Today's episode for May is for Mamas is all about using a timer in motherhood. This is going to be fun.

I'm going to talk about tension and anxiety and how to get past it, how to get through to the other side. I'm going to share some practical things that I've walked through in my life very recently and I'm going to share the things that helped me get through it.

There's something about meeting regularly as a family that brings you together. You can talk about the calendar and your schedules and your plans, but emotionally you can connect and you can share things you're looking forward to or problems that you're having. Today, I'm going to share with you the simple outline that we follow for our family meeting and I hope it's helpful to you.

For the last six months, I've taken a break from social media and it has been so good. Today, I’m going to give you an update on how I liked it, what I missed, the best lessons I learned and how I'm going to do things differently when I come back.

The key to success is contentment.

I mean, think about it—if you can find a way to truly be content, to be happy in every circumstance, wouldn't it be awesome? Every day it would be incredible. I mean, we'd wake up so grateful and so happy because we're content! This episode is about fighting for contentment with simple habits in our lives. Habits that can help us pause and realize just how good we have it. Habits that help us to live at ease and to live content.

This episode is going to be a fun one. I firmly believe before we can look ahead and move forward, we need to pause and look back, and this episode is going to do just that. It's going to be all about 2021. The things that happened in my life that were highlights, experiences—I recommend trips that we took, books that I read, things I tried and liked, and more.

Here is the best of 2021!

It can be helpful. It can provide income. It can be addictive. It can be a trap. Today, I want to talk about simple practices that I have found incredibly life-giving to keep social media in its place.

And now for the shortest podcast episode of 2021, I hope this encourages you and is just what you need today.

Taking a long-ish break from social media has been on my heart for quite some time, and having Benji, our fourth child, just seemed like the perfect time to do it. I'm currently four months in, and this episode is all about what I've learned in the last four months from my social media sabbatical so far.

Today we're going to talk about five ways for you to work through that feeling of overwhelm that honestly overtakes us every once in a while and leaves us feeling so helpless.

Get ready, because I love a good morning routine. Fair warning: I am such a nerd about this. I know this sounds kind of extreme, but having a morning routine in place really enhances the quality of my life— I'm not kidding!

[Replay] Life is hard, and sometimes it just seems we can't move forward in our lives until someone speaks some words of life to us. So that's what I'm here for today. If you're facing something really hard, I am here to tell you, you were made for hard things.

Hello! I am back after a two month break from this podcast! I'm happy to be back and today I'm so excited to share with you a huge life event that took place over the last two months for us—the birth of our fourth baby, a son, Benjamin Valor Ray. And today I'm going to be sharing his birth story with you.

Today, Will and I are going to be sharing about how we are debt-free again, as we just paid off our house! Our hope more than anything is that you would be inspired and know that with some hard work and intentional planning, this could be possible for you, too.

So I have decided to take six months off of social media. No Instagram, no Facebook, no Twitter, no social media. As soon as our fourth baby arrives, I'm going to be spending time with my family and friends in real life, being present and free myself from any obligation to post or share anything for six whole months. In today's podcast episode, I'm going to share more about why I'm doing this and why you might consider doing it, too.

Over the last several months, I have been working on a project I haven’t told anyone about, but you, my dear work and play podcast listener, are going to be the very first to know about it.

Today’s episode is part 1 of a three part episode series giving you a glimpse inside this new audio course (I honestly hesitate to call it a course because it’s more of a comprehensive way that I look at my life broken down into three categories: faith, home and work).

Welcome to another episode of May is for Mamas! Today, I’m going to be brief and hopefully encouraging. And I don't say this lightly—I believe the secret to getting the most out of motherhood, and life in general, is to simply lean in to your season.

This episode feels extra vulnerable for me because I don't feel like I got to this path of motherhood that I'm on like most women do, but I'm realizing that every story of motherhood is different and hard and beautiful and every unique way.

And so in hopes that I'm going to make someone who's listening feel a little less lonely and a little more normal, I am going to be vulnerable and share how I got here, how I got to being a mama of almost four kids.

I'll be honest—I almost took this book off of my reading list this year, because I felt like it was cruel and unusual punishment to myself to read a book about sleep the year that I would have a newborn baby. BUT I'm really glad I read it anyway, because it's helping me now in pregnancy and it will help during that newborn phase, as hard as it's going to be, as well as prioritizing sleep for our whole family for years to come.

I get pretty nerdy today—fair warning!