As I manage a household with four little kids and a lot of stuff, as well as my online business I've realized there are two parts to productivity. Those are also the two places I tend to get hung up, but when I get them right, they are key. So hopefully today's episode will unlock some insight for you, too!

Having four small children six and under simply means that over the last six years there has been a lot of sickness in our house. And while there's really no right or wrong way to be sick, because you're just sick. I have learned a few ways to cope with sickness, ways to cling to Jesus, ways to pray over your children during sickness, ways to perhaps make sickness a little less miserable and that's what I'm going to share with you today.

We are living in a tense time. Cultural pressures are really high. Our nation feels like it's falling apart some days and is super divided in it. It's hard and more than anything, the dark world around us is begging for light and truth. T his episode is simply an encouragement for you to be bold and strong and to live out your faith in every aspect of your life and to cling to Jesus every day.

Now, today I'm going to be talking about The Self-Driven Child, which is a book that's going to stay with me throughout the rest of my parenting journey.

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.

Today I'm going to be talking about my first book, The 12 Week Year and why this book was just what I needed to read at the start of this year, between having baby number four and this pandemic. I don't know about you, but it felt so hard to plan and to dream and set goals—but 12 weeks? 12 weeks? I can do that. I can plan the next 12 weeks.

Money is a part of our life. Whether we like it or not, we need it to live and we can choose to either manage it well and let it be a blessing to us and those around us, or if we neglect it, we'll likely end up with not very much of it and it will be a continual point of stress for us.

This episode will be full of practical advice, but all of that practical how-to is going to stem from these money mindsets, and I hope that they're a blessing to you.

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!

Hello and Happy New Year! I am so excited to be back to be bringing you some fresh episodes of the work and play podcast moving forward, and to start this year off on the right foot, encouraging you in your work and in your play.

Happy 2022!

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.

I recently shared the news that after this year, my twelfth year of business, the doors of Nancy Ray Photography will close. I’m sharing with you the three questions that I asked myself during this journey, and I’ll ask you as well.

I am so excited to replay this episode with Emily Ley. If you’ve listened before or you haven’t, this episode is so good. I think that what I love most about her is how much she values the little things—the moments in between—and finding that kind of balance between work and play and what that looks like.

I think it's pretty safe to say that when it comes to our work, we want to be part of something that we are called to do— something that is full of meaning and has purpose, something that is in line perfectly with our passions and giftings. But today I want to challenge our way of thinking, and really the language that we use describing our work and our calling.