Ep. 17: Can I Be a Feminist Yet?

In this episode, we’re tearing into imposter syndrome, sparked by a question from Alyssa’s daughter about whether she’s allowed to be a feminist yet. As we grapple with blending Christianity and Feminism, we’ve had our own moments of doubt about whether we get to be "real" Feminists. But this feeling isn't new! Imposter syndrome has kept women feeling unworthy—both today and in Biblical times. Just like us, Esther (of the Bible) didn't feel like she was worthy, but now her name is written in history. So how can we move past our collective feelings of inadequacy? Listen in to hear our take!

What is We Are More: Sisters Talk Faith & Feminism?

We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.

Welcome to the We Are More podcast.

My name is Alyssa.

And my name is Bri.

We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.

We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His

word.

And apparently that's controversial.

But comfy.

Can I be a feminist yet?

Hey everybody.

So that was my daughter.

She's so excited that she got to be on the podcast.

She's like, I'm famous.

She has been begging to be on the podcast since we started.

And just for privacy concerns, it's not my favorite thing in the world.

But you don't know her name, so it's fine.

So haha.

So today we're going to be talking about imposter syndrome.

I think we're talking about several different things.

We're talking about the idea of becoming a feminist or deciding that you're a feminist

and kind of the journey to get there.

And some of, yeah, imposter syndrome and some other things we'll learn about with us.

I think for me, I really struggled with the term feminist.

I know when I was younger, I mean still an adult, but younger than the elderly age I

am now.

You are very decrepit and ancient.

Thank you.

I'm not saying that I'm not.

It's just the group of us.

I mean, I'm 98, which makes you 110.

Shut up.

I remember telling mom that if I had grown up differently, I would be such a big feminist.

And I remember her laughing and saying, oh, I know you would be.

And at the time, it was still like, oh, feminist is such a dirty word.

I would never define myself that way.

I know.

Because people don't realize that when you're in that really conservative Christian world,

that is kind of a dirty word.

The whole idea of equality is taboo because they think the stereotypical raging feminist,

like burn your bra, all men deserve to die, kind of.

Can I say that on the podcast?

We've said many other things.

That's the tamest of the things we've said.

Which in my view is not true feminism.

Because feminism at its core is everybody is equal.

I don't think that men are terrible.

We made a whole podcast about that.

We did.

If you want to listen to it later, it's called Why We Don't Hate Men.

That's a good one.

You know what?

I don't remember it.

It was a lot of episodes ago.

Guys, as a review, this is why we don't say what episode number it is.

We have no idea.

We are always confused.

And I never, like you edit the podcast, so you do listen back to them, but I never ever

listen back.

I don't want to remember my stupidity.

I have fun.

I said you're like cracking up and Nathan will come upstairs and be like, are you okay?

Yeah, I'm just laughing at myself.

It's totally fine.

It's normal and natural and I'm vain.

Yeah, we're hilarious.

It's great.

But I think the reason that we wanted to talk about imposter syndrome and why it boils down

to that concept is just because of this idea that as we jumped into the feminist world

and out of the more conservative side of Christianity, we still obviously have faith and consider

ourselves Christians.

But as we deconstruct and move into a different phase, it's almost like we don't have a place

anywhere.

Because the feminist community is like, why are you still in church?

But the church people are like, why are you a feminist?

Yeah, it's very difficult to find a home anywhere.

And that's really discouraging and I think that's a big part of why a lot of Christians

struggle with considering themselves feminists or a lot of people of faith in general and

why a lot of feminists stay away from faith.

Because it seems like these two things cannot go together.

Like oil and water.

Yes.

But is it that or is it that somebody along the line created that narrative to stop Christians

from seeking this out, from seeking out equality, from finding this?

Because when you look back, like the first feminists were Christians, I would think that

Jesus would be a feminist.

He trusted and respected all kinds of women throughout the Bible.

He treated them different from how the rest of the world were treating women.

And that should say something that should open people's eyes.

Yeah, if we're truly following Jesus, we forget so often who Jesus was.

We quoted a really terrible megachurch pastor a couple episodes ago, I think, who basically

said that Jesus needs to be a tough man for him to respect him or whatever.

But the reality of Jesus was that he was kind and loving and gentle for the most part.

Now there were moments where that, you know, where he flipped the tables.

But that wasn't necessarily who he was on a normal basis.

We all flip a table eventually.

I saw a sticker, I think I told you about this, but I saw a sticker on Facebook, it

was advertised to me and it said, stop trying to sit at the tables Jesus flipped.

I love that so much.

Like let that sink in.

Let's have a moment of silence.

We don't know how to do that.

Did you experience that?

Think about that quote.

I need you to know that was less than a second of silence.

That's enough silence.

Nobody wants to listen to silence.

That's not why you tune in here.

We're only six minutes in and we are so on track.

I'm really proud of us.

I'm so proud.

Is it because it's really hot in this room?

It's hot.

Everybody's probably sitting there like, okay, what is wrong with them?

And then it's gonna hit winter and we'll be like, it's so cold, it's terrible.

I'm miserable.

Although at least we can close the windows in the winter and maybe keep in some warmth.

Perhaps.

Sarah Bessie.

We love her.

I don't know that we've talked about Sarah Bessie a ton.

Not a ton.

Not like Beth Ellison Barr, our best friend.

We do talk about her a lot.

Sarah Bessie is the author of Jesus Feminist.

I still need to read that.

It's just one of my all time favorite books.

I'm looking at it right now on the floor.

Jesus Feminist, if you haven't read it, was my introduction into calling myself a feminist

and being comfortable with that because she takes, instead of taking an extreme stance

of saying every Christian should be a feminist and blah blah blah, she takes this very loving

approach that comes from a place of understanding conservative Christianity, but also saying

I love you, but this is wrong.

This isn't what Jesus would have wanted.

It's beautiful.

Go buy it immediately.

Wonderful book.

She's really living out what would Jesus do, I would say.

But I read a blog that they interviewed her and she said that she is a feminist because

she follows Jesus, not in spite of, which I think is so, so powerful.

Not a lot of people would say that.

Feminists or church people.

Well, and I think we think feminism in the church is a new concept and it's definitely

gaining popularity in a huge way, but it's not new at the same time because you look

back and there's all kinds of, I actually just bought a book.

We've been really working on our Instagram lately and so we've been following quite a

few people.

All of the people.

All of the people.

And somebody posted about this book and it's called All Were Meant to Be, A Biblical Approach

to Women's Liberation.

And this book was published in 1975.

A good year.

But I think that just goes to show, and this is not the only example of that, and I haven't

read it yet.

I just ordered it.

So we'll see how it is.

But it's an example of the fact that women, Christian women, have been fighting for equality

for a long time.

This is not a new concept.

And here we are, furthering the cause.

In 2024.

An election year.

So unfortunate.

So many signs out.

I'm so tired of the signs.

Oh my gosh.

It's like there's a billion signs as you drive down the road.

I'm scared.

Well, in our area too, there's, I don't know.

These people must all be running as a group for something.

But every time you see this sign, it's a set of three signs and they're like four signs

high and they've got 12 different names on them.

And I don't know how that's effective because I'm not going to remember 12 names.

Nope.

I barely remember your name.

I don't know my own name.

Who am I?

Where are we?

Stop!

I really liked this other quote in this blog that I read.

The blog is called Girls Got Face.

Faith.

Uh oh.

But the title of the blog was like, can you be a Christian and a feminist?

And one of the lines from there is that this girl believes that there's a sliding scale

of people's approach to feminism.

And it often leads to people thinking they're not feminist enough or not recognizing that

they're a feminist, even though they believe the things that feminists believe because

they've just been taught their whole life that being a feminist is wrong.

And I think that's kind of how I eased into it.

I would say fairly recently.

Just saying out loud, yes, I think I'm a feminist.

One would hope we do have a podcast called We Are More Sisters Talk Faith and Feminism.

But that's so ingrained in you that there's something wrong with that idea of feminism

that women and men are just so different and you just have to accept that they're different

and God made them different.

The reality after we've been learning more about this stuff, there's not a lot of differences

that are God given.

They're mostly physical, human given.

Galatians 3.28.

You want me to read it and stumble over it?

I would love that.

Okay.

There's neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for

you are all one in Christ Jesus.

That's it, ladies and gentlemen.

People use the Bible to say what they want it to say, right?

And we've talked about some translation bias before and how that affects the way that women

get treated.

But I've been reading this book and it's so if you grew up in the very conservative Christian

church, you probably heard of the author Grace Livingston Hill.

Oh, Grace.

She was the Christian romance author like early 1900s.

Sounds a little dirty.

It was not.

Let me just tell you.

But it was one of the few of that type of books that I was allowed to read as a kid.

So I read all kinds of her stuff and so I picked one up not too long ago and read it.

And what was really interesting to me and now this was written a very long time ago,

the time period was set where Texas was trying to break away from the rest of the United

States.

This ain't Texas.

I know.

Oh, down.

That's Beyonce.

I know.

But they are trying to break away from the rest of the states over the issue primarily

of slavery.

And in the book, all of the people that are arguing for it are using the Bible.

They're using the Bible to say slavery is okay.

And that's not fictional.

That's real life.

That really happened.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

She's just quoting arguments that happened back at that time.

And just to preface this, she's very against it.

It's not like she's for any of this, but I look at it in very much the same way.

It's the modern day similar vibe, I guess.

There was a podcast that I listened to.

I forget the name of it, but her name is Blessing.

And she spoke a lot about that because she's an African American woman and her mother's

from Africa.

Both her parents are from Africa.

But she dives deep into that how people would use the Bible to justify slavery.

Yeah.

And I think when you have the benefit of looking back into history and seeing all those things,

seeing that the Bible has been manipulated to say what benefited the people of the time,

the people who were in power at the time, it's pretty hard not to draw a correlation

between the two and to say women are being put down still.

Certainly not to the level of slavery.

But we as a people have decided that's no longer okay.

But why is it okay to use the Bible still to justify women's subjugation?

That's a big word.

Thank you.

I love the big words.

I get confused.

So Brie looked up something really interesting, just bouncing back to imposter syndrome that

women deal with because we're told we're not good enough, particularly in the church.

But this is a non church example.

I was watching a TikTok.

I know everybody's shocked.

If you're doing some kind of drinking game, now's your chance to take a drink because

I'm mentioning a TikTok.

But it was in response to actually the Harrison Butker speech.

They were like, this is what a commencement speech should sound like.

And forgive me, I don't know who she was or what college this is for.

But I think I did share it on our TikTok.

I think I reposted it.

But she was talking about this thing called bicycle face, which was like a coined term

back in like the 1890s.

And she said, think back when the bicycle was first invented, do they have that big

wheel on the front and then a smaller wheel on the back?

And eventually they realized that's not the best way to ride a bike.

Maybe two wheels of equal size.

Equality.

That was the best way to do it.

So bicycles got really popular with women because it was kind of a new sense of independence.

They could get places, they could do their own thing.

And the men didn't like that.

They didn't like that they were gaining independence.

In fact, some men feared that them riding the bikes kind of blurred the lines between

femininity and masculinity.

I know that sounds stupid now.

That was true.

So this doctor named Dr. A. Shadwell coined the term bike face and the symptoms were flushed

or pale skin, drawn lips, dark shadows under your eyes, weary expression, clenched jaw,

bulging eyes, contorted face.

Basically just exercising.

What I look like after I am forced to go to the gym.

Or when we're walking around Disney.

They're another drinking game.

They mentioned Disney again.

Which I'm sure men who were riding the bikes for the first time or just on a long journey,

they probably had the same symptoms but they were just using them to freak out women.

They also said that they were concerned about their sexuality while riding the bikes.

That was a concern for them.

Who knows what could happen.

So actually the doctor that disproved this whole theory was Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson

out of Chicago.

She put the whole idea to rest.

But anyways, this TikTok that I was watching, she related this to bike face is now just

rebranded as imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is a hot button buzzword topic right now.

Everybody being utilized to keep women down.

Yeah.

Well think about what a bike meant for a woman or what it would mean now, today, for anyone

who doesn't have the freedom to do what they want to do.

Who feels stuck.

Right.

It meant that they could go far away and make friends and visit them on a regular basis.

It meant that if there wasn't a job available to them in their tiny little town where they

could walk, that they had access to that job and could go to it.

That maybe their entire life didn't have to be spent in their sitting room.

And that's what it would mean for someone now.

That it opens up all of these possibilities, all of these options.

It opens up control of one's own life.

And I think when women get bogged down by imposter syndrome, we lose control of our

own lives.

We can't say, I want to do this.

I am going to be this.

I'm going to make something of myself because we're constantly told, well you're not good

enough to do that.

You finally get that promotion at work that you are well deserving of.

And someone whispers in your ear, hey, imposter syndrome, you're not completely qualified

for this.

And it's just a way of making women feel smaller.

Making them feel underqualified.

Even though maybe you are underqualified.

Don't say this.

But you have a brain.

You will get there.

You'll figure it out.

It's just a way to knock down your confidence.

Knock you down a peg.

Bekkah They say that men are significantly more likely

to apply for a job that they're not qualified for.

And still get it and do well.

Nobody's saying they're not going to do well.

Whereas women will wait until they know every facet of that position to apply for it.

So that's a huge part of the wage gap.

Because women will wait until they already know how to do the job.

Because we have imposter syndrome.

Overqualified for it.

And then they tell you're overqualified.

So I read an article by a woman named Katherine Spearing.

And this is on CBE International if anybody wants to look that up.

I feel like you're always reading articles and I'm always watching TikToks.

That's okay.

We compliment one another.

You are of the times.

I've always said that.

It's your youthfulness.

Yes, my youthfulness.

At the young age of 98.

So this article is called Battling Imposter Syndrome in the Aftermath of Vocational Ministry.

Oh my gosh, I haven't heard that word vocation in so long.

That's like a college term.

I feel like I'm back at Calvin College.

Are you supposed to say where you went to college?

I feel like I'm back at college.

There you go.

She starts this with a quote.

It says, imposter syndrome is the result of structural in...

She's going to have to read it again.

Imposter syndrome is the result of structural inequality, not individual inadequacy.

So basically it's because things are not made to make us equal.

It's not about you.

It's about everybody else.

Well, like when you walk into those spaces that you feel like you're under qualified

for, people should come around you and say, no, you're absolutely worthy of being here.

Stop thinking that.

You're great.

But instead, if we do get a lot of, maybe it's not the people that you're around, but

the media or what have you making you feel smaller.

Right.

But the author here says, so she's talking about, she was in ministry for like a decade.

This woman was in ministry forever.

And if you've ever been in ministry, I've worked in ministry before, not for a decade,

but for a while.

And it is rough.

They say pastors are, they only last a few years at this point because it's just such

a tough, tough space because so much is expected of you.

It's not just while you're in the office.

You are always in ministry.

Yes.

100% of the time.

And I wasn't in a pastoral position and I even felt that.

So she says that she was a youth director because we can never call women pastors.

So is director of this.

Director of the youth.

It's the worst.

And really she was a pastor and she goes into that, but she was called a youth director

and she chose to leave because she was treated like crap.

All of these other people basically told her she wasn't worth their time.

And so in 2020, right before everything shut down, poor thing, she quit her position.

And she says that she endured a decade in the Complementarian church that said things

like we value women and want them to use their gifts, but then at the same time told them

they couldn't be pastors.

There's always a but.

We love and I hate that but.

Do you think Jesus ever was like, I love you, but you're a woman.

No, he was like, I love you.

End of sentence.

Yep.

Period.

We have a rule about that and I try to do my best with it with our kids where we say,

you can't say I love you, but it's I love you.

And then if there's something else that you're going to say, like if they're in trouble or

whatever it's like, I love you.

This thing you did was not acceptable.

There's no but in the middle because what that but does is it says everything I said

before isn't true.

That but.

So when you say we value women and want them to use their gifts, but you don't actually

value women and want them to use their gifts.

It negates everything before it.

What you want is for women to do the grunt work that you don't feel like doing and we're

going to call that their gifts, but conveniently their gifts can only be in youth ministry

and for elementary children and serving the coffee.

Oh my gosh.

I saw this TikTok yesterday.

More drinking guys.

This girl was responding to this guy's TikTok and he was like, so I'm back in church and

I've decided it's about time for me to find a wife, but I'm just really confused.

Like what happened to all the women?

Like back in the 1800s and early 1900s when women loved to cook and clean and this girl's

response was like, yes, because all women love to cook and clean.

If I could just stop being a feminist immediately, I would love to cook and clean.

I'm like, do you really think that is my greatest endeavor is to cook and clean?

No, my greatest endeavor is to lay in my bed and watch Netflix.

Maybe.

Order some door to Ash.

Gosh dang it.

But I think that people really think that you romanticize the past to be whatever you

wanted it to be or whatever and men in particular have this rosy view of the 1950s housewife

and she wore her pearls and she wore her pretty dress.

She changed before dinner and dinner was on the table before I came home from work.

This Leave It to Beaver style life.

You really pulled that.

I did.

I don't know where that came from.

We watched a lot of TV land when we were kids.

We did.

It was like the one appropriate channel for us little Christian kids.

Grady Bunch, Bewitched.

We were watching all those.

Not to say they were all appropriate.

They were not.

I've gone back and seen some of those episodes and I'm like, dirty.

But I think that stereotype of women get held up as like, oh things were so much better

back then when women didn't know their rights.

I don't know.

I don't know what the argument there is before women figured out that they could stand up

for themselves.

Right.

They unlocked the chains around their legs and left the house.

So back to this article.

Circling back.

Circling back around.

She talks a lot about imposter syndrome.

So she talks about how she went to a youth camp with her students and they asked the

youth pastors to get up on stage so that they could pray for them.

The camp people and the students, whatever, could pray for them.

And so she got up on stage with mostly men.

And her title was not...

Youth Pastor.

No, Youth Director.

No, Youth Director.

So she got up there and they prayed for her, whatever.

And she said that it was very clear that she was not supposed to be up there.

And she got off the stage and felt that.

Felt like I shouldn't have gone up there.

I shouldn't have gone up there to be prayed for because I'm not a pastor and that was

a space for men.

So eventually she gets out of that, right?

So she leaves.

Why is it okay for youth pastors to be majority men?

Majority of teachers are women.

That's a great point.

I think even in Christian schools, the majority of teachers are women.

It's okay for women to teach teenage boys about math but not about Jesus?

Yeah.

You can have authority over men but just not about Jesus, apparently.

That's weird.

So she leaves full-time ministry and she goes into kind of like the corporate world, right?

And she goes...

This woman, she starts off running, okay?

So she starts a nonprofit.

She's leading this nonprofit in addition to working full-time.

In addition to...

I think she writes two books, okay?

In a span of two years.

She needs to rest, take a melatonin.

That's what she says.

So she says that because throughout her time in ministry, she felt like, possibly told

people, I'm not 100% clear whether this was vocalized, but she felt like if people would

just stop holding me back, imagine what I could do.

And suddenly people weren't holding her back.

And that's not to say that imposter syndrome doesn't happen in corporate America and things

like that, but in this particular instance, people weren't holding her back anymore.

And so she ran full speed ahead to see what she could do.

She did all of these things because she believed that she had to not only do as much as the

men were doing, but do 20 times more than the men were doing.

And she needed to do it all in heels.

She had to run circles around because that's what she had to do in ministry to prove herself.

She couldn't be as good as them because if she was as good as them, she was failing.

She had to be a million times better.

She had to bring so much more to the table, idea after idea, and it still wasn't enough

for her to get anybody's time of day.

She talks about wanting to have more teaching time.

And she was essentially told, well, even the men aren't getting the teaching time.

So you tiny little sad woman that you are certainly are not about to get that.

I wonder if she liked being called tiny.

I don't think I'm paraphrasing.

I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but I elaborate.

Wow.

I've never known that about you.

Breeze astounded.

So she says that this frenzy to achieve was because she was held down for so long and

she felt like she was working at 50% capacity, even though she was still running circles

around them.

She still wasn't allowed to do everything she knew she could do.

And so when she was allowed to, she burned herself out to the point that she had like

physical issues because she was so burned out.

Has that ever happened to you?

Like experienced burnout because I get like tummy troubles.

I can't sleep through the night.

It's horrible.

Your mind just raises and raises.

You grow 75 gray hairs.

It's a big issue for Bree.

Oh, and then if you're Bree, you buy really expensive skincare to avoid the wrinkles.

I'm trying to maintain my youthfulness.

At 98?

Yeah.

I look great for 98.

You do look great for 98.

Shut up.

So she goes into some of the messages that she felt she was hearing in ministry.

And I think these are universal.

I don't want to specifically be like, oh, well, these are only for women in ministry.

This is for women in the church that want to do anything.

Women that want to teach, preach and lead.

Women that want equality.

And outside of the church as well, who want these things in their jobs, who want these

things in their marriages.

This is not Christian exclusive.

So she says these were what she was hearing.

How dare you want to teach and lead when that's a job suited for men?

How dare you want a career when women were meant to be wives and moms?

How dare you have opinions and ambition when you're supposed to be quiet and small?

How dare you step outside of your box?

How dare you suggest the world could be better?

I love that.

How dare you?

Like how very dare you?

Where's that from?

How very dare you?

It's Catherine Tate's variety show.

That's it.

You quote that all the- no one's gonna get that one.

How very dare you?

Brandon will.

Brandon will.

You're absolutely right.

It's such a powerful phrase.

And she's- she does say these weren't explicitly said to her, but these were the messages she

was receiving.

People say so much more through their actions than through their mouth.

That's a good quote.

We should quote that from me.

Brianna.

I think that's really clear in the churches that we have been in recently.

The one that we most recently left.

Now they were a little more explicit in their hatred of women, I will say that.

But there were a lot of times where things were said that you kind of just nodded along

to.

Okay, well I don't like that they said this about submission.

I don't like this about them saying women in leadership or whatever, but you kind of

breeze by it because-

That's been our entire existence in church.

Yep.

I remember in- when I was working in ministry, I had a situation with someone at the church

and just the misogyny that came out during that situation.

That again, there weren't necessarily things that were explicitly said, but it was the

words that were said were, well how does your husband feel about this situation?

But what that means is how you feel isn't important.

Is he doing okay?

Because he's your keeper.

His manhood must be hurt by this.

And what was said was, well it would be best if he sat down with this other person and

talked to them to deal with the situation.

But the message is, you tiny sad little woman can't handle things yourself.

And I don't believe you until it comes out of a man's mouth.

Yes, absolutely.

So it's what's being said versus the message.

You can say you respect someone until you're blue in the face, but if you constantly go

around disrespecting them, not listening to their words, not believing them, not treating

them in a loving manner, you do not respect them.

Right.

Well that's why I have so much trouble and this is what we've already mentioned Harrison

Butker once in this episode.

Butker.

But the issue that I had with other people's responses, like other football players' responses

to his speech, Travis Kelsey said essentially, well these are his beliefs.

He's a good guy.

These are just his beliefs.

And I can't change that.

I don't have anything to say about his beliefs.

He's not a good guy.

I just, any kind of female only submission is disrespectful to women.

And I recognize that's a bold statement.

But anytime you say women exclusively should submit, husbands have no need to submit to

their wives or to be a partnership or any of this stuff, that is automatically disrespectful

to women, disrespectful to your partner, disrespectful to Jesus himself.

Yeah!

Alyssa's going off today.

Alyssa!

It's too hot in here for this.

It's so...

I want to get all riled up but I can't.

So I want to read a couple of quotes from her, from this article.

I'm just going to keep bouncing back to the article because we keep getting off track.

Honestly, that's what we do.

We bounce.

We do.

So she says, as these messages dripped down over a lifetime and the erosion of my confidence

resulted in crippling fear every time I dared to pursue a dream, often the shame and fear

accompanied even the dream itself before I put any action behind it.

If I fail, it'll confirm what they believe, that women can't, that women shouldn't.

And how often, as women, does that happen to us?

Yeah.

You crush your dream before you even attempt it.

Don't even start.

I can say that for this podcast.

Brie and I have been talking faith and feminism for years.

For a long time.

And I remember sitting in the parking lot at my daughter's school one time, we were

just talking about this stuff.

We talked about it all the time.

And I have no idea what I said, but you looked at me and you said, so when are you going

to start your blog again?

And clue, this is not a blog.

I don't know if you guys noticed.

It's a lot easier.

It's a lot easier than blog.

Although the editing and all of the technology would maybe be a little easier.

I read articles all day for work.

I'm not writing a blog.

But my first thought when you said that was, I can't do that.

I can't do that because I'm not going to do a good job at it.

And if I can't commit my whole self to it, then that's a failure.

We talked about it at work this past week.

It's called self-limiting beliefs.

So anything that could possibly hold you down from moving the needle forward, learning to

identify those in your dreams and proving them wrong.

Like for us, we're like, how are we going to start our podcast?

We had all of the technology to do it.

We had all the wherewithal to do it.

We had the computer.

We had to buy microphones.

And essentially that's it.

And now we're here.

Well, I think that's really what it boils down to is, oh, and that's a great lead into

our next story.

If God has asked something of you, men, women, children, whoever you are, if God has asked

something of you, he will provide you with everything you need to get it done.

You don't have to go out and strive so hard to complete this task and whatever.

Like he's prepared you already to do it.

All you have to do is stand out of the way.

Yeah.

God prepared us for years.

I picked up Sarah Bessey's Jesus Feminist years ago and started reading and exploring

and just starting conversations with people, just starting to research.

And when it came down to, should we start a podcast?

Should we spread this message?

We had the knowledge.

I think something that's interesting too that's come out of this is people want to talk to

us about this because I on purpose don't talk about it if we're in a big groups of people

or whatever.

Now, sometimes I do.

I'm not going to say all the time, but I do try to not bring it up, but people bring it

up to us.

They do.

And I think that that shows this is a topic worth talking about.

It's interesting.

I think it's what we're supposed to do.

That's why we can't stop blabbing.

We're, yeah, we talk a lot.

So I think that leads great into it.

Now there's a lot more to this article.

Highly recommend it.

I think I said where it's from so you guys can go look it up.

So a really great example in the Bible of imposter syndrome.

The Bible.

The Bible.

Now there's, this happens a lot in the Bible because God asks a lot of the people in the

Bible, take Jonah, for example, he got swallowed up by a whip.

Yeah.

And then he disappeared.

Like we don't know what happened to Jonah.

What a crazy, like, have you?

The entire book is like two pages.

It's not short.

The dude got swallowed by a whale.

I know.

That should be a bigger story.

He lived in a fish.

He lived in a fish.

We're really spinning off topic here.

I'm hot!

But also we don't know what happens to Jonah.

He sits under a tree, the tree wilts and dies, and that's the end of the story.

I think secretly like reincarnation might be real.

He came back as a fish and swallowed himself back in time.

No, that's not where it's going.

So anyway, so a specific example of imposter syndrome for a woman in the Bible is Esther.

Now, if you don't know the story of Esther, she's a leak.

If you've seen Veggie Tales, I don't think she's a leak.

Actually, I have no idea what she is.

She might be, I've spent a long time since, there's an Esther movie for Veggie Tales.

She's a green vegetable.

Again, if you were a Christian youth in the 90s and 2000s, you watched Veggie Tales is

what you did.

So Esther has a very stressful story, frankly.

It's really stressful.

Yeah.

I, again, am looking off of the Jewish Women's Archive because they're really cool guys.

Highly recommend them as a resource.

So Esther is collected amongst a bunch of other young women to be presented to the king

because the king is tired of his queen.

Her story is tragic.

Okay, it's tragic.

She didn't really get a choice.

So Esther is kind of collected and presented to the king and we don't know a whole lot

about her.

Which this is, I just want to mention, this is not abnormal.

Think back King George, like crazy King George.

He didn't find Queen Charlotte.

You only know that from Bridgerton.

Listen.

They scooped her up.

They did scoop her up.

So we don't know a whole lot about her.

We just know that she wasn't Israelite.

She had a cousin named Mordecai who I think was a pea in the Veggie Tales.

Was he a pea or an olive?

I don't think there were olives in Veggie Tales.

I'm fairly certain he was paw grape.

Maybe.

Yeah, he wasn't a pea.

He was paw grape.

He was a grape.

That's it.

Okay.

Wow.

On a journey guys.

A really exciting journey.

Mordecai.

So she is presented to the king.

She goes to him.

He falls in love with her, decides that she's his queen, blah, blah, blah.

What I like about that part of the story is it's not presented as like she's super thrilled

that she's the queen.

Hooray.

No, she's a kid.

She's scared.

And she gotten?

She had gotten all her choices taken away.

Gosh dang it.

Not that she had a lot back then.

No, she didn't have really any choices.

So her cousin, Mordecai, he is kind of battling it out with the Grand Vizier.

Now he may have been a leak.

People are, if you haven't seen Veggie Tales guys.

I think he was a green onion.

It's a wild time.

So Mordecai and the Grand Vizier, whose name is Haman are at odds.

So Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman and is going to be put to death.

It's a bad time for the Israelite people under this rule, right?

And so Mordecai goes to Esther and he basically says, I need you to go to the king and fix

this because Haman, the Grand Vizier over here, is making life terrible for all of us,

not just me.

It's all of your people, the Israelite people, were being persecuted.

I need you to fix this.

You have power.

You can do this.

God put you in the position to do this.

Now go do it.

And she's like, what the crap?

No, I don't want to die.

He will kill me.

He will.

So that's how the story goes is that if the king didn't call you into his court and you

came anyway, he could kill you.

And she tells Mordecai, she's like, he hasn't called me for like a month.

I'm not doing this.

Get out.

No, thank you.

I'm just going to stay here in my own little corner in my own little chair.

And based on the time period, she's probably a child.

She's probably an actual child.

So going to talk to the king, even if he's your husband, forget it.

And we're not talking a loving, wonderful marriage here, okay?

And she hasn't seen the man in a month.

Initially, she says, no, I don't want to do this.

I'm not prepared for this.

I am not the kind of person you want to put in this position.

That's a self-limiting belief.

It is.

But Mordecai keeps telling her, no, God wants you here.

God put you here for a reason.

And this is it.

So Mordecai tells her, Mordecai, Mordecai, you said Mordecai.

Maybe that's his name when he's poggry.

Hey, guy.

So Mordecai tells her, look, God is going to do what God is going to do with or without

you.

You can get on the bus or you can stay here if you want.

And God will still deliver us.

God will still save his people.

But you won't have been part of it.

You won't have been part of the story.

And then he actually goes on to say, like, your family will die.

But you don't get to be part of the big mission that God is pushing forward.

And you want to be in that.

Yeah.

And you can because God knew you could.

And so finally, she says, all right, fine, I'll go.

Now it doesn't say a lot about does she believe that God is going to keep her safe or does

she believe she's walking to her death?

I've got to believe in that situation.

Even with faith, prepare for the worst.

Yeah, absolutely.

I would be preparing for death.

And so that's what she's walking into.

But God did what God does.

And he knew who he was putting in the right place at the right time.

I used to have a sticker on my computer.

It said, perhaps you were created for such a time as this.

And that's a verse from it's a paraphrase of a verse from Esther.

Women in whatever position you find yourselves, you were created for such a time as this.

You were created for today in the current political climate, in the current church climate,

in the current relational climate.

You're here because God knew you could do it.

And that doesn't mean that you have to do something enormous.

No.

Just because you're a woman or whatever, you don't have to be the president of your company.

You don't have to do all these major things.

You can just be.

And that is enough.

But if you do have those bigger dreams or smaller dreams, whatever dreams you have,

do them.

Well, the thing in having faith, it's so easy to have imposter syndrome.

It literally is everywhere in the Bible.

Every single person is dealing with it.

But at the end of the day, God told you who you were.

He said, you are my child.

I love you.

I created you exactly how I wanted you to be.

So any flaws that you see are there for a purpose.

It's like that song, I am who you say I am, not who social media says that you are, not

who your family says that you are.

You're who God says you are.

So when you feel that, when you feel like I'm not good enough to preach, I'm not good

enough to lead, I'm not good enough to be an equal partner in my marriage, I'm not good

enough to start a podcast.

When you feel that, step back and say, I feel this way, but what's the truth?

And stop listening.

Yeah, stop listening to the pastors that are telling you're not good enough.

Just because they're a pastor doesn't mean that everything that comes out of their mouth

is gold.

Heaven knows that's not true.

I've listened to some pretty crappy pastors.

We really have.

Some really bad ones.

Some really good ones.

And some truly terrible ones.

Well that's why when I presented doing a podcast to Brie, I was talking to my therapist about

it because I was like, what if nobody listens?

What if nobody wants to hear what we have to say?

I'm not some massively educated in feminism person.

That's not my degree.

I don't-

I have an art degree, okay?

What the crap am I supposed to do with that?

And she said, if it's for no one else, let it be for your daughter.

Let your voice be the voice she hears instead of the pastors that have crushed you throughout

your life.

I love that this is coming full circle right now.

It's just one of those things that- and I don't even want it to be my voice, I want

it to be God's voice.

But I hope that the things that I'm saying are what God would say to her.

And I hope they're what God would say to you.

You are strong.

You are worthy.

You are enough.

And there are verses to back every single one of those statements.

And you don't have to be a man for those verses to apply to you.

Absolutely not.

God made you equal.

And he loves you very much.

Do you see how we're weaving all- do you see the fabric of our lives?

Okay, if you have not watched my videos, really, you're a little lost at this moment.

That's how they end all the episodes, it's not my fault.

God made you special.

And he loves you very much.

I think we ended another episode like that one time.

I think we did.

Sorry if you were confused by that one too.

So to wrap this all up, we're gonna do little challenges for ourselves, I think.

If we remember to do them, that's really the question here.

Maybe just on this one singular episode, we'll have one challenge.

But we wanted to see if we could expand our reach a little bit.

And so our challenge this week is to have someone listen in Canada.

The whole country.

Anywhere in the country of Canada.

So if you know anybody in Canada, please do share with us with them.

If you know anybody anywhere that would like this, please share it with them.

We appreciate you guys so much.

We hit 900 downloads today, and that was just super cool that like 900 times someone wanted

to hear our stupid voices.

That's like 900 hours.

That's a lot of our time.

That actually, I'm concerned.

We said that last episode, hydrate.

Hydrate.

That's it.

That's it.

But thank you guys so much for listening.

Follow us over on social media.

We are on TikTok.

We are on Instagram.

Technically, we're on Facebook.

I don't post there.

I think Facebook is a dying art.

Thank you for that information.

You're welcome.

You can also find these episodes on YouTube if that's easier for you.

And we will see you next week where we talk about something to be determined that we haven't

decided yet.

I'll be honest with you.

I can't see you.

We will speak at you next week.

You will hear us.

Yes.

All right.

We'll talk to you later.

Bye.

Love you.

Bye.