12 min read ⭑

Jamie Ivey has been writing online since the golden age of blogging (circa 2005). What started out as sharing her first adoption story has turned into regular, honest conversations about the big and small moments of faith and life. Over time, she’s added podcast host and author to her list of titles and talents with her “Happy Hour” podcast and books like “Why Can’t I Get It Together?”

Come and be encouraged as Jamie spills the tea about her hidden fears, why she shut down the podcasting arm of her business after a year and how Scripture memorization is transforming her heart and ministry.

The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

My husband, our four kids and I live in Austin, Texas. One of the things we love about the city is the great meals, the great restaurants, and the variety of restaurants. I was trying to think of one restaurant that would be my favorite, and I can’t. I want to tell you about seven!

I will tell you that as much as we love all the amazing restaurants, there is a restaurant out here close to us. It’s in a shopping center. It’s called Hecho en México. We got to know the owner, Mario. He owns it with his sister. And there’s something about Aaron and me: When we get to know people at a restaurant, we want to go back there all the time. There was a restaurant in town called Second Bar + Kitchen, and Aaron got to know the chef and owner, David Bull, and we would go there all the time because it was about relationships. So we go to Hecho en México for kids’ birthdays. We’ve done so many birthday toasts there. We go on date nights or just sit at the bar and talk to Mario.

Of course, we love the food there. No doubt, we love the food, but there’s something special about going to a place where people know your name. I mean, it’s like the “Cheers” theme song. We find ourselves there for birthday dinners, date nights, Sunday dinners — all the time.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity (or activities) do you love engaging in, which also help you find essential spiritual renewal?

I’m going to start with the one that I cannot figure out how it gives me spiritual renewal. Over the past couple of years, we’ve had season tickets to the University of Texas football games. And the reason I bought those season tickets was to take my boys. My boys are seniors this year, and next year will be the first time (this fall) that there will be University of Texas games and I won’t have any of my kids home. My boys and my daughter couldn’t care less. So the season tickets have been so fun because we love Texas Longhorns and football. But for me, as a mom, I love going with my kids. I’m just kind of coming to face the fact that I don’t know who will be at the games next year. So that spiritual renewal, I don’t know about that, but I do know that it has connected me in a deeper way to my boys, and that’s what I wanted when I bought the tickets.

Now, the activity and interest of mine that’s very much a spiritual renewal for me is my newfound love of walking. I have always loved moving my body. In certain seasons, I walk more or less — obviously, that’s life. I used to be a runner and hurt my back, so I can’t run anymore. But in 2020, when everything shut down, we would walk through our neighborhood a lot.

We’ve been walking through our neighborhood for years, but this last year, in 2023, I began walking more as a spiritual practice. Not to sound overly spiritual, but it became something I felt I needed at the end of the day or at the beginning of the day. I was really encouraged by some friends and even a professor (I’m in school at Denver Seminary) to see how I could use that walk as a time for spiritual renewal. I love to listen to podcasts because I’m a podcaster myself, so one of the things I’ve been encouraged to do is go on a walk without listening to anything. That’s been very difficult and very rewarding at the same time. Both activities bring a lot of joy to my heart.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you hide it?

I’ve been married to my husband since 2001, so this year, we will have been married for 23 years. Throughout our entire marriage, one of my biggest struggles has been overcoming the fear that he will leave me, grow tired and weary of me, and want a different wife.

The problem with that struggle is that he has never given me any reason to think that way, fear that, or think that. But it’s something I struggled with before I even met him, and I brought it into our marriage. This fear of having someone decide years into a marriage that they don’t want to be in this marriage anymore.

The thing that’s hard about this is I have a phenomenal marriage. I love my husband deeply. He loves me deeply. We really do say that we are each other’s best friends, which is cheesy and weird, but we can’t help it. And yet, at the same time, I battle that fear that he’s going to leave me. The great news is that it doesn’t come up as often and I battle it much better. But the truth is, it’s there even though I wish it weren’t. I think that God is somehow using it for me to trust him more with my life and love.

Obviously, I wish I didn’t feel that way, but I do. We all bring brokenness into our marriage, and we all have brokenness in our lives. We need Jesus to help us with that brokenness.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

I’m currently obsessed with figuring out why I can’t get it together, which is crazy because I wrote a book titled “Why Can’t I Get It Together?” And yet, at the same time, I still find myself asking this question. What I learned during this project and writing this book is that, often, we don’t feel like we can get it together because of two things. Number one, we live in a broken world. We have things we’re up against us that we can’t control. And number two, we often look around to see how everyone else has it together and wonder why we don’t. But the truth is, we don’t see their whole world.

One of the passions I have for women — because that’s the majority of my audience — is to help them see why they feel this way and understand that some of them are preventable. For example, you can work on not coveting other people’s lives or scheduling your world better. And there are also some things we need to lay down to let the Lord deal with.

That’s a pretty big passion for me right now. Number one, obviously, because I have a book about it, but number two, because I’m living it, because I’m human, and because we’re all trying to figure this out as we go. And I’m right here with all of us trying to figure this out.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors, or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

In the fall of 2022, God really started to impress something in my heart that meant downsizing my company. So six months before that, we had added a whole new part of my company where we were helping other people create podcasts. It was awesome. It was wonderful. We had nine podcasts on our network, and it was great, except that in the fall of that year, God really started impressing on my heart: I don’t think this is where you need to go next. I don’t think this is what you need to be doing.

I also started feeling a certain tension. I didn’t know if I wanted my life to be about helping build other people’s podcasts. I think it’s great. People do that all the time, and they do it phenomenally, but I didn’t feel like it was where I needed to be. The problem was I had started a whole arm of my company with that, so I wrestled with the Lord.

In June 2023, we shut down that part exactly a year after it opened. The wrestling with that was really, really hard. There are a lot of reasons why that was a difficult decision to make, but here I am, nine months removed from that final decision, and certain things have happened in the podcasting world that cause me to look back and say, “God, you were protecting me so much in that decision.”

Making the decision to downsize, to do something that looked like I was going backward when the world was telling me to move forward as fast as I could — it was hard. I felt scared about it. I felt insecure. But I also couldn’t shake the fact that it was God who was asking me to do these things. And even though God doesn’t owe me this, here I am nine months later, going, “God, you were leading me and protected me to bring me to the exact place I needed to be.”

I think that a lot of times in our work, we don’t see or notice those little moments when you go, “God, look, you did that. I trusted you, and you were faithful in that hard decision.” I got to see that unfold recently. And again, God didn’t owe me that, but I think, How kind of you to let me see. I feel like he’s saying to me: Wow, you trusted me, Jamie, and I took you on the right path, and you followed even when it felt shaky and you didn’t know where it would lead. And here I am, showing you that it was actually worth it.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you right now?

One of the things I’ve wanted to get better at my entire life of following Jesus is Scripture memorization. Being in God’s Word and hiding it in your heart is definitely a spiritual practice, and it’s always been a little bit difficult for me.

I thought memorizing Scripture was difficult, but then I realized that when I listen to the radio and a country song from the 1990s comes on, I know every single word of it. You cannot put a song on that I don’t know the words of!

So over the last couple of months, I’ve really started to put more into practice memorizing a verse a month. (I wish I could say it was a verse a week, but that’s just not where I am.) So far, this practice has been really encouraging for me.

I see the fruit of it because I’m memorizing it and writing it in my journal when I have my time with the Lord. For example, I was speaking at an event recently, and even though Romans 12:12 was not in my notes at all and didn’t have anything to do with my talk, I found myself saying it in the middle of the talk. It was this kind of light bulb moment that made me say, “God, this is why we hide your Word in our hearts — because it overflows when we don’t even plan for it to overflow.” That was a really cool moment. It felt good to say a portion of the Scripture that I’ve been meditating on this whole month. It made me feel proud of myself, and it also made me think, This is what I want. I want God’s Word to flow out when I don’t even know it’s going to come out.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top-three resources stand out to you? What changed the game and changed your heart?

I have three resources that have helped. When I was new to following Jesus, I did a Bible study by Beth Moore called “Breaking Free.” This Bible study was monumental for me because I showed up to following Jesus with a lot of brokenness. (Which, side note, we all do.) I had been pregnant twice in college, sexually active for a long time, and just thought, Is there any way that God can use me? Now, looking back, I think, Of course he can. Christ’s sacrifice is good for all of us. But when I was new to the faith, I did this Bible study called “Breaking Free” from Beth Moore, and it was really monumental for me to let go of the shame.

Fast forward to the last couple of years of my life. There’s a book I recommend to a lot of people called “Be the Bridge” by my friend Latasha Morrison. One thing I didn’t mention is that, of my four kids, three of them joined our family through adoption. Latasha loves people and has a great organization. I wanted to learn as much as I could about what it meant to be a Black Christian in America because I was raising Black children. It’s been really helpful for me. In the last couple of years, there have been a lot of conversations about racial injustice, and I just trust Latasha immensely. The work that she’s doing has been really, really great.

The third one is a podcast I listen to every week and never skip called the “Holy Post.” Skye Jethani is one of the hosts, along with Phil Vischer (who created VeggieTales) and Kaitlyn Schiess. I really enjoy the conversations they have about the lenses we use to look at the world and how to live in this pluralistic world and be faithful followers of Jesus. That’s something I’m trying to figure out, so I really enjoy their podcast.

We all have things we cling to to survive (or even thrive) in tough times — times like these! Name one resource you’re savoring and/or finding indispensable in this current season, and tell us what it’s doing for you.

For Scripture memorization, I use a company called Dwell Differently. They send you a verse of the month and cards that just have the first letter of each word in the verse. It helps you memorize it, and it’s been super helpful for me.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

I started school last fall. I’m a student again at the age of 45. I’m attending Denver Seminary and will eventually end up with a master’s degree in biblical and theological studies. I’ve wanted to go to school for a long time — not because I think I need a degree or anything else behind my name, but because I just want to know God more, know his Word more, and love him more.

I just finished a class this semester on the Gospels and Acts, and when I left class, my mind was blown. There’s nothing in me that thinks this is going to change much about my professional life, but it’s going to change a lot about my personal life. I’m going to back up — it is going to change my professional life because I’m the author and I really do sense that knowing God more is going to help me write better books. I don’t have any books on the table right now that I’m writing, but I can guarantee you that they will be better because of my seminary degree. That’s why going back to school is super exciting for me right now.

Jamie’s thoughts on Scripture memorization are powerful. Yes, memorizing Bible verses can be hard. But if we can memorize the lyrics to our favorite song without even trying, surely we can hide God’s Word in our hearts, too.

But does that mean we should hold Scripture memorization over our heads like some ominous to-do? Of course not.

If you have time this week, read Psalm 119. (It’s a long passage, so be sure to set aside the time you need!) As you read, pay attention to the words the psalmist uses to describe his love for the Word of God. Can you see how he delights in it? No wonder he hides it in his heart (v. 11)!

Perhaps the first step to memorizing God’s Word is allowing ourselves to enjoy it first. How can you simply enjoy the Bible this week?

Jamie Ivey is the creator and host of the popular podcast The Happy Hour With Jamie Ivey, a central gathering place for talking about life and Jesus. Jamie told the raw, redemptive story that brought her to this place in her debut book, If You Only Knew. Now, she’s telling the story that keeps her going and frames her God-empowering message to women today. Jamie and her husband, Aaron, make their home for six in Austin, Texas.

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