Courtney Reissig: Glory in the Ordinary

When you are a stay at home. Yes, did you ever feel like what you're doing wasn't important, especially coming out of ministry and then deciding to stay at home and I did some stuff, part time, but I just felt like my really impacting the world for Jesus right now. I did have that time you feel like a lot of moms feel that way, or even stay-at-home dads yeah I think so because it feels so monotonous and mundane. It feels like really just cleaned up vomit or have changed 20 poopy diapers and I it feels like this kingdom work and working to talk about that a little welcome to family life today to help you pursue the relationship that matter and will think that I'm Dave Wilson and you can find us@familylifetoday.com or on our family life. This is family life today got Courtney Rice took with us today and you wrote of book sort of how the call glory in the ordinary why you're working the homeowners. The gods were really good with this Courtney me I just even like the title glory like in the ordinary yeah I mean you're not there. Your Bible teacher you work with prison motherhood. You've got four kids, married to a guy from Findlay, Ohio got our home down so it sounds like you're not a stay at home mom that just you know, does the ordinary thing you're doing a lot of different things, but you wrote a book about feeling that fact open the book with a story about sitting beside a businesswoman on a plane is yes you what you do. Yeah.

Also, I wrote the book I was primarily working the home and so and I still days I work from home. I always check my has and I like the prairie people because your favorite modern Perry people so I'm saying you work from home before covert before Covey got everybody yeah you did before I started my head in the middle of the bed and I just did like freelance writing and his writing books and I would start something and I would pull back and I had a lot of flexible idiot like that aren't right about the erratic write an article or anything. I need a break. My kids are young younger and I didn't feel right. It wasn't for trucking because before Kevin hasn't traveled a lot right now. We both work from home so we are primarily in the home all the time and your kids at home as well as a school or school okay finally goes to preschool two days a week so but when I wrote this book, I had just had my third son when I got the contract for this books.

I wrote it throughout his whole first year of life.

So you are in your oldest twins I had to two-year-olds and I had a three week old baby. When I got that contract and know when you say I was hands over here like you to know what it is the language they now Larry mom knows that what is it while I had three children to and undersize in diapers three kids in diapers. I had three kids. You are in car seats. There's messaging triple stroller at the time that I knew of and there's no time to yourself not watching my kids 24 hours a day right, making sure they're safe they can't be alone. They're not really playing on my own that much yet know, and so you have no time to yourself when you're in the bathroom.

The kids are in the back right where you can barely take a shower right my third son was a very easy baby.

But then I pretty quickly that helped. I felt rested as rusted as you can feel with small children. What was so hard for me as I write how children I wanted to stay home with them, but I've never been someone who is what I would call a good housewife has in his house like that me and you be playing overly good homeschool dad like you just be really good. He's really good at those types of managing types of things I would read books. My kids all day if I could but I just don't.

I don't like cleaning. I love cooking that's easier for me to get my mind around of like why that matters but the cleaning and organizing and my children matter like my taking care of your children are like that.

I love them deeply when you say the ordinary you're really talking about taking care of the home right now swear just this is hard for me to wrap my mind around what mattered in what the book was that my husband had transitioned into out of thinking he was going full time vocational ministry and continue working as a businessman and has continued all this time in doing it so we had to come to terms with. Why does work in general matter, like why is is work. That's not just paid vocational ministry work wise other work matter to the Lord. So both of us on this journey of figuring out why does it matter, why does it matter that you are businessman and house honoring to God. How can we honor the Lord as we had to come to terms with what is it mean to be an image bearer of God and then because Raymond fears of God.

We are also called to work in Genesis and so you're not even talking about. To stay at home mom know about all of our work is writing so ordinary. Yeah, we can bring glory to right. It seems on those you get on an airplane is what you do so you know what it make you feel when you're trying to tell her I stay-at-home right side. They often struggle with.

Do I excite written a book already arrived prior to that point I didn't write it off there yeah but then you also to deal with what author are you on the Christian author is like and I want to be. Honestly, I mean everyone struggles with that right me in on airplanes like I wanted to hear but didn't want to show what I want talk about the gospel in true confession. That's all it is hard and so for me there's no easy answer. I either say I'm in some form of Christian ministry.

I write a book or I stay home with my children, primarily, but neither of those are respected by women in business suits and next to me a.m. as I did struggle with it.

How to explain what I do all day and then the woman was to write books and finding glory in your marriage to be like what is seen love it out. What I struggled with is that she came to thinking back to me and said I couldn't do that I would get bored all day and as I worked it out like I can get a little bored sometimes, but it was a good reminder to me that there reason why we do work hidden work. The work and nobody sees that the work that upholds the society and the reason we do is hidden. Work is not because maybe we all aspire to love it like some people love organizing and cleaning and I'm so I'm friends with them, but we do this work because it brings glory to the Lord, and he created us as image bearers and as image bearers of God. We are called to bring order out of chaos and to exercise dominion of the world is made into if you don't take the sheets off the bed after kid throws up on them or he's the bet on them and watch them then Elma spreads out the house and did you think prior to learning what hygiene was in like the modern world. People routinely died from things that could have been prevented.

Just because the mint and clean, and these things that we do every day are actually not only imaging God, but our sustaining life and caring for people, so when I make mac & cheese for my boys. They and when asking if they we make mac & cheese for lunch and I'd rather you converge like this way easier and they ask for that. I'm feeling a hungry belly. I'm not. Only thing is I'm image bearer, who showing them a God is light and that God gives good things and God gives us to things like mac & cheese and I know I really sometimes wish I didn't like the mac & cheese of my Ozzie mac & cheese is fine, but you take us back to Genesis 3, yes, about how God gives us work right in the garden, God created Adam and even he gave him a job to do.

He says God create male-female and sentiment an image of God he created them and then goes on to explain that the creation mandate, which is good, be fruitful and multiply x-rays man and bring order out of chaos and fill the earth, some is only in the form of like marriage and having children, which is a good exclamation of that but also God gave them jobs to do anything throughout Scripture elsewhere went in creation, God created out of nothing and we don't do that. We always are creating with raw materials that God created as image bearers as the ones who are telling a story. What he is like. We take the things that of this world, that he is created, and then go make more things to bring glory to him and also to love the world that he has made and I love the story in I think it's in Exodus where I don't have holy avenues that a guy can say that has the be and they are the ones who are creating the things to go on the tabernacle and it says that the Lord gave them skill and then get them like joy anointed and going to lease. Yes yeah and with skill to create things that they were art. Yeah so there's just so much in our work that brings glory and honor to him.

So whether you're in the home doing laundry or your mowing the grass or your cleaning out the refrigerator.

The mold that grows in the refrigerator now because people can get to your loving other image bearers in your heart. You are like my husband who works in the medical industry of selling operating room equipment selling lifesaving equipment so that people's lives can be sustained. This work brings glory and honor to the Lord and tells the world that he is like as Christians are in whatever sphere that they find themselves in its good work. And even if it's hidden work so my work looks so different now that I work part time, but most my kids are in school and our life does look so different.

Not in the trenches with little children at home.

It's weird now that I have the opposite effect. Now I'm like a home and I am deeply invested in my home and I deeply invested my kids and Courtney you are still in the age of your kids tell you those are still hard years. They are used, they just feel so left heart you know when I heard they move into new seasons together. Yeah there also with me, but I remember my mom was a stay-at-home mom. Four of us and she loved being at home. She loved cooking. She loved cleaning and she always had this attitude. If get to do this. Yes, remember thinking, are you kidding, it seems like it's doing nothing and yet she was saying she was so happy she would make dinner and she to come and help me this is so fun and then I remember her teaching me how to clean and Destin chose to can be the best little duster ever cleaning the bathroom when I was four and she still has a good motivation for me to just her attitude right I do today. I wasn't that I grew up in a Christian home, but her attitude about work. My dad had it to like we get to do this, you get to learn how to work hard and now when you put a biblical context to that.

This brings glory to God. When our kids were little with three boys growing up our bathrooms. I'm just saying yes it's very gross. It's gross and I can remember cleaning around the toilet looking this is the grossest thing ever wall all the law yeah and I remember as I'm cleaning and I had this attitude like this is just gross and I can't wait for them to get older that they're going to be cleaning this and then I had this thought like this is worship in which which is like. I remember having a public weight weird that that's not even true. And yet when we do it unto the Lord our mundane acts can bring glory to him right because were we can do it for him as my act of worship, especially when no one sees right you were doing it for him. Like Lord, this seems like monotonous light and horrible and yet I'm doing it for you and that has a different meaning to it right and I felt like cheering me like you go girl yes like look at you cleaning not run has different like standards of cleanliness. My desire that my husband feels deeply loved when things are likely no really so is associate. Oh yeah, and he feels really he can relax and it's clean is that pressure gnocchi like the queen to see in our marriage of me being Mike are you getting the right thing. I'm not or are you using, I'd like you guys want to do something helpful.

He likes to clean, but it has helped me session when he was would travel a lot to think in terms of the rest become some of its clean.

I can live with a little bit more mass than he can clutter than he can but it's funny as we morphed into the Mary long enough we start a more from the same person that I wanted more cleanliness than being married to him that I used to prefer so you know that one of my favorite passages in Scripture it's just the simple passage and I think it's so powerful to me because when I was came to Christ. In college I was a college athlete football player in the guy who led me to Christ while the first things he did when he discipled Maisy said, let me give you a perspective on how you play football, resilient, then this guy was an athlete, so I was like looking at Bill like what he and he goes so Colossians 323 yeah memorized it years ago.

It's like, whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord enough for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive a reward and memorability to me what you do on a football field.

Matters from a glory standpoint what you write a title glory in your nerves like all know it matters to people like sports and maybe this college and it does pay for my education. Not only sent to the Lord and it wasn't coming touchdowns. You throw her score was how you do what he's given you to do and so it elevated like to get rid of the secular spiritual. You know dichotomy. It was like everything spiritual, right, you know, so if you understand the Lord is give you gifts for you in this role do it for the Lord for measuring plan for this university.

I used to teach Detroit Lions overflows oppression applying for an owner to plan for the fans in Detroit you're actually plan for the Lord. So whether you're watching film weathers Monday and you're practicing or it's Sunday and you're playing because you know we elevate the game to like the right most important so everything you do right actually really really matters.

And when you have that perspective was a stay-at-home mom, a plumber, a medical salesman or teacher, you name it right yes – changes your perspective. All I do this unto the Lord, right, and it's a gift from God to build a work right now the curse know it's a blessing right. I love what you say Courtney say everyone want to revolution right nobody wants to do the dishes. It's what you're saying Dave like you want the game day practice that feels Monday night.

Ordinary faithfulness in the ordinary that is actually eventually the greatness, not maybe in the world size God after our faithfulness. That is after our obedience and whether that's on writing a book or discipline my kids and having a hard conversation about an attitude or something.

Those things are are honoring to him because people matter to him because are created in his image, and so whether it's one person or 5000 people all matter to him and II love that makes you think of that of the air" where he's run. I feel his pleasure. I just finished reading his biography to my boys biography I read in the bags. On Sundays we discussed you like the ethnographies yeah and whether he was on the mission field whether he was on a track he was. His heart was always to honor the Lord and be faithful to the Lord and that's I hope my boys learn in the site. I want to model for them is that my work is valuable when we we are trying to instill in them a cleaning now where is that when the time of the to that were all contributors that we are all contributed to the work at home and so whether you're three or your almost 40 everyone has a job to do so, you're part of this member of his home. Sometimes you don't like it worked as feels really boring and hard and still good work that is so a lot of our work is hard and monotonous. I remember when we started our church in 1990 long time ago. I remember walking in a restaurant like the second year in the city where we are starting and I'm sitting down to think you with me but after a while, the owner of the restaurant came over to hear you Dave will cycle yeah goes to have a word with you from Sweetser walks out of the school hallway and omicron my beautiful like I'm in trouble and he goes hey, one of the guys that works for me. He's actually a busboy at the restaurant goes to your church might know what's he going to say you know what you thought was negative. Yeah, I thought, would this go do so soon. Okay because limitation.

I've never seen a kid work like this.

He's like 17 years old. He shows up early. He stays laid.

He helps everybody he so kind. He does his work with excellence. He just amazing and I'm looking to buy okay that's great YC. I don't know who the kid is you and he looks amigos are all the people your church like that. I'll never forget her cousin why that's how Christian should work no more people were like marble by hope they do with the don't know this kid and I'm hoping that he's a Colossians 323 I like whatever I do from a busboy from going to school whatever it is is like I am reflecting God deprival I'm gonna work as though my boss is not this year. Restaurant owner he's got so I thought what a beautiful thing if that would be said about people in the church in the home.

Also, don't as you name it right. My goodness people become to church they went, they were one of the elements that yeah I remember writing my journal one day and I share this. I think I read this at the weekend to remember how it was just one of those days with five boys under five had an ear infection. Somebody had a cold. It's just your grinding it out in the day feels like it goes on for a million years and I wrote in there. I'm so tired of the mundane game and then a few days later I was reading, and all of a sudden it I write this. CJ said can we keep praying for Austin who is only three and I said what he want to pray. He said I just pray that he gets into heaven. All because we had explained the gospel displaying the need for a Savior and separation.

He said I just don't want Austin to be an old guy in all this in his life. We need to pray mom so we can all get to heaven all and I just wrote in my journal that day like among the mundane comes the miraculous. And I think that's true for us every day. We may be grinding it out and God is seen like sometimes I wonder if he's waiting to see our faithfulness in the ordinary before he gives us the revolution right right right now. How can I trust them right with this incredible call and sometimes it takes that just doing the things when nobody sees which Dave reminds me of you in the hands of locker room. I'm thinking about you helping all the trainers rip off the jerseys at the end of the game printers with the equipment that is just realizing their job is dirty yet thankless job. I don't know what even sees them doing it right in helping them out, and what those equipment guys were never interested in coming to chapel the little sermon I give before the game until I started serving beside them and they never expected a God has a different job to do their job right, right. Just volunteered you to start doing it.

I just are doing it and they actually look to me when I start doing. I like to redo it and then the thing I knew they became my friends and their friend. Yeah, again it's what you're saying there's ordinary things that happen everyday and jobs in the mundane and when you can step back and get God's heart on it. There's really glory in this, I got say the story of never forgotten a preacher preach this, a buddy of his was a contractor on his house so there built his house and he said he talked his buddy I think his name was Bob and he said dude I'm sitting on your front slab you know and it's going terrible and things are shown up goes on literally having a pity party I'm sitting on the front slab and I'm hate my job in Geiser inside try to get things done but it's just a bad day and I'm not enjoying this and I'm really upset because all of a sudden this pickup truck rolled right out in front of your house. He owes no yard yet is just dirt and he goes this loud music split in this dude gets out of his pickup truck and he's like who is this guy, he starts walking right toward him sit on the funny super happy happy sitting in the loud music. He had tattoos on his arm. He goes who is this guy we have and we don't expect anybody show up helplessly and he walks up, goes where his reported job. He was it's in the back. He was on the porch are cleaner. I'll see you in a minute okay guy goes back there he goes, we get all the workers like washes guy because he was full as joint goes and goes sees banging around he's in there longer day by severed and he comes out and he looks he goes. He looks amigos however used to clean the porta potty did a really bad job.

Let me tell you to take care you from now on is going to be perfect and Bob said I looked okay, sounds good. As he turned to go to structure turnaround goes because I work for the Lord all that is drawing and he says as he blares away. He hears worship music blared out of his truck and Bob said he told this preacher goes through there. I am certain there. You know complain about my life because contractor and things are shown up and there's a guy who's up portage unclean who probably at his high school graduation did not think you know. But there is in he saw glorying in the Utah by the ordinary that very little growth and why do I tell a story of never forgotten that the illustration of like I complain every day you what is diapers or toys. I have an opportunity right in front of us is very ordinary may be very hard and he says whatever you do, do your work for me I can bring some into the middle writer mess so thanks for your book. It's a reminder that I think some of the challenges all say what we do matters next time you're opening up a box of mac & cheese or waiting in the carpool line or going through the mundane of keeping the family together. Just keep in mind that what you're doing has an eternal purpose God is using those moments to shape not only your life but the lives of your children as well. There is glory in the ordinary that's the name of Courtney Rice six book.

It's a book that we have in our family life to a resource Center helps remind us of the value of all that we do that God is present in those moments he's at work in all of life.

You can get a copy of Courtney's book order it from our website, you can go to family life to a.com and order there, or you could call in order at 1-800-358-6329 that's one 800 F is in family L as in life, and then the word today. You know here at family life. There are the voices you hear every day. Dave and Ann Wilson. There are the people who work behind the scenes here in family life to make this daily program.

This this podcast available and then there's a whole group of people who are ultimately responsible for all of us being able to listen to the conversation that Dave and Anna Courtney had today that would be those of you who contribute to our ongoing work of this ministry, especially our monthly partners. Those of you who give monthly to ensure that family life to a is able to continue in our mission. We are so grateful for all of you who as listeners have joined the team and are helping us to reach more people, more people more often because of your financial support, helping us effectively develop godly marriages and families. If you've never join that team if you've never made a donation to support the ongoing work of family life to a and if God is used. Family life to a in your life in any kind of a significant way. I challenge you to go online and make a donation.

We can call one 800 FL today to donate be a part of paying it forward help others with the same kind of help that you received and if you can do that this week. We'd love to send you a copy of Laura stories book so long normal when life is crazy and shifting like right now you don't have to wring your hands in fear.

You can push past the loss of your quote unquote normal and embrace the new story, God is writing for you the book again is called so long, normal, and it's our gift to you. When you make a donation this week to support the ministry of family life. You can donate online@familylifetoa.com or call one 800 FL today to donate. We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks in advance for partnering with us here in the ongoing work of family life. If this content today or any of our family life programs have been helpful for you. We love you to share today's podcast with a friend or family member, and wherever you get your podcast can really advance the ministry of family life. If you scroll down and read and review us know next time were in here from Justin and Lindsay Holcomb answering the question how do we effectively and non-awkwardly talk to our kids about their bodies and body image to be talking with Dave and Ann Wilson about their book, God made me in his image on behalf of David and Wilson. I'm Shelby Abbott will see you back next time for another edition of family life today. Family life to days of production of family accrue ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most