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Practical Chats for Intentional Living
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Monday Mar 11, 2019
Monday Mar 11, 2019
43. Joys and Challenges of Motherhood with Podcaster and Author, April Hoss
**Transcription Below**
Proverbs 14:8 “The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, but the folly of fools is deception.”
April Hoss is a wife, mom of 4, and unapologetic animal lover and dessert orderer living in southern California. She is living proof medical school ends, homeschool hecklers can become homeschool moms, and God has the wildest plans for the most unexpected people. She just completed her first novel, The Sound of Arrows.
At The Savvy Sauce, we will only recommend resources we believe in! We also want you to be aware: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.comand affiliated sites.
The Magic of Motherhood (Book Compiled by the Coffee + Crumbs Team)
Some of April’s Favorite Recipes:
Some of April’s Recommended Food Blogs:
N.D. Wilson Books April Recommends:
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Gospel Scripture: (all NIV)
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”
Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession- to the praise of his glory.”
Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”
Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
**Transcription**
[00:00:00] <music>
Laura Dugger: Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.
[00:00:17] <music>
Laura Dugger: Today's episode is brought to you by Kelsie Zarko. She provides practical education and guidance in using Young Living essential oils and products. Kelsey is passionate about making wellness simple and she will assist you in taking an intentional approach to your health and home. You can find out more at KelsieZarko.com.
Have you been looking for creative ways to invest in your relationship with your spouse and with your family? You can do this from your home with zero preparation with Night In Boxes. For more information, visit nightinboxes.com.
I've said before I love listening to podcasts, and one of my favorites is Coffee + Crumbs. That is why I'm so excited to interview one of Coffee and Crumbs' hosts today, April Hoss. April is a wife, mom of four, and she's a gifted author and speaker. I love her witty humor and love of Jesus. I hope you enjoy our chat. [00:01:29]
Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, April.
April Hoss: Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here.
Laura Dugger: We're excited to have you join us. And listeners may know you from your own awesome podcast, but for everyone else, will you just start by sharing your story?
April Hoss: Sure. How much time do you have? I can be a little long-winded. When I hear something like share your story, I can get carried away. So please feel free to cut me off. But yes, everything you said is true. My name is April Hoss. I am part of the Coffee + Crumbs team. But getting from where I started to there was a little bit of a journey.
So my husband and I are high school sweethearts. We met when we were 13 and 14 years old, which is... it just gets crazier. Every time I say it as the older I get, it just sounds crazier and crazier. But it's really true. We got married seven days after our college graduation. About a month later, we moved from our college life in Santa Barbara to Southern California to start medical school. [00:02:31]
Actually, we did not start medical school. He did. I definitely did not go to medical school. I took the most basic possible math and science classes a person needed to graduate. We did not start medical school. He did. But we moved together, of course, and we had zero friends, zero family, zero experience or knowledge of our new city.
Medical school is really its own beast, and it was just an incredibly lonely time for me as I started this new life as a wife and as a person that got transplanted to this new area. So I graduated college with a teaching credential but at that time, this was in 2006, jobs in Southern California were really scarce and so I was taking substitute teaching jobs when and where I could. But really there were a lot of days when I was just watching TV, eating terrible food because I knew how to scramble eggs and heat up pasta sauce. That was the extent of my culinary skills. [00:03:31]
For my husband, medical school was the first time he had encountered any kind of academic challenge. Honestly, it wrecked him psychologically. He went from someone who was "school was a breeze," he was at the top of his class, the worst case scenario he was bored in class to someone who felt like they couldn't keep up.
We had no idea, on top of all that, really how to be married, but we did have very idealistic notions about marriage. So neither of us went into marriage understanding there would be conflict, hardship. We just thought, "Here we go. We're married. We're gonna sail through life."
So our sky-high expectations got met with an immediate set of hardships, and we were really just a disaster individually, as a couple, in every way one could be. At our lowest point, my husband voluntarily asked to withdraw from medical school in order to repeat his second year of school. [00:04:30] And that was around the time that I said, "Maybe we're supposed to get divorced."
And I should mention that neither of us came from families of divorce. Both of our sets of parents are still married. They're in happy marriages. We did not grow up seeing divorce. But I just thought that because our marriage was difficult, that's what we were supposed to do, that maybe marriages aren't hard and ours was because we had made this terrible decision.
So, Daniel, my husband, did not think that was the answer. He did not want to get a divorce, but he didn't know really the way out either. And it was around this time we had just started getting involved in a church. We had kind of been in a situation that I'm sure a lot of people can understand. When you move to a new place and you're kind of going from church to church on different Sundays to find the right fit.
We had finally landed at a church and we had started getting more involved and we heard someone mention that they listened to online sermons. They mentioned a man, specifically named a preacher, specifically named Tim Keller. And I had never heard of him. Not only that, I had never known that there were sermons online that people could just go on and download and listen to. [00:05:37]
I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't know people listened to sermons recreationally. So I'm sure I just heard that comment and kept walking to the donut table. But Daniel picked up on it and went home and started playing them from the computer in his office. So He'd be in his office getting work done, and I would be in the living room doing whatever on my computer, maybe writing lesson plans. This was around 2008, so blogging was really big. I wasn't a blogger myself, but I kept up with a few friends from college who had blogs.
So I would just be kind of piddling around, and I would hear these sermons playing. Daniel started with Tim Keller's Genesis series. And I can't stress this enough, I actually froze at different times while I was listening. Whatever I was doing, I would stop in midair. So if I was typing on the computer, my hands would freeze over the keyboard. Or if I was folding a towel, the towel would be frozen in front of my face because I was just wide-eyed at what he was saying. [00:06:34]
Even though I grew up in a Christian home, I grew up attending church, I never had been taught the Bible in this way. Everything Tim Keller said felt honestly mind-blowing to me. It was really through that, through that experience of listening to this Genesis series, that God really started working on healing us.
And it felt like the same God who had ordained that we would be kind of swallowed by this whale of hardship and conflict and having our expectations dashed and not knowing what to do with ourselves would be the same God that ordained our way out onto dry land. So I developed this hunger. Okay, if this, if just in the book of Genesis all this was in there the whole time sitting next to me on my nightstand, what else is in the Bible that I never learned that I didn't pay attention to, and who is this God?"
I developed a real hunger for God. At the same time, Daniel was developing a real hunger of God. And that became our kind of touchstone. We both wanted to study scripture more and learn about God more. [00:07:41] So even though there were still a lot of challenges in our marriage and even though we were still very immature and finally confronting that, which is such a painful thing to do to confront your own immaturity, we did have this one thing, which was suddenly we both wanted to know "what else don't we know about God?"
So we kind of rebuilt our marriage from there. Daniel did go on to repeat his second year of medical school and did much better. Ended up, of course, graduating. We went through residency together. He did fellowship years, and he's now an attending. So he was able to complete what he started.
And I realized along the way, I don't like teaching, and it's okay to say that. That I went into this job because it's what I had trained to do, because from a young age, I thought it's what I wanted to do. But now that I'm here, it's not a good fit. And that's okay to admit.
And around the time that I started studying theology and things like that, I also got really interested in writing. And this part of myself that I never knew was there sort of woke up with everything else. So in between work hours when I was coming home from teaching or on summer breaks and stuff, I was just writing, writing, writing, writing. [00:08:55] So in a few short years, our lives changed drastically. I tell people it's like God woke us up from a dead sleep, and in what was once a total disaster, God healed.
So we went through that and thought, okay, we've been through a really hard few early years of marriage, and there's probably nothing else that's going to come and hit us anytime soon. After Daniel graduated from medical school, we thought this would be a great time to start a family.
We can have kids while you're in residency. We had always talked about adoption since we were in high school. We knew we wanted to adopt and we thought we would go with the international adoption route because to be perfectly honest, I was too scared to do a domestic adoption. I guess I had seen too many TV specials on things going wrong, and I just thought, if we adopt internationally, there's no way the baby can ever be taken from us. We can't lose the baby.
So we really did pursue that. We worked with an agency, but everything they required were just things we could not give them. [00:09:56] For instance, we wanted to adopt from China, but we both had to be 30 and we were still a couple of years from that. We wanted to adopt from Chile, but they needed us to go together for six weeks and Daniel could not get six weeks off of residency.
We wanted to adopt from Ethiopia. We thought, "Okay, this is our third option. We'll try that," and they needed a really significant amount of money, like $30,000 in 14 days. Can you do that? No, we cannot do that.
So it looked like God was saying, You're not going to adopt internationally. Through our church, we were in an adoption kind of information/support group. So it really was for anyone, whether you were just curious about adoption or you were in some kind of adoption process that was hard and you just wanted to talk to other families.
There were people from all walks and all places coming to this. From being in that group, I started to feel like God was pushing us toward domestic adoption, maybe foster adopt, and I just turned the volume down on that. [00:10:57] Like, nope, okay, you can do anything else, God, but please, please don't ask us to adopt through the foster system because I'm too afraid. So I just blah, blah, blah, like put my fingers in my ear on that.
And so we thought, Well, this international adoption thing didn't work. We'll try again after we're 30. Maybe we'll go the China route. I always thought our very first child would be through this Chinese international adoption. Where I got that idea, I have no idea. But I just had that in my head.
When that didn't look like it was going to happen, we thought we'll go the biological route. In the summer of 2011, I did get pregnant. And shortly thereafter, I experienced a miscarriage. That felt like, "Really? We've just had all of our adoption plans kind of fall and be foiled, and now this?" And I thought, "Okay, we'll just try again right away. We're just going to kind of brush ourselves off. This was hard. This was painful. This was unexpected. But what I should do instead of really feeling it or sitting with that pain is just try to get pregnant." [00:11:59]
Again, in just a bizarre set of circumstances, I was matched to be a bone marrow donor. I'm still on the couch recovering from the miscarriage and I get this email from the National Registry of Bone Marrow Donors, something that I had signed up to be a part of when I was in high school, that said I was a potential match for a patient.
There was a list of things they asked me to commit not to do. Like get a tattoo, travel to certain countries. One was get pregnant for six months. Could I commit to that? And I thought, "Oh my gosh, how is this happening? But I felt like, of course, I want to say yes, that I can put my plans on pause and see what happens. So that's what we did. Waited. It ended up that the patient chose a different route. I never had to do any kind of medical procedures whatsoever.
In the summer of 2012, I got pregnant again. Another very bizarre set of circumstances. I had a miscarriage at the exact same time, same month, same day as I had had the first miscarriage. This is where it just feels like, cue the Twilight Zone music. It just gets super... what are the actual statistical chances of this happening? [00:13:11] Again, I get contacted, "You are a match for a bone marrow donor patient. Will you wait six months?" And I thought, "I can say yes this time with ease because I feel like God is saying, I've shown you the path I want you to take."
So then from my bed where I was recovering from my second miscarriage, I looked into what is the next available date for an informational meeting through our county to adopt. I had the miscarriage in August and we were at the September informational meeting. In October, we were doing classes. We had to do 40 hours in about one month of classes on everything from kids that are drug-exposed and how to care for them, to how to walk with a parent who's trying to regain custody of their child, to basic parenting skills, everything in between.
Then we had to go through a series of interviews, our home had to be inspected, kind of all the things that you hear about. We had to do the basic stuff to be placed with a child. In November of 2013, we brought our son, we brought Ridley home. And it was everything that I had been afraid of and worried about, it just wasn't there. It's kind of like when people tell birth stories and they were really, really, really afraid of delivering a baby and then they have the baby and they can't remember that it was painful or, did that actually hurt? Was I actually screaming and saying those things? It was kind of like that. [00:14:39]
All of my fears about "What will it be like to become a mom this way? Will I feel like I'm illegitimate in some ways? Will it be just so terrifying to know that there's a birth parent within some mile radius of me, pretty near to me, that could take him back? Will that cripple me from loving him?" And all of that was proven to be untrue and not there.
So he came home in November and then the following year, I got pregnant with our daughter, Kaisa. And then about a year and a half later or a year later, I got pregnant with our son Caleb. Someone said once they start coming, it's like the door never closes fully. Who else is going to walk through the door? How many kids are we going to have?
So I have three children. They are 5, 3, 18 months, and I'm having a baby in January. So we went from, "We don't know what God is doing, will we be parents, it seems like maybe God is saying no to every road we walk down, it feels like there's this immovable block in the way to all of a sudden we're going to have four kids. [00:15:44]
So it's been a really wild 12 years of marriage, but I think overall, if your question was, what's your story, and I answered a very long version. But the short one-word version would just be what I think is probably the word for a lot of Christians, just a story of redemption. There was so much that was broken and dead in my heart and in my life, and I really just had a front-row seat to seeing how God makes dead things alive in the last 12 years.
Laura Dugger: Wow, April, your story is incredible. I just really appreciate how authentic you're being because I think a lot of listeners are going to relate to some of your experiences.
April Hoss: I hope so. I hope anyone that's in a place where they feel like there's something dead in their life can hear that and know that I did nothing. I brought nothing back to life. I can't use my words to create things. That any good, alive, healthy thing in my life is just testament to God's hand in my life.
Laura Dugger: Well, and he certainly has gifted you with the gift of writing. [00:16:48] And even with the book that you contributed to, The Magic of Motherhood, people can read little glimpses of your story in that as well. And just as a side note, we'll put that in our show notes. If you're wanting to know how to access the show notes, just go to our website, thesavvysauce.com, and click on this specific episode.
But April, you are also on the successful Coffee + Crumbs podcast team. So how did you originally get into podcasting?
April Hoss: That question definitely falls into that if anyone had told me I would ever be on a podcast, well, first of all, I probably would not have known what a podcast was, but I would have laughed so hard. I never saw that coming.
So I had been on the writing team for Coffee + Crumbs for about a year, plus or minus when the woman who hosted season one and two of the podcast, plus Ashley, the founder of Coffee and Crumbs, approached me about co-hosting. And I have no background experience, even in something like radio. I know nothing about that. [00:17:49] But their confidence in asking me to join gave me confidence, and I just dove in. The microphone came in the mail, and we stuck the headphones in, and they worked.
I feel like, honestly, I have the easiest job on our podcasting team because I show up in front of my laptop and press a button, and that's the extent of it. I have to email a file at the end that has my voice on it, but I don't carry any of the behind-the-scenes responsibilities, which I know there are many, and there are a lot of challenges, especially on the technical end, from editing to also just having, like you just mentioned, show notes. And I know that that's a job in and of itself to make sure all the links are working and organize the way it's all going to look. There's a website that all these podcasts have to live on and social media outreach and even reaching out to advertisers.
Podcasting is really quite an enterprise and I'm just the girl in her pajamas laughing with her friends. So I don't want to take any credit for the heavy lifting on the Coffee + Crumbs podcast because, as you know, podcasting is not easy and it's what people are hearing is really the product of teamwork for sure. [00:18:54]
Laura Dugger: Oh, amen to that. Yes, it definitely takes a team. And how has your life changed since you started podcasting?
April Hoss: What we're doing, is probably the biggest change or at least the most fun change is that I get to meet so many people and talk to so many people. Writing is I wouldn't say lonely, but it's pretty isolated. There's not a lot of just talking in writing, even though you might be writing a book with a lot of dialogue or pouring out so many words. You can often do that sitting in a coffee shop, not speaking to anyone, or up early in the morning before your family wakes up. There's not a lot of person-to-person communication in writing.
And the thing about podcasting is that it still requires the use of words and things like that, and you want to have some of the same skills that a writer may bring to the table, but you're actually getting to have these really fun, engaging conversations with people. So the biggest change has been just my world widening a little bit and my horizons broadening. It's been great.
Laura Dugger: Well, I'm so curious. Do random people ever recognize your voice in public?
April Hoss: No. No. That would be so funny. No, not yet. We'll see if that happens, but I'll have people that will say, "I had no idea you were on a podcast, and someone said, listen to this podcast, and "Oh my gosh, I think I know her." So that's been funny. But no, when I'm out and about talking to my kids or doing whatever, doing life, and I'm chatting, no one has ever stopped me. [00:20:23] So that will be a funny day when that happens.
Laura Dugger: That'll be awesome. You'll have to keep us posted when that occurs.
April Hoss: I will.
Laura Dugger: Now let's take a brief break to hear a message from two of our sponsors.
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Laura Dugger: Well, something that I gather from being a regular listener of your podcast is that you are genuinely friendly. It just seems like you naturally listen well and you offer others such affirming messages. So do you have any other tips or personal practices that you recommend for being a good friend? [00:22:55]
April Hoss: That's a good question because I think as moms, all of a sudden we find that being a good friend is a lot harder than it was before our child or our children or a part of our lives. We're just faced with challenges on every single front and friendship is not immune to that.
I would say don't stop inviting people even if they say no. So if you have a friend that you really want to get together with for coffee or to meet at a park with your kids and it's just not working out, keep inviting them and also be willing to give nos. It's kind of telling of how healthy a friendship is if you can give and receive no's in a way that doesn't just cut off the friendship or make it so that you're no longer interested in hanging out. Because life happens. Kids do get sick. Cars do break down. Some weeks are just too crazy. We have to just keep pursuing one another.
I would also say that the currency of friendship in this season is really in your favor because little things like a text that might have not meant very much before you had children suddenly mean the world. I know that if someone, especially someone with children, reaches out to me, just a simple text, hey, I'm thinking of you, maybe they saw something funny or maybe I just came to mind and they wanted to let me know I prayed for you this morning.
I know that in order to send that text, they stopped what they were doing, they took time away from their to-do list, their children, their chance to relax, to reach out to me. [00:24:18] Even though a text isn't an extremely difficult thing to send and to produce, it still means so much to me that they would take that precious time out of their day to do that.
So know that little things matter. It may seem like, "Ah, she's not gonna care if I text her or putting a card in the mail. You know, what's that compared to being able to hang out and go to dinner together?" It's huge. It really is huge. And the big things like going out to dinner, a girl's getaway, a spa trip, those are awesome. And the more those can happen, fantastic. But in the between, and there's a lot of between, the simple things are so huge. So don't be discouraged. Be encouraged to pursue people in whatever way you can.
Laura Dugger: You're in such a unique stage where you're a homeschooling mom and you have creative outlets and a thriving business that you're a part of. So how many relationships are you feeling like you're able to foster well in this season?
April Hoss: What a good question. Foster well, too. You're making me really think through this. [00:25:20] I would say, like a lot of people, I have my core, what I would call my 3 a.m. group. So the people that you know, you could call at 2 a.m. and say, I know this is crazy, but the car broke down. It's dark. I'm on a mountain road. Can you come help us? And at 2 a.m., they would be there for you.
Those are the relationships I would say I have... If I wrote down all the names, it would not fill up two pages. Probably a page of names that I would put on that 3 a.m. list. But those are the people that we try to say yes to as much as we can. So if their kids are having a birthday party, we're going to RSVP yes. If they invite us for dinner, even if we absolutely can't go on the Wednesday they invited us, we're looking at our calendar, "We can't be there this Wednesday. Could we try for next Tuesday? What do you have going on Friday?" So those are the friendships that we're really flexing for and trying to make work.
But honestly, I don't know that it's possible to have 40 of those. I don't know that it's possible to have 20 of those in some seasons of life. I think it's totally okay to have a small handful of super close friends and you don't have to feel like maybe everyone else has 10 close friends and I only have three or maybe everyone else has... you know, everyone that they follow on Instagram is actually really close with them. Probably not. [00:26:36] And that's okay.
There's going to be seasons where your kids are in school or you suddenly have more time and you're able to broaden that friend group. I think you are tremendously blessed if you have two or three friends that you know you could lean on in any situation. That's huge. So my friend list isn't terribly, terribly long, but those are the people that I want to say yes to as much as possible.
Laura Dugger: I love that real picture. I've heard you say before that you're an introvert and I'm an extreme extrovert. So I think maybe listeners could relate to one of us.
April Hoss: Yes.
Laura Dugger: But what does your ideal week look like?
April Hoss: My ideal week and the weeks that I actually have are a bit different. I have to say that I am definitely an introvert, but as I've gotten older, I've tried really hard not to let my preference for introversion impede friendships or community. [00:27:36]
I don't know if you've seen those shirts online that say something like, "I'm sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come." When I first saw those, I thought, "How did they read my mind? I think that all the time. I just wanted to stay home and read a book. I just wanted to curl up on the couch and watch Netflix." Going out... I'm an introvert, I'm a homebody, I'm all the stereotypes. I would rather have my nose in a book and a coffee in my hand than probably go out to dinner with a large group. My preference is to do the things that are at home and quiet.
However, I don't really long-term want to live that way. So on a single Friday, that may sound like the better option. But I don't want to look back on my life of Fridays and think, well, I read a lot by myself. I want to foster relationships and have friendships. So I sort of fight against my ideal week.
My husband is more extroverted than I am and friendships and staying connected with people at church and engaging with people, those are things that are priorities to him. In my mind, because I am an introvert, even though I do want that, I don't always think about it the way he does. I appreciate people like him and like you who are extroverted because it's just a totally different way of operating. [00:28:50]
So if he says, "You know, we should have so-and-so over for dinner," or... he just actually a couple days ago, said to me, "Our fall is beginning, and what if we made an effort to have these five people over between now and New Year's?" And my thought was, "[Gasps] Really? You know how much I could just read during that time or how much we could just relax during that time?" And my second thought was, "Say yes, say yes." Because if he didn't suggest it, I certainly would have never cooked up that idea to have these couples and their kids over for dinner. But I'm glad that he did.
So my ideal week looks like me saying yes when I want to say no. And then, I kid you not, for all the introverts out there, this is true, I've never come home and thought, Man, I really wish I would have just said no. I always think, "I'm glad I went, even though it was hard, even though I kept thinking about how relaxing it would be to not do the social thing, every time I do it, I am so glad that I pushed myself and I did it.
Laura Dugger: Oh, that's awesome to hear. [00:29:49] And just to get a glimpse into somebody who... I do feel like we're maybe opposite in that way. It's really helpful because my husband and I are both extroverts and we're both initiators and pursuers. So we love to host. And I've wondered before, like with our introverted friends, does that feel overwhelming to them or do they wish we wouldn't reach out so often? But that's great to hear you say, like, you don't regret it once you're there, even if it does take effort.
April Hoss: No, no. And when people reach out, because it doesn't always occur to me first, I don't know, I don't want to speak for all introverts, but I think there's a camp of us who are really touched by that because we think, Oh, I just admire extroverts so much. I would go as far to say this. In some ways, I think extroverts are just more admirable because you guys do have a heart for people and a heart for connection.
Introverts sometimes have a heart for cocoa and a novel. That's great, but I don't know how admirable it is. So I would encourage you to keep reaching out because I bet it means a lot to your introverted friends. [00:30:50]
Laura Dugger: Aw, thanks for saying that. And I very much admire introverts. And sometimes I say, when I grow up, maybe I'll be more like that. But it's great. We can all bring something different to the table.
April Hoss: It's true. That is true.
Laura Dugger: By now, I'm sure that you've heard us talk about Patreon. I just want to give a simple reminder of each of the levels of contribution available.
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One topic that you say you and your husband love is meal planning. So what easy ideas do you have for feeding your family? [00:31:50]
April Hoss: Oh, well, if I was talking to someone who was totally novice or totally afraid, I would say my first two tips for feeding your family are be fearless. The worst that can happen is you'll order pizza. It's okay. That's totally okay. If the recipe is just a disaster, no one likes it, the thing burns in the oven, it'll be okay.
The second thing I would say is make it as joyful as possible. So if you're intimidated by the kitchen, by cooking, by the amount of time, by the work after, which no one likes, I would ask, what can you do that makes it fun for you? Could you make sure you always have a drink that you enjoy, whether that's a glass of wine, a La Croix, just something that you like. Drink that while you're cooking. Can you light the candle that you always save for a special occasion? Light it while you're washing the dishes. Turn on music that you love or a podcast. Or maybe that's the one time you don't have any noise going on. Just enjoy the sound of pots and pans and sizzling and make it joyful.
If we go into it like it's drudgery, it will definitely become drudgery because there are a lot of just unpleasant parts about it. Sometimes it feels like, if I have to chop one more piece of chicken breast, or really? This food was so delicious, but now I just want to sit down and unwind and I didn't realize I would have 57 things that needed hand washing. [00:33:12]
So try to make those tasks that are the biggest pain points for you joyful and then go for it. I mean, it is such a huge world as far as the amount of cookbooks and now the amount of food blogs. And then there's all of the recipes that are on Pinterest. And you can follow food bloggers on Instagram. You don't even have to go to their blog. They're posting the recipes right there.
So just pick what kind of medium you'll most connect with and start cooking a couple recipes. And if you like a couple of them, you might like everything that that blogger or that food writer is putting, so maybe follow them. Set a goal. I'll cook one recipe a week from this blog, and the rest will be what we're already doing, and maybe in six months will expand to two recipes a week. And you might find that you really enjoy it.
Laura Dugger: These are great practical tips. So what are some of your actual go-to breakfast, snack, lunch options, etc.?
April Hoss: So I'm pretty sneaky as a mom because I'm always looking for ways to make things a lot more nutrient-dense than they might appear than they were. [00:34:20] So baked goods are a great go-to. You can keep muffins in the freezer and heat them up pretty quickly. And you can also put a lot of healthy stuff in muffins.
So when I'm really on my game, I try to make a big batch of muffins or breakfast cookies on a Saturday. And then during the week, it is so easy for me to pull them out. My kids think they're getting some kind of pastry. They have no idea they're eating sweet potatoes and chia seeds and maybe there's like little particles of zucchini in there. They have no clue. They think they're getting this delicious dessert. So, that's a big one.
Lunch is still tricky for me. So, if anyone listening has lunch tips, please share them on Instagram. Lunch is kind of what I call our charcuterie time. So, lunch is usually very simple around here. That's when we're pulling out the string cheese, the yogurt, the fresh fruit, just picnicky food. I'm usually not cooking lunch unless we happen to have leftovers. [00:35:18]
And then dinner is... it could be anything. When I say be fearless, I'm saying that because I think sometimes I might be a little too fearless and I will try to cook things that are way above my culinary pay grade at this point. But one thing that I do very regularly is I use my slow cooker. It's probably my best nonliving friend. I have such a close relationship with that thing because there are so many wonderful recipes out there now.
It's not like it was, I think, when I was growing up and my mom probably had a very limited amount of slow cooker recipes available. There might have been a few cookbooks at Barnes and Noble in person that she could have chosen from. And now you type in slow cooker recipes to Pinterest and you could be there for hours or just to Google. And you can be so, so specific.
So let's say you have a whole lot of frozen chicken breast from Costco and you think, Why did we buy this? What are we gonna do with this? Chicken breast is dry. Google that: slow cooker chicken breast recipes, slow cooker from frozen. I mean you can be so crazy specific and have delicious meals just bubbling away while you go about your day. [00:36:31] So I think that's really a great way to get acquainted with your kitchen and to get comfortable is to start with a slow cooker.
Laura Dugger: Oh yes, love the slow cooker. So we'll have to maybe link to a few of the recipes that you recommend. I'm always looking for new ones to try and I'm sure this would be a helpful place for some of our listeners to get started. So we'll link to that and maybe a muffin recipe as well.
April Hoss: Oh, yes. Okay. I have one that I'm thinking of that I think will be mom-approved and really anybody-approved.
Laura Dugger: Now to switch gears and kind of go a little bit deeper, you had mentioned earlier about your faith in Jesus. How does that faith actually inform the way that you're living your life?
April Hoss: You ask really good questions. I don't know if anyone's ever told you that, but your questions are so... they really make me stop and think. They're fun to answer, but they're not just something I can just take a swing at it immediately. You give me pause in a really good way, so I've enjoyed this.
Really kind of going back to my original story, that question sort of captures the problem that I had, which is that I grew up in church, I knew sort of the basic, the basic structure of the gospel, like Jesus died for my sins. And I kind of thought, and that's where the period is at the end of the Bible. Okay, great. And that's where I get to take communion and I got baptized, but here I am now, you know, in high school or college or as a new wife or trying out this career. [00:38:00]
I was just living day to day uninformed by my faith. My faith was just almost like an ethnic heritage that felt very distant. Like my grandmother's Italian, so I guess I have some percentage of Italian, but it's not really affecting how I interact with this. My Italian heritage isn't affecting how I interact with a student or how I handle the situation with my husband. It's just kind of in my DNA.
And that is where I think God shifted my thinking so much because I learned that it should affect everything I do. And at first, I thought it should affect the big things I do. Like, okay, it should affect how I interact with my husband in this conflict. It should affect the way I treat my students at school, or my fears about adoption, or how I walk through a miscarriage. These big things should be informed by my faith.
But as I grew and as I matured as a Christian, I learned just from seeing people that were further along in the faith, it should really affect how I wash that dish or my attitude about the constant flow of laundry, or how I want to pursue excellence in whatever I take on, whether that's writing or even something like podcasting, whatever I do, gardening. [00:39:15]
It doesn't mean that I want to pursue perfection or feel pressured to be perfect, but it should mean that I look at everything as a chance to honor God. So instead of feeling like this is now kind of enslaving me to a life of perfection, I am now free to just love it and enjoy it and say, I'm going to do this to your glory, God.
Even something like washing a dish, which feels like pretty glory, glory-less, kind of void of glory, there's something to washing a dish with a cheerful heart and saying, Thank you, God, that we have dishes. And thank you, God, that we have a house full of people that are using these dishes. And thank you that if someone called right now and needed a meal, I would have something to serve them on. I've never not had anything to serve them on. You've always given us plates and you've always given us food to put on the plates and pretty soon I'm just moved with gratitude as I was scrubbing off that yucky cheese situation that was there.
So my husband said to me recently, All of Christ in all of life. [00:40:15] That's not his originally, but I think it really kind of captures how I would answer that question that really in all of life, from the most mundane of activities to what would feel like maybe the most spiritual of activities, Christ is informing all things and is inviting me into joy and worship in all things.
Laura Dugger: Wow, that is an incredible answer and such a good challenge to remember the attitude of gratitude.
April Hoss: Yes, me too. It's challenging for me because, trust me, I am not always looking like, you know, Maria on the sound of music just twirling through the hills. There are days when I am not thinking about all of Christ as I go to do the dirty dish or the dirty diaper or fix the potted plant that is just not working out there. I am by no means excelling at this every day, but I try to come back to it as often as it comes to mind because I know it is an area that I could work on and that when I am thinking that way, my life is so much more joyful. [00:41:22]
Laura Dugger: Yes. And I'm sure it spills over to those around us if we're joyful.
April Hoss: Yeah, I think so.
Laura Dugger: Then taking it to a more practical place, is there any scripture or specific spiritual discipline that helps keep you rooted and established in Christ as you live out all these other important roles?
April Hoss: Well, that also, just to kind of go back to kind of where I was in college, was something that I think was a stumbling block for me is that I felt like I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. So I grew up going to public school and then I went to a private Christian college and there were young people that I was around, other classmates who had gone to private Christian schools their whole life, had been homeschooled, had just been exposed to Christian culture more than I had, and I felt like they understood something that I didn't. So I would watch them a lot.
Like maybe I'm supposed to sing in chapel like they sing in chapel, or this friend calls her time with God quiet time, but this one calls it devos, and I don't even really have a time with God. [00:42:25] So which route do I pick? Do I call it quiet time and do what she's doing? Or this friend has a prayer journal. I'd never even heard of prayer journals.
So I was always searching for spiritual practice. I read a lot about spiritual disciplines. And it's funny because My faith was really weak and watered down and immature, but I wanted some kind of outside thing, like fix it. Like once I do this thing, then I'm going to have this deep connection to God. And that never happened and I tried a lot of these spiritual things that I saw people doing.
What happened, what really changed was when I just got back to the basics, just read my Bible. And it doesn't necessarily have to be on a Bible reading plan. It doesn't have to be a huge amount every day. Maybe I get through one psalm. Maybe I get through half of a psalm because someone woke up early, someone started crying. Pray. Try to just pray as much as I can every single day. Sometimes as much as I can is I prayed for one kid. I have three. I prayed for just one of the kids. [00:43:27]
Something someone said to me is that God knows that newborns don't sleep. It's not a surprise to Him. He knows how exhausted you are. He doesn't expect you to live like a monk. He put you in this season, this really intense season of motherhood. He did not put you as a single person in seminary. So, you can't possibly do the same amount that maybe someone else in a totally different season is doing. What I do probably looks so much different than the 60-year-old woman next to me at church who's an empty nester, isn't working. It's okay. It's okay.
Just the simple basic things. I read my Bible. I pray. Some days it looks pretty minimal. Some days, everyone sleeps in and it's great. It doesn't always involve the perfect coffee and the perfect candle as much as I wish it did, as much as I want that, too, I want that really cozy scene.
Sometimes I'm telling the kids, I can't talk to you right now. I'm going to read my Bible. I didn't get to this morning. And they're still saying, Okay, when's breakfast? He broke my magnet tile tower. There's chaos. There's such chaos. [00:44:32]
But someone else had encouraged me: God knew that was going to happen. God knows what five-year-olds are like. It's okay. And I have grown more in just reading my Bible and praying than I ever did seeking these other things that I saw other people doing that I thought were going to be my ticket to connection with God.
Laura Dugger: Wow, that's so good and freeing. Just back to the basics. April, this time has just been so great. If listeners want to hear more from you, where can they find you online?
April Hoss: Oh, well, I have my motherhood essays live on the Coffee + Crumbs website and you can find our podcast there as well. And I'm hoping that very soon you can find me in a bookstore or on Amazon. I just finished a book. And so my next job in this season is to try to find a literary agent and seek representation that way. So I'm hoping in the next year or two to have a book published. We'll see what happens.[00:45:31]
Laura Dugger: That is so exciting. Congratulations.
April Hoss: Thank you so much. I'm really just so happy to be done. So happy to be done. So I'm excited to see what happens next too.
Laura Dugger: Do you know what it will be called yet or what we can be looking out for?
April Hoss: You are the first person to ask that, actually. That's so funny. Yes, so my book is called The Sound of Arrows, and it's a fantasy novel. Like I said, I'd like to think that this time next year you could walk into a bookstore and get it, but we'll see what God has in store.
Laura Dugger: That's incredible. For the final question, our podcast is called The Savvy Sauce because "savvy" is synonymous with practical knowledge or insight, and we want to know your most beneficial and practical habits that we can replicate. So April, what is your savvy sauce?
April Hoss: I would say bringing a sense of humor into any situation. This is not a personal story, but it's a story that I think about often when I'm struggling to bring any kind of humor into a situation. [00:46:33] One of my favorite authors is Indy Wilson. In his book, I can't remember if it was Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl or Death by Living, but in one of those books, he talks about how his entire family came down with a stomach flu, he has five children, he and his wife, came down with a stomach flu after his wife had tried this new Sloppy Joe's recipe.
So, it was like the worst possible time for people to be getting sick because they had just eaten this huge meal that was not the kind of thing you want to clean up in that situation. And in the middle of the night as he and his wife are passing each other in the hall, one's doing laundry and one's got a bath running for one of the kids that's sick, they just started laughing. Like of all nights, of all times, after we ate this meal that's pretty gross, when you think about it, to then throw up, this is when our whole family got sick. And it just became... like they had to wipe tears from their eyes in the hallway. They were laughing so hard. How did this happen? I think about that all the time when something's chaotic, something doesn't go well.
Last summer, I had a really little baby and two little kids. [00:47:35] And as I was unloading our van to meet friends at a smoothie shop, a truck just ran over our stroller. Thank God it was empty. But he just was in the parking lot and I wasn't moving fast enough, so he just ran over our stroller. So I am schlepping these kids. It is summer in Southern California, so I don't know, probably 109 degrees. And I'm just laughing the whole way up like, how does that happen? How are people actually running over strollers? They're in such a hurry that they would do that.
It was one of those situations where I thought maybe I should just load the kids up and go back home and cry on the drive because I can't believe that happened and it's so terrible. And now we have to buy a new stroller. And instead, I thought, there's actually some humor in this because that was such a nutty thing to witness. And now I'm sure I look like the most sweaty tornado-blown woman that ever showed up to this store because I've got these three kids and a bag and nothing to help me.
And it was that story about the stomach flu and laughing themselves to tears in the hallway that kind of motivated me. So that has been my savvy sauce. [00:48:39] Since I read that, it's just, can I laugh? Is there anything about this that I can laugh about? And when I'm able to laugh, usually it's not... It takes the edge off for sure.
Laura Dugger: That's such good advice and so applicable. April, you're just very easy to talk to and you're clearly so humble. And with all of your achievements, it seems that just doesn't go to your head or make you conceited. And instead you're such a gracious person and it sounds like you're an incredible mama. So keep it up and thank you for joining us today.
April Hoss: Thank you so, so much for inviting me. I have been telling people for a couple weeks I'm so excited to do this show and I found your Instagram so this has been really my honor and my thrill. I can't wait to share it on my own Instagram and I'm sure we'll link to it also in the Coffee + Crumbs newsletter so I know there'll be other episodes that our listeners want to hear from your show as well.
Laura Dugger: That'd be awesome. We'll definitely connect that way. Thank you again.
April Hoss: Yeah, for sure. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Laura Dugger: One more thing before you go. Have you heard the term "gospel" before? [00:49:41] It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you. But it starts with the bad news. Every single one of us were born sinners and God is perfect and holy, so He cannot be in the presence of sin. Therefore, we're separated from Him.
This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So for you and for me, it means we deserve death and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved. We need a savior. But God loved us so much, He made a way for His only Son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute.
This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with Him. That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life we could never live and died in our place for our sin. This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. [00:50:42]
We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished if we choose to receive what He has done for us. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
So would you pray with me now? Heavenly, Father, thank You for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to You. Will You clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare You as Lord of their life? We trust You to work and change their lives now for eternity. In Jesus name, we pray, amen.
If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring Him for me, so me for Him, you get the opportunity to live your life for Him.
At this podcast, we are called Savvy for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So you're ready to get started? [00:51:43]
First, tell someone. Say it out loud. Get a Bible. The first day I made this decision my parents took me to Barnes and Noble to get the Quest NIV Bible and I love it. Start by reading the book of John.
Get connected locally, which basically means just tell someone who is part of the church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.
We want to celebrate with you too. So feel free to leave a comment for us if you made a decision for Christ. We also have show notes included where you can read Scripture that describes this process.
Finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, "In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." The heavens are praising with you for your decision today. [00:52:41]
If you've already received this good news, I pray that you have someone else to share it with today. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.
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