My friend Reagan has a heart of gold—you'll see in our conversation, just how amazing she is. 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.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of surface, trite, make-it-what-you-want-it Christianity. I want the real God of the universe. I want what He has to say, even if it's hard to hear it. This book showed me the practices that we can do as believers to welcome Jesus into our very real lives and to hear His very real voice a little bit clearer. I'll be honest. These disciplines, they aren't easy. They are not for the faint of heart, but they are good. And they have changed me.

Today, I'm going to be sharing all of our favorite Christmas traditions. And sharing this is really just to encourage you to make time for the most important things, and hopefully just to invite you into our family for a little bit in sharing how Will and I have brought our different sets of our own family's traditions and made them our own.

So when I became a mom, during that newborn phase of life, it was very hard to determine which way was up or down. The Lord taught me this simple practice. It doesn't take a lot of time, but still to this day, it speaks straight to my heart and it grounds me. It's simply focusing on one word throughout your whole day.

Welcome to this month's edition of the Nancy Ray Book Club, where I choose 12 books to read in a year, and I invite you to join me in reading them, and then I share my takeaways in the book of the month every month. This month I am thrilled to be talking about Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

In today's episode, I want to remind all of us of three things the Lord calls us to, in any and every season of our lives. Three things that, if I'm honest, I feel like they've been pushed to the side. Three things that I believe were part of the founding of this country and three things that we absolutely must maintain if we are to move forward.

This week, we're going to be talking about how to get the most out of your week with the ideal week exercise.

Let's take a few minutes to dream about life and work and lay out a game plan for the next five years.

Often times, this is the time of year where we go a little off the rails with our eating, our spending, with our planning. We just do too much of all of it.

So, my encouragement to you today is that if you want to finish this year strong, you have to start now.

In it, Rebecca outlines four rhythms for a life of peace and purpose. I couldn't help but think back to my episode just a couple weeks ago on self-care, because I feel like this book is a deeper dive and how we can live out these rhythms and have a healthy, mature life as a believer. All in all, I love the book. I feel like Rebecca is somewhat of a soul sister and I can't wait for you to hear my top takeaways.

Today, I brought Emily on to have a conversation about camping, kids, and slowing down. You're going to love Emily. She has a depth and a graciousness that is unmatched, and I love her. It's why she's been my friend for so long. So, I'm so excited to share our conversation today.

We are constantly hearing and seeing the message of self-care. Take time for yourself. Don't forget to care for yourself. Drink water. Exercise. Go get your nails done. I have had so many mixed feelings about the phrase “self-care” for a long time.

So, today, I'm going to dive into the good and bad of self-care and offer a better, more holistic approach.

Today I'm talking with my friend, Chrystal Evans Hurst, and let me just say, this woman, I love her. This is for you if you maybe feel stuck in a rut with your prayers, or, like she talks about in our conversation, if you want to activate the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life to be more real, and fresh, and conversational.

Today's episode is short and sweet, and I am talking about why I have a business journal—a work journal.

Yes, a separate journal, completely dedicated to my work. And I'll be telling you why I think you should have one too.

As we were starting to do research and kind of figure out what content we wanted to make when I was just starting this brand and podcast, a friend asked me some really good questions, and recommended this book: The Pumpkin Plan.

It challenged me to push pause on all of my own ideas, to zoom out a little bit, to get some more perspective, and ask better questions, not only of myself, but of my clients, my audience, and my work. I'm really excited to dive in today and share what I learned!

School shopping as a parent. It's not always so pretty. There's a lot to manage. There's a lot to take hold of. And I've learned this: there's a lot of different correspondence and papers, a lot of different things going on.

I don't have a ton of years under my belt, but I am committed to putting systems, and rhythms, and routines into place as we go back to school that will allow us to flourish instead of being stressed out.

For the most part, mission statements / purpose statements / "what's your why" statements are just too wordy and a bunch of gobbledygook that doesn't help you or clarify your vision.

So if you've never written one for your work, or if you have one, but you can't recite it right now off the top of your head and you don't really believe in it: this episode is for you.

Today, I want to encourage and kind of pause and coach you through a few exercises and questions that will hopefully help bring clarity to this year, to exactly where you are, and show you that it's not just important to cast vision for your life or your work years down the road, but it's also important to have a vision for the current season of life that you are in, and dare I say it, even for 2020.