093 - A Year of Contentment with Reagan Reynolds, Part 1
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Show Notes:
My friend Reagan has a heart of gold—you'll see in our conversation, just how amazing she is. She lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina, not far from me, with her husband of 10 years and two young boys. And the whole reason I interviewed her is because she took the Contentment Challenge to another level. She and her husband, Jeremy gave up shopping—get this—for the entire year of 2020 to pursue a greater life of contentment and eliminate debt. I think their story and how it all turned out is going to inspire you like crazy.
Her days are spent navigating busy mom life and a modest career at an innovative tech company. She has devoted her life to being an earnest disciple of Jesus Christ. In her words, “if my life is solely an experience of God's endless love and mercy upon my undeserving soul, that will be enough to call this run at life a success.”
Today, you're going to hear all about their year of contentment. Now, if you're new to this whole Contentment Challenge thing, I want to leave you two quick resources so you can find out more about it:
First, Episode 003 of this podcast—a very, very old episode. It dives deep into my first Contentment Challenge, how it was born, what it is and how you can do it too.
Second, if you go to here, you can sign up and download a free guide to the Contentment Challenge and get it instantaneously.
So I hope that those two resources shed a little bit more light on where the Contentment Challenge came from, what it is.
Finally, I just want to invite you, come do the Contentment Challenge with me, pray about it. As we talk about in this episode, I'm going to be doing the Contentment Challenge January through March. Like, I do pretty much every year because it has been that life-changing for me. I just want to invite you to do it with me, to pray about doing it and seeing what God does in your heart, in your life.
Listen, we are in a fight for our contentment. I feel it every day. I mean, whenever I walk through Target or scroll through social media, I feel a battle for my own contentment. More than ever, I believe we need to be crazy aware of the battle we are in. My prayer, and I know Reagan's prayer, is that this episode inspires you to make whatever changes you need to make to live the content life that you were meant to live.
Click play above to listen in, or read through our conversation below!
Nancy Ray: Reagan, I am so glad you are here. If you wouldn't mind just opening this podcast episode by telling anybody listening a little bit about how you and I know each other, which goes pretty far back and also a little bit about you and your family.
Reagan Reynolds: Oh, wow. Well, we met when we were babies. Not literally like babies, but I felt like I was a baby or whatever. I was in eighth grade.
Nancy: Pretty much babies.
Reagan: We were. I think that was around 13 years old if I'm doing my math right. And you were one of my first friends at my new school and I will never forget how comfortable you made me feel just as a preteen voyaging into a new middle school experience. And I don't know, I was just ... I'm always been grateful for that. What a time to meet, really. So a little bit about myself. I'm married to a wonderful man. We will be celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary this January.
Nancy: That's crazy, 10 years.
Reagan: I know it's nuts. And actually that's another important intersection point in our relationship because you were our wedding photographer back in 2011. So thank you for that again. And also this is a little tidbit. I don't know if you know this or not, but you actually captured the very moment that my husband and I decided to get married seven months earlier that year. We were on the dance floor during a reception at my best friend's wedding, where you were also the photographer and it was there that my husband and I had that make it or break it conversation. We have that very moment that we were having that conversation photographed and framed in our home.
Nancy: What? I literally had no idea. Wait, who's wedding was that?
Reagan: Stephanie's wedding.
Nancy: Oh my goodness.
Reagan: Yes. So she actually printed it and gave it to us as an anniversary gift one year. And so that means so much.
Nancy: Oh my gosh. Of course it was Stephanie's wedding. I cannot even believe that. Reagan, that's so special. I had no idea, that is so sweet.
Reagan: It is. In a lot of ways that's like—our wedding was so important—really, but that moment changed everything. So thanks.
Nancy: Wow.
Reagan: Still married, loving that. I am a mom of two young boys, a four year old and almost two year old. I'm sure that you can relate to this. I didn't know how fun life could be until I met those two guys, so I just feel really blessed and lucky to have those boys in my life. In addition to that, just mom and home life, I work full-time at a global tech company. But I am about to transition to part-time working hours. Thanks a lot in part to the flexibility and understanding of my workplace, but in large part to this Contentment Challenge.
Nancy: Wow, that's so exciting.
Reagan: Yeah, really-
Nancy: That's a good range but really exciting. Also, I totally agree that kids really open your eyes to how fun life can be.
Reagan: They really do.
Nancy: It's amazing. And their little personalities, man, they teach us so much, but that's exciting. Well, yeah, the main reason I wanted to have you on is because first of all, you're a dear friend and I love your heart so much. And I knew anything you would have to say would be so worth listening to. But second, you have been through a year of this contentment challenge.
For anyone listening, who doesn't know what we're talking about, when we say the contentment challenge, the Lord really kind of came up with this challenge for me years ago I think in back in 2012 was the first time that I did it. You can go to to learn about it, or also listen to Episode 003 of my podcast, the third episode ever that I came out with.
But basically after my husband and I got out of debt and paid off our house and did all this crazy stuff, the Lord told me to give up shopping for three months. And I was like, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. I'm good, I just reached all the financial goals, I'm good. And the Lord just said like, no, I really want you to find your contentment and me. So that's just a quick summary of the contentment challenge. I did end up giving up shopping for three months and he taught me so much to that.
Reagan and her husband, Jeremy have been on this year long. They didn't just do three months, all of 2020. They have been on their own contentment challenge, their own version of a contentment journey really. I've been privileged enough to be kind of a fly on the wall, like included in their emails, seeing what the Lord has done through them. And I just really wanted to have her here to share a little bit about that experience. So starting with just the contentment challenge, when did you hear about that for the first time and kind of what made you interested in it?
Reagan: A year is so crazy, but I can't remember exactly when I first learned about the contentment challenge. I mean, it's been quite a few years that I've been hearing about it, but it would come up in one friend group or another. And it was always a friend saying something like Nancy has started this awesome challenge. And I feel like it would be so good for me and I'm going to do it. And me going maybe I'll do that. And then actually, no, thank you. I'm not going to do it. Because it just seemed really hard, to me at least.
Nancy: I would say that would be most people's first reaction to it. If I had to guess most people are like, that's cool, but not for me.
Reagan: So that was kind of my mindset until late 2019 when my husband and I began praying about where God wanted to focus us in the year 2020. And that's kind of when the light bulb came on for me around the contentment challenge.
Nancy: So you called 2020 your Year of Contentment. How did you and Jeremy really decide to do this together? What led you to not just do it for three months, but not just six months, not nine months, but for a whole year?
Reagan: I know, who would do this for a year? Actually, it was awesome. I would encourage anyone to do the contentment challenge for any amount of time really, but it all began with prayer. Honestly, just lots of prayer. God starts with the heart and I strongly believe that anything we try to accomplish out of our own efforts will ultimately fail. Or even if we do it in our own effort, ultimately we will find that thing unfulfilling in the end.
So I believe God cares for and cultivates the root of our spiritual life. He was really challenging Jeremy and I to gain control of our finances and nourish contentment in our souls and really prepare us for the plans we believe He has a head for us. So, we've been on this journey for several years of God teaching us how to think rightly about our money so that he could stake His claim on the throne of our hearts.
It's a life role straight from the mouth of Jesus. You cannot serve God and money. It seems so straightforward. Really I think it's a lot harder, there are a lot of layers there for a lot of us. And so God's just been pulling back those layers. So anyways, we had a mountain of credit card debt, a large mountain and hospital debt that accumulated over several difficult seasons, but we really began to feel a spiritual pull to make some very practical changes in our lives, such as moving me to part-time, to prepare for schooling the boys at home and freeing up some of our assets for more ministry focused work.
But we had this mountain of debt standing between us and what we believed was our next assignment. So we really were just praying like, God, if this is what you have for us, just give us wisdom, show us what to do. So we started by making a list of things that we needed to accomplish, that list was really daunting and scary. And then just with a lot of prayer, we set an ambitious goal of attempting to tackle a portion of that list, our credit card debt within one year.
So, the Contentment Challenge, it seemed like such a wonderful tool, but for us we knew that three months would not be enough to dig our roots as deep as the Lord was wanting us to grow really. So, we agreed that one year seemed like a huge challenge. We were probably crazy to do it, but it was around November, 2019 when we just decided, "Nope, we're doing this. This just feels right and we're all in."
Nancy: Wow. I just love hearing all of that. One thing that just really struck me about what you just said is you feel like there is a mountain of debt between you and the next assignment that the Lord had for you. And I think that ... I don't know, finances, it's just something that we don't really talk about or share about.
But it's a very real part of our lives and just getting free from debt, it does free us to do things and to make decisions or to grab onto a new endeavor, or just have the freedom to step away and work part-time, or do different things because you're not slave to the debt. That just struck me and it's really profound because I know your story and I know how this year ended up, but I'm just excited for you guys.
Reagan: Thank you. I will honestly say like God and money ... I spent a big chunk of my life not really understanding that relationship and not understanding too why debt would be a negative thing. I mean, debt helps us start businesses and go to school and sometimes it's unavoidable. But I think there is just a point of clarity for us where it was like, no, this has real implications on our life.
And really, as we grew deeper in our walk with the Lord, we saw it has real implications on the way that we can love other people well and how much we can give to other people, and how much just we can do ministry well. So that all kind of clicked for me, I'd say for the first time in 2019.
Nancy: So that was a big motivator for you guys and a big reason why you did this, not the only reason, but a big reason. So can you tell us a little bit about what those financial goals were as you looked at 2020 in the year ahead, how contentment or lack of it is tied to our spending or what you've learned and yeah, just kind of what your goals were, like looking at this, maybe daunting here ahead of you.
Reagan: So just in the spirit of transparency, because that's kind of who we are. Here were our numbers: Our goals were to eliminate $20,507 in credit card debt. And then we had a bonus amount of $6,000 in medical debt. Then it was about mid-year that we had an additional hiccup of needing to fix our car. That was about $7,500 worth of repairs.
So those are just kind of the numbers so that people have some context on what I mean by a mountain of debt. And also, that's not the totality of our debt. We carry a mortgage, I have a student loan debt, there's more there, but this was kind of the first step.
So Nancy, I don't think I fully understand all the ways that our spending habits are influenced by contentment. That seems like it's a really long journey. I feel like I'm learning along the way, but I do think all of our actions flow out of our deeper understanding of the larger themes, like who we believe God is and who we are in contrast to Him. Those are big topics. I love sitting face-to-face with young women to discuss those topics, but they're kind of big to flush out here.
So I have some important examples to help draw out insights of how contentment influenced our spending overall. So during the Contentment Challenge, we no longer had the big question of what to do whenever we received an extra sum of money. This was kind of a big deal because that decision point, when you receive extra money, that's where a lot of the temptation lies, at least for us where it did. It really just came down during the Contentment Challenge to two options: We either put it toward that goal or we give it away.
So we no longer work tossing up the idea of pushing off our debt a little longer to splurge on like a family vacation or buy a new thing for the house. That decision we had already made when we agreed to do the Contentment Challenge back in November of 2019. So, it made those moments much easier to navigate.
The second thing is that whenever we did need to purchase something that was generally outside of our Contentment Challenge limits, for instance, like new clothes for our growing four year old, we did it very prayerfully and we really didn't impulse buy for those things.
Contentment helped us to slow down our budget and plan for spending when we needed to spend. So really I feel like there's a strong correlation between contentment and impulse buying and excessive spending, which is just hurrying. Like being really busy and feeling the need to immediately supplement that need with a quick buy. So that was kind of a non-factor for us this year. We really slowed everything down when it came to spending, even for our needs.
Then the third thing is that I think comparison, it plays a big part in discontentment. I don't think I'm saying anything new. I think people kind of know this, but one thing our family did this year to help support our Contentment Challenge, is that we got off social media completely.
If I'm honest, I don't think we're going back. I don't think I realized how much comparison and envy was fueling my spending habits. I generally don't think of myself as an envious person and it is really easy for me to be happy for others generally, but there is something about scrolling through Instagram that just puts ideas of things that we think we need into our heads and hearts when really life is okay without those things. So, we definitely saw a direct correlation between our spending habits and our social media intake this year.
Nancy: I just feel like I need a moment of silence for that because it was so good. I'm just thinking to myself. One thing you said is life is fine without social media. You're fine to not partake in social media and life is okay. I would even venture to say life is actually really good, but it's just this hard thing, this tension that we live in. I struggle with this and I'm really open with this, that it's this tension of like you have to guard and protect what comes through your eyes, what you're looking at and social media can be a wonderful place, but it also just totally unknowingly can feed you those same ideas.
I just think it's fascinating and very helpful to realize our links between our spending habits and our social media intake. I just think that's fascinating and worth listening to this podcast episode, just for that little bit right there, just to be more self-aware. That was a huge thing for you. I picture a life of like doing this Contentment Challenge and no social media. I'm like, okay, number one, that's hard. That's a really brave decision, but number two, how refreshing? You're living life in real time, in reality, how refreshing? Did you feel refreshed after doing that this whole year?
Reagan: Oh my gosh. Nancy, being off social media is like, I could spend a whole nother hour talking about that topic. The benefits far outweigh the benefits of being on social media in my perspective. I don't see it as something bad, I don't see it as this innate tool that's doing bad things. I think it can be used for good for sure. I would never suggest that getting off social media should be the 11th commandment or anything like that.
Because I just don't think that's true, but my life has radically changed. I feel like my face-to-face relationships are deeper. I'm just all present where I'm at. And then just fun things, like running into a friends in the grocery store and realizing that she's pregnant and not having seen the announcement on social media or, and just that authentic excitement and, or like I think one thing for me was what if I miss one person I could minister to, if I get off social media? One person I could reach out to and be a friend.
And what I realized is that I have a neighborhood surrounding me, of people who need a real friend and I was able to be that person. So I don't know. I just could talk and talk and talk about that.
Nancy: Well, I love that. I feel like that's a little golden nugget in this episode. So we're just going to leave that for what it is and let God do whatever He wants. Because it's a struggle for me too. But I just love hearing that. I love hearing people's experiences with it as I continue to search for what is the right amount or balance or what is ... It's a hard struggle, I think we all deal with. So I just loved hearing that like paired with this Contentment Challenge that you've done for a whole year. It's really, really fascinating and I think thought provoking.
One thing I wanted to ask you about is the monthly email that you and Jeremy decided to send out once a month because you very graciously included me on it, which was such an honor to be on that email because I was able to follow along with you, like month after month after month to see your goals that you laid out for the year to cheer you on, to pray for you.
What made you decide to bring other people into this journey with you? Who did you include on that email list? Because I saw a few of the names, but I didn't know everybody. So I'm just thinking who are these people for Reagan and Jeremy, and then what did you include in your email report every month? Because I love what you included, but I would love for you to just share it with the listeners.
Reagan: So that report was a huge game changer and motivator for us. We were really focused on three main ways to prepare our family to do this year. Well, we knew this wouldn't be easy and so we really needed to prepare. And those three ways were by securing our commitment. So we supported our commitment to our goals by the Contentment Challenge. That was just a really great way of putting it out there. Like we're doing this challenge, we're committed, done.
Persistence was a really important thing within our home. So that was supported by weekly and daily check-ins with our family and then accountability, which was supported by trustworthy accountability partners that we knew would pray for us and provide wisdom and encouragement this year. And those accountability partners received our email. There weren't many of them, there were like maybe five and then you as well.
So, we thought carefully about who our accountability partners should be. We wanted a couple who was ahead of us in life and had navigated similar life stages before and life circumstances. So we had a couple from our church who just is so full of gentle wisdom and encouragement. This couple is also in our small group. So not only were we sending them monthly emails, but we actually saw them face to face most weeks. So that kept it really fresh as well.
They were actively in our lives in getting these reports from us. And then, so they were there. We also wanted peers who really help hold us accountable in other areas of our lives. We have a couple in our lives who have really just been excellent at challenging us in the right ways. I work with the woman in this couple. So I see her almost daily and the active presence in my life was really encouraging over the course of the year. And then we also included my mom who is in our home quite often, at least once a week, at least, and is just a close part of the culture in our home. So we really partnered with her in this as well.
Nancy: I love your mom.
Reagan: Thank you. I do too.
Nancy: I do, just tell her that I love her. Sorry to interrupt and say that, keep going. I've just known her since I was 13. So sweet.
Reagan: Yes, I will definitely tell her. I'm so glad. So one thing I do want to note, and this is partly because we were not on social media. I think this would have been looked different had we been on social media during the challenge, but we didn't necessarily blast this thing out to the world. I mean, our close friends would know, and it wasn't this big secret or anything, but we really wanted to be intentional about guarding our hearts in the why we were doing this challenge.
It really wasn't to impress anyone. None of our accountability partners are necessarily impressed by us. They love us in all of our mess. So, we really wanted to make sure our motivation wasn't to say look how great we are for doing this thing, but that it truly was a motivation upheld in the foundational culture of our private home.
So that was just really important, and I think it's important when you're thinking about accountability partners to think about also in parallel your why for doing the challenge, because that will inform who holds you accountable in a lot of ways. So, and then let's see, in the report we included just a few things, is pretty consistent every month. We included a brief one to two paragraph summary update of our month in the Contentment Challenge.
And then every month we reminded our accountability partners, what our goals for the whole year were and what we were asking them to do, which was to pray for us and ask the hard questions and share wisdom with us over the course of the year. So then we reported on how much money we paid toward debt and if we gave, that's one area our accountability partners really challenged us in was to continue giving generously during this year of contentment.
And when you're paying on debt, that was a real challenge, but it was amazing. And then in the report, we also just wrote out a couple of bullet points reflecting on the past month, challenges, successes, and what we saw God accomplish in our lives that month. We pretty much stuck to that every month, which kept it simple. And it's been really cool to look back on in preparation for this podcast show. I think the coolest thing to look back on is to see what we said each month for what God accomplished in our lives. That's been really awesome.
Nancy: I love getting those monthly emails. Every time one would come in and I'll be like, yes. I just felt such ... It was just such an honor to be included in them. But my favorite things about them, I think, were your transparency because you would open up the email with like a summary of how did last month go? What challenges do you foresee in the upcoming month?
I remember a few things you said like, oh we went a little bit overboard with our son's birthday this month, and we're going to reign that back in because it's just so ... And as a mom, I'm like I get that, but I just so appreciate, you were honest with it. And we're like, okay, this is what we did this month. And this is how we're going to kind of shift or do something different next month, and this is what we learned from that.
Or it was okay, I'm glad that we did that and this is something that we're choosing to do next month to make up for that. And even, you said you made homemade Halloween costumes this year. And my favorite thing recently in your last newsletter was you said ... I think it wasn't like an Amazon catalog arrived in your house. It just destroyed the contentment in our son's because he was flipping through all the things and all the toys. And we've been doing the same thing in our house. Milly and Linden have been flipping through the pages, looking at all the toys, circling all the things they want.
But I loved your perspective because he said something like, Jeremy just threw it in the trash immediately because it did. And I just loved because it was like it gave me power. I can just throw that thing away. They don't need to flip through those things. They don't need to look at them if it's fostering that discontent. And I hope you're okay with me sharing that. It just was so real. And I think that was such an important element of those letters is I knew I wasn't going to get anything fake from you guys. It was going to be the real raw, honest, this is how we're doing, this is where we've had a lot of victories, this is where we're struggling. Boom, here it is every month.
Reagan: Oh man, I hate the Amazon catalogs.
Nancy: I secretly love it. I did flip through it and looked at it before we throw it away. The funny thing is as we threw that away and then the very next day my mom brought hers to our house.
Reagan: Oh my goodness, that's so funny.
Nancy: I'm sure that many listeners know exactly which catalog we're talking about.
Reagan: 100%, yes.
Nancy: It just was inspiring to me to even just hear your perspective on that. Because one thing that's always eye opening to me whenever I do the contentment challenge is the marketing efforts of stores. And this is actually something I include a little section in my little contentment challenge mini course about marketing and how I kind of get wiser about stores marketing. I know that sounds kind of silly, but you become hyper aware of the images that are thrown at you all the time, because your default is to not spend.
So I'm like that thing in Target was very purposeful, or this magazine or this thing I saw on Instagram, they're actually trying to get me, and not in a bad way. Marketing is wonderful, I love marketing, I do marketing. It's great, but it just helps you be aware of it rather than just saying like that's pretty and clicking, buy or the quick Amazon buy button. It's like, it really makes you thoughtful. This store is marketing to me right now. I'm going to take a step back, think about it and make a decision a little bit slower. So anyway, that's just a side note, but I love that part of your latest email newsletter. I thought that was so good.
Reagan: Thank you.
Nancy: Well, I'm so sorry to cut this conversation short, but you can catch the next half of it next Tuesday when Episode 094 comes out. I definitely encourage you to come back and listen to the rest of it because I loved the rest of what Reagan had to say. But while you wait, could I challenge you to do one thing? Would you pray this week, really pray and ask God to show you how to live a more content life.
I'm going to be real. It's a bold, hard prayer. At least it has been for me in my life because it usually just reveals some really ugly things about myself. But I can guarantee you when he answers, he answers in the best way. It can be hard, it can look counter-cultural or it could simply look like changing your mindset. But no matter what, I guarantee that that prayer ends in something good for you.
If you feel like God is tugging at your heart to do some version of the Contentment Challenge, whether it's the three month challenge I normally do, maybe one month for you, maybe a whole year like Reagan and her husband did. I just encourage you to simply check out what it is and the resources that I've created over at nancyray.com/contentment challenge.
I'm going to be starting on January 10th with many of you, will be starting another three month Contentment Challenge. And we're going to give up shopping through April 10th to focus our heart and our relationship on the Lord. I'm getting a healthy relationship akin with our money and our spending and our Amazon Prime happen on people focusing on experiences. But I don't want you to wait until January 9th to decide.
So there's some prep work involved, some heart work. But even if you don't do that, I'm excited for you to hear the rest of our conversation next week.
See you then.
