be that disciple or that learner. We're showing that posture of being someone who's humble to say, "I don't know it all, but I want to find out. I want to discover and grow more." Then, as we gain that knowledge, we get to pass it on. We get to teach it to our children. That is what is so fun about it.
It's funny because I think to myself—we were at the beginning of the show saying, "Baby-led weaning and all these sleep things." Those are going to be irrelevant by the time my girl has babies. That's probably not going to be helpful to her, but there will be some truths that I can learn now—girl, I spent all that time in motherhood, and it helped me in the moment, but there are lots of things that we can learn that are going to help us lifelong and that may be even better to apply ourselves to.
Some practical ways to begin learning:
First of all, just pick one or two topics to learn about. This is something that, when you have a bigger topic, you can allow yourself to have years to learn about it. Something like—for me, I know that I took years to learn about exercise. Literal years. I'm still learning good form. I'm still learning—I see all these things online where they've got this insider language and terms. I still don't even know all those words. I've been trying to learn and grow in exercise and what it means to do strength training for years and years and years. But not putting the pressure on that “I’ve got to learn this in a week” can help quite a bit.
Emily: I think another thing is—you can consider it in the context of even like a hobby or an endeavor that you want to embark on that you've never done before, that feels a little bit risky—foreshadowing to another episode. For me, I think this was gardening. I remember feeling like, “I have a black thumb, but I'm just going to try this. Why not?” It has taken me years now through reading books, listening to podcasts, reading articles online, failing, and trial-and-error to learn about a topic that I knew nothing about before that seemingly has no connection to motherhood. Yet, I think that learning about gardening and embarking on that new hobby has really enriched aspects of motherhood. Especially when I see my daughter out there and she knows the names of the flowers now and she sings to the flowers. It's like, “I never would have had that moment in motherhood had I thought, ‘No thanks, I don't have time to learn something new.’”
Laura: Right. Another way to just start learning is ask somebody wise out for a coffee date. Ask somebody wise—
Emily: Or coffee cake.
Laura: Is that what I said, “Cake?” I couldn't even tell what I said. Okay. Ask someone wise out for a coffee date or cake. Yes. Have like an intentional conversation with them. Even about something that's a very specific topic. I know that I asked a friend of mine, who was a great hostess, and she was incredible at hospitality. I just started picking her brain. I was like, "Why do you do this? Why do you do that? How do you think ahead for this? What would you do if that happened?" We were just going on and on. She had all these awesome answers. Part of it was experiencing her hospitality. Then part of it was asking her questions to help me break it down. “Where do you buy those plates? Where did you get this tool, that tool? What would you say are the most essential?” Be curious, have a natural curiosity about you, and get good at asking questions. I think that has really—it has been so beneficial for me now as I go out and try to sort of model after her. Just taking that time to ask the questions.
Emily: We can also—you can purchase a course, a handbook, a class. I remember discovering—and this was in my young mom years—discovering there are free seminary classes online (you can listen through all the lectures) and thinking, "Okay, I don't even have to go sit in a building, but I have listened through several seminary-level classes.” And just learning about topics theologically that were really interesting to me. There's all of that in other topics too. It doesn't have to just be theology. Anything that you want to learn about out there—there's a course, there's a coach, there's somebody who will give you their expertise.
Laura: Lastly, we just want to encourage you to make it a goal to apply one to two things that you're learning this month into your real life, because you can hear a lot of things, you can read a lot of things, you can watch a lot of things, but we all know it doesn't get under your skin until you actually try it. Maybe this month, it's implementing one to two things that you've learned or are rehearsing. If you're taking a seminary course, you're rehearsing or reapplying some things that you learned in that.
Over time, it's amazing the amount of knowledge that you can accumulate. We hope that maybe for some of you guys, the Lord is bringing to mind something that you're like, “I've had some curiosity about that,” or “I've wanted to take a leap; I've wanted to take a risk there.” Maybe this is just the nudge that you need to take a leap of faith and start to learn. Be humble, be disciples, be people who learn and grow, and then go and pass that on.
