Podcast Transcript: Episode 12

INTRO 

COURTNEY: Welcome to the Women & Work podcast, the show that inspires you to confidently step into your God-given calling & view your work as meaningful to the Kingdom of God. 

I’m Courtney Moore.

MISSIE: And I’m Missie Branch. We want to introduce you to women who through their own unique vocations are seeing what they do make an eternal difference.

COURTNEY: We pray these conversations will inspire you in your own calling to honor God, image Him to the world through your work, and leverage your potential for His glory. 

MISSIE: Thanks so much for joining us today.

SPONSORSHIP

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Thank you, Elevate!

GUEST INTRODUCTION

MISSIE: Welcome everybody. We’re so excited to be doing this particular interview. We have with us, Ruth Chou Simons. She is an entrepreneur, an artist, a speaker, author, writer, author, author, and she’s a wife and a mom. Ruth, we are so excited to have you. Welcome.

Ruth Chou Simons: Thanks so much for having me, ladies.

CM: That’s right. And so, Ruth, we’re so glad you’re here. You have written several books, including GraceLaced, Beholding and Becoming, and Foundations. You also have a brand new book set to… When is it set to release, Ruth? 

RS: October 12th.

CM: October 12th. It’s called When Strivings Cease: Replacing the Gospel of Self-Improvement with the Gospel of Life Transforming Grace. And I gotta tell you, when I was reading about this book, I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is a book for Women & Work.” Can you just tell us a little bit about it? 

RS: I feel like it’s a cornerstone book of my ministry. It’s the book that I probably could have written first, but because I was serving my audience with devotional work, I’m an artist, I’ve been for years, pairing short works about… You know, short words about the Lord with artistic creations: Paintings, water colors. And so all my books previous to this one had been largely devotional, meditational in nature and they’ve really been out-workings of this very message that’s coming now in When Strivings Cease.

RS: So When Strivings Cease is a trade. It’s 15 chapters and it’s just more text-driven and it’s not art-driven, but it’s really my story of being an Asian-American immigrant coming to understand faith when the culture I came from and the culture I was growing up in, both so highly valued performance and approval chasing and the idea of almost just earning your worth. And so, as you know, the core of the gospel message is that we are saved by grace, not our works. And so it very much is a message that helps women recognize once and for all that self-help and self-improvement alone just holds no value, that we can lay our strivings down and receive grace instead.

MB: Oh my goodness.

CM: Sounds great.

MB: This is gonna be so exciting to… I cannot wait to read this book. I’m very, very excited to get this in my hands and into the hands of other women. Okay, but before we dive in, we always start our podcast with three what we call rapid fire questions, where we really get to know the people who have joined us. Just some silly things, but… Are you ready? 

RS: Okay. Do it.

MB: Okay. So the first one is, Ruth, as a kid, what did you wanna be when you grew up? 

RS: I idolized that cartoon character, Jem and I thought I was for sure gonna be a rockstar. That’s what I really thought, I was gonna be a punk rockstar.

MB: What.

CM: I love Jem.

MB: Jem and The Holograms.

CM: She would transform. Wouldn’t she transform, Jem and…

MB: Jem and The Holograms.

RS: Yes, I loved her. I loved her. [chuckle]

CM: That was it.

MB: I love everything about that. That’s awesome.

CM: Alright, Ruth, what was your first job? 

RS: You know my first real job was I worked as an assistant manager for a Maurices store. And Maurices is like you know a department store.

MB: Okay.

RS: So when you see that I’m in retail now, like I’ve got some chops in retail. [chuckle] Yes, full circle.

MB: That’s awesome. Okay, and the last question is, what kind of work do you want to be doing when you’re 80 years old? 

RS: Wow, you know I picture myself at 80 discipling women. Just that’s what I really wanna be doing. I wanna be still active in the local church and I really just hope that I’m still in the game and still discipling women and having people over to my house for tea and coffee and…

MB: I love it. I love it. Great, beautiful.

CM: So you mentioned that your family were immigrants to the United States, were you born here in the… I guess you weren’t born here, if you were an immigrant. Where were you born and how old were you when you came and just fill us in on that background? We’re so curious to hear about that.

RS: I’ll try not to give the full life story because you can read a little bit more about it in the book, but I was born in Taipei, Taiwan. My parents… They were born in Taiwan after their parents were escaping communism in ’49. And so when you think of our family, we were really escaping China and found refuge in Taiwan, and so two generations born there and…

CM: Okay.

RS: I immigrated to the United States when I was three, almost four. My grandparents on my dad’s side were already here. And so there were all these dreams about going to school and starting the American dream life. And long story short, it didn’t come to fruition quite like that between heartaches and family relationships. We’re talking sinful patterns and things that you don’t expect between just hardships and relationships. Those things never came quite to fruition, but in the sovereignty of God, we certainly did have a purpose in coming. Because ultimately we truly as a family met Christ, walked with the Lord, and began a new life, both. And we started off in the east coast, near Maryland, and because of some family ties, ended up in New Mexico. And it just seems crazy that we ended up in New Mexico, but the Lord had me there for so many years.

And so I fell in love with the desert. I fell in love with… Because New Mexico was not flush with Asian Americans. I got to grow up in the community where I actually knew the Asian-Americans in that town and back then, that was a really special and rare thing in the Southwest. And so…

MB: Sure.

RS: Yeah. That’s a long story, but ultimately, I think the context of growing up as an Asian-American girl in Western culture was one where I really compared and contrasted. Even though culture, we all have our cultural backgrounds and our family histories, but it was one that really was poignantly showing me how much there is a performance and approval and acting out of needing to earn worth, whether through education or through the right behavior. And so once I really heard the Gospel message, it was actually really startling and hard to understand when I had been really raised in a surrounding culture that said straight A’s and being a really great daughter and making the right choices, that’s where it’s at. And so… So yeah, the book that I’ve written and releasing in October really uncovers that journey and how the grace of God actually changes everything, including my life, you know, it tells the story of that.

MB: Right. It’s interesting how our own culture, our own families, our own communities can sometimes be our greatest gift and our greatest nemesis at the same time, right? [chuckle]

RS: Sure.

MB: It’s beautiful.

CM: Well, and it really plays into the name GraceLaced…

RS: Absolutely. Yeah.

CM: Your shop. It really seems to flow directly with maybe how the Lord was leading you to even name your shop.

RS: Well, I think that’s exactly… It’s interesting because this book really feels like the cornerstone book, the book that should have come first. But I’m really grateful that the Lord did set the timing up this way, because what I’ve been really focusing on in the last several years in my other books has been to minister to the hearts of readers and women, in intimate places, as they seek the Lord in a devotional nature. But now I’m going back and saying, “Here’s why grace changed everything. And why grace is not just some fun, sweet, fluffy word we see on mugs, but that it really is the means by which we come fully welcome and not trying to earn our way into the presence of God.” And that actually should and will change everything in a self-help, self-improvement, self-actualization age that we live in, right? 

MB: Right. Yes.

CM: Amen. Beautiful.

MB: Well, Ruth, GraceLaced is a platform for you to share your artwork and one of the things that I love is that… I mean, it is so beautiful and I think I appreciate the fact that it does. You don’t shy away from pieces being feminine, but then you don’t shy away from pieces being theological, and you don’t shy away from seeing those things come together in a way that’s actually really very beautiful and not demeaning or degrading at all, but really shining light on biblical femininity. So it’s beautiful. My question for you is, when did you know you were an artist? When did you realize, “I see this and I can make this be on paper”? 

RS: You know, I feel like my mom told me that I started drawing when I was four or five. I’ve always been artistic and then in the years when I was a mom with a bunch of littles… No, I wasn’t sitting around luxuriously painting and starting a business. I was doing well just to get dinner on the table and getting the laundry folded. And so sometimes that creativity came out once a year in a certain project, or the way I hung my drapes, or the way I styled my food, and so creativity has always been a part of my life. But it wasn’t until there was a season in which I could see, “Wow, the fruit of my labors,” as a mom was starting to take shape and, no, I didn’t have to do everything around the house. And there was a new season where I just could sense through prayer and just through waiting that the Lord was giving me a green light and my husband and I were like, “This is the right time. Let’s tiptoe into this.” And you know what, Missie? There was never a plan to be what GraceLaced is right now.

CM: Wow.

MB: Wow.

RS: There was not a plan to be an international lifestyle brand or a big business or a licensed product. None of those things. Like there were… But the only dream was to use my giftings in a way where I didn’t have to separate the sacred and the secular.

CM: Yes.

MB: That’s beautiful.

RS: Just because… Just because you paint some… You don’t have to paint a Bible verse to be a believer reflecting the image of God. So hear me say that loud and clear for anyone listening. You can work in the secular workplace, you can start a business and paint landscapes and never paint a single verse, and you could absolutely proclaim the glory of God in your own life through your life and who you are and how you run your business. But I, particularly, because of the words I love to write and say, I found such a sweet marriage between writing words that might pierce the heart or cause somebody to think about their walk with the Lord differently, but then to have that come alongside something visual that would give them recall and that would cause them to shift their gaze. And then in a physical form to surround them in their everyday life, so that there are reminders of the grace of God and the Gospel and the word that’s been given to us. So that’s where GraceLaced came out of and that’s why…

I think it could change. I don’t think that it has to be the products that you see right now, but in this season, this is exactly what God’s given me to do, and so when you say, I love that you just said, Missie, that we don’t shy away from pieces being theological, I love that you say that because we have never been stuff people. We’ve never wanted to just simply create things that match furniture or simply just to create things, to have things. We always have felt that it’s content-driven, so if we’re gonna show you a verse, we’re gonna talk about the passage that comes out of… We’re gonna share why I personally, as the founder and author, have grown from studying that and thinking about it, and so… So yeah, theology matters and what we believe about the Word of God, actually undergirds everything we create at GraceLaced.

MB: That’s beautiful.

CM: That’s so great. And so you and your husband have worked together a little bit. You guys wrote your book Foundations together, and so how long have you been married? That’s my first question, and then the second kinda that goes with it, I heard you share on another podcast that marriage, it hasn’t been a walk in the park. And so I’d love for you to just… We love to get real, we’d love to just get real on this podcast…

RS: I just find it so funny when people ask me things like, “Do your kids ever fight?” or “Do you and Troy ever fight?” I just wanna say loud and clear, every single believer wrestles with disobedient children and difference in marriages, I don’t… There’s no one that’s having the… There’s no perfect marriage, there’s no perfectly wise mom who will avoid all conflict with her children, so now that we’ve said that… Troy and I have been married, we just celebrated 23 years.

MB: Congratulations! 

RS: Thank you so much. And we have six boys. No, no twins in there, our oldest is 19 and our youngest is eight.

CM: Okay.

RS: And we can get into it more later, but certainly did not expect that or plan for that, nor did I feel like I was equipped for that. But I would just say when… Marriage is already fully challenging when two sinners come into a union that has meant to put one another more important themselves into one another, each other in the Gospel, that’s already difficult.

CM: Sure.

RS: But then you throw kids in the mix and all that comes with changing diapers and hormones and early marriage, early marriage years where you’re trying to discover your career and pay a mortgage… Throw all that in there, and… I started that hashtag motherhood is sanctifying, and marriage is sanctifying, because ultimately, it’s not that those two things caused me to become godly, but they exposed the areas in which God could transform my life, because if I wasn’t shown how weak, how sinful and how selfish I can be, would I know how deeply I need the grace of God? I probably wouldn’t. So those are two areas in my life that I don’t feel like I’m nailing it, ever, but they are daily reminders that as a mom, as a wife, this is where I say, “But by the grace of God, I would ruin everything. So Lord, help me today, reflect who You are with my spouse, with my kids. Let me ask forgiveness when I need to, and reflect and put the gospel on display in the very interactions I have today with them.”

MB: So I’m so grateful that you have said what you said about the fact that every married couple are using fights and every parent has struggles with their children… That’s just real life. Now, our podcast is not obviously a podcast for about being a wife or a mother, but we know that that’s a huge part of womanhood for so many people, but I do feel like every woman can learn from every other woman, no matter what their station is, and I would like to ask you about being a mom, right? My personal experience is that I did not grow up in a situation where I was daydreaming about one day I’m gonna be a wife, a mom, and then I’d be home with my kids. And I actually had a passion to be something that kids were probably gonna get in the way of… How was that for you? Did you dream about being this mom to six boys at home, and how you would just focus on that, or were you the… You know what I’m saying? Help us unpack that.

RS: Yeah. I like to start every bio that you read, well, maybe not my book bio, but… I always say I’m an unlikely mom to six boys, because I think when somebody sees that you’re a mom to six, they think, “She’s so good at this. She must have done VBS all her life. She must have signed up to nanny children”. I mean the truth is, I didn’t even know how to change a diaper. When we as a married couple first volunteered to the help babysit for our friends, I mean, Troy was the one that was like, I literally held a baby and would be like, “What do you do with this?”

CM: Yeah. [chuckle]

RS: I had zero experience. I didn’t like children. I think there’s a lot of noise coming out of their mouths, a lot of sounds and smells that I don’t like. All the things that I find irritating about puppies or dogs sometimes, I’m like, “That’s basically like children for the entirety of your existence”. So I’m an unlikely mom. And I had all these aspirations that probably, yes, did not look like sweeping up Cheerios that get crushed under your feet or picking up Legos, or wiping up that sticky thing, I mean the other day, I sat down to do something and my arm just stuck to the table and then my, immediately was like, “Why does no one wipe the table around here?” That’s how I’m feeling. So, with that all said, I think, I just wanna say… I credit Spurgeon with saying this, but I don’t know if he actually said this, I’ve always credited him because I read it somewhere…

MB: Right.

RS: That God’s callings are His enablings. I always stop and say, “Okay, it doesn’t mean you have to be good at something for God to use it to produce what He wants to produce in your life.”

MB: Mm-hmm.

RS: Meaning I don’t think I had to be an aspiring, “I will change the world through motherhood” kind of person or “I can’t wait to start a blog about motherhood”. I’ve never wanted to do that. I haven’t written a book about motherhood. When we wrote Foundations, it was really just to help parents start the discipleship conversation because we were already doing it and nobody was really putting out material that could help with that. But fundamentally, right here, this podcast, this is where my heartbeat is. I’m all about women and work and how do we use our giftings, and quite frankly, I’m not afraid about talking about money and success and all of those things. But at the same time, because I think, as believers, we’re so quick to be like, “I don’t wanna talk about that.” And we really forget that we can honor the Lord with a 30% increase in our business.

MB: Amen. Right.

RS: We can absolutely honor the Lord when we set goals for our business, all that.

MB: I love it.

RS: We can talk about that later. But my point is just that, in motherhood, I had to teach myself that… One of the things that I had to learn is that unlike running a business, I can’t just set my goals and strategize my way and hire enough people to ensure success. Now, quite frankly, you can’t do that in business either. God is so in control of everything that we do, we’re not actually that… [chuckle] We’re not that influential and that heroic here, right? But motherhood is really one of those things where I was like, “I can’t treat these kids as a project.” In the same way that God is literally sanctifying and changing me, this whole thing of having little people in my house that make messes, that don’t respond the way I want them to. Even though I’ve literally done the whole conversation that should’ve resulted in this tender heart.

After all that, you realize, “Oh, it humbles me. It lays me low.” It causes me to say, “I don’t get to control this. And if I don’t completely surrender over and over again, I’ll be super discouraged in this.” And so, when you asked that question, Missie, I would just say, for all the ladies out there who may or may not be moms but wonder, “Won’t I be the worst mom in the world?” or maybe you’re a mom and you’re like, “Maybe I’d be the worst homeschooler in the world,” I would just say, in different seasons, God calls us to different things. And sometimes, He calls you to something that you think you stink at, that you’re just really not good at.

MB: Wow, that’s so good.

RS: And that you feel weak in.

CM: That’s right.

RS: And that’s okay. Lean into that because we trust that when the apostle Paul says, that God says, “My grace is sufficient for you” and, in weakness, we see His strength, that’s really what I cling to day by day is, “What if I nailed it in all these other things in life and I was tempted to believe that I’m so great, that I’m so amazing that I don’t need amazing grace.”

CM: That’s right.

RS: Well, He saved me from that because He’s given me plenty of things to be weak in.

CM: That’s right. I hear you.

MB: Wonderful.

CM: I hear you. Okay, we’re gonna shift the conversation to more of your art. And so I love when you say that your artwork adorns the Gospel. I think the word “adorn” is just so beautiful. I want you to talk about that. What do you mean by that? And I’m just curious if there are certain Scripture passages that you think of that come to mind with what you’re trying to do when you say that your artwork adorns the Gospel.

RS: Well, the Gospel truly… The Word of God is already 100% complete and beautiful. I don’t have to add anything to it. I think the only thing that I really mean when I say “adorn the Gospel” is kind of in the same way that music causes you to pause and think differently about the words that you hear and that a certain melody or line could cause you to feel something about… Even when you stand and see… You’re standing at the top of a mountain and you see the grandeur and the beauty of God’s creation. Sometimes if you’ve got a playlist going and you’re on a hike, that will lodge that memory and the greatness of God in a way that’s different had you not been listening to these amazing lyrics or this beautiful melody line.

RS: And so when I think about my work, I don’t think there’s anything… It’s not that I feel like I’m the best painter or that I illustrate something perfectly or that… I’m not even literally trying to illustrate the verse. It’s more that… If anything, I just think that we miss so much of God’s creation and we miss so much of the beauty that He’s already provided for us to put His glory on display. And if I can, I just try to use the mediums and the giftings that I have to cause us to look and stop and look a little more closely. So if that means that I cause a bloom to be a little bit more vibrant in your everyday life because you haven’t taken the time to bend down and see what’s growing right in your little garden or even blades of grass that we just don’t pay attention to or the birds of the air.

Scripture points to so many… Matthew 5, we’re pointing to the birds of the air, the flowers of the field. And why does Scripture point out those things? Because we miss it all the time, but God’s caring for those very things. And so, if there’s a goal for my artwork at all, it’s that I would cause the busy, hustling, everyday woman to stop and say, “Because this piece or this notebook or this journal or this note card that I purchased from GraceLaced, because it’s so beautiful and I want to use this, I can’t help but direct my mind’s eye and behold the greatness of God and not my circumstances”, that I would shift my gaze from my to-do list, my every day check, check, check, check and stop and go, “Oh,” just like that print that you have in your office, Courtney, that there would be a moment where you would say, “I read this verse. But now, that is so beautiful, I can’t help but look at it again.”

CM: That’s right.

RS: And so adorning the Gospel means that I’m just coming alongside and using my gifts to kind of just make it a little bit more accessible.

CM: I love that. It’s so beautiful.

RS: Not because it needs any help but because in this context, in my… Right now in this middle of 2021, can I just bring the artwork in a way where somebody who doesn’t usually look and gaze intently at the Word of God might shift her gaze? 

CM: I just love that so much, Ruth.

MB: One of the things that we have find on this campus is that… Or not just on this campus, but just for women in academic spaces, is that generally the women who are hyper, super smart, super academically inclined will be the ones who say, “I’m not real creative and I’m not really into the art.” And then the ones who are… We tend to look at the ones who are very creative as, “They’re super girly, so they can’t be academic.” And so it’s almost like beauty is reduced to one sphere, you know know what I’m saying? And then academics and theology are overlooked or reduced to another sphere. And I feel like that’s almost like a Christian thing, right? [chuckle]

RS: Well, and that’s been one of my… It’s literally top on my mission, like my goals is to enter the publishing space, the speaker space, the influencer space and say, “You don’t have to choose between good theology and beauty.” And then ultimately, when you pick up a devotional book, my prayer is that you would turn to the Word of God and not just sit in the devotion, but if you will read a devotion, it doesn’t have to be my little stories with one verse tacked on to it. It can be deep and rich and pointing back to the true words of the Gospel. And so, yeah, that really is a goal of mine that we wouldn’t just make good as Chris… Like, “Oh, that’s pretty good for Christian art.” I just wanna make good art.

[chuckle]

And make it really good and do good work. I want… I don’t wanna be a good business for being a Christian business. I just wanna be a really smart businesswoman and ultimately be and cause the secular world to even pay attention and notice that it’s a sound business and, “Oh, wow, she does a lot of faith-based products.”

CM: Right. That’s awesome. Sometimes I feel like… Ruth, I’m kind of piggybacking off what Missie was just saying there. I feel like creativity and beauty, these types of things, you see it so much in the secular world, even with just the quality of production in movies.

MB: Yes.

CM: You see this talent over in people who don’t even know the Lord and I think, inadvertently, they’re glorifying God, and they don’t even know it because God has put those skills within them. But I just wanna talk for a second about why beauty is so important. Why do we need, as creatures made by God and as His… Like, why is beauty important? Why do we… Why should we linger? Does that make sense? And you might’ve already answered this with your previous question.

RS: Yeah. Well.

CM: But I just feel like, how do you think about it? 

RS: Well, I think it’s… The quickest way to the… Because this could be the philosophical question that takes us the next hour.

CM: Sure.

RS: But ultimately, we’re image-bearers.

MB: Yes.

RS: Two things that make me think, we’re image-bearers. We’re created to reflect Him. And then secondly, God could’ve made everything bland and He didn’t.

MB: That’s right.

RS: I mean, He made so many flavors.

MB: Wow, yes.

RS: I think about how much I love a good green curry or a butter chicken or I love jerk chicken spices. And then you don’t… Don’t even get me started on Thai and Chinese food.

CM: Right. [chuckle]

RS: So if he created that much variety… And then I step outside here in Colorado and realize, “Oh my goodness, there are more colors than I could express through my watercolors.” Why did He do that? Why did He create tiny little things that you step right over and you forget just to look at and then glorious, beautiful things like peonies and roses that we notice? But if He’s in the details and if He’s so extravagant in the way He wants to draw our attention with delight and wonder… And I wrote about this in Beholding and Becoming, but the reality is He starts every day and ends every day with a light show, right? 

MB: Right.

RS: He starts every day and… He begins and ends every day by saying, “Look over here. I’m God and you’re not.” And so when He does that, I can’t help but say… Well, we don’t look outside and go, “I guess that’s okay. That bright, flaming orange sunset, it’s alright.”

[laughter]

No, we go outside and we’re like, “Hey guys, you should check out the sunset tonight.” And it’s always amazing. It’s more than we could create. It’s more than we accomplish in a day’s time. It’s astounding. So beauty is not something we’re trying to muster up and create and say, “Well, ladies, we should focus on the beauty.” No, God’s already done it. We’re just created to notice and to thrive when we reflect Him. And then we ultimately step into… Like, sanctification is restoring us back to our full purpose. And so as we’re sanctified, we are capable of enjoying Him more. And beauty is really just an opportunity to enjoy Him. And to your point and I won’t belabor this too long, but when you mentioned that in the secular world, there’s so much talent and there’s so much production and maybe they invest so much more money into creating really quality products, I would just love to… Cause us to think and say, “Okay.” And this connects a little bit with this topic of striving in my new book, but I think sometimes as believers, we forget that if the world strives to find self-worth and accolades in achievement, we don’t just not strive. We strive because grace fuels us towards excellence. We strive in grace.

And so, as business owners and women who are trying to make their work count, I would just say whatever… Whoever is listening, whatever work you’re in, if you work at the doctor’s office or if you are starting a business, if you have a nonprofit or if you are training up your children and you are dedicated to doing this homeschool thing in your community, whatever it is that you’re doing… Not striving doesn’t mean that you lower your standards and say, “Eh, it’s good enough.” It’s that you get clear in your mind that God deserves all the praise, all the glory. And because He saved you and rescued you, your one, timely, little piddly life gets to totally proclaim Him and be as excellent as humanly possible for the life and for the time you are on Earth. So that should cause us to do everything even better than those without hope, right? 

CM: You’re right.

MB: That is incredible. It’s obvious to me what your inspiration is with your artwork. [chuckle] It’s obvious to me who your inspiration is. It’s obvious to us who inspires your artwork. So based on knowing that you’re inspired by all the beauty that our incredible God has put all around us, what are some of your favorite mediums that you work through? And when you… You’ve said, kind of said this, but when you’ve worked through your favorite medium and you’ve created this thing and then you put it in… See it in someone else’s hands. What is the thing you want people to walk away with? Like, “This is my thing, I’ve created this, and now I want you to know this about God.” Or just know this in general.

RS: Okay. So to answer your first question, I’d say I love a lot of mediums, but sometimes certain mediums find me in a certain season. So right now my medium is watercolor, because it cleans up easily, it’s not super expensive, I don’t have to have a lot of extra stuff to help me. Because doing oils takes up more space, it takes longer to dry, it’s more difficult to reproduce. So in this season of what I create in terms of publishing and creating GraceLaced products, watercolor is that medium.

And also I love the medium, because in case I’m all… I’ll nerd out real quick with art. But with oils and acrylics, you can constantly paint over something and you could foster that perfectionist in you. You could be like, “Wow, I’m just gonna never put it down until I get it better and better and better.” And for those recovering strivers and perfectionists here, watercolor is an amazing way to be like, “And it’s done. I can’t do any more to it. I mean, we could start over, but really like… And we’re done now, that mark is there, I can’t really go over it 10 times.”

So it is what it is. The water moves, I can’t control everything and it is what it is, and it’s beautiful that way. So that’s been a real gift to me in this season to say, “Yeah, I could do oils, but really, I’m gonna do things in a different way and I’m gonna learn to embrace the imperfection and the limitations that I have.” And then to your second question, I would just say… You know, I’m gonna try to say this without sounding cliche and maybe a little too spiritual about it [laughter].. But I really don’t want people to remember me. I really… I hesitate to say that, because that sounds like I’m so godly for saying that. But I think there’s a lot of pressure as a creator if what you really want people to remember is that: “Ruth is so talented. Ruth is so great. What’s Ruth gonna come up with next?”

CM: Right. Sure.

RS: I actually, for two reasons, I don’t want you to remember me because number one, I don’t want the pressure of being your hero, and being somebody really special, or being your icon of an artist, or for you to feel like that the way I paint is the only way you should paint, that you wanna emulate that. I don’t want that pressure. And number two, because I just think in this day and age, whenever you’re well-received, the temptation is to ultimately miss your entire calling, because you start obsessing about yourself.

CM: Right.

RS: And I just… I just don’t wanna be taken out of the game. I just don’t really want to not have GraceLaced 10 years from now and if the Lord shuts it down, He does. But I just don’t wanna be taken out as an author or an entrepreneur, because it’s become about me. And so, I just really hope that when you guys, when anyone gets a print, in some ways, yeah, I hope people remember it’s GraceLaced, so maybe we can keep those customers.

MB: We know where to go get more. [chuckle]

RS: You know I hope I don’t lose you as a customer, but at the same time, I pray and hope that when somebody looks at that… My ultimate goal is that somebody who’s not cracked up in their Bibles, might go, “Well, why is that verse even in there? I didn’t even realize that this was in there.” And that they might go to that and read the whole chapter, read the whole section, or maybe read the Bible from cover to cover, and realize the love story that they never understood before.

CM: Ruth, it’s so beautiful what you’re saying, because our whole goal with Women & Work, is that women would take the skills and the talents that God has given them and just point straight back to him, and everything you have just said is everything that…

MB: Right on.

CM: We want women to do and if they’re an artist or no matter what work God has called them to. And so you have just explained that so beautifully, and thank you for that. And we just love your heart behind it. So Ruth, when I met you… I met Ruth at the Gospel Coalition’s Women’s Conference this past year. And when we started talking about women and work, it surprised me I thought you were gonna be very excited. I mean you were to talk about art, but I was surprised by the fact that how much you really got excited about the business side of what you do. I mean, that was in part of your bio is that you call yourself an entrepreneur. And so I’m just wondering what is it that… What do you love about business? What is it that excites you about it? 

RS: How much time do we really have? Honestly, I think I was raised in the generation where I think Christians downplayed trying to create something that would go far, go the distance. And then now, we live in a time where we actually kind of are counting the cost of celebrity culture and building platforms and so there’s a… So take what I’m about to say with some balance here and recognize that there’s a sinful way to do this and there’s a godly way to do this. And just because I love building a business doesn’t mean that every form of doing that is always appropriate or God-honoring.

I think about it in the form of stewardship. I feel like not everyone has a mind that’s been wired to think about marketing and think about growth. Not everyone wakes up thinking about a new business idea. I just happen to do that. Like, I mean, right now, you don’t see me starting a whole bunch of new stuff, because I still have an eight-year-old at home. I still have six kids who homeschool from this house. But I wake up every day with a new angle on a new thing or a new stream of revenue because my brain’s wired that way. I’m somebody who wakes up thinking marketing not because I wanna make a sale, because I am wired to think, “Where is that person at and how do I serve that person? And if I serve that person, we will funnel the right customers to us.” Right? 

CM: That’s right.

RS: And so that’s the way I think all the time. I didn’t take a webinar. I didn’t go to a master class on business. I just, like, my brain’s wired that way. And when I was selling clothes, I was wired that way too, because I wasn’t trying to make somebody overspend, I was just thinking, “How do I serve you best so that your trip here will actually count and your wardrobe will matter?” So fundamentally, I guess the quickest way to answer that question is to say, “I have a passion for seeing women not be intimidated by the idea that their giftings can be strategized and stewarded in a way that can not only… Not take up all their time and run them ragged, but they could be used wisely and efficiently, they can say no to certain things, say yes to other things. And then fundamentally when that’s stewarded well, can have an ROI that ultimately causes them to be able to do more of that.”

MB: I love it.

RS: So why are we afraid of making money? I mean being profitable is a way of stewardship so that you can be more profitable with your giftings, your time, your ministries. And so at GraceLaced we’re 100% not afraid of talking about some goals we wanna meet financially, not just to make payroll, but so that we can do even a better job at serving others. And so I just would love to normalize that in Christian women’s culture. But not to normalize it to the extent where… Not to join in the conversation of saying, your dreams are the most important and you should attack your dreams at all costs, and that’s not… The conversation could go that direction too, and I just mean, Let’s steward when the Lord tells us it is something He blesses, you know.

MB: Sure. So this is beautiful for me to hear, and I’m sure it’s gonna bless a lot of people, because prior to working in here at Southeastern, I had a business where I was a custom cake decorator. But where I… I come from a space where when someone wanted a custom cake, what they wanted was a shoe and a bag that matches the shoe and a bag that they had in their home. So, you create a cake to match that thing and it was just so much fun to use that creativity to take eggs and flour and sugar and step out and you have this designer bag.

But the part that always tripped me up was talking money. I knew… Like you, Ruth, I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’m always thinking of something. And I knew in this particular market, I can charge $1,000 for this cake. In this particular market, I can charge $500 for this cake. In the market I’m in, I can charge $800 for this cake. Oh, but I’m a Christian and I’m a woman, and I’m at home, so I should probably only charge $200 for this cake. You know what I’m saying? 

And I struggled with having those conversations, because it almost felt like if you say my work is worth $1,000, then it must be not because you’re motivated to build a great business, but because you’re falling into the love of money trap. And so that was my biggest challenge. What are some of the challenges that women will have in business and that you’ve even seen when you have to think through I have to do this and be a Christian? 

RS: Well, I love that you told that story. I think in any creative’s life you start… I mean, I gave away a lot of work. I probably did a lot of commissions for free or for a very, very low cost, when I was first starting out.

MB: Absolutely. I mean you do.

RS: But as you build, it’s really not just putting a value… I think we get tripped up on like, “Am I thinking too highly of myself if I put a value on my gift? Is it am I saying, ‘I’m the best artist in the world?’ Or am I saying, ‘My cake is better than anyone else’s.'”

MB: Sure. Right.

RS: That’s not actually what that monetary value is. It’s really looking at the whole picture of, “What is something I can do that nobody else can do?” I can bring the vision. I can bring the creativity. And it’s gonna be different than somebody else’s. And in order for me to do that, I can’t do these other things in my life. And in order for me to do this well, I’m going to give you this kind of attention and this kind of space, and that’s worth something.

RS: So it’s more than just, “Is the product good or is it better than somebody else’s?” We do the comparison game so much, but I think if we would as entrepreneurs or creators or anyone who’s trying to put a price tag on our work, if we just stop looking at everybody else and just say, “What is it that I can rightly… ” You do look around to make sure that you’re being competitive, I mean, I do think that that matters. I think if we start by saying, “How do I steward well what He’s given me to do, so that I’m not pulling out all these ingredients and making a cake and then finally finding out that I just spent four hours and I actually… It’s poor stewardship when I, when all is said and done, really make about $25 for this whole endeavor.” That’s not good stewardship.

MB: Sure.

RS: Because really then you’ve actually wasted that. Like think about The Parable of the Talents. You’ve actually wasted the opportunity God’s given you. So if we stop… Rather than think about how much money can I make, how profitable can I be, am I doing better than somebody else, or am I better than someone else? Just start with your stewardship. What’s God given you to do? What do you have to say no to? What do you wanna say yes to? Has He given you freedom? And that are you obedient in what’s on your own plate? And then put the value on what it takes for you to do those things with a happy heart, with good stewardship, and managing your life opportunities appropriately, that helps you.

MB: Yeah. That’s good advice.

CM: It’s very helpful. When we talked about how as an artist and how art really points back and reflects who God is, the fact that He’s a creator and into those details, that how beauty really reflects Him. But for those women out there who are not artists, but they are in business, are there maybe even just some… You know one of my big goals with Women & Work is for them to… Is she’s sitting at her office? You know, to think, “Wait a minute, here I am looking at this spreadsheet, here I am coming up with these goals, but what does this have to do with God?” Are there just some quick maybe bullet points you might give to a business woman, in particular, to say, “Wow, in this very moment, here are some ways that I can actually glorify God in business.” And I know one of them might be the stewardship that you talked about, but just some, you know… Just those… You know you’re renewing your mind right there at work. I don’t know. What do you think? 

RS: Well, I may not deliver bullet points as well as quickly as you would like at the moment.

CM: Okay. Sure. [laughter] That’s okay.

RS: I’ll just say the big picture is that, “I think every believer, our ability to see God at work in our everyday lives, in our every day work, will increase as our understanding and our grasp and our awe of the attributes of God increases.

MB: Yes.

CM: Thank you. Yes. Talk about that.

RS: The more you recognize him as mysterious and mathematical, the more your spreadsheets become kind of like, “Wow, I can’t believe I get to think like this.” And He’s the one who created these systems, ultimately not man-made systems but the ability to think like this, right? 

CM: Yes.

MB: Right.

RS: When you’re teaching math problems to your homeschooler, when you are hosting a meeting… When you are running a marketing meeting and… I myself, every time I’m in a boardroom and I’m leading out in some huge production meeting and I’m coming up with these ideas and I’m off… I’m not sitting there going, “Wow, God’s omnipotence.”

[laughter]

I’m not thinking that, but what drives me is when I realize, “Wow, I did not just come up with this, that God created me this way.” And I’ve been meditating on that prior to showing up in this meeting. I’ve been thinking about God’s greatness so that when I’m in that moment, I immediately go, “The fact that I can even think creatively and that we have these opportunities that we can make this one little shift and, suddenly, it becomes so much more interesting,” those are all things that happen when you realize God’s actually that nuanced, too. And so I find that the greater He is, the more you… The greater He is in your view of Him, right? 

When AW Tozer says that the most important thing about you is what you think about God. Really, your everyday life and how you apply your walk as you go do your data analysis, as you go to your meeting, as you go and work as an assistant to a CEO, that will be informed by whether or not how you think about your purpose in life, who God is, how he’s at work. And that starts with his attributes. But then just on a quick, really practical level, I would just say whether you’re an artist or not, whether you are attuned to beauty or not, whether you get up in the morning and you coordinate your outfits or you’re just throw on black and white every day.

[chuckle]

Because it’s not just about somebody who’s creative and artistic. I know I am, but whoever you are, everyone benefits from stepping away from their phones and their laptops and their spreadsheets and their Asana and their Slack and their Monday, whatever app you use to get you further ahead, Hootsuite, whatever it is. Everyone benefits from stepping away from that and being more in awe of God than with themselves and their team.

MB: That’s beautiful.

RS: If I sit there and look all day at my Slack and go, “Wow, that spreadsheet’s amazing. Oh my gosh, how productive are we?” I will start thinking that we’re, me and my team are in charge of everything.

CM: That’s right.

RS: But if I step away and close down everything and go outside and take a walk and talk to the Lord about the things that are overwhelming to me, I suddenly realize everything is by Him, through Him, from Him, and to Him, and that ultimately I can return back to work and be kind of reset, preaching truth to myself that he’s the boss and I’m not.

CM: That’s right. Yeah. That verse is actually one of my all-time favorites, Romans 11:36, “From Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”

MB: Yeah, it’s our theme, too. Yeah.

CM: All things, art, business, all things. And thank you so much for answering that question.

MB: Ruth, I hate that we have to even close. I hate that this has to come to an end. I felt like I’ve… Courtney, did we just meet our soulmate? 

CM: I know.

[laughter]

MB: So if you could leave our listeners with one piece of advice, one encouragement both to women who are artists but to women in general who want to honor God through their vocational calling, what would that piece of advice be? 

RS: I think the biggest thing that’s made a difference in my life is to truly be faithful with what you’ve been given today. I know that sounds a little bit cliché. But the truth is you have no idea how God’s gonna use your faithfulness in that spreadsheet today, with that one meeting today, with that one confrontational conversation that you have to deal with today, with that whatever it is. God will use that. And you have no idea if two years from now, he will put you in a position. He will… Just like Joseph, right? Just like Joseph, the story of Joseph. You have no idea if he’s gonna use that at some point and give you position before kings, give you another opportunity, ask you to start something, give you… And cause you to publish books, start a business, whatever. The years that I was privately behind closed doors, never on social media, trying to learn how to be faithful in preaching the Gospel and the Gospel of Grace to my children. Everybody who is reading my books now, they’re benefiting from those years of hiddenness.

CM: Yeah.

RS: You have no idea that the books that you’re reading for me now were fleshed out when nobody on Instagram saw anything that I did.

CM: That’s right.

RS: So whatever your aspirations are, wherever you wanna go, whatever CEO you wanna become, however successful you wanna be, those are all great things but start right now with what God’s been giving you today, like with what skills you have right now. Don’t wait for when you have more skills, more training, a higher position. Start right now because your faithfulness right now, literally, could be the direct thing that He uses in days to come. And you have no idea what that will be.

CM: It’s just so wise, so good.

MB: Mic drop.

[laughter]

MB: And you know what, Ruth? It’s beautiful is that that’s exactly what was modeled by Jesus. We see Jesus to a point. We see silence and then we see Jesus using whatever was being built in those years for ministry. So that’s perfect.

CM: So true, so true. I’m glad you brought that up, Missie. Well, we are just so incredibly grateful for you coming on. I know our listeners are gonna be so encouraged by this. And I want to let them know that the link to your new book, When Strivings Cease, is right down in the show notes. And so we wanna make sure that they grab that book. It comes out October 21st, you said, right? 

RS: 12th.

CM: 12th.

RS: October 12th, yeah.

CM: Okay. Got it mixed up there, but…

MB: The link is at GraceLaced.

CM: Gracelaced.com.

MB: It’s so much beautiful things to purchase there. It’s very well worth your time.

CM: End track. Well, thank you so much, Ruth.

CONCLUSION

MISSIE: And thanks to our listeners for joining us today. Be sure to check out our website at women work.net for today’s show notes. There will be more information about today’s conversation there.

COURTNEY: While you’re there, take a look at the Women and Work podcast discussion questions. We’ve provided those so that you can lead your friends from work, your neighborhood, or your church into useful conversations that will encourage you as you take  *your* next step of faith into your calling. 

MISSIE: If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, please subscribe in Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We’d also love for you to take a minute to rate and review our show so more listeners can find us.  

COURTNEY: And with that, we hope you’ve been inspired to more confidently step into your God-given calling and view your work as meaningful to the Kingdom of God. 

See you next time!