Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher.

This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith,

ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

You don't have to settle for water down Christian teaching. And if you're ready to go deeper,

God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.

Well, hello friends, Felicia Masonheimer here. And in this video, we are actually talking about

a topic that's going to be streamed on the Verity podcast, discussing motherhood and how the gospel

meets us in this issue that is so relevant to women. So specifically in this particular video,

slash episode, we're going to be talking about asceticism. What is asceticism and how come it

plagues so much of motherhood today, both in the church and outside of the church? Now,

what we're going to talk about is our theology of suffering and again, the definition of asceticism

because you might not know what that means or what that looks like. And once I describe it,

I think you're going to recognize it right away because a lot of us really struggle with this

especially as Christians. Now, this is kind of a follow up on what I talked about regarding

breastfeeding. Now, as you guys know, I have a very particular experience with breastfeeding,

but that's not really what this about. This is a vehicle for the discussion because what we're

going to talk about today in relation to motherhood and the gospel really plagues every single

area of parenting decisions and motherhood in general, whether it is the kind of birth you had,

how you feed your baby, how you parent your baby, how you teach your baby to sleep, etc. Whatever

it is, most likely this issue is going to be relevant because the mommy worse exists precisely

because of what we're talking about today. Now, obviously anywhere you have dissension and grief

and anger and shame and all of those lovely things, the gospel is going to address that, right?

...