160 - Book | A Confident Mom with Renee Swope

- May is for Mamas -

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Show Notes:

Welcome to May is for Mama's, when every episode in the month of May is dedicated to all you mamas listening with topics and conversations specifically designed for you. Today, we have the privilege of hearing from my friend and mama mentor, Renee Swope, who is a wife and a mama of three and an author and speaker. And she loves Jesus so much, we are going to be talking all about her latest book, A Confident Mom, which is the perfect fit for my book club and May is for Mamas.

You can get all the details about the updated 2022 Book Club at nancyray.com/bookclub, but I am thrilled to talk about one of those books today with the author and Renee is just such a treasure of a friend to me. She's so wise and I love that she is ahead of me in the motherhood journey, she has so much to offer. You are going to love our conversation, I can't wait to share it with you today.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.

Nancy: Renee, I am so grateful that you are here. Welcome to the Work and Play Podcast!

Renee: Well, I am so glad to be here, although I wish we could be together, but thank you so much. I've been looking forward to our conversation.

Nancy: That would be the only thing that would make this better is if we're in the same room right now. I just love hearing your voice and I'm so grateful to just connect with you and hear from you and before we jump in to all of your wisdom that you have to share, I would love for you to just tell anyone listening a little bit about you and your family and what it is that you do.

Renee: So, I am an author and a communicator—is really what a friend told me. Like, you're not a speaker or an author, you're really a communicator. And so in any way that the Lord, you know, intrusts me or allows me, I love to communicate His truth, His hope and His encouragement. I get to do that through writing books, sometimes speaking at events, and I'm about to launch a podcast.

In the past, I have served through Proverbs 31 Ministries on the radio and so that's a little bit about me. I've been married for almost 29 years to my husband, JJ and we have two biological sons who are 24 and 27 and are married and then we have a daughter who was adopted when she was a baby, but she's 13 now.

So what do I do? Like on a daily basis, I'm trying to survive a home renovation while we're living here.

Nancy: That's impressive, that's just a lot. That's a lot.

Renee: Yeah, but we're getting there.

Nancy: That’s excting, well, first of all, I can't believe that Astor's 13, that blows my mind. That is so crazy, you have the most beautiful family and I love that we connected several years back through a mutual friend and I heard about this book when it was an idea in your heart and a burden on your heart and now I am literally holding it in my hand as I'm talking to you.

It's called A Confident Mom, and I can't think of a better title for something that I long for and want to have and to take hold of in my life. I want to be a confident mom and I love the subtitle, it says “Simple ways to give your child what they need most.”

So tell us a little bit about what made you want to write this book.

Renee: So over the years, I've been a mom now for 27 years, and I really struggled a lot early on and it started early for me. From the time I talk about in the book, once my boys turned into toddlers, they wouldn't listen and I just started panicking inside. Because I held up this measure of performance and really high expectations I had of myself and I falsely believed that God had of me, but it took me a long time to figure out they weren't realistic.

And I wanted to be able to give back and give to moms at every stage and season of motherhood, what I so desperately needed and found over time through my relationship with God. Truly as I allowed Him to father me from His heart and through His word, I was able to become the mother that He created me to be.

But, it was a process and it was a journey and that's what made me write the book. Over the past few years, the Lord has just brought different women into my life and you're one of them. Women who are moms, who love Him with all their hearts and really want to pour into their kids and leave a legacy and it awakened in me just more and more of the desire to do it.

And as you know, writing a book is hard. You've prayed me through the past few years and were so graciously willing to sit down with me a few years ago when I was in town and help me ask you know, what would be the questions that you would ask? And I looked back on those notes as I wrote the book.

I have the heart of a mentor and I've discovered God's given me a real nurturing heart. We recently, I recently adopted some baby ducks and my husband's like, “Oh my gosh, you were so created to be a mom.”

Nancy: The baby ducks seal the deal, they’re your legacy.

Renee: They are meeting my needs until we have grandchildren.

Nancy: Ah, that's the best. Yeah, I love that. Well, I see that throughout this book and I wanted to say truly, I think this is what sets this book apart from other parenting books that I've read—is that your heart as a mentor and a mom who has experience and has a deep walk with the Lord. Like what sets this book apart is that you keep going back to the Lord for your parenting wisdom.

You keep asking him, you keep running to the feet of Jesus to say, “How can I navigate this with my kids?” I just haven't seen that modeled in other books like it was modeled here and I just treasure that because that obviously is an example that I want to follow.

Funny side story about Renee coming to ask me these questions a few years ago is—

Renee: Let's mention when my baby boy was getting ready to go to college and was thinking about going to live in your area. He was looking for colleges or grad school or Seminary—that's what it was.

Nancy: Okay, so that's like 15, 20 minutes down the road from me and Renee came to spend the night with me one night.

Wouldn't you know, I mean, it's just so classic—I'm trying to remember. Did I have three kids at the time?

Renee: Yes.

Nancy: Beaufort was a baby, Milly and Lyndon were like toddlers and you're spending the night in the guest room. And in the middle of the night, Milly goes into your room and crawls in the bed with you. Did she sleep the whole night with you?

Renee: It was probably about twelve or one o'clock in the morning, but I didn't want her to wake you up and then I didn't want her to wake Lyndon up, and so, yeah, she fell asleep next to me. It was so sweet.

Nancy: I mean, that is just like the perfect demonstration of your heart and the best story I'll never forget. I was mortified the next morning when I realized Milly, I think she was three years old at the time, had wandered into your room and slept with you. It still tickles me to think about it, but it just goes to show your nurturing heart and I totally attest to that and that you are a mentor.

I just love that and I love that about this book. So kind of set the table, I love the opening story. I'd love for you to share, just the article that you read that led you to being a gold miner in your children and kind of what that means.

Renee: Yeah, so it was a really hard day and I had been running way too many errands with two little boys and by the time we got to like my fourth stop, they were driving me crazy. I was trying to check off my list cause I love completion and I was trying to get a lot done so I could feel like I had, you know, knocked it out of the park that day.

And they were interrupting my plans by, you know, fussing and arguing and climbing in and out of the cart and I just knew that I was going to get reprimanded by a store clerk. I left, you know, I, made a u-turn pretty quickly in the aisle and we went home. On the way home, I made sure that Josh knew they were going down for an early nap because he would not obey and, you know, with guilt being my absolute goal.

So, I put the boys down for an early nap and decided I was going to work on an article and edit an article for Lysa TerKeurst, that she had written for moms. And in it, she referenced a story about Andrew Carnegie, who was the wealthiest man in the United States in the early 1900s and he employed 42 millionaires, which was unheard of.

A reporter asked him one day, how he had hired these men and Carnegie explained that the men weren't millionaires when they came to work for him, but had become millionaires as a result. So of course the reporters intrude and start asking him how and basically, Andrew Carnegie shared a management principle that completely captivated my heart.

And he said, “Men are like gold. You know, and when a gold miner goes into a gold mine, he has to move through tons of dirt, but he doesn't look for dirt. He looks for gold and the more he looks for, the more he finds.” He was intent on, you know, working through the hard things and the people he worked with and who worked for him, their weaknesses to bring out their strengths and to find the best in them and see beyond who they were to who they could become.

And as a mom that day, it captivated my attention, but it also crushed my heart because I thought—I am buried in the dirt of my kids' disobedience and my discouragement. Like I wish I had a gold miner in my life and I put down the article and I opened up my journal and I wrote in it. In the book I share a couple of my journal entries where I just say, you know, I'm such a horrible mom, I feel guilty all the time, I thought I was going to love being a mom and now I want to quit. Why didn't anybody tell me it was going to be this hard?

I know you're just as frustrated with me as I am with myself, Lord. God used that story, and that day to really begin to show me how critical I was of myself and as a result, how critical I had become of my kids. And honestly, although I don't mention this in the book, how critical I became of my husband too, because what was in my heart was just spilling out of my mouth and in my attitude.

So that day I began to process with the Lord, how I got into that hard place but at the same time, I also asked the Lord, show me how I can become a gold mining mom. You know, how can I see beyond who my kids are? How can I notice the good and bring it to the surface? And from there began this really amazing turning point and really a crossroad in my parenting and eventually in my marriage.

That completely shifted my perspective, as I began to look for golden attitudes and golden actions that reflected the heart of God, because all of us are created in His image. As I was processing this idea, I felt like the Lord brought me back to Genesis where it says that “We are created in His image and that the gold in us is that, but the dirt that burries the gold is our sin.” And it just unfolded over time and became a powerful parenting perspective, but then I was able to develop some tools and systems on a poster board chart, and it really shifted. It just changed my perspective and it changed the landscape and the environment of our home.

Nancy: Well, you can give me a poster board any day and I feel like that is like such a great tool for me. When you started talking about that in the book, how you put these character traits that are Biblical, Christ centered character traits, and you went through them on this poster board with your kids and you would focus on, was it one a week? Is that right?

Renee: Yeah.

Nancy: You would really focus on one attribute a week and just hone in on that and have examples and creative lessons and I just, I love that. It's so simple, poster board costs like $2, you know, it's a tool that you use to really keep you on track to look for that gold.

Renee: So in the back of the book, you probably saw there's an appendix that has the different traits. I think it's 24 different character traits and it has a child-friendly definition—I call it, it has a Bible verse you can memorize, and we used it as a family devotional tool. Then it has three or four ideas of how you can live out that trait in your everyday life, you know, in your community and your neighborhood and your home, with the kids at preschool or wherever.

And really a lot of them could be used even with teenagers, the approach might be different, but the content itself. And so now what I did was, I took those and I printed them and had them laminated and I just look a little magnet and stick them up on my refrigerator or have them on our kitchen table and it just helps. It kind of shifts our perspective, you know, what's interesting about character and I talk about this in the book, is it turns us outward.

If we're looking to be kind or we're looking to share or be content or use kind words, we're looking for ways to treat another person nicely. I feel like character takes the focus off of, you know, looking at ourselves or even our kids, just focusing on what they want and what they want to do, and really looking outward and truly finding ways to live and love like Jesus. And then over time, as you know in the book it unfolds. I was able to then add the traits of dirt and then explain the Gospel in a way that was a little bit easier for my kids to understand.

So when one of them would do something, you know, that wasn't so golden. Like I remember one time Andrew came in, he was crying and he said our dog had bit him, which there wasn’t any blood, I think she just kind of hit them with her teeth to get him to leave her alone. When I unpacked it, he said he had hit her with a sword, his plastic sword and I was like, well, buddy, I probably would have bit you too.

But we went and found the dirt card of meanness and then went across the board and were able to say, “Well, what's the opposite of being mean? Kindness.” And so, instead of just telling our children “Stop being impatient, stop being mean”, we can say, “Here's what it looks like to choose the opposite of that.” And then, you know, define it for them, give them some little bullet points. I think so many times I expected my kids to understand what I meant when I told them to be content or to be patient, but I'd never defined it for them.

Nancy: Yeah. I identify with that so much because my kids are still so little and often I find my mind just thinking like, “You should know this already.” We're adults, we've lived this life, we know what it all means, but we forget they have no concept of the basic things, the basic principles, the basic character traits that the Lord teaches us to walk in. I think that the section in the back of your book is worth buying the book alone, like just the last few pages, because you can turn it into a devotional.

You can just have a focus for the week and as a busy mom, that's really all I can do these days, but it will minister to you as a mom too to work on patience and kindness. It's a family effort, but you also are taking the intentional time to break it down and teach them what it looks like, what it means, and then living it out in everyday life, which I love so much.

Renee: So often we feel like, well, I don't know enough about the Bible to teach my children about God or I'm not doing enough, I'm not spending enough time with them, we're not reading our Bible enough, you know, and this breaks it down. That's why the word simple was so important for me or to me so that we could put that in the subtitle because it's not that doing these things are always simple, but we can simplify them and make them doable.

We can't do all of them every single day, but we can simplify these needs that our children have and make them doable and measurable and meaningful. I think that so often as moms, we don't have a way to measure and focusing on character actually gave me a way to measure whether what I was pouring into my kids really mattered and was I seeing them, you know, change over time? It also helped me to notice things that they were doing already that I wasn't even paying attention to because I just focused on the behavior changes I wanted them to make.

Instead of noticing Andrew carrying his plate to the kitchen sink, even though milk spilled on the way, but he took initiative. I didn't have to ask him to take his plate to the sink that night and so I had been missing out on those things, and this helped me to start noticing and nurturing those character traits. But like you said, they were and they are so good for my heart as well, I think it's important.

This is one of the things I learned early on with them when we were doing this, it was really important for us to approach it as a “we as a family” are going to learn how to be patient this week and as a family are going to pursue sharing like Jesus did.

It became a “we” instead of just “you need to” and that just really changed things a lot. It helped me to grow, to become more like Jesus as well and to notice when I wasn't being like Jesus. As you know, from reading the book, there were times when my kids called me out for not being nearly as kind to them as they had been to me.

Nancy: Well that is going to happen.

Renee: It is and those are times that I learned the most and it's good for our kids to see us mess up and apologize. Apology is key to that sentence and apologize and ask for forgiveness and ask if we could try again.

Nancy: And one of the struggles I have so much, I don't have—especially right now, I don't feel like I have a lot of time to spend with the Lord journaling, reading scripture, diving in. You know, it's either sleep or that, and sleep is very important right now for me to be a functioning human. So, I love that not only are you discipling your children, you are showing them what it looks like to abide with the Lord, to pursue Him in His characteristics and what He teaches in His word every single day in like a very simplistic way.

And that is Jesus in the gospel, it's simple, it's not complex, but it's so rich. I love this whole concept and can't wait to really start working on it. I hope to do it over the summer. That would be like kind of our launching point for it this year and I'm really excited about it.

Renee: That's one of the things I want to do in my podcast this summer is have a series on having a fun and meaningful summer. A purpose because summers can become just, it just feels like jello, you know? And it just feels like nothing's meaningful, like we're not getting anything done and you know, the only people that do anything good in my life are the people who teach them at Sunday school.

We can be intentional as moms in the summer, but keep it simple again and I have such fond memories with my boys and now doing this with Astor, it's also something I have found to be applicable at every stage of life with my kids, even as adults.

Nancy: Yep. I mean we're going to get stuff out of it too and I'm 35. It's like, they're timeless, you know, you can always get something out of it, which is beautiful.

One of my favorite parts of your book was turning self-defeat, which is something I think moms of littles deal with a lot, into self-awareness and really how JJ, your husband, does this thing called a retrospective. So tell us a little bit about what a retrospective is and how it's helped you in motherhood.

Renee: So after that really hard day, I needed to not only make a shift in my perspective, but I needed to look back. I felt like the Lord was asking me or leading me to unpack. Why was I so frustrated with my kids? And what could I have done differently? Was it all just bad behavior? Or was there something that I needed to shift? That I needed to become more aware of?

And I really needed to unpack, you know, why was it so important to me to get five things done that day? What was driving me there and why hadn't I planned breaks for the boys? Like, of course they were climbing in the grocery carts, they wanted to be at the playground climbing the monkey bars.

There was something driving me and so by doing a retrospective, you look back at a situation and I did it specifically when I would have a hard day or go through a few hard days with the kids. I would sit down and ask myself questions about my expectations, about their sleep, my sleep, eating, you know, just different things. So I could discover some patterns possibly that were forming or discover little ways I could make adjustments that might better serve my kids and myself even.

And so when we have bad days with our kids. You know, there might be something that broke at home and a service contractor that didn't show up and then we're in a bad mood, but we're just going through the motions, then at the end of the day, we feel horrible. And then we get up the next time we just do it all over again.

By doing a retrospective, we sit down and sometimes you don't have time to sit down. You know, I am in a season of life where I can sit down for a little while while my daughter's at school. Even if it's in the bathtub with your bubbles or on the toilet, lock the door, kids are watching videos. Because this is very Biblical, like David prayed—search my heart, oh God and know me, show me if there's any offensive way in me and lead me.

Unless we sit down with ourselves and with the Lord and just ask Him to help us see what's really going on, I think we become hopeless. We just feel like things are never going to change and things are never going to get better and that's just a really risky place to stay.

And if we don't take time to do that, I even think about Mary and Martha, you know, Martha who was so frustrated about where her sister was and the mess in the kitchen, went to Jesus and asked for physical help. But Jesus helped her see what was really going on in her heart and it was worry and it was distractions, but that's not what she asked.

She didn't say, “Will you calm my anxious heart? And will you help me not have all these distractions?” Like she thought she just needed physical help, but Jesus is the one who can show us what's really going on in our heart and what we really need. That's what I started to do and become more self-aware and child-aware, of their unique traits and personalities and which I unpack again later in the book.

Is that enough detail to understand?

Nancy: Yes, I just want to read a couple of these questions because there's six questions about expectations and then eight about behavior patterns and I just think this would be so helpful after a hard day for me to sit down and journal about these questions.

What were my expectations? What did not go the way that I hoped it would? And what did? Did I leave margin for the unexpected? Which oftentimes my answer is no, I have my plan and I stick to it, you know, but it's important to leave time and then behavior patterns. What time of day was it?

What happened right before things went downhill? Was I on my phone ignoring my children? Is there a pattern I can see when I can compare today to another bad day? My favorite question is were my children tired, hungry, not feeling great, bored, antsy or craving attention? I'm like, yes, that's my children all the time, yes—number five, that's the answer.

But it's like just so important to stop and I just love the phrase that you use here, which is turning self-defeat into self-awareness because by asking ourselves these questions, instead of feeling so defeated after all these things feel like they spin out of control. We can step back and instead step into self-awareness and understand why am I feeling like this? Why are my kids feeling like this? How can we course correct and do things differently next time?

And that's wisdom, that's wisdom to pause and reflect and so I just loved that. I wanted to make sure that I asked you about it because I feel like that's just such a valuable page in this book. I want to, you know, put a bookmark there so that I can go back and do that again and again, when I do feel just self defeated.

Renee: I think it's so important. I think it's easy for us to get really stuck in the muck and the mire of that, of the negative emotions, but by asking these questions, it brings it to a logical level.

You know, it brings it from the middle of our emotional brain—which I think is called the amygdala, into the cognitive part of our brain and we look at the facts and by just looking at some of the facts, it really, for me diffuses the power of defeat because I'm looking at some logical things and realize like, okay yeah my expectations for all of us were not really realistic.

Nancy: That's so good. I love how throughout the book, there's so much heart and wisdom, but there's also these like nuggets of just practical. Like here's the list of questions to ask.

Another thing that you give is what do you call your guiding principles of discipline? So discipline is a hard topic. Everybody has different ideas of what's right or wrong with discipline and how to best discipline your child. I feel like it's always changing, but I love these guiding principles of discipline because it doesn't matter how you discipline your child, these are guiding principles in the way you discipline them. Could you share just a few of those and how you and JJ kind of came up with them?

Renee: Yeah. So we felt like it's really important for us and I really believe this is important for all parents or anyone that is in charge of disciplining, is to determine ahead of time, what are going to be your guiding principles and have a plan in place so that you respond in love rather than react in anger, which is so easy to do. But so here are some of our guiding principles.

We discipline our children in private and away from anyone else that's involved, my kids even as adults have told me how much that meant to them. We wait until our emotions and our child's emotions are calm before we discuss the situation or discipline our child, we ask, and this is the whole discuss the situation, so the third one is we ask what happened and we address the choices that they made.

We also ask them like, what could they have done differently that would have led to a better result? So, before we would tell our children what their discipline or what the consequences were, we would process with them. Process with them what had happened, you know, and recently when I was writing the book actually Joshua said how that he was so glad we did that because oftentimes he thought he was right, no matter what, and this is when he was a teenager. And he said by you guys talking with me about it, it helped me to see what I had done wrong versus when I went into it and if you guys had just disciplined me, I just would have been angry because I didn't think I'd done anything wrong.

Also, before we talk about consequences, we communicate our unconditional love to them and we remind them that God calls us as parents to discipline them and that He's entrusted us with that role and that we would be bad stewards. If we had told them beforehand, here are the boundaries, here are the consequences, here are the choices you get to make and then didn't follow through then we would've lied basically.

After we give them their consequences, we hug them and again, we express our love for them. Now, as they were teenagers that got a little bit harder but we would try, you know sometimes teenagers especially bristle, but we tried to say, I love you, I'm taking the car keys away. Which I know as a mom of littles you're like what car keys?

Nancy: I can't wrap my head, you know?

Renee: The Little Tike car keys. We always tell our children that we believe in them and that the behavior is not who they are, but something that they chose to do. There's a story in there about Andrew biting Joshua and him saying “I'm so bad, you know, my heart's full of so much dirt” and me saying like, “You're not a bad person, but what you chose to do was wrong” and making sure our kids don't define themselves based on their behavior.

Then if someone else was involved in the situation, we ask our children to apologize and ask for forgiveness from the person that they hurt. Once again, I want to mention, and I'm mentioning these things because the younger years are so hard and I remember feeling like nothing I'm doing is making a difference and yet I just decided my goal was to lay my head on the pillow at night and know I had done the best I could with what I had through Christ who gave me strength. Even if it was making pizza, frozen pizza and saying I'm sorry five times.

Like, I just wanted to know, I had at least been as faithful as I could be. But what I've discovered now that we have adult children is there were certain things and this was one of them, the power of an apology and where it has showed up for them most is in their marriages.

Both of their wives separately have said to us, when we were hanging out with them or, you know, talking about engagement or something like that, they've just said like, “Thank you so much, Andrew like leads us in that. Or Joshua makes sure that we don't just say, ‘I'm sorry’ and the other one says, ‘Oh, that's okay’ but we say, ‘I'm sorry, will you forgive me?’” And it really has helped a ton in their communication so I just want to encourage you, mom, wherever you are, whatever season you're in that, although it feels like it's monotonous and it feels like it doesn't matter. It really does.

You are really shaping a future friend, a future husband, a future leader. What you're doing really, really does matter more than you'll ever know.

Nancy: You talk about finding good between the guard rails and about boundaries and how God gives us boundaries and they're good. But that can be something I wrestle with, I feel like that's going to be my new mantra—finding good between the guard rails, because I feel like there's just a lot of boundaries in my life right now, just naturally with little kids, you know, I don't have a lot of freedom or it's just built in. But they’re hard and I identified so much with your tension of like sleep versus free time.

Am I going to sleep or am I going to have to do something for myself? Because literally every waking moment when the kids are awake, is devoted to them. So how do we lean into boundaries as mamas? How do we really be grateful and find the good in those guard rails when it feels so hard?

Renee: I think we have to look for that and you know, my personality does not like to be told what to do. So guard rails feel like limits, all I can see is what I can't do. My focus on, you know, the highway before me all I see is the fields on the left and the right that I can't play in anymore.

And we do give up a lot, if we want to parent well we will have to give up a lot, but it is just for a season and it doesn't feel like that, but it really, really is. One of the things I struggled with so much was making sure I got enough sleep and giving up free time, like you just talked about. I kept sensing the Lord telling me, you know, or showing me I need to take a nap instead of getting projects done.

Sometimes instead of even cleaning my house and now it would be like, instead of being on social media, you know, or doing those things that are kind of extra, that I needed to set myself up for success. So it might even be taking time to journal would be something versus watching a TV show.

Not that that's bad, but when you need—and this is what I call, not self-care, but it's soul-care or it's both. I had to learn, even if I wasn't taking a full nap, but I was resting and resting my mind it was really important. Especially in those early years when sleep was often interrupted or my body needed to produce breast milk or, you know, there was just something going on that was putting a strain on me that I just needed to allow the Lord to put some guardrails and really go before Him with my time and say, this is my time. How do you want me to use it?

And I wanted to be busy and involved in our church. There were seasons where the Lord showed me, that's not what's best for you or your family, but there will be a season that you can be more involved. I'm a seven on the Enneagram, so that was hard, it was really hard, but it was good. I can look back now and there were times where I saw the good, but I was always resistant to the guard rail.

Nancy: I think that's so good, I feel like I want to write that down—find good between the guard rails and know it's not going to be forever, but there is goodness right where I am right now. Because I'm in that, you know, and I do find myself only looking at the limits and looking at the things I can't do and just feeling frustrated all the time. But there's just so much goodness where I am, so just focusing on that.

I feel like it's a spiritual discipline to do that, to like course correct my brain and my mind to get back to searching for the good and clinging to that.

Renee: Yeah and that's one of the reasons that I wanted to write this book so that I could help moms see the good, because as you know from reading the book there's a section that's, you know, what your child needs most. Then there's a whole other section—and it's probably my favorite section and it's what your heart needs to know and so, and I think this chapter falls in that.

My hope is to really give encouragement and wisdom and also say like, I know this is hard and you are not a bad mom because you think this is hard and nobody else is out there super mommin’ it and doing it better than you but it's worth it and you are not alone. What you do, what you're doing matters more than you'll ever know until heaven. I see you as a hero.

Nancy: Wow, do you have any closing words of encouragement for any mama who's listening?

Renee: Yeah, I think tying into what I just said, but I oftentimes in order to motivate myself to really pour the best of what I had into being a mom for my kids, I would think back on my own growing up years and think, you know, what would I have needed? Or what do I wish my mom had done in my growing up years? Because I didn't grow up in a home environment that was very nurturing at all.

In fact, my mom recently told me, cause she's reading my book, how much she wishes she'd had a book like this to help her and help her see how valuable motherhood was, because I mean, she's apologized in her eighties for neglecting us as kids.

So that helped me a lot to think, what did I wish I had? And if you did have an awesome mom, it might help you to think, what am I so grateful that my mom gave me? I remember my mom taking a nap when we did, I wonder like how grouchy she would have been if she didn't? That helped me a lot to find motivation to do what was best. When it was going to be take more effort than just doing what was easy.

Nancy: I love that. I think it's so practical too, when you're just in it to simplify that and just try to take yourself back to when you were a little girl and just think about that. I think it's beautiful advice.

I would love to share, and this is going to be reflective of the questions I asked and the things I talked about. But my three biggest takeaways from the book, because I loved your book and it just ministered to me and I can't wait to keep it as a tool and go through that retrospective and look back and talk to Will about what are our guiding principles for discipline.

But my three biggest takeaways are just to always, always, always be looking for the gold in your child and calling it out when you see it. My second biggest is just to take authority and turn self-defeat into self-awareness and grow from that, from the hard stuff of motherhood. And thirdly is to find the good between the guard rails and look at the boundaries as a gift and part of God's will for us right now. Where He is leading us and guiding us and so finding the good in his presence in that.

So thank you, I just wanted to say thank you for writing this and pouring your heart into it. I've been so blessed by it and I know my kids in turn are going to be blessed by it and I'm so grateful for that.

I would love to end with just three kind of fun questions. First, just for you to share a book that you're reading and enjoying right now.

Renee: So right now I'm in a season where I'm not reading as much as I want to be, but there are a couple of books that I've picked up and I'm listening to. I'm actually listening to, and I'm not just saying this to sound super spiritual, I'm really listening to my Bible app a lot just as I'm going about doing things. I’ve just been reading through the Psalms and I'm listening through Nehemiah. Then I'm also reading through Ann Voskamp, as I pick it up off and on I'm reading through Ann Voskamp's new book, Waymaker and then also Lisa Whittle has a great book called The Hard Good, I'm almost finished with that audible book.

Nancy: Those sound like great books, I want to get my hands on them.

Renee: They're not as practical. I mean, as you know, I am a very practical kind of person and so that's probably why I tend to gravitate towards things that aren't as practical because it's good for me to get nourished.

Nancy: I feel like those are the best kind of things to just listen to and kind of get it in your heart.

Renee: Because if I'm listening to a practical book, I want to stop and write down everything.

Nancy: Exactly, me too. So good, what's a thing that you're loving? This can be literally anything, like a product in your home, anything.

Renee: The first thing that came to my mind is this new, well, it's not new anymore, but my frother. I love oat milk and I have this new creamer that's oatmeal cookie oat milk, and I have a frother. It's basically desert foam.

Nancy: Is that one of those things that just, you kind of turn on and you stick in your coffee and it spins around?

Renee: Yeah, it has different levels. It is just the joy of my life right now.

Nancy: I do not have a frother so I'm going to have to go get one.

Renee: Yeah, that's definitely worth putting on your list and watching for some sales maybe during like prime sale, but I did get it off Amazon.

Nancy: Okay, good to know.

This is kind of a big question—How do you maintain a healthy soul and a fulfilling life?

Renee: Well, I don't always do it well, but I pay attention to my soul and sadness is usually what shows up and I know I'm not living or maintaining a healthy soul and a fulfilling life and when that happens, I make sure that I start what I call making joy deposits. What that is is I've written down a list of things that give me joy because sometimes when you're in a place where you don’t feel it you just get in a funk or you feel self-defeat, you can't think of anything that gives you joy. All of a sudden I forget everything. So I'll go back to that list and a big part of it is going outside, just going outside and every time I'm outside I just know God is so evident to me through the greens and the trees and the blues and the skies.

So being outside and paying attention to my soul and definitely spending time with the Lord and like you said earlier, there are seasons when it's really hard to have time to sit down and journal or read. Listening to God's word in those seasons, even if it's while you're nursing a baby or while you're driving carpool, you know, keep that accessible and make it easy for you to do.

Instead of returning calls when you're going to pick up your kids, listen to the book of Philippians or just whatever book encourages your heart and I've been doing a lot more of that lately and it's really made a big difference.

Nancy: I love that, that's so good. I just want you to know I needed that answer, it has been just a really tough mama month for me. Dealing with a lot of anxiety, a lot of things. I love just making a list of joy, the things that bring you joy and making those joy deposits when you feel like things are hard.

I love that answer, so thank you.

Renee: Right now, I have drawings of my house on my whiteboard right now, but I used to keep them written on my whiteboard when I was going through a really hard season and it was especially helpful when I was struggling with depression. My husband helped me come up with those and now I can come up with them on my own and they might change but if you find something that gives you joy, add it to the list. Make that list easy to find and go back to it because the Lord wants your heart to smile, God wants you to have joy and joy really can renew your perspective and your hope and the Lord wants that for you right now.

Nancy: Yes, Renee, thank you. Thank you for your wisdom, thank you for writing this book, thank you for your time that you spent with us today just talking about all of this and all your experience and wisdom and knowledge that you've been able to pass to us—the mamas who are listening that are a few years behind you in motherhood. I'm so, so grateful.

Why don't you share a little bit about the podcast you're launching this summer and where people can find you?

Renee: Yeah, so I'm launching A Confident Mom Podcast this summer and so if you go to reneeswope.com there will be links and easy ways to find the podcast. I'm hoping it's going to launch in June, that's my goal, but it might be late June or early July.

My website is my name, reneeswope.com and I'm on Instagram where I share just more encouragement and some of the principles from the book and some takeaways. I would love to encourage you just in any way that I can in your walk with the Lord and whether you're a mom or not, but if you are a mom, just through some of the things that I'm developing now, as a result of writing the book.

Nancy: We're going to get together, Renee and I are and we're going to talk about some element of this podcast, we're going to put into a gift form for anybody listening at reneeswope.com/workandplay. We'll put that together, so head to that URL and you can grab your gift from Renee.

Renee: Maybe we'll just add that link to your show notes and maybe we could add a link to the frother.

Nancy: Yes, definitely all of the links we're talking about will be added to the show notes, for sure. So you have to send me the exact frother that you have.

Thank you, Renee I so appreciate you and all that you've shared today.

Renee: Well thank you for having me, I so appreciate you.

I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did and I just wanted to remind you this episode is made possible by my incredible, generous Patreon community. This is a new thing, so maybe you've missed it, but I've just recently launched a Patreon page. You can head to patreon.com/workandplay to learn more about it but my patrons are the wonderful listeners of this podcast who believe in work and in play, who believe in living a faith centered life, who believe in the content and conversations that I share. For as little as $1 a month, you can become a patron and support the Work and Play Podcast.

I have already had so much fun just interacting with those of you who are already in my Patreon community. Hearing your feedback on the podcast episodes is so much fun and I just can't wait to see what this community continues to grow into. So if you want to be a part of that had to patreon.com/workandplay and bonus—you get access to some exclusive episodes and resources and a community of new friends who are listening alongside you. You make this podcast possible and I'm so, so grateful.

I'm going to close with words from Renee, from her book that are just so encouraging.