You're listening to the Family Discipleship Podcast, a podcast of Training the Church.

This is Cassie Bryant and Chelsea Griffin.

We are honored to be in the presence of true greatness today with theologian Caroline Smiley.

That's right. We have a girl squad for today's episode. If you're a man and you're listening,

hang in there with us. We promise it'll be worth it. Caroline, we'd love to just introduce you.

We have all been together. We've worked together. We've been at

church together. You used to be on staff at the village church. We worked together in children's

ministry. And then you worked for the institute as a paid professional theologian. And now

you're an unpaid professional theologian and an unpaid mother. I hear that's not paying well either. Would love to just

hear how you're doing. Yeah, I'm doing great, you know. I like to think that I am paid in my job

as a mother because I charge my husband for, you know, all the child care. So that works out well.

50% turns out. Oh, just kidding. I'm just kidding. I mean, that was a joke. I don't charge him for child care because what I'm doing is not child care. It's parent. You're mothering. It's a, it's a more than full-time job. It does sometimes feel like child care. Like just throw Cheerios at him. I remember when Maven was a toddler, I'd give her like a full box of Kleenexes and see how long it would take her to pull all the Kleenexes out,

just because I needed her to like stay occupied for a couple minutes. Yeah, trying to navigate,

like having school deadlines and also toddlers has definitely increased my repertoire of what

activities will take a really long time and not need mom's assistance.

Okay, speaking of school, where are you at school? What are you studying? Tell us more.

Yeah, so I'm working on a PhD in New Testament, specifically in Luke, on the infancy narrative.

So really looking at Mary, the mother of Jesus. So convenient for our topic of theology

and motherhood today. And I'm doing that at the University of Aberdeen. So it is all, which is in

Scotland. So it's all distance and a lot of this kind of thing. That's a lot of calls and

face time. And then a lot of sitting in a library by myself

and reading and writing.

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