Podcast Transcript: Episode 1

INTRO

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

MISSIE BRANCH: And I’m Missie Branch. No matter if you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, on staff at your church or a stay-at-home mom with little ones wrapped around your ankles, your work matters, and God wants to use you right where you are for His kingdom purposes.

COURTNEY MOORE: Each month we’ll introduce you to a woman who is living her calling to the glory of God, and we pray these conversations will inspire you in your own calling to honor God, to image Him to the world through your work, and to leverage your unique potential for His glory.

MISSIE BRANCH: And make sure to head to womenwork.net after the show to download your free copy of this month’s Women & Work Going Deeper Bible study where we take content from today’s episode back in the Bible, where you will study and gain a biblical foundation for the show’s topics.

COURTNEY MOORE: Along with that resource, we’re thrilled to offer you the Women & Work Podcast Discussion Questions. Our vision is to help lead you and your friends from work, your neighborhood or church into meaningful conversation that will help you take the next step of faith into your God-given calling. Thanks so much for joining us today.

GUEST INTRODUCTION

Now it’s time to welcome our guest to the show today. We are chatting with Courtney Reissig, and we are really excited to hear how she thinks through her calling from a biblical perspective and also really hear about some of the practical ways she’s managing the roles that God has called her to with faithfulness.

MISSIE BRANCH: That’s right, Courtney. We’re glad you’re here. I know that you’re a mom. You’re a writer, you’re a Bible teacher. You have written several books. And your life is a three-ring circus. No, you’re like most women, juggling a lot of hats.

One of the first things we like to do is when guests come on is do a little game that we like to call a Women & Work Get to know you. It’s like, we ask a few questions and we ask all our guests the same three, so… Are you ready?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah. Ready.

MISSIE BRANCH: Okay, so the first one is, as a kid, what did you wanna be when you grow up?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Oh gosh, I had a lot of things I wanted to be… The one that always stands out to me is I wanted to be a fighter pilot in the military, which is, if you know me, it’s ridiculous now as an adult. I have no, I think I watched GIJoe with my brothers or something. I have 3 younger brothers, so I think I watched GIJoe and wanted to save the world, I don’t know, but I couldn’t hang in the military, I just… I would get eaten alive, so…

MISSIE BRANCH: We all have lofty dreams.

COURTNEY REISSIG: I know. Now I just wrangle kids.

COURTNEY MOORE: So here’s our second question for you, Courtney. What was your first job? Did you have a job when you were a teenager, or what was your first real job?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, I’ve had so many jobs. My first real job though was, I was a plant waterer. And then… Yes, I love telling this story. I was a plant waterer in a nursery in the heat of Texas in the summer, and I did it to pay my driver’s ed, so if I wanted to go to driver’s ed, I had to pay for it. And so my dad got me a job when I was 15, and I watered plants, and it was the hottest summer on record in Texas, and so they… I have no idea how this happened with the Weather Channel came to where we were at and filmed me. It must have been that they thought it was crazy that a 15-year-old was outside in the heat of summer when it was so warm, but they took pictures of me and had me, like showed me with water and watering plants, and I thought I was gonna be famous.

MISSIE BRANCH: Those are the types of jobs that build character, don’t they?

COURTNEY REISSIG: They do! I remember it was… And I’m not outdoorsy, so it was a stretch for me to be outside for that long, that didn’t involve laying at the pool, so I was… Yeah, if that’s any indication of what kind of teenager I was… But yeah, it was good. And my parents always made me work and we have to do… There are four kids and my parents didn’t have a lot of money, and so it was not mentioned that I would not work, and so I just from then on, have always had a job, so…

MISSIE BRANCH: That’s great. Well, this next question is about work, so that’s what your first job was, but what kind of work do you see yourself doing when you’re like 80 years old?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Teaching women the Bible. I would love to just teach the Bible until God takes me home. So that’s beautiful. Yeah, that’s the thing I went to seminary for and wanted to do… And towards opportunities. And I’ve gotten a little older and I love it. So if I could do that forever, I would.

COURTNEY MOORE: That’s so great, Courtney. And so that is one of the things you do now, you teach the Bible, you write… You actually have written three books: The Accidental Feminist, Glory in the Ordinary, and your newest is called Teach Me to Feel, and it’s Worshiping Through the Psalms in Every Season of Life. And so, I’m sure our listeners are familiar with your work, and I know a lot of women would probably be curious of… When did you want to become a writer? Somehow you shifted from wanting to be a fighter pilot to writing, so tell us what intrigued you about writing, why did you want to become a writer, and how did you move from maybe just say, blogging to actual writing… A lot of women are in the blogging world and maybe they have a dream to write a book, how did you… What were the steps that got you there?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, so I think I probably was always writing stories as a kid until I… In addition to wanna be a fighter pilot, I also wanted to be a news anchor, and so which of it makes a little bit more sense for my personality, but I would write my own new stories and then I would read them and pretend like I was reading them on the news, and I would write stories. I have very little memory of any other subject in school besides writing or reading stories or reading books or things like that, so that just kind of is where my brain gravitated, where my interests were. And then in high school, I had… I always did better in English that I did in the math and sciences. And then I had an English teacher who was just really encouraging, and so when I would write things, she would submit them to stuff, which just goes to show that someone who’s further along and you showing interest in you really does make a difference because I… I, it really influenced me into… I had an English teacher in high school, and then I had an English teacher in college who really was…

I thought I was gonna be elementary ed major, and now I know I would be a terrible elementary education teacher, but I liked kids and I didn’t really know what else to do, and so she said, You really are good at writing, you should pursue this. And from then, I don’t even know her name anymore, and I wish I did, so I could thank her, but I went… From then on, I changed my major to focus more on journalism, and then eventually it was just English with a writing emphasis ’cause I really did like literature, and then I got saved about halfway through college, and so my interest in writing went from writing about whatever I wanted to write about whatever it was interesting me that to me at that time, to wanting to write about what the Lord was doing in my life or what God was doing a lots of others, and that’s kind of where my writing interests shifted, and so then from then on, I wrote for the school paper, I wrote… When I went to seminary, I wrote for ministries, I worked for non-profits and worked in marketing and communications and wrote for them.

So my writing just kinda grew out of… I wrote for anybody and anybody who let me put words together, so I’ve done a lot of different types of writing and about when I left, so seminary, I continued to be encouraged to write by my professors, and so that was helpful that I knew that… Okay, so this is not something… I’m just pulling out thin air, I can do this, and so… But I did wanna write a book, I always knew that I wanna try a book, but I didn’t really know what that entailed, and I was pregnant with my twins, and I had been encouraged to put some ideas together for my first book, and I pitched it to some people and they turned it down, and then they kinda told me what book writing looked like, and I had just found out I was pregnant and I thought, I don’t wanna do this. And we had tried so, we had infertility, we had a miscarriage, we had tried so hard to get pregnant that I thought, This is not my time, and when they were six months old, an agent contacted me, ’cause another friend of mine who’s an author, mentioned me to her, I continued writing articles for The Gospel Coalition in different places whoever would accept them, so I blogged for a long time, and I thought I’ll just do that and you just keep practicing, but I won’t try to do a book, and then when the twins were about six months, the agent reached out to me and I said, well, I kind of have this proposal you…

He asked me if I had any ideas, and so I have this proposal, but maybe it’s nothing, and so then I sent it to him and he said, Oh, I would like to represent you and we can start pitching it, and that’s where my first book came out. And it felt a little crazy because I had twins, and the Lord was really great, ’cause I mean, your first book, most authors would say your first book has been in your head for a really long time, that… It’s hard to write it, but it’s not as hard because you’ve just probably spent a lot of time thinking about that idea and researching that idea, and so that one came a little easier to me, and my second book did not, and I thought I would never write another book again after that one.

COURTNEY MOORE: Really?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, it was on… That idea was Glory in the Ordinary was my second book, and that was pitched to me by The Gospel Coalition by an editor there, so they asked me to write it, and so that required me to do a lot of research that I had not done previously. So it’s just a lot of research.

And typically, I think now that I’ve written three books, and I think that for me, the best way to write a book, and I’ve probably read 20 to 30 books on the topic prior to starting to write the book, and I hadn’t done that with the second book, so it took a lot longer. It just took a lot of effort. And so with my Pslams book, I had read that many books before I started on the Psalms, before I wrote Teach Me to Feel.

And The Accidental Feminist, I probably… It was a 10-year process of thinking through that stuff, so…

COURTNEY MOORE: Wow, I like how… Along the way, you mention how you had different people confirming, affirming you, you’re good at this, you can do this, and then especially even after you got saved, it seeing like people are still coming around and believing you have this gift, and they saw that in you and they really encouraged you, and I think that’s really important.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Oh, I think it’s huge. I think it’s everything. I think I also… My dad and my brothers are incredibly supportive and encouraging of me, and so I spent a lot of time not realizing that women sometimes live their lives thinking they can’t hang in a room full of men, because I didn’t know that existed. And I was shocked when I walked into rooms of men realized I couldn’t hang… But I think that was really helpful. I don’t have some of that difficulty in my family upbringing, it makes a difference in how you feel like you can do something, and I think it’s just an encouragement to anyone who has some form of privilege, who use that privilege to encourage those who don’t have that same privilege, because I don’t think my brothers or my dad in any way to say we’re using our privilege for good, but they’re believers, and so they are acting like Christians. So I think Christian responses to use our privilege to lift people up and bring them to where we’re at, because we’ve been given the opportunity, and so I think it’s huge as a teacher, as a parent, as a male or a female, or someone, even in a majority culture, to be able to say, I’m for you, I think you have a gifting here, like you notice that and to call it out, so…

MISSIE BRANCH: I love that, Courtney. I love that because one of the things we know just about womanhood is that we tend to not naturally lift each other up. And so we as Christians say, it is my responsibility to do that. It changes the game.

COURTNEY REISSIG: It does, it absolutely does. And it is our responsibility, and I think it tells a better story to the world… Absolutely, that we’re not doing it ourselves are doing it. We’re all working for the glory of God and for the good of others. Right.

MISSIE BRANCH: Well, I have another question for you, because when I think about you thinking about passing on all of your privilege, but then just all of your information, discipleship and teaching, one of the primary roles I know you have right now is caring for your kids, as a stay-at-home mom. And you, I think, have a similar story in that that was never something you necessarily aspired to do, even though you love children, and obviously you love your children. How you come to embrace this calling as a stay-at-home mom?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, it was, in some ways, it came to me more because, well, first culturally, we came from a sub-culture of Christianity where it was the norm, and so I didn’t really think beyond doing that because that’s what everybody I knew did. And my mom stayed home, and so I did have… I saw that I really liked that she was there, so that was helpful to me to have that, but I also didn’t grow up aspiring to do that, even though I like that she was there, so I don’t really know what I thought life was going to be like. But for me, our twins were… We had wanted so badly to get pregnant, and then it took so long, but I think for me, it was just a form of gratitude, I just wanted to be home because I wanted them so badly, and I had some very idealized understanding of what being a stay-at-home mom would be like, and so I… And some very… False dichotomy. You’re either this or that. You’re not both. And so the Lord really had to work. I think I had an understanding of it that I thought, if I do this, it’s an act of obedience, and therefore it’s going to fulfill me…

MISSIE BRANCH: Right. Wow. Yeah. So, flesh that out a little bit for us. One of the things I know was my experience is that I thought: Missie’s life shuts down so she can focus on other people’s lives, and then later on, Missie will pick up her life. How have you balanced that Courtney is Courtney. But part of being Courtney is being Daniel’s wife and my sons’ mom.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yes, so that’s been like a near constant struggle for me because I kind of have that same idea and that I thought If I sacrifice the most, then that’s the most glorifying to the Lord, and so I kind of shut down any notion that I would ever want to do anything else. And so that’s why I didn’t wanna write a book. I didn’t think I could, I didn’t think I wanted that. And then I was like three months in. And I was like, What? What is wrong with me? I felt a little like angsty, and a lot of moms feel that way, and I think most… A lot of moms feel that way, but they’re too scared to say it because they’re like, someone’s gonna say that I think I don’t love my kids. Or, I don’t value the Lord or I don’t value motherhood. And so I think my husband has actually been… Has been more helpful for me than anything else, he views all of our roles as a stewardship, and so we’re… He’s a dad and I’m a mom until we steward that role, but I’m also called to write, and I’m also called to teach, and so we steward that role, he’s called, he works in business, so we steward that role and we kind of view it in terms of the primary and I’m the primary caretaker, but he’s just as much as it should be involved, so I have had to work really hard for myself to see that to be human, to be a woman or man is to not be the sum total of one of your many hats that you wear and…

And so sometimes, sometimes it means that you don’t do as much, and sometimes it means you do more, but you’re not… You don’t give more jewels in your crown in Heaven if you sacrifice the most over the course of your life because you thought that was the most godly thing to do. And I think I had that for a long time, and I still struggle with it now.

MISSIE BRANCH: And you know what, Courtney, I believe that the kingdom loses out and our children miss out on a lot when we don’t allow them to see us flourish, but we… Almost mute ourselves and all that God has given us a gifted us with… And if you had muted yourself, we wouldn’t have these three great books, so we’re grateful that you listened and stewarded well.

COURTNEY MOORE: Yeah, that’s right. And also, Courtney, my next question really falls in line with what you’re saying about stewardship, and it sounds like your husband is really helping you think through this, but I was kind of curious, when you are in the middle of writing a book or you’re preparing to teach the Bible at a conference or retreat for women, practically, there’s gotta be give and take between you two, and I feel like a lot of women, maybe they’re not writing, but they have another something they’re hoping to accomplish as they are moms, and so just on a practical note, how do you guys… You and your husband work out some of these practical issues of even though you’re the primary caregiver for your kids, you might, in this one little season, you might be busy preparing to teach or whatever… How does that work out for you guys?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, yeah, ’cause you’re right, it doesn’t necessarily… That a lot of people have to do, give and take regardless of whether you’re a Bible teacher or you’re a nurse or a teacher, or any type of profession that a woman would have for me and would have outside the home, it requires a lot of… For us, it requires a ton of trial and error. I often say, We will walk through open doors and then we’ll be like, Oh well, we should have done that, and we do a lot of having to work, so we… My husband is really… He really values the work of the home, and so I always say that he’d be a better homemakers than me, and so I… He’s less stressed by these things, he is just… He can just get more than in a time frame that I can, and probably with more efficiency and better skill, and I’m just not… In some ways, we work well together because he likes it and he’s good at it, and so that helps, I think we do a lot of talking through the schedule when it’s gonna be kind of crazy and I’ll be gone more.

I try to communicate, I’ve got this, this and this coming… When can I get some time to work on this? And things like that, we both kinda just look at the work of the home is like, if you’re home, then you just look and see what needs to get done. Neither of us really have tasks, but we kind of fall into certain tasks like I’m home, most of the time, so I do do a lot of the laundry, but if I’m gone all weekend and he does the laundry, and so we just kind of view it as if you’re home, then you do the task, and I think… We didn’t really set out to talk about it in that way and divide up, I guess we just kinda share it because we both value the work of the home, and so whoever is the one there does it.

COURTNEY MOORE: So what do you think about… Maybe this, you haven’t felt this, but a lot of women, they’re trying to do so many things and they’re trying to… If they work outside of the home full-time and they’re trying to still be faithful moms and do all the home tasks as well, You really can’t do all of it 100% all of the time, and so I feel like a lot of women kind of walk around feeling just a sense of guilt that they can’t do it all, so how would you encourage these women, what would you tell them?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, when you said that, you said you may or may not have felt this, I wanted to be like, I probably have felt it. But yes, I feel like I have a low level guilt for most of the time, and what I have realized is when I’m thinking clearly that my low level guilt is often owing to the fact that I’m finite, not that I’m doing something sinful ’cause guilt, if it’s true guilt, then it’s over, then you should repent of it because it’s sin… But if you just feel guilty over you didn’t get enough tasks done today, or you weren’t able to read your kid because you had to go do this job or something then, or you didn’t play with your kid enough or whatever thing that kinda makes moms feel a little guilty. I think that’s just… That you’re finite. And so everyone has 24 hours in a day. That’s all we get. We don’t get more, and we all need sleep, and we all need to eat and we all need rest, and know, honestly, I hate all of those things, I hate that I need the things, and I often buck up against it and fight it, and so then I walk around to guilty that I’m not able to do the things that I set out to do.

And the reality is, I’m not intended to because I’m not God, and so I think that that… For women, I think that we have to come to terms with is that is that we are not God, and so we are going to have to depend on Him to fill what is lacking in what we are not able to provide.

COURTNEY MOORE: So if they don’t get the tasks done, they can just rest in the Lord and say, God, I’ve walked in faith today, I’ve walked in your spirit the best I can, I didn’t get the laundry folded here… Here I am anyway, I’m yours anyway.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Right, yeah, I mean, so I have this, this list on my phone, it’s called Spring cleaning, but I guess I always change it to fall cleaning whenever… Like summer cleaning… Then you don’t feel so bad. You just keep moving on. So much of I know for myself, so much of my To-do list is, Am I guilt over not getting the things done that I wanted to get done in a given day is arbitrary standards that God has not placed for me. So God requires us to be holy, He requires us to obey and He requires us to love others, and so obviously, there are things we should feel guilty about if you didn’t get the laundry folded, but you were disobedient, or maybe you were… I do think laziness is a sin… And so if you were lazy or you spent the entire day on social media instead of doing your job, then anyone, whether you’re a mom or a husband, or an unmarried person, or a man or a woman, you should feel guilty about that because you are required to be faithful in your work, you’re not required to be frivolous all day on Netflix or social media, but that’s not most of the time why we feel guilty.

COURTNEY MOORE: I think that’s a good point.

COURTNEY REISSIG: That’s between me and the Lord, that’s not something anyone can set for you. Most of the time we’re not feeling guilty over true sin, or at least I don’t think I am.

MISSIE BRANCH: So then Courtney, you wrote Glory in the Ordinary, right, which kind of in my mind, similar in that, I can look at folding laundry and changing diapers and cooking dinner as almost the same simple mundane as scrolling through the internet and watching Netflix, but I know in the book, you were specifically trying to encourage women whose primary job is inside their home.

Do you see a conflict at all? For you, being a woman who works and who is advocating women in work, but you stay at home, and if they’re not at odds, what are some of the things you say… You would say to speak into that like Mommy war that goes on between, I work harder ’cause I work outside of the home and I work harder because I work inside of the home?

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, I think… One of the things that I try to address in the book is that all of us are workers, and so that kind of puts the mommy wars to rest in that regard, because the mommy works in some ways are… We have women who work in the women who don’t work, and the reality is, is that if you’re an image bearer of God, which all humans are, then you are created to work, and so compensation is a by-product of our work, but it’s not the point of our work. And so we are created… So my kids don’t get paid, but when they unload the dishwasher, they are working, when they eat their toys, they are working, and we… We have a different understanding of work than the world does, because we know that God is the one who is the ultimate worker, and he created his image bearers to work, and so that helps women see that all work has value.

And I think sometimes the reason why women feel threatened by each other is because, first of all, I don’t think they understand each other, so I think a lot of working moms and stay-at-home moms rarely ever… Or work-outside-the-home moms and work-inside-the-home moms, they don’t ever really talk to each other, they don’t really… They’re not in the same circles, they don’t tend to do the same things, and so what happens is they don’t realize that they really actually are very similar, and they’re struggling the same things, and they’re doing… The mom who works outside the home still has to come home and cook dinner… Right, and she’s dealing with the same probably false guilt that a mom who’s inside the home has, but it would just look a little different, and so I think what I… What I really have a heart for is helping women, helping bridge that gap that women… That all of us are workers and so we all are bringing something, contributing something, and so depending on your personality, in your interest and your desire, some will work outside the home more than others, and I don’t think that’s wrong.

I think that… That’s biblical. I think the reason why work is all outside of the home to begin with, is because of the Industrial Revolution, not necessarily because of what the Bible says, and so that… I think sometimes we have a failure to understand history of how we got to where we’re at in America, but regarding work, and that I think is why there’s the mommy wars. It’s that everyone wants to feel like they’re a good mom, right?

MISSIE BRANCH: Probably looking for have affirmation.

COURTNEY RESSIG: Yeah, and so we prop up these things of, What is a good mom or a good mom is one who doesn’t lose herself and her kids and goes to work, or a good mom is one who sacrifices everything. And what I wanna say is maybe you guys should talk to each other and realize that you both want the same things and I think that that would help. And honestly, I really think it’s a white woman’s conversation because… And it really bothers me ’cause it’s like most of… I read this book on the history of work of housewives, and this is just not typically a conversation that women of color have had or been able to have been allowed to have, and so I think it’s a little bit coming from privilege and maybe too much time on our hands, but…

MISSIE BRANCH: Well, Courtney, one of the things that Courtney Moore and I have talked about is just how different perspective changes everything, I don’t come from a space where being a stay-at-home mom was normal or deified, and so when I began to hear it, I couldn’t even understand it, because I remember being asked, Am I lazy when I told somebody I was a stay-at-home mom? Yeah, so it does a lot of it has to do a lot more with culture than the Bible, I think.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Oh, for sure.

MISSIE BRANCH: And we need to be able to be honest in it.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yes, and we’re not… I think sometimes we’re so afriad that we’re… That someone’s gonna say, We don’t believe the Bible. And I just… Yeah, it’s cultural, it’s not…

COURTNEY MOORE: So how would you, Courtney, based off of that… I mean, I know for myself growing up in the South, I don’t know if it was ever really said to me, being a say at home mom is the most godly thing you can do, but that was definitely… I don’t know if that was actually stated, but I definitely felt that way, and then you go to Titus 2, and it’s train the younger women to be self-controlled, pure, working at home. Love their husbands love. So I feel like this verse in particular is really substantial for the stay-at-home mom. Women want to honor the Lord and they want to obey Scripture, so I’m just kind of thinking about what you’re just saying like… What you said about being disobedient to the word, so how do you interpret this Scripture and maybe talk a little bit about what you just mentioned about the history, the Industrial Revolution and all that…

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, so even when in Titus 2 when that was written, it was culturally all work was done in the home, and so a lot of workers are in the home and then going through a colonial America and just… And even the majority of the world currently, so third world countries, places like that, where people don’t leave their home every day to go to the marketplace to work, and so we don’t… We have this false separation between how people have historically worked, and work was often very localized, it was very… Your whole family was involved in it. My kids and I are reading the Little House in the Prairie series, and you can even look at that, that the work is so home-based, even Charles is working out of his home, he’s working in the fields as kids go help him, his wife’s working in the house and doing things, and so everyone was kind of all together, and we don’t have that culture any longer. And so what we’re dealing with in America is largely owing to the way we work and not owing, and then you have this other issue of the children were always with their parents, they were always with their mother, and I do think that…

I think that’s biblical, I think it’s God-given. I mean, most women who have to leave their children at home, very young children at home to go to work, do not have this strong desire to not be around their children. Many women have a strong desire to have their children with them, which is why I am a huge advocate for paid family leave, because we have created a society that works only for men, and into what we’ve forgotten is that we were created to work, we were created with these interests and desires and abilities, and we have a society that is not suitable to the family, and historical, the family has always been a part of that. And so part of the way our family works is we’re trying to figure out a balance of that, and it is always so troubling to me with Christians is they take that one verse and they say they should be busy at home and working at home, and they miss the cultural context. And miss that when you look at it in the scope of the Industrial Revolution, when work was taken out of the home into the marketplace and to factories, it changed the dynamic of the home and the people who suffer the most for the most vulnerable, the children and the women who once who were suffered the greatest and men suffered too, because I think we were all intended to work holistically and to have… I mean, kids don’t even know what their parents do anymore.

And so I think there’s just a lot of things we lost and trying to get that back, and so I think if you don’t understand history or understand culture, you don’t understand all what’s going on, then you can take one verse and say, we shouldn’t go to work today, because you’re not being obedient to the Lord as a godly women, and that’s just not true, so instead of saying, Hey, maybe we can work to make our society better to actually be more conducive to working families.

COURTNEY MOORE: Right, and I love how there’s really just so much freedom in Christ, when I hear you talk about this, I just feel like there are probably women out there who are working full-time outside of the home and probably do feel a lot of guilt that I should be at home, it would be a better Christian if I was home for the whole week with my kids, but there’s just so much freedom in Christ too, and I just feel like so much love of the Father for women. So it’s good to hear you say these things.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Yeah, and I’ll admit, for a long time, I totally use that verse as a heavy-handed, all wommen should stay home, so I’ll be the first to repent and say That was wrong… A wrong interpretation too, but I know a lot of women who are just straight up tired because you’re working outside the home and they feel guilty and then they don’t wanna necessarily be home all the time, they love their job, but they feel, they’re torn between their home and their children… And I always would wanna encourage them that those are God-given, that’s a God-given angst, that you’re created to work, that’s a good thing, you’re created as a whole person with interest, and you’re also create… If you have children, you were created to be a mother, and so they’re not opposed to one another, but our society has made them opposed to one another, and that’s the problem, not your interest and desires. And so it’s hard. A lot of women, I think, feel torn and guilty, and I don’t want them to feel that way, I hate that.

MISSIE BRANCH: So, Courtney, how would you encourage women to support each other? One of the things that I’m a fan of, I believe in is giving people language for what they probably didn’t realize was going on. We’ve all been at conferences where we’ll hear the women who are pro staying at home speak about it as if it is… I’m now living a life that’s godly. I’m now submitted to God because I’m staying at home, and then you’ve been at conferences or networking events or whatever, where you hear women say, I don’t know women do it. This seems like a waste of their time and their resources… So one of the ways, how do we encourage women to support each other within the different domains?

COURTNEY REISSIG: I think knowing that everyone’s different, I think is huge, knowing everyone’s life circumstances are different, everyone’s interests are different… Everyone’s capacity is different. And so recognizing that there is not… There’s no one right way to be a woman. I think that’s huge for women, not to feel like they have to fit into a box. Now, obviously… I mean, there’s some like You need to… Not think you’re a man or something, but we’re not talking about that in… I think that there’s just so much freedom. If God is diverse enough to create people who look different, with more differences than we can even fathom, then he also created personalities with more differences than we can even fathom. And we just need to have a lot of grace for that.

MISSIE BRANCH: Our womanhood is huge and diverse. That’s beautiful.

COURTNEY MOORE: Well, Courtney, your latest book, Teach Me to Feel has just released. Let’s transition to talk about this new book you’ve got… What spurred you on to write this book and what do you hope women will gain from it?

COURTNEY REISSIG: So it’s on the Psalms and our family went through a really difficult season with the birth of our fourth son, and where my son and I, we had a pregnancy complication where both of us nearly died and by God’s grace we’re here, he’s napping in the other room he’s Fine, almost three, but it was a really traumatic season for our whole family, and I dealt with a severe depression afterwards, and probably will always deal with it to some degree, and the only thing I could read was the Psalms, and the Lord, we had prepared me, prior to that, I had let a Bible study with the literature and the Psalms, and so I had gotten some framework for how the Psalms fit together and had grown to really love them. And so in that moment in that crisis, I spent all my time in the Psalms because I felt like I had familiar friends. And so, from that came in this book that I imagine that other people have walked through, maybe not what we walked through, but a fair amount of highs and lows of the Christian life, and so I wanted to give people… Help them see that they’re not alone in the joy and in the pain, and then the suffering and in the deliverance, that God has given us language for how to express and harness our emotions back to Him and find hope in whatever circumstance we’re in, so that’s…

They’re short devotional type chapters on specific Psalms, so yeah, they deal with happy things and sad things, so, I wanted it all to be sad because I’m kind of melancholy as a person, and my editor was like, I gotta have some happy psalms in there, so… Yeah, so not everyone is as melancholy as me.

MISSIE BRANCH: So, as we come to a close, what is one piece of advice you would want to leave with women who really are striving to honor God through their vocation, through their callings, whether at home or in the marketplace, what’s one thing you would leave them with?

COURTNEY REISSIG: I would leave them with the verse in… I wanna say it’s Colossians cause Idon’t have it open right now, where whatever your hand finds you to do, do it with your might for the glory of God, and so the work that you have for today, whether it’s inside the home or outside the home, whether you hate it or you love it, has been given to you by God to do and use for His glory, and so it’s not a means to an end. It is in many ways the point to imaging him to watching world and your work is intended to spread His glory throughout the world, and so I would encourage you to, if you hate it, ask Him to help you see the good in it, and if you love it then do it with your might.

COURTNEY MOORE: Amen. Thank you, Courtney. We wanna make our listeners aware that we have provided links to purchase all three of your books right here in the show notes, and they can also find those links on our website as well, and so Courtney, thank you so much for this conversation. I really feel like women are gonna… They live in these spaces that we’re talking about these kind of things, these thoughts go through their mind all day long, back and forth, and so I feel like some of the things you shared are gonna be super helpful for them.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Thank you so much. I hope so. Pray so.

MISSIE BRANCH: Courtney, you’re a blessing. Thank you.

COURTNEY REISSIG: Thank you. So are y’all.

MISSIE BRANCH: And thanks to you, listeners, for joining us today. As we mentioned at the top of the show, make sure to head to womenwork.net to download your free copy of this month’s, Women & Work Going Deeper Bible study. That’s where we take content from today’s episode, back to the Bible, where you will study and gain and biblical foundation from shows topics.

COURTNEY MOORE: And why you’re there, don’t forget to grab your copy of the Women and Work Podcast Discussion Questions. Again, our vision is to help lead you and your friends from work or your neighborhood or church into meaningful conversation that will help you take the next step of faith into your calling.

MISSIE BRANCH: If you were encouraged by today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, please subscribe in Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

COURTNEY MOORE: And while you’re there, take a minute to rate and review our show. 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. Thanks.