This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 575: A More Beautiful Life Collective with Cayce Fletcher This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 575 Cayce Fletcher - A More Beautiful Life Collective.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to restitutio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:12 Sean Finnegan Casey Fletcher is the host of a more beautiful life collective, A blog, a YouTube channel, and a podcast. She releases a new show each week on making theology practical and developing a more beautiful life. 00:26 Sean Finnegan As a wife, mother and homemaker, she appeals more to women than to men. But I personally, as a man, have found much of her content about lifestyle really helpful, and I recommend it to you here. Now is episode 575 a more beautiful life collective with Casey Fletcher. 00:53 Sean Finnegan Welcome, Casey Fletcher to restitutio. So glad to talk with you today. 00:57 Cayce Fletcher Thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. 00:58 Sean Finnegan To start with, I thought just so people could get to know you a little bit, we could hear a little bit of your journey of faith. Could you share a little bit about your background and why it is you take your faith so seriously? 01:11 Cayce Fletcher Yeah. So I have been in the church my whole life. My parents grew up in the church. We go to a Church of God Church Church of God General Conference in South Carolina, and my parents were part of the church. 01:23 Cayce Fletcher Their parents were part of the church. Even their parents were part of. 01:26 Cayce Fletcher The church. So. 01:26 Sean Finnegan Ohh wow. 01:28 Cayce Fletcher Really. You know, I'm from this long legacy of faith, and it was one of those things that as a kid, whenever church was happening, but it was Sunday mornings or Sunday nights or Wednesday nights, you know, we were there, like, at the church doors were open. We were going to be there. 01:44 Cayce Fletcher And so for me, it was just something that was part of the culture of my life as a young kid. My parents were really involved in ministry and then my extended family was involved in ministry. My grandmother, I remember we lived with her for a bit and we every time that we would go and visit. 02:01 Cayce Fletcher Or whenever I was there at 5:00 in the morning, she was reading her Bible. So I just had this really long legacy of faith that showed me the importance of my faith. I think every kid had an 8-9 year old. You're just kind of going with the motions. You're just going with what your parents do, showing up at church, doing what they do. 02:21 Cayce Fletcher Do what your friends do. 02:23 Cayce Fletcher But whenever I was young, I was 10 years old. 02:27 Cayce Fletcher Both of my parents passed away and my mother was sick of cancer. My father died of a heart attack, and then my grandmother also she she passed away from a disease that she had been wrestling with for about 10 years, right around the same time, in the same like 1 1/2 month period. And so I remember my grandmother. She held my hands. We came and visited. 02:48 Cayce Fletcher Yeah, the whole her whole house was full of people, and whenever we visited her, she basically said goodbye to everybody. They were flowing by her bed and she held my hand. She's like, I'm gonna see. 02:58 Cayce Fletcher In the Kingdom. 02:58 Cayce Fletcher One day. And so you know, whenever you're confronted with that, especially as. 03:03 Cayce Fletcher Young child like you begin to recognize that life is a lot more than what's going on at school. A lot more than you know your friends and the drama not just saying get into drama or do any any of those crazy things. Whenever I was in middle school and high school and stuff. But. 03:19 Cayce Fletcher You just begin to see that life is very short and you want to live it well. And so part of my faith journey was living through that. But then also I had a really strong group of friends. Like I said, we all grew up, you know, I know that sometimes people feel a little bit more isolated. Yeah. As like, a Unitarian. 03:40 Cayce Fletcher But for me? 03:41 Cayce Fletcher I never really felt that way because we had such a strong youth group. Our youth group was always really big. We would go to the camps and at summer like fuel and we had camps around here as well. And so that strong youth group really also started to disciple me as I went into high school. My friends were just very interested. 04:01 Cayce Fletcher I'm passionate about living out our faith. 04:03 Cayce Fletcher And so all of those things just really solidified into something where it was not something that I was going to take lightly and I wanted to figure out how to make that happen. And so. 04:14 Cayce Fletcher That. 04:14 Cayce Fletcher Is just a little bit of my story, but it really it it's due to my family and also the people that I was surrounded by growing up. 04:22 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I remember you. 04:24 Sean Finnegan Attended the Lena Bible College, right? 04:26 Cayce Fletcher Well, so as a high schooler, I took classes and so I took classes online and then they have Saturday classes. So I was like 15 sitting in Bob Jones full religion class and stuff. But it was good. And so yeah, so I I went to the University of South Carolina for college, but yeah, I took classes whenever I was younger to get some of those credits. 04:30 Sean Finnegan OK. 04:46 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you have had a kind of a passion for God and for truth. 04:52 Sean Finnegan For a long time, correct me if I'm wrong, but your your tragedy that you endured almost like force you to to face like the big questions early and make decisions that maybe other people would make it 16 or 18 or 20. You're making it at 10:00 and 11:00 or 12:00. 05:09 Sean Finnegan Did you find that your faith really helped you through all of this loss? 05:14 Cayce Fletcher Yes, definitely. Again, I was young, but even then I remember praying and. 05:20 Cayce Fletcher At 10 and 11 years old, I did go through this time where you know, you feel the joy sucked out of your life. But I remember one day I was listening to this back when Casting Crowns was really popular and stuff. I was listening to the radio, and I was listening to a song, and it's just I felt the comfort of God. And I think as an 11 year old, I was able to see that God was with me. 05:41 Cayce Fletcher And we had an amazing church family as well. Like, there was a time where basically every day of the week we had somebody bringing us a meal. We have people visiting even the night that my father passed away. One of the ladies at Church came and took care of us. She stayed at the. 05:58 Cayce Fletcher With that well, you know, my aunt was able to go up to the hospital. So it's like we just were surrounded by love and the love that other people showed us during that time, it really was like the love of God being shown to me as well. And so you can very easily in those times of tragedy you can very easily become bitter. But for me, seeing the way that. 06:18 Cayce Fletcher That was able to see us through that. 06:21 Cayce Fletcher And there was still life and joy afterwards. And really I think spoke to the character of God. 06:27 Sean Finnegan Yeah, that's that's so powerful. 06:29 Sean Finnegan There are so many people who have had either similar or even less severe circumstances in life who ended up in drugs or in prison or in some sort of toxic lifestyle. 06:45 Sean Finnegan And see you turning out. Well, there are no warrants out for your arrest. To your knowledge. You know you don't. You don't have a a drug addiction or anything, you know? Like it's just like it really is a testimony to God's goodness that he provides through his people in times of stress. 07:02 Sean Finnegan Well, let's talk about where you're at now. So you're married and you have a number of children and one more on the way. So who are you married to and how many kids do you have? 07:13 What? 07:16 Sean Finnegan And what are their ages? 07:18 Cayce Fletcher OK, so I'm married to Josh Fletcher and we have two kids, Jonah and Mary. They're four and two, and then we have one on the way. And so on. She's due in December, and so we're. 07:29 Cayce Fletcher Getting really close. 07:31 Cayce Fletcher We'll see. She's due on the 29th, so it could be a Christmas baby. Maybe New Year's. 07:34 Cayce Fletcher Day we don't know. 07:35 Sean Finnegan Oh yeah, some real possibilities there. 07:38 Sean Finnegan I think if it was me, I would rather be born on New Year's than Christmas because then you. 07:43 Sean Finnegan Know. 07:44 Sean Finnegan You don't want. 07:45 Sean Finnegan To. 07:45 Sean Finnegan Like you know, lose any presents. But hey, that's how it happens sometimes. So alright, let's talk about the websites and this whole concept you have. It's called. 07:45 Cayce Fletcher Yeah. 07:57 Sean Finnegan More beautiful life collective.com. 08:01 Sean Finnegan Where did that name come from and what's this all? 08:03 Sean Finnegan About. 08:04 Cayce Fletcher To back up a little bit, whenever I went to college, I ended up going to school for secondary English education. And so I became a teacher and I taught for five years. And, you know, I really loved to teach and to communicate with my students and try to bring them to the best possible version of themselves. 08:24 Cayce Fletcher But one of the things I noticed is like if you've ever talked to a teacher like life is so regimented, whenever you're teaching like you wake up, you have to be there at 7:45 for the bell. You know, you got 15 minutes to eat, and then you have to go home and do everything that you need to do in about two hours before your. 08:39 Cayce Fletcher Just go to bed. And so it's just this life where you felt like there's very much like a treadmill. And so after five years, I decided to stay home. And whenever I was staying home, I wanted to make sure that I was using my time intentionally. And so, you know, there's the idea of, you know, finding yourself to the good, the true and the beautiful. 09:00 Cayce Fletcher And so the idea is that through. 09:03 Cayce Fletcher Being intentional with our practices at home, we can incline ourselves to those things. Goodness, we emphasize that very much with the Christian faith. And then truth is something that's very important to us, especially in the Unitarian movement, but I think. 09:18 Cayce Fletcher We also need to make sure that we Createspace for beauty and so I think for me it was just trying to think about how we can have a more beautiful life and honestly a more beautiful life is probably one that is centered around this idea of glorifying God. And so if we have our our loves ordered rightly, if we put God at the. 09:39 Cayce Fletcher Chemical of our life. That's the focus of our life. Then everything else will become more beautiful in turn. 09:44 Sean Finnegan Very cool. Tell us about what you have on here. What resources do you have on the website? Give us a reason why we should ever go to your website. I think so many of us, like with the podcast. 09:55 Sean Finnegan I have so many listeners, I'm sure that have never been to restitutio.org even though I like, I plug it in literally every episode. 10:02 Sean Finnegan Like go to the. 10:02 Sean Finnegan Site and go to the site but like give the listeners a reason to check it out. What do we? 10:03 Cayce Fletcher Yep. 10:07 Cayce Fletcher Have there? Well, there's two different things, so like anybody could tell you, if you're listening to a podcast, normally you kind of jump in. 10:14 Cayce Fletcher And you're like, I mean, you have, what, 500 episodes, you know, like, you have such a backlog of content that there's so much that if you're listening to. 10:22 Cayce Fletcher A podcast each. 10:22 Cayce Fletcher Week you're missing out on all this backlog of content. 10:25 Cayce Fletcher So on the website there's all of the resources and things that we've already covered a lot of the stuff that we've talked about on the podcast we have like right now going through adoption studies. So we do focus a little. 10:35 Cayce Fletcher Bit on that. 10:36 Cayce Fletcher But a lot of what we're focusing on is planning and productivity and home making and how the habits of our lives and make. 10:45 Cayce Fletcher Otherwise, more beautiful they can add to intentionality in our lives and to these spiritual disciplines and so. 10:53 Cayce Fletcher Or on the podcast we talk about these things each week, but all the backlog, all the old articles are on the website, and then the other thing that we have is the shop. And so you know, I think a lot of times people miss out on a lot of the free goodies and extra resources and things because like you said, they never go to the website. And so. 11:13 Cayce Fletcher For each of the posts that I do or each of the podcasts that I do, I have some kind of free resource connected with that that can help you to implement the things that we've been talking about. But then I also have some Bible studies there, and I keep adding to it. I've written journals for our camps for. 11:29 Cayce Fletcher Years. And so there's these Bible studies that are on the shop that you can get that walk through different biblical concepts as well as other things related to planning and homemaking, helping you to make your life something that you love. 11:43 Sean Finnegan Yeah, that's a really nice way to say it. At the end there, making your life. 11:48 Sean Finnegan Making your life something that you love. I I like that. I really do. I think doctrine is important. I think holiness is important. Righteousness. These kinds of things. But you can have correct doctrine. 12:01 Sean Finnegan You can live righteously and you can be miserable and it's like well. 12:05 Sean Finnegan What's? 12:06 Sean Finnegan What's the point? You know, I'm doing all this stuff and I'm a spiritually drained. I'm emotionally numb and it's just life gets so overwhelming we get either bored or we binge on stuff that is just. 12:21 Sean Finnegan Not good for our souls. 12:23 Sean Finnegan Or we just overbook ourselves, get crazy busy, and you and you handle these kinds of issues on this podcast. Talk to us about the last episode or two episodes ago on hobbies. What made you want to talk about hobbies? I'm really curious about this. 12:39 Cayce Fletcher I try to alternate between. Right now we're doing a systematic theology series, and then we're talking about creating like love with some more practical episodes and the other episodes. 12:49 Cayce Fletcher And so one of the things that I started thinking about is really, you know, in life we do tend to numb out, you know, edge out, chill out. We like to watch Netflix, we like to scroll on our phones. But I heard somebody say and this is from screen strong. So if you're interested in parenting young kids or even teenagers and wrestling with. 13:09 Cayce Fletcher Issues related to technology, especially technology addiction to things like social media and video games. One of the things she said is like she can tell who. 13:19 Cayce Fletcher Sets good boundaries around their strength times by saying, OK, Tell me 5 hobbies that you have 5 interests that you have outside of school or anything to do with like your device. Like the shows that you watch. 13:30 Cayce Fletcher And a lot of times, if I ask people like adults around me, what hobbies do you have, it would be hard for people to say like, these are my 5 hobbies. I'm interested in in all of these things. And I think for me, that was something that I was like, oh, I don't know. Because you get so caught up in life, you know, for me, I'm taking care of two young kids, but then it's like if I'm not doing that and I'm not. 13:51 Cayce Fletcher Cleaning house. Normally you'll find me. It's like wrestling with ohh. Should I get on my phone and just killed the time? But that doesn't ever fill you up and that it doesn't make you into a better person. It doesn't serve God. 14:03 Cayce Fletcher And so really, that's what kind of got me thinking about creating hot time for these hobbies. And then as I got into it, it's like it is a good example. 14:15 Cayce Fletcher One of those things that we think is a purely unchristian thing to think about, like, OK, well, why are we focusing on hobbies? You should be focusing on this doctrine, but I think through our hobbies, one, we can fill ourselves up, but then also I think it's a way. 14:31 Cayce Fletcher That. 14:32 Cayce Fletcher Through the cultivation of hobbies, we're able to then serve God better. 14:36 Cayce Fletcher So. 14:37 Cayce Fletcher Is it worthwhile to learn how to play guitar? Well, I think most of us would say yes because we want to have a worship team, right? And so you need people that do that. Is it worthwhile to spend your time running or working out or whatever? Like. Well, yes, because you want to live past a certain age and be able to continue being active. And so I think sometimes we try to compartmentalize. 14:58 Cayce Fletcher These things. And so that's one of the things that I try to do on the podcast is bring things that we think of as like, oh, that's just productivity people, those are self help people. We don't need to listen to them and say, well, no, what, what wisdom can we learn from these things? 15:12 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Yeah. I I think too, there's often a hidden. 15:15 Sean Finnegan Benefit or benefits and these sorts of things that we do. For example, you mentioned running prolonging your life, I think running also helps me think better helps my brain work better, helps me reduce stress, helps me to comport myself in a more Christian manner. 15:35 Sean Finnegan When I get home. 15:36 Sean Finnegan If I've exercised that day, I have just more patience. And if the kids are screaming like I can weather it better with music, there is a stress releasing benefit or reduction benefit. You know there, there's often other benefits beyond what The thing is itself that are just good for you. And if we really think about. 15:58 Sean Finnegan What's the Kingdom of God going to be like? I think there are going to be these joys, you know, like musical instruments and. 16:06 Sean Finnegan Exercise and probably sports and exploring and making stuff. And you you talk about making stuff and productivity in in a really interesting way. And you mentioned doing something that makes money. What was that like your first one on the list? Talk about that a little bit and you know some other suggestions for people. 16:22 Cayce Fletcher Yes, yes, yes. 16:27 Sean Finnegan Because to be honest, like many of us are not really engaging in hobbies or we feel guilty if. 16:34 Sean Finnegan You do. 16:35 Cayce Fletcher Yeah. So what I said in that episode is basically you need 5 hobbies, and five hobbies are things like you need to have a hobby that makes you a little bit of money, a hobby that helps you to stay healthy, maybe stay fit, a hobby that helps you to be more creative, a hobby that helps to cultivate your intellect and your spiritual life. 16:55 Cayce Fletcher And then a hobby that helps you to connect with somebody, whether that's your spouse or your kids. And so OK. So in modern life, you know, we. 17:02 Cayce Fletcher We have our bosses that tell us what to do and so we just feel like, OK, well, if I do work, I'm doing it for this boss and then everything else that I do is just kind of like a waste of time or I'm just doing it. Just go through the motions. I have to do it because, you know, I have to, but we tie a lot of value into the things that make us money. But a lot of times that is connected to this like. 17:23 Cayce Fletcher Industrial thing that you're doing for somebody else. 17:26 Cayce Fletcher And so I think even having a hobby that is yours that you get to make money and feel productive outside of the workplace is a way that you can take back some of your time and redeem it. And people might feel like, well, what's the point in that? But I think part of it is just it makes you feel a bit more accomplished. And then also, I mean, it can help you in. 17:46 Cayce Fletcher Paying off bills it can help you. 17:48 Cayce Fletcher To you feel like that probably is not like a waste of time. I know people that you know they crochet so they have an Etsy shop and they're able to sell that. There are people who make bread on the side and they sell that. You stayed with my parents. And so Dave he even sold some muscadines from his garden. And so even that, you know as an example. 18:08 Cayce Fletcher Where I think a lot of us, we do these things but having it. 18:11 Cayce Fletcher Where it makes you a little bit of money also makes you feel good. So that's just one example. But I think all of these hobbies, it helps to create a balanced life that brings you a little bit of joy. And so I think like my website and podcast, that would be an example. I'm not making a bunch of money or anything from it, but it's a way that you can feel productive outside of the modern. 18:31 Cayce Fletcher Workplace. 18:32 Sean Finnegan Mm-hmm. And what if somebody says I'm just too busy looking after the kids and working the job? It's just unthinkable to add a hobby to it. How would you respond? 18:42 Cayce Fletcher The first thing I'd ask them is what's their screen time usage, and then we'll go from there. I think a lot of us, I've said something somewhere that was talking about. 18:50 Cayce Fletcher Our kids, a lot of them are not working outside the home very much anymore, but they have like a part time. 18:56 Cayce Fletcher Job which is. 18:57 Cayce Fletcher Looking at their phone and so I think that that's something that I think a lot of us if we use our time wisely, then we might have more time than we think. But then if you're still like, well, no, I just go to work and I come home and have just a couple of hours. 18:58 Yeah. 19:10 Cayce Fletcher It's just basically reorienting that time and it could be that maybe you're picking a hobby or an activity or something. It that hits a lot of different things at once. Several people at our church now they play pickleball, so they're able to connect with people. 19:24 Cayce Fletcher And get healthy and they have this hobby. They're doing all of those things at the same time. So there are ways that you can kind of have these, like, double hitter hobbies that help you to do the things that you want to do. 19:35 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Are you mainly focused on off screen hobbies? Cause like somebody might say ohh well video games is my hobby. Would you count that? 19:41 Cayce Fletcher Well, no. So I would say it needs to be something that's productive and that adds value to your. 19:47 Cayce Fletcher Life. 19:48 Cayce Fletcher And for me, if I'm talking about a website and A blog, and you know podcasts or whatever that obviously like, I write on my computer. 19:55 Cayce Fletcher But that's something that I'm producing. We need to draw a line between producing and consuming things. So if we're producing something, normally that thing is going to be more like a hobby because it requires effort from us. We're not just consuming, but I think most of us now, we basically other than whenever where it works we are. 20:15 Cayce Fletcher Consumers. So we take in Netflix, we take in social media, on our phones, we like to go to fast food and it's like all these easy things without producing anything. And so I think that's kind of the difference is that. 20:28 Cayce Fletcher We want to focus on hobbies that are producing something with video games. I would say that they're video games are highly addictive, and so there's a lot of research on that that I would just encourage you to look at that if you. 20:38 Cayce Fletcher Oh. 20:41 Cayce Fletcher Say that is your hobby. 20:43 Sean Finnegan I was quite a gamer in my college years in high school years and part of my repentance was giving up video games. So I've gone 20 years without them and I am not sad. I've gotten a lot of other things done so. 20:58 Sean Finnegan Anyhow, I was listening to a podcast the other day. Netflix has just like, released their data of the top shows and the guy was saying that the average time Americans watch. 21:12 Sean Finnegan Shows or movies whatever is 3 hours per day. 21:17 Cayce Fletcher M. 21:18 Sean Finnegan I was like, what's that's insane that, I mean, let's say you, let's say you, you still wanted to like watch a show a night. So let's say it's 45 minutes or maybe an hour with commercials. If you have to watch the commercials. 21:31 Sean Finnegan In that case, you could still watch a show a night, plus have two other hours to do other things. You know, that's incredible when you think about it. I'm kind of curious just to shift gears a little bit about your vibe. You're kind of like got this very like homemaker focus to what you're doing with this website and this podcast. 21:50 Sean Finnegan It seems like you've been on both sides of it. You worked for, you worked out of the home for five. 21:56 Sean Finnegan Years and now you're staying at home. What are your thoughts on stay at home moms? Do you think everyone should do that? Every mother should do this. Do you think it's better for some to work outside the home or what are your thoughts about all that? Do you have thoughts? 22:11 Cayce Fletcher That's the right question. 22:12 Sean Finnegan On it. 22:16 Cayce Fletcher Think obviously that this is something that you would have to wrestle with and that think about your convictions. It used to be a given that you would stay home and if you work outside the home, that something you're hustling. 22:26 Cayce Fletcher But then now I think it's like it's a given that you work outside the home and if you stay at home, it's like you have wrestled with this for me. I know that I really desired to stay home. I think there's something that happens whenever you're at home with your kids, especially young kids, or you're able to disciple them. 22:46 Cayce Fletcher So my son is 4, so you know I say this, but I also say this keeping in mind that he's 4, but we are planning on homeschooling and we do a lot of home school now and I think that's something that's. 22:56 Cayce Fletcher You're able to have such an influence on your kids that if they go to school, you're not going to have the same thing. And I think that's it's all tied up, you know, staying at home. If you stay at home, you're going into a one income household unless you can find a hobby or something else that makes money. And so that's definitely a sacrifice. And then generally, if you stay at home, a lot of people, they begin to consider. 23:17 Cayce Fletcher Whether they want their homeschoolers and their kids to public school, and then, you know, there's there's lots of things, but I just know that for me, I'm able to do so much more. 23:26 Cayce Fletcher As far as. 23:27 Cayce Fletcher Home life goes because I'm at home. I always felt like whenever I was. 23:31 Cayce Fletcher Working basically I feel like you can only deal with two things at one time, but you're juggling so much whenever you are working outside the home, so you know it's like your homemaking and then your parenting, and then your work. One of those things is going to drop, and if we want to do everything excellently, then we need to create margin in our lives. So for me. 23:51 Cayce Fletcher I would rather focus on discipling my kids and I'm able to do that. We'll wake up in the morning and we have some time where we listen. 23:59 Cayce Fletcher To music we. 24:00 Cayce Fletcher Do like a catechism question and then we do a Bible story and it's just something that if they were going to daycare. 24:06 Cayce Fletcher Sure. 24:07 Cayce Fletcher Maybe it was a Christian daycare. They could do it, but definitely once they go to kindergarten, they're not getting that. So yeah, so that's my thought on it, but obviously every person is going to have to wrestle with that question and think about what they want. The sum total of their lives to be, not just what they want their bank account balance to be. I do think it's important to say, though, some people are like, I couldn't be around my kids that much. 24:28 Cayce Fletcher That might be an attitude question that you have to ask yourself, why do you? 24:31 Cayce Fletcher Feel like that about your kids? 24:32 Sean Finnegan I'm curious about the culture where you live in South Carolina, up here in New York, there's a stigma to stay at home moms. 24:41 Sean Finnegan Where and I don't think it's so much with respect to men, but more women looking down on women that choose to stay at home. Have you encountered anything like that? And if so, like, how would you coach somebody to like, respond? 24:55 Cayce Fletcher I will say around here there's not really that I think people are like, oh, I wish I could stay home. That would be so easy. It's the kind of thing, I think if somebody is feeling that way again, I think it's important. Like if they feel like people are looking down on them and that's making them uncomfortable. 25:01 MHM. 25:08 Sean Finnegan Yeah, yeah. 25:10 Cayce Fletcher And definitely ask yourself like, why you decided to stay home and if you're staying home because you want to disciple your kids and spend time with them, then it doesn't matter what people are saying because you're doing the right thing. The the godly thing you know around here. I think people admire that, but what I'm seeing more frequently now is that people are really it's just a struggle. 25:31 Cayce Fletcher It's a struggle because you're making sacred. 25:32 Cayce Fletcher Prices, yes, you have to be very on your a game if you're working and with your kids. As far as being like organized and getting them to what they need to go to you. But obviously staying home, it's not like a one is easier than the other and so have that kind of competition. I think it's like that's just not worthwhile. It's not worth while getting into that with those people. 25:53 Cayce Fletcher Now people need to recognize, like if you're staying at home, basically you're saying. 25:58 Cayce Fletcher That person has to be in charge of basically lowering their budget somehow, so you have to normally sample 1 is going to make all their food. They're going to make sure that you know you don't spend money. There's $5 coffees now, they're like $8 from Starbucks. Like you can't do. So there's a lot of sacrifices that go with it. And so I think if you're choosing to stay at home, give yourself a pat on the back because you know that you're making. 26:19 Cayce Fletcher Sacrifices to do what's right by your kids. 26:21 Sean Finnegan Yeah. My mom was a stay at home mom, and my wife has been a stay at home mom. At least so far. Now it it is interesting though, because both my mom and my wife did work in my wife case. She does. 26:36 Sean Finnegan Work, but she works in like kind of a very flexible situation where she can. She can do it while the kids are at school, cause our our kids go to public. Well, we have a complicated situation. Some of our kids go to public school. One of them goes to a private Christian School. At one point, we did home schooling. So we've tried a lot of different things. 26:57 Sean Finnegan And one of our kids is in cold. 26:58 Sean Finnegan Village. So she will work at different hours during the day, either from the home, like early on she did a lot of eBay where she was essentially a picker and just found stuff that she thought would sell and she developed an eye for that and we would just had this room full of stuff. And she was selling it. 27:19 Sean Finnegan On eBay and get that chaching sound on her phone every time something is sold and it's a misnomer to thank. Stay at home means no contribution to the income of the family. It can mean that it's certainly going to mean less in most cases. 27:34 M. 27:34 Sean Finnegan Trish, is we really need to think about this. And you know at the same time also not condemn the ladies who or men who decide to work outside the home, you know, for whatever reason. So I think it's just like a freedom in Christ issue as far as this all goes. But as I'm looking around in my own. 27:54 Sean Finnegan Contacts I'm seeing very, very few stay at home Moms today. 27:58 Cayce Fletcher Yeah. 27:59 Sean Finnegan And and people looking at it as like, you're gonna do what? 28:03 Sean Finnegan How you gonna survive? 28:05 Sean Finnegan So it is definitely something to think about and you do have some tips and stuff for people to consider who who are living this kind of lifestyle, but it also would be applicable to folks who are working outside the home just if they're involved in home making. 28:05 Cayce Fletcher Yeah. 28:19 Sean Finnegan Which I think all of us should be to some degree. 28:22 Cayce Fletcher Yeah, I think we're all homemakers, yeah. 28:24 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 28:25 Sean Finnegan Well, let's talk about let's switch gears and talk about theology. You're a bit of a theology nerd as far as I could tell, have been for a long time, and you are doing a systematic theology track on your podcast. Why do you think people should learn systematic theology? Why should why should we learn all these? 28:46 Sean Finnegan Terms and these doctrines other than it's like cool and fun. 28:49 Sean Finnegan 1. 28:50 Cayce Fletcher It's important one to have an answer for what you believe, so I I've said, you know, I grew up in a church where everybody believes. 28:57 Cayce Fletcher This way but. 28:58 Cayce Fletcher There's a lot of things that we never talk about at our church or if we have different doctrines on certain things. And so, you know, you might get into an argument about that, but it's not a good comprehensive understanding of what you believe. 29:10 Cayce Fletcher And so I think systematic theology is important because it starts at the. 29:13 Cayce Fletcher Beginning you slowly. 29:15 Cayce Fletcher Work through and you develop an answer for each. 29:18 Cayce Fletcher Of these doctrines, to figure out what you believe about that. So if somebody was going to come up to you and ask you what is the gospel, you might be able to tell them, you know. Oh, I believe that God is 1 and This is why. But you also need to have an answer for what the gospel is. You also need to have an answer for what the Kingdom is and everything in between. And so that's one of the reasons why I think systematic theology. 29:39 Cayce Fletcher It's important. It's important to know what you believe and to also internalize that you can look at your church statement. If they you may not agree with it, or you may have never thought about why your church. 29:50 Cayce Fletcher Believes the way that they do, I know even with arch purchase statement. 29:53 Cayce Fletcher If. 29:53 Cayce Fletcher They there's certain things that they don't even talk about. And there's other things that I wouldn't agree with that's in this statement of faith. And so I think that's why it's important just to recognize what you believe and make that make your own and make sure you understand why you believe that way. And so that's what we've. 30:08 Cayce Fletcher Been working through. 30:10 Cayce Fletcher On at the podcast we've been going through every couple of weeks we've been going through. 30:15 Cayce Fletcher One doctrine at a time. So we've made about 5 doctrines in, and we're going. 30:19 Cayce Fletcher To get through 10. 30:20 Sean Finnegan OK, so why? Why do it like that? Why do it every other episode or every couple of episodes? 30:26 Cayce Fletcher They're really long. It takes me a while to write them and to research them. It's not something that I'm just like, regurgitating. 30:34 Cayce Fletcher You know the systematic theology like that the conference has like what they've put out. I've been trying to research it. I tried to not just focus on what our church believes. I tried to research basically what Protestant views are as a whole and then try to figure out where I fall in. 30:50 Sean Finnegan Uh. 30:54 Cayce Fletcher And so, because it's so much, I try to space it out and also I recognize some people love to talk about theology and they're interested in it. But for other people, it's better to get their feet wet and have you think about it. And I try at the end of every theology episode, I try to give you a couple questions to. 31:10 Cayce Fletcher Think about so. 31:11 Cayce Fletcher That hopefully you're able to develop your own. 31:13 Cayce Fletcher Personal statement of faith after listening. 31:15 Hmm. 31:16 Sean Finnegan To that, yeah, I really. I really thought that was a cool exercise. Develop your own personal statement of faith. Have you done that yourself? 31:23 Cayce Fletcher Well, that's what I'm doing now. So I was thinking about this this past spring where I was trying to go through and think about what are core Christian principles that we should live. 31:32 Cayce Fletcher Buy and then as I was thinking about that, I was like, well, I need to develop my personal statement of faith, but that's hard to do if you don't have that kind of structure. If you don't have somebody that's asking you to work through that thing. So as I've been going through each of these doctrines, I've been basically writing my personal statement. 31:50 Sean Finnegan Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a, it's a. It's a really cool exercise. It forces you to take ownership for your beliefs. 31:50 Cayce Fletcher I state as I go through that. 31:57 Sean Finnegan Which is like a weird thing to have to do because it just seems obvious that everyone would take ownership for their beliefs at a certain point in Christian history. Essentially, the mindset came in that the clergy or the professors or whatever are the ones who know all the main beliefs and the reasons why. 32:18 Sean Finnegan And regular Christians don't need to really understand that. They just need to say yes and Amen and give money. And don't send too much Christianity kind of went in that direction. 32:29 Sean Finnegan Over the year. 32:30 Sean Finnegan There's, and certainly with medieval Catholicism, there was just such an emphasis on sacraments as all that. All that matters. It's probably gotten a little better than that over the years. But yeah, we should take ownership for what we believe. And I think we are responsible for, even if you're not a teacher of others. 32:50 Sean Finnegan You're just somebody that is trying to live faithfully to God and to follow Christ. 32:55 Sean Finnegan We do all have this burden. Now. There are some people that are just like less interested in this. But there is sort of like a basic level at which we should all be informed. Your approach is good for that. Let's talk about the last episode with Christology. What was your strategy there or what? What did you hope to cover? 33:15 Cayce Fletcher Well. 33:15 Cayce Fletcher Also with Christology, again we're talking about the the doctrine of Christ. And so I wanted to make sure that if there was somebody who was not a non Trinitarian already that you know, you don't just go in guns blazing, we actually this is a side note but we had at our vacation Bible school we did a class. 33:33 Cayce Fletcher On basically it was like one God, one faith. And so we had some visitors, you know, and it's like that's always exciting whenever you have some visitors that came in. But the the first thing that we talked about was one guy. We started talking about the Trinity and the how we don't believe in that. And it was very. I felt like it was very isolating I guess for those people they didn't really understand what we were talking about. 33:55 Cayce Fletcher Especially because we kind of get went in and just immediately start talking about all the things that are wrong with the document of the Trinity. Which is fine if you're in the church, but I didn't want to jump into looking at Jesus and immediately start with that because I think there's a foundational belief that who Jesus is that we need to understand. 34:12 Cayce Fletcher Really, the doctrine of the Trinity, nothing that I said in my podcast. I think a Trinitarian would argue with because in the podcast we've talked about how Jesus is the Messiah and he's our Prophet, priest and king and recognizing what he does in each of these roles shows us how he is important for our faith. 34:32 Cayce Fletcher And kind of the role that he plays in our faith. And I don't think any Trinitarian would argue with that. 34:39 Cayce Fletcher And so I think The thing is, is, as we look at these doctrines, we need to make sure that we're not just saying, well, we don't believe this. We need to say, OK, but what, what do we believe and how can we articulate what we believe? And so that was how I wanted to approach that. 34:45 Hmm. 34:56 Sean Finnegan And are you going to do more Christology? 34:58 Sean Finnegan Stuff you think or is this it? And then you're going on to another. 35:02 Sean Finnegan Doctrine. 35:03 Cayce Fletcher I might go on to another doctrine, but I might go back and slip, go back and talk about a few things. There's some things like, if you believe in original sin, do you think that which I do, do you think that Jesus had original sin? And I know that that's kind of like, like Augustine said, oh, no, he didn't. But there's certain reasons. And so I think there's things that we could talk about and obviously there is the question of like, the nature of Jesus. 35:23 Cayce Fletcher My answer would be pretty short, like the nature of Jesus is he's a man, but to talk about that, I think it's so important. And so I might struggle back to it, but I'm not going to do it like next week. I'm going to think about it and then that might be something that may come up in the future. 35:39 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I think it's helpful to have a positive approach. 35:42 Sean Finnegan So would you say that your main goal is to serve others in the Church of God? Biblical Unitarians at Lord, Christians at large, or even just like humanity at large, like what really is your focus or intended audience for the podcast? 36:00 Cayce Fletcher It's Christians at large. I mean, definitely everything is based from a Christian point of. 36:04 Cayce Fletcher View. 36:05 Sean Finnegan And it seems like Protestants as well. You're not really getting to, yeah. 36:08 Cayce Fletcher Yeah, yeah. 36:10 Cayce Fletcher I don't really get into Catholicism, but I I think that that's something that we need people in the Church of God and, you know, in the biblical Unitarian movement, we need women that are speaking about these things, especially the things related to life and homemaking and motherhood. And it's nice to have those things. I know I listen to a lot of. 36:31 Cayce Fletcher From, you know, all sorts of different traditions. Yeah, listening to all those like, there are some times where, like, there was one podcast I was listening to it and I just had to, like, turn it off because, like, I can't do this because it was like they. It was just so blatantly like it was modalism where they were talking about God being enough. But then they used Jesus, and it was just. 36:49 Cayce Fletcher Like. 36:49 Cayce Fletcher It was so convoluted and so. 36:52 Cayce Fletcher Like we need podcasts available for biblical Unitarians where they don't have to feel like. 36:58 Cayce Fletcher You have to listen with that filter of like. Can I even trust this person? But then also there is a certain point where hopefully through taking in some of the content that I have, that's not necessarily doctrine related people begins to see that biblical Unitarians are Christians that know their Bible and they want to live a Christian life and they want to live for God and be righteous. It's not some. 37:21 Cayce Fletcher Cults that they don't believe in Jesus and they don't know what they're talking about. It's like, no, we we do. And so I think that's another thing that maybe through this then they can begin to understand better. 37:32 Cayce Fletcher What we believe, and who knows, like if people. 37:36 Cayce Fletcher Will maybe change their beliefs because they see people who are living for God and they're living righteously for him. 37:45 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you're not targeting Bible believing Christians in order to convert them to Unitarianism, but you're also not hiding your beliefs about it either. You know, you might actually be more effective evangelistically doing it this way. It's kind of interesting because I've recently listened to a lot of testimonies. 38:07 Sean Finnegan Of. 38:08 Sean Finnegan People coming out of the Trinity in particular. 38:12 Sean Finnegan And that's because at our UCA conference, there was a gentleman going around with a camera, just like recording random people, and he just post them all on Facebook. And so just like hearing them over and. 38:22 Sean Finnegan Over again it. 38:23 Sean Finnegan Oftentimes it's a Bible thing that they get somebody's attention and then they start to type stuff into search engines to find out. 38:32 Sean Finnegan Like what? Stuff is even called and I think as far as those kind of people. 38:36 Sean Finnegan So I think we're good. We've got a lot of different websites and resources and youtubes and podcasts and articles. I mean, shoot. If somebody looks up the technical definition of what the doctrine of the Trinity is, it's written by a biblical Unitarian on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Like we have infiltrated and we're doing great. 38:57 Sean Finnegan Not to say we couldn't always have more. I think more is just always better, especially when we're a minority movement. But like your strategy, I think is really interesting and really helpful and it's something that I kind of saw with my wife and Mormons where she would like end up following a lot of Mormon moms blogs. 39:15 Sean Finnegan Because they were just like putting out really great content on, like being a good mom and doing the things a lot of the similar things that you're talking about, not that my wife is considering Mormonism for the record, but it kind of made her to have a much more positive attitude towards a group that's often considered to be. 39:35 Sean Finnegan Cult. Or just like not Christian because you know, let's face it, they had some really weird beliefs. If you ever study them, but which we don't need to get into here, but there could be just like, an incredible advantage of, like, just putting out really quality content that is useful to other people who are in a similar situation in life to you and then to just be like. 39:41 Cayce Fletcher Yeah. 39:55 Sean Finnegan And I'm a biblical Unitarian. Or, you know what I mean, like and. And like, that's not what we're talking about, but that that is something that's also true about me. 40:04 Sean Finnegan So now you can't hate us and kick us out of your schools and not give us degrees. You know what I mean? Like, I think somehow we've got to change that culture among evangelicals, and this might be one way to do it, which I think is pretty exciting to think about. Do you have any other comments on that? 40:20 Cayce Fletcher Most people wouldn't even know if we talked about Biblical Unitarian. They wouldn't even know what that is. They would think that you're like with the, you know, Unitarian Universalist group or the first thing that you have to say is like, no, this is, you just have to kind of get it out there. But you don't always. It's not always the best way to go in. And, you know, gun slays in and telling people how they're wrong. 40:37 Sean Finnegan Guns blazing. 40:41 Cayce Fletcher And I think that was basically how we whenever we were, I was younger, we were kind of told to do apologetics for evangelism. It's like, hey, we don't believe this. We don't believe in, you know, the Trinity. We don't believe we go to heaven and then he's like, you go through all these different doctrines and people were like, well, who are you people like, you know, they never understood. 41:01 Cayce Fletcher Our actual beliefs and what they did, it's like, oh, we're not really that different. There's just a couple core things that we don't agree on and they probably had never studied it. They didn't even really know how to articulate the Trinity. And so. 41:13 So. 41:14 Cayce Fletcher I just think this is just a way that. 41:17 Cayce Fletcher If you haven't gone to school, you know, study Greek and Hebrew and all these different things to kind of get into the text and tell through biblical executes of all of these different points on the Trinity. Or looked at these historical documents, you can still make a path for the movement just through the way that you live your life. You know, it's just your testimony. 41:38 Cayce Fletcher And I think that we all can learn from that and who knows who we're affecting through that. 41:43 Sean Finnegan Yeah. I wonder what, what do you have planned for the future? Can you share any thoughts on as far as the future of a beautiful life, a more beautiful life? Excuse me. 41:53 Sean Finnegan More beautiful life, collective or just Casey Fletcher in general? Like, what does the future hold for you that you can share? 42:00 Cayce Fletcher I'm trying to, you know, get some episodes recorded and then get that ready to go so that whenever the baby gets here, I have some of those we're going to finish out this systematic theology series. And then also I'd like to focus a little bit. 42:13 Cayce Fletcher On homemaking and then maybe next year, I'd like to talk a little bit about education and you know, home schooling, some of the things that we talked about as far as staying at home and how you can use education to better yourself and your kids and what that kind of looks like, because I definitely. 42:32 Cayce Fletcher I think people are hungry for that, but we don't have any. 42:36 Cayce Fletcher Resources that are Unitarian resources for homeschooling or even for like catechism, or systematic theology. And so everything that I I read to my kids. If you've ever read, like the Jesus Storybook Bible, that's one that's like, it's so Trinitarians and we just don't have these things available. 42:56 Cayce Fletcher For our kids, so I don't know if that means I'm gonna write those things, but I do think that that is something that we need is just some more resources that for people. 42:57 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 43:06 Cayce Fletcher Are wanting to disciple their children in this. 43:09 Cayce Fletcher We don't need to fall back on a reformed theology book, which is what most people do. I think in the Protestant tradition they find these things, and then they have a lot of a lot of doctrines we don't agree with. 43:20 Sean Finnegan Yeah, somebody could spearhead that. And the person organizing such a thing wouldn't necessarily have to write everything, just sort of like, organize it. Because I think there are lots of people out there, both women and men, who would be willing to contribute to something that's aimed at kids. And there's four kids. 43:41 Sean Finnegan There have been a couple of kids books here and there. You remember Maggie seeks to. 43:45 Sean Finnegan Kingdom that came out years ago and then. 43:46 Cayce Fletcher Yeah, yeah. 43:50 Sean Finnegan Renee Dugan at Spirit and Truth has just released, I think, two or three kids books, books that you would read to your kid at night. Type of thing. Yeah. There's so much more that needs to. 44:00 Sean Finnegan Be done. 44:01 Sean Finnegan So that that sounds really cool. Maybe maybe kind of more of a long term goal. Well, thanks for so much for talking with me today. Is there anything else you'd like to? 44:11 Sean Finnegan Add before we closeout. 44:12 Cayce Fletcher No, thank you for having me. It was an honor. 44:15 Sean Finnegan Yeah. All right, well, we'll catch you next time. Thanks so much. 44:26 Sean Finnegan Well, that brings this interview to a close. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find Episode 575 a more beautiful life collective with Casey Fletcher and leave your feedback there. Also, if you're interested, why not just subscribe to a more beautiful life on your podcast app? Or? 44:45 Sean Finnegan Her on YouTube she does a video as well as an audio version of this, so both are available. On another note, I'm now in New Zealand, attending the first ever Unitarian Christian Alliance Conference there. 45:01 Sean Finnegan I'm going to present this weekend this coming up weekend on five options for understanding the deity of Christ texts in the New Testament. I'll focus on the handful of verses that apply the word theos to Jesus. 45:16 Sean Finnegan This it may be a little while before this gets released. I'll certainly let you know and hopefully I can get a copy to play out here on the podcast as well, but it might not be for a little while, so stay tuned for that. Also, if you would like to hear this and the other presentations that are happening. 45:37 Sean Finnegan This weekend they will be out on the Unitarian Christian Alliance YouTube channel. So if you're a YouTube person, check that. 45:47 Sean Finnegan Out Unitarian Christian Alliance is the name of the channel there, and they'll probably they. They will probably have a playlist for the New Zealand Conference. There wouldn't recommend typing in UCL A to YouTube because you're going to get a bunch of cheerleaders if you do that, and that's just not what I'm talking about. When I said the UCLA. 46:09 Sean Finnegan So word to the wise, you might have to actually type in the words Unitarian Christian alliance to find out more information about that. 46:16 Sean Finnegan Well, that's going to be it for me today. I look forward to coming back to the United States in time for Thanksgiving next week and I hope to be able to share a little bit about my trip in future episodes as as the Lord is willing. So thanks everyone for the prayers and for the support. If you'd like to. 46:36 Sean Finnegan Support restitutio. Please share this episode with your friends. I think that will also support Casey Fletcher and her endeavor to bring her podcast to a wider audience, and I'm really happy to support that. I hope you will support that as well by sharing this episode. 46:52 Sean Finnegan Others, and also if you'd like to support us financially, you can do that at restitutio.org. 46:58 Sean Finnegan Well, that's it for this week. I'll catch you next week and remember, the truth has nothing to fear.