Hey friends and welcome to the happy hour with Jamie Ivy podcast. I'm your host Jamie and I'm so glad you're here.

Each week on this show, I invite a friend to join me and we chat about the big things in life, the little things in life and everything in between.

Hi friends and welcome to another episode of the happy hour with Jamie Ivy podcast. I'm your host Jamie and I have a really fun show for you today, but something awesome in our families, happy tomorrow is that my son Deacon is turning 16 years old.

Happy birthday Deacon, you're gonna love 16. You guys today on the show, I'm joined by Mariah Smallbone and I cannot tell you how much I loved getting to know this girl. Mariah is a singer, songwriter, she's a producer, she just released a new EP that I played for air in the other day and we both love it so much.

Mariah and I talked about a lecture that she just gave at her alma mater, Lipscomb University where she talked about sustainable artistry. The conversation could have gone on for another couple of hours, but she just is great inside of how creatives and people, how do we sustain the pace that we're doing, how do we keep doing what we're doing.

I really enjoyed this conversation and at the end we talked about slow church a little bit and she tells you what that is.

You guys before I played this conversation for you, I want to tell you that lifeway.com is still running a deal on two of my books, God made you to be you, which was written specifically for the kids in your life and then you be you, which is written for all of us adults, you can get both of those books together combined for $15.

It's a great way to stock up on Christmas gifts or birthday gifts, whatever you might need God made you to be you, the book just for kids and then you be you for adults, both of them $15 together, lifeway.com.

All right, y'all, here's my conversation with my new friend Mariah Smallbun. Mariah, welcome to the happy hour. Thanks for having me. This would only be a better happy hour if I was in your office, where you're sitting and you could play me some of your music and then we could pick that basketball up that's behind you and go play basketball because that would make a day.

Do you play basketball? Well, let me introduce you into part of my life is I think that the whole once an athlete always an athlete that's what I live by I live and die by that so I did play basketball at high school.

And if I were to get on a court, I would think I was like 18 again. Were you a point guard. Yes, were you you give me so many point guard vibes it's not even funny you couldn't be anything else in my head. What about you.

I was mainly post or shooting guard. I don't have the ball handling skills to be a point guard. I'll give you the ball and you can shoot tag team. Yes.

Did you play other sports in high school. It depends on whether or not you consider cheerleading to be a sport. Well, I don't want to hurt your feelings so I won't answer it.

I don't want to hurt my feelings because I can be 100% real with you and tell you that the only reason I joined at my freshman year was so that I could wear a uniform and like the part of what I thought would be the popular crew.

I didn't want to work as hard to make friends. So I literally joined cheer my freshman year for that sole purpose for that only reason how insecure how selfish how child is sure.

Fine, but I paid for it. I got to the end of the cheerleading season. All I wanted to do was play basketball because that's what I grew up playing.

And I got in trouble because at the games, I would be making fun of all of our cheers because I was like, I've seen competitive cheerleading before and that's not what this was.

You're on the sideline. I'm doing little hand motions and I would make faces. I would do it, you know, don't die. I was a really ridiculous and make people laugh in the stands and my coach was taking it all very seriously as they should be.

Yeah, which I was being disrespectful as a little 14 year old brat. And thankfully that was my first and last experience with cheerleading and I went back to my first love and I finished out my high school years playing basketball.

I will say this. I think most high school cheerleading, please no one hate me. I would not consider like a sport. But you know, I assume everyone in national knows everybody. Do you know mayor Beth and Stephen Kirtichettman?

I am friends with mayor Beth and I follow her online and her daughter who is now our cheerleader at Alabama. What she does is a sport. I'll just need to say it out there because she shows photos of that. And I'm like, she is in the gym hours one hour is amazing.

You know, all of the gymnastics side of things, the flyers, you know, when you can throw people in the air like that, that is absolutely.

...