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157 | Living Out Theology in Pain: The Real Story Behind Our 5 Month Break
31 Plays1 minute ago
After an unexpected 5-month podcast break, we're back with our most vulnerable episode yet. While Every Woman A Theologian kept going, we had to pause the podcast to navigate some of life's biggest challenges. What does it look like to live out theology in the middle of pain and difficulty? Here's the real story of why we stepped back from podcasting and how we've had to practice what we preach in our darkest moments.
In This Episode:
- Living Out Theology in Real Life
- Why we paused the podcast
- Walking through secondary infertility and loss
- Balancing ministry travel with family crisis
- A prophetic dream that sustained our faith
- Getting ready to meet our miracle baby
- The ministry work that continued behind the scenes
🙏 Prayer Requests: Pray for baby Olivera as we welcome her into our family, and for wisdom as we navigate this new season of ministry.
📅 What's Coming:
- Verity Conference 2024 session reruns
- Verity Conference 2025: October 3-4 (online)
- Returning to Ancient Heresies podcast series
- New 2026 series (we want your input!)
🔗 Links:
Verity Conference 2025: https://verityconference.com/
EWAT Shop: https://phyliciamasonheimer.com/store/
💝 Thank You: To everyone who prayed, supported, and carried us through 2024's hardest season - you are the beautiful body of Christ in action.
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Transcript
Living Theology in Challenging Times
00:00:00
Speaker
What does it look like to live out theology in the middle of pain and difficulty? What does it look like to hear the voice of God? Like, what does it look like for the church to encourage one another daily?
00:00:14
Speaker
All of these things that we've talked about in theory on this podcast, we have actually had to live out in real life.
Podcast Hiatus and Return Plans
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello, friends. Welcome back to Verity Podcast. It has been a little while since I recorded a new episode for you, and I have some explaining to do about why that is. so Our last episode was in April of 2025, the height of our busy travel season for the ministry, speaking around the nation for the next few months after April.
00:00:53
Speaker
And we thought that we could bring the podcast back on for the summer. But in the end, we had some major changes to our plans and we weren't able to do that. So this is a little bit of a season relaunch after our unplanned break for the summer of 2025.
00:01:12
Speaker
But we're so thrilled to be able to come back for the fall and winter of 2025 and as we prepare to finish our False Teaching and Ancient Heresies series and then launch a new series in 2026.
Personal Reasons for Podcast Break
00:01:28
Speaker
I want to tell you a little bit about where we've been, what has happened since the last episode went up. And so this episode is not going to be on the Ancient Heresies and False Teaching. This is going to be more of a personal look at kind of where we're at as a ministry, why we took a break, why I had to take a break,
00:01:46
Speaker
and what God has been doing in the meantime. So for those of you who are faithful listeners of Verity Podcast, you might already be aware of our story.
00:01:57
Speaker
I tend to be better about sharing more of our testimony, more of our personal story on my social media in my email newsletter, and not so much on the podcast. The podcast has become really more of a place for teaching.
00:02:10
Speaker
We want to be as helpful as possible, and it's not really a lifestyle podcast, so I don't get into too much about my personal life here. But i thought, you know, as we're coming back into this series after such a long unplanned break, I should probably tell you a little bit of why that happened and kind of expose those of you who are maybe podcast listeners but don't follow on social media and who aren't in our email newsletter to a little bit more of our story and why we are doing what we're doing.
00:02:43
Speaker
So back in April of 2025, we had been producing this new series on false teaching on ancient heresies.
Ice Storm Impact on Life and Ministry
00:02:51
Speaker
And at the beginning of April, our area of the country, northern Michigan, was hit with a massive ice storm.
00:02:59
Speaker
It was an unprecedented thing. First time in 100 years we'd been hit with something like this. It took out our power for a week and devastated our area. And so the electrical companies were saying that it was the equivalent of...
00:03:14
Speaker
a category five hurricane staying in one place for three days. So the damage was atrocious, both to our farm and to the surrounding areas.
00:03:25
Speaker
And we spent around 80 hours just cleaning up our farm alone, not to mention all of the work that was done helping other people in our area to recover from that storm.
00:03:37
Speaker
It was so much work on top of the beginnings of our travel schedule for ministry that we simply were overwhelmed with everything we had to do to finish out the homeschool year with our kids, to run the ministry, to clean up our own land, to help other people with theirs, and that we knew we had to take a step back from something in order to handle everything that was on our plate.
Struggles with Infertility and Loss
00:04:02
Speaker
Now, we also had a ton of travel in 2025 that was booked. And this is because back in 2024, at the end of 2024, we knew that there were just some big changes coming for us. There were, you know, a lot of mixed feelings. 2024 was an extremely hard year for us.
00:04:21
Speaker
um For those who don't know, we've been walking through secondary infertility really since Ivan was born five years ago. But in 2024, we lost two babies six months apart.
00:04:33
Speaker
And that's when we really started to say, OK, this the secondary infertility is actually a bigger issue than we realized. We'd never struggled with this before. um we need to try to get help. And so in the latter half of 2024, went through four rounds of fertility medication, letrozole.
00:04:51
Speaker
none of which resulted in a pregnancy. And so by December, we were, you know, kind of settled that it seemed like the door was closing um for us in regard to um having another baby. And it was time to simply entrust that to the Lord more than we already had and move on from that. For Josh and I, um we have ethical objections to in vitro fertilization. So that was not something that we would have pursued.
00:05:19
Speaker
And so we simply accepted that it was time for us to move on to focus on the ministry and specifically on traveling for the ministry, which I have not always been able to do extensively.
Lifestyle Changes from Speaking Engagements
00:05:30
Speaker
So we took a lot more speaking engagements. I took them and the family committed to come with me for 2025. And we ended up with about 13 different retreats, conferences, homeschool conferences that we were doing between January and July 2025.
00:05:48
Speaker
twenty twenty five And while it might not sound like a lot, 13 across six months or so, it ends up being a ton of work when you're also homeschooling, running a farm, trying to leave the ministry, trying to be a sane person who's not crazy. So that's about two to three weekends a month and sometimes whole weeks that I would be gone or our family would be gone.
00:06:13
Speaker
um And that just is disruptive to our family lifestyle, to our team and what they're trying to do because we're on the road and we don't have stable internet and things like that. So while we were so, so grateful to get to meet so many of you in person at these events, we realized through the ice storm, through the travel, through the strain that we just can't sustainably do all of these things and also run the podcast. So The podcast took a backseat while we completed those obligations.
00:06:45
Speaker
But the part of the story that you might not be familiar with, again, if you're not on social media or don't follow us closely, is that in January, January 6th of 2025, we actually found out that we were pregnant with our miracle baby.
Surprising Pregnancy Announcement
00:07:01
Speaker
And at the time, those of you who've walked through the path of infertility and miscarriage know we kind of held that very loosely because we weren't sure how the story would end.
00:07:13
Speaker
Quite honestly, I wish I could say that we were more excited and like... gung-ho about it. Of course, we were excited, but when you've experienced multiple losses, you start to kind of steel yourself for the worst news possible. So we were very um cautious in our excitement, and we didn't really think, to be honest, that this baby would survive. And as I'm recording this for you, I'm 37 weeks pregnant with our baby girl, and we are due in three weeks mid-September, and God has graciously preserved her life. And we are so deeply grateful for your prayers and your um messages and your emails um and how you all have encouraged us in this last nine months of walking this path.
00:08:03
Speaker
Now, one of the amazing things, and I want to share this testimony with you, is that in the midst of all of this busyness, the midst of some really hard decisions this year, the stress of trying to handle everything for the ministry,
00:08:16
Speaker
um having to step back from things like the podcast, having to step back from other commitments. We were doing so in order to be faithful in the things that were in front of us, one of them being this pregnancy and and being as careful as possible to um help, as far as we're able, um help sustain um this little
Hopeful Dream About Pregnancy
00:08:41
Speaker
life. And so as we were kind of looking forward at the year, again, very cautiously optimistic um regarding whether or not our child would live, around the ninth week of the pregnancy,
00:08:59
Speaker
I got this message from a sweet follower, reader of mine, who did not know, because we had not announced anything, um did not know that I was pregnant.
00:09:11
Speaker
And in her message, she very humbly said, hey, Felicia, I had this dream. um I feel kind of weird bringing it to you.
00:09:23
Speaker
I feel like you know, i don't want to hurt you or trigger you um in any way because of your losses, but I feel like God wants me to share this with you. And in her dream, we were pregnant with our fourth baby, fourth living baby, and were ah were going to the doctor to see if the baby would live or die.
00:09:48
Speaker
And in the dream, um the baby had a name and she prayed for her in this dream. So again, this is all just for her in her dream. This is not real. Like she, she doesn't know.
00:10:04
Speaker
um She prayed for this baby, for this, this um child. And she said, the baby lived And you named her Olivera, which means olive tree. And she said, as she prayed about that name and what the meaning of the olive tree was, because there's lots of olive trees in the Bible, she was reminded of the story of Noah and how Noah, ah when when the water had receded and the ark is sitting there, he sends out a dove and the dove goes out twice
00:10:37
Speaker
The second time the dove brings back an olive branch. The third time the dove does not come back because it had found life in a barren land.
00:10:58
Speaker
So again, at the time that that this dream was sent to us, you know, we had not shared publicly that we were pregnant.
00:11:09
Speaker
We were still really struggling with that kind of cautious optimism. and And maybe it wasn't even optimism. Maybe it was actually kind of cynicism, to be honest. Like, trying to for an outcome an outcome while also entrusting the outcome to the Lord and knowing that in the past, the answer had been no, which I think for those who walk this path, whether it's in miscarriage or infertility or losing someone close to you, you know, a parent perhaps who has a ah ah a cancer diagnosis, you don't always know
00:11:57
Speaker
what the answer will be and if it will be what you asked for. And so we were really struggling with that. You know, we were struggling with how to pray and um praying in faith, but also open-handed. And so when she sent this dream to us,
00:12:15
Speaker
Again, because her posture of her heart was so humble and she was so willing to listen and obey what the Holy Spirit had told her to do, even though she was worried about hurting us, she did what he had asked her to do and she listened to the voice of the Spirit and she was receptive to the ways that God can speak in the unique and myriad ways that he does.
00:12:39
Speaker
That dream deeply encouraged us, and I think that if it had been given to me, i wouldn't have believed it. I would have second-guessed or thought, you know, it's just my mind, it's just me trying to make myself feel better, or or, you know, I would have doubted, I think, that God had given it to me, but because he gave it to someone who's completely objective, someone who had no idea what we were walking through, but he gave it to her to encourage us. It was something that we were able to hold on and and begin to pray in accordance with what she had received from the Lord um to pray for the life of this child.
00:13:25
Speaker
And so we did that. We prayed in accordance with that, in accordance with the will of God, and we found out at the 20-week ultrasound that we were actually having a girl.
00:13:40
Speaker
So again, at the time of the dream, we didn't know we were having a girl and that's what her dream said. We be held that loosely. You know, we're going to wait on the Lord and see what he says, check everything against scripture.
00:13:52
Speaker
And at the 20-week ultrasound, we found out we were having a girl and her name will be Oliveira, like the dream, because of the faithfulness of God to speak in this way and the faithfulness of his church through this sweet woman who was willing to obey God and share what his voice had said, even when it was a risky thing to do.
00:14:19
Speaker
And so i share that with you because That was a point in that early period that right around the time of this ice storm, of the stress that our family was walking through, of finishing out these commitments that we had made to receive this from the Lord and be encouraged by his church, by the women of his church, to hold on to the truth, to hold on to on his hand, even when we still couldn't see the outcome, trusting that he was going to finish the work that he was doing, whatever that work was going to be, has been a huge blessing. And to me, truly reflects the heart of the ministry that we're trying to do.
00:15:05
Speaker
Our ministry is Every Woman a Theologian. And the women of this church, this global church, have ministered back to us in a time of great suffering. 2024 was a time of great suffering for us, to the point that that I don't even remember whole swaths of last year because they were so devastating and so hard and so difficult that there are parts I don't even remember
00:15:37
Speaker
I don't even remember. and now in this year, it's not as if everything is erased, right? You know, it's not like, oh, we turned the page, now it's 2025 and everything is easy.
00:15:48
Speaker
No, we still, we're continuing to walk through hard things and continuing to navigate through the anxiety and fear that comes with multiple losses and with no guarantees.
00:15:59
Speaker
This has been a more difficult pregnancy than any of my other pregnancies. And all of this to say that are I'm sharing this with you, um again, to give, I think, more of a personalized look at what what does it look like to live out theology in the middle of pain and difficulty.
00:16:22
Speaker
What does it look like to hear the voice of God like we talk about on this podcast so often? What does it look like for the church to encourage one another daily as long as it is called today? What does it look like for a woman to operate in a prophetic gifting where the Lord speaks to her and she then transmits that to another person to upbuild their faith?
00:16:44
Speaker
in a time of hardship. All of these things that we've talked about in theory on this podcast, we have actually had to live out in real life. And so as we bring the podcast back, as we put it back on air, so to speak, I wanted to relaunch it with this episode of where we've been and what we've been through because walking through this has only solidified to me, number one, the beautiful nature of the global church, its diversity of denomination and expression, yet its unity around the core tenets of the gospel and the Christian life and the holiness that it requires.
The Spirit's Diverse Communication Methods
00:17:22
Speaker
Number two, it solidified for me the power of God's word and how God's word is always the check for how his spirit speaks, but his spirit speaks personally, lovingly,
00:17:34
Speaker
daily and through his people. And he doesn't only speak through the Bible. He speaks through the inner man. He speaks through dreams. He speaks through visions. He speaks through other Christians.
00:17:45
Speaker
He speaks to you. And all of those things need to be held up to what scripture says. But we miss out so much when we limit God in how he wants to speak to us and upbuild us, especially in our hardest times.
00:18:01
Speaker
And lastly, i think what I have been most encouraged by is how we continue to see the global church grow And people grow in their understanding of Scripture, their understanding of the Spirit, that they are growing in their fire and passion for the Lord.
00:18:18
Speaker
And they can do that without Every Woman a Theologian, without Verity Podcast. That is the work of the Spirit, not our work. But I'm so glad that we get to be a small part of that through our resources and our Bible studies, through this podcast, through our blog, and all of the things that we get to do. we are...
00:18:37
Speaker
deeply, deeply blessed to get to serve you in this way. And as we're moving forward and we're kind of planning, what are we going to for the next year? We would love to hear from you You know, what is it that you would love to see another series on as we wrap up the ancient heresy series? series What would you like to hear more about as we continue to develop how our series um And begin to develop out new resources.
00:19:04
Speaker
Our team is more unified than ever before. We have an amazing group of people who are all working to the same end, who are humble, who are um kind, who truly love you and who look at your emails and your messages and your comments and and discern how can we best serve you as a ministry. And I feel honored to get to work alongside every person on our team as Josh and I continue to pray for direction and and what would serve you best in this space.
Promoting Verity Conference 2025
00:19:37
Speaker
What you'll be seeing next for the next few weeks before we restart the Ancient Heresies series is a rerun of some of the sessions from Verity Conference, our Theology Conference, 2024. The reason we're doing this is because we're going to be launching Verity Conference 2025 all online October 3rd through 4th.
00:19:59
Speaker
And so we're going to do some little clips and glimpses of last year's content. I'll run these as regular podcast episodes, and we would highly encourage you to grab a ticket. You can stream it individually online for October 3rd and 4th. It's the evening of the 3rd and all day on the 4th.
00:20:16
Speaker
We have some amazing sessions on the Trinity and the problem of evil and justice and so much more. I'll be talking about denominations. um We would love to have you join us. You can check that out at verityconference.com.
00:20:29
Speaker
So look for that in the next few weeks, and then we'll transition back into our Ancient Heresies series. and then close out the year finishing that series up before we jump into something new for 2026. Thank you, as always, for listening to Verity Podcast, and thank you most of all for those of you who have prayed for us, who have carried us, who have bought from the Every Woman a Theologian shop.
00:20:53
Speaker
You have blessed our team, you've blessed our family, and you have helped us to hold on to the goodness of God in the land of the living.
Celebrating Olivera Hope's Birth
00:21:02
Speaker
Hey Verity Podcast listeners, it's Zach Smith, your friendly EWAT videographer, photographer, etc., etc.
00:21:12
Speaker
I do the podcast now, too. Anyway, I have some incredibly exciting news. Literally the day that I finished this podcast edit, went to post it, was the day that Oliveira Hope Masonheimer was born 4.06 morning.
00:21:31
Speaker
um Very healthy baby. Everything went smoothly. And I'm just here to add that to the end of this incredible story that you just finished listening to.
00:21:43
Speaker
ah God is good. And we have have her in fine Josh's arms. The journey that it took to get here is incredible. And I cannot...
00:21:57
Speaker
emphasize enough how much your prayers and support to Felicia and Josh meant and to the rest of us on the team. It's incredible to have been a part of this and we just want to keep celebrating the miracle of life.
00:22:14
Speaker
Olivera Hope Meisenheimer born after all of that. I want to extend huge praise to God after all of this.
00:22:27
Speaker
Miracles do happen, and we were all along for the ride. Thank you for being faithful listeners. Those of you who are new, welcome. um We look forward to joining you for Verity Podcast and Verity Conference for the next year.
00:22:44
Speaker
In the meantime, God bless.