Have you ever walked into someone’s home and immediately started making a shopping list in your head of all the things you would need to purchase for your own to even begin to measure up? Sometimes, envy can sneak up on us, but other times, it can strike with surprising force as we convince ourselves of our inadequacy as compared to someone else - whether it be their home, their wardrobe, their family, or their career.

Our guest today is the author of the book (I’m failing at) This Thing Called Home where she writes her thoughts on how to build a truly thriving home, even when you feel underqualified. Brooke Sailer is an organization expert, teacher, blogger, creative designer, and thoughtful writer and she speaks with us today on the topic of envy. Brooke is just as familiar with the next gal on the pain of envy and how it can hurt both the one experiencing the emotion, but also the woman who is the subject of the envy. You won’t want to miss Brooke and Willow’s insightful dialogue on this relevant topic.

Takeaways:

• This podcast is all about women colliding with Jesus through their messy lives, sharing stories of pain and joy.
• Home organization isn't just about decluttering—it's about expressing who you are and finding peace.
• Comparison and envy can rot our bones, but finding contentment in what we have is key to peace.

Real transformation happens when we focus on our hearts and invite Jesus into our homes and lives.

Follow Willow: Website | Instagram | Facebook

💑Check out Collide’s website for info on upcoming conferences, events, and resources.

📲Follow Collide on Facebook and Instagram for encouragement, inspo and a fun peek into our ministry.

📰Plus, subscribe to our newsletter to stay up-to-date on all things Collide!

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are, so that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

When you remake a space in your home, you don't just get a new home, you get a new you.

Because when you do that deep heart work, it impacts the way that you move about in your home and the things that you learn and do. And the expression of who you are just has a natural way of coming out.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and today I get to interview my friend Brooke Saylor.

And Brooke and I met through the most serendipitous of stories, and I've been blessed to get to know her and her lovely family, and we have this annual Texas Meets Washington friendship.

Brooke comes up to Washington to where I live every summer, and our families have formed a sweet, growing bond on their annual trip where they visit their best friends. And Brooke is married to Scott, and they have the cutest four kids, I think, in all of Texas.

Brooke is a stay at home mom, creative thinker, writer, home decor enthusiast, and also a shoelace tire, a lunch packer, and master of skillet tacos and home organization.

Brooke is addicted to TED talks and dinner parties, and I find her to be warm and thoughtful, humble and a fighter, fighting for her purpose, fighting for her healing, fighting for authenticity, and fighting for home. And I can personally say that when you look up the word kind in the dictionary, you see Brooke's beautiful face.

She's the author of the book this Thing called A Busy Mom's Thoughts on Changing the Narrative, Embracing Possibilities and Remaking Home. Brooke, thank you so much for setting down all the things you could be doing to be here with us on the Weeklight podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm not gonna lie, you made me tear up there a little bit with that intro. That was. That was very sweet. That was very sweet. Thank you.

Well, those are my goals. I just try to make people cry and then I feel like, job well done, right?

All right.

Will you share with those who aren't familiar with you a little bit about your life and the work you're doing and what led you to want to put out this Book about home.

Yeah, absolutely. You nailed the basic facts. And that said I'm married. I've been actually next week is our 15th wedding anniversary.

So I feel like I should get a little sticker for that or something. That feels like a big deal, you know. And then we have four kids. My kids ages range 12 down to age 5. I have three girls and a boy.

And that little boy, I'm telling you what, he's got it. He's got four mamas in this house, so. But he handles it somehow. And then I have been a stay at home mom.

This is going to be my first year which is an amazing milestones slash. I really feel this season shifting because he's going to school and I know that so many stay at home moms relate to. Okay.

We've been playing all day long and you know, taking care of babies, toddlers, all the things. And now to watch them all be in school is. Is a really big deal for me this year. So I am excited.

I have a little more space and width than I have had in the past and I'm definitely like, ok, Lord, what, what is this? Like this next stage? But yeah, I am. That's a little bit about me in terms of how I got into my life's work.

I was very casually passionate about home organization.

I don't know if I just loved it or if I was just bored because I was home all day with little kids and I needed something like exciting and tangible to do. Like, hey, if we declutter this closet, it feels like something got done. It was in a way for me to express my creativity, I think.

And I just kind of was like started to enjoy.

I started to teach home organization classes where I invited friends into my home and was invited by others to teach on home organization and home everything. So I started to kind of teach that and share and everybody thought it was kind of funny.

When I first got married, like I. I couldn't cook anything but macaroni and cheese. And I didn't. I was so like, I would leave the laundry like in the dirty hamper till it molded.

Like I'd be like, what's that green and black stuff at the bottom of the hamper? And we know how to get mold out of linen hampers. I really did not have any homemaking skills when I got married. I was creative and artsy.

Was like really cool until you get married and you're like, I don't know how to do this thing called home. So I didn't know what I was doing. And I had to learn and I had to grow. And I grow. Like, we all have to grow. We have to step out of our comfort zone.

We have to figure out what's going on, where we are, where we want to be, and kind of carve out a pathway to get there.

So teaching the classes helped me to share my story of growth, encourage others, how to get there also, and feel like you're not just surviving in your home, but you're thriving and you are not a failure. So that kind of birthed the book because I literally wrote it all down.

I took it across the street to a local printer, and it wasn't really the book in full, but I had it spiral bound. And then I thought, man, because everybody who comes to my class needs something to write on. And so they had that little spiral bound thing.

And it was just like I was at a women's conference. And I had one of those moments where it was like, I think I'm supposed to write a book.

I think the Lord is drawing me to a place where it sounds really scary to write a book. But if I can trust him and have the clarity, I am hearing his voice. I want to try this. I want to see where this goes. So I did.

I really felt like I had a moment with the Lord and I just started pursuing it.

I took a little writing course, I got a writing coach, and Weekly was kind of starting to work towards it, taking that little booklet that I had made and thinking, what would this look like if it was a chapter book with a workbook and all that? So that's a lot. Wow, that's a lot of words. But that is what happened. That's the story.

I love, though, that you wrote this book on the premise of starting from a place of not feeling like you're nailing it, you know, Like, I feel like a lot of people might write a book about home from a place of, like, I'm nailing this. Let me tell you everything I need to know. But the stuff that you're sharing came from a place of you needing and desiring to figure out how to.

How to make home the way you wanted it to be.

Yes. I was so tired of burning scrambled eggs. I thought, this has to be easier. And somebody told, if you can read, you can cook.

And I was like, what are you talking about? But I did. I got some cookbooks. Like, I checked out some cookbooks from the library. And, you know, some people, when I was, like a newlywed, had.

Had bought me some as part of, like, a Wedding gift or something. And so I pulled that out, and I was like, oh, I get it. Like, if I read, I can follow a recipe and I can do some.

I mean, like, anything else was not nailing it. And it's not like I wanted to nail it. I just didn't want to bring so much frustration into my environment because my skills weren't really there.

So I was like, oh, maybe I can. Maybe I can grow from here.

I think so many women can resonate with that feeling. How much pressure do you think we as women feel to make the perfect home?

So much. You know, part of that is I would blame culture or social media or things like that.

I would blame maybe just the way that we've grown up in such a visual culture where we're used to seeing things. And a lot of what we see isn't the whole picture. It's not like you see or we talk about how you see on Instagram. It's the highlight reel.

It's not the real always.

And I think there are a group of people who are leading the way and doing a better job of showing the real story and the long story and the whole big picture of how you got to somewhere. And we all have to realize that we start somewhere.

What's your greatest advice to women? Because you're coming into contact with so many since putting out your first book there, what's your greatest advice for relieving that pressure?

Oh, man, that's such a good question.

For me, I think realizing that I needed to know who I was and I couldn't know who I was and how, you know, our actions are so tied to who we believe, who we are. It's so tied to what we tell ourselves. Like, every day when you wake up, what are you telling yourself that's such a huge thing?

And for me, relieving the pressure just came from knowing what was going on inside of me. Because nobody can make an assumption about what's going on inside of you think relieving that pressure comes from.

Wait, what is this thing in my heart, in my mind? Who am I? Who do I want to be? We can answer some of those really big questions. Not like it's easy.

It might take some time and hard work, but I think we can slowly give ourselves the grace to understand who we are.

How do you see home in our houses? As one of the great ways that we as women, struggle with comparison and envy.

I think our house, just like our car, just like our clothes, is something that we see. It's something that we experience. And so when you invite somebody over for dinner, they see. They see what's tangible.

I mean, that's why the word says that only God is what sees what's on the inside of our heart. And those things you can't see, they're not as tangible, if that makes sense. But my answer is just. It's so tangible, our home, our.

The couch, that it's something you can touch, feel, see here. It's. It's something that you experience.

And so those things that we can experience become those things of massive comparison in our lives because we see them, we encounter them, we experience them. Right.

It's so interesting because as you're talking, I'm just thinking about a couple different, like, people come to mind. And one of them is a friend who recently told me that she stopped hosting for. In the last year, and she had always hosted dinner parties and stuff.

And she stopped hosting because she said she felt judged by people for what our house looked like. And when she told me, I. I was almost stunned because I think she hasn't a great house. But she.

It's like we have this house shame almost, because we're comparing our house to other people's houses. And I think that can even start from a very young age. In fact, I was dropping off. My son was in a study group with a. With a group of kids.

And one of the kids in the group had this kind of like, you know, sort of mansion on the lake. And this other girl lived downtown in a very small, rundown house.

And as we were driving to drop her off, she started talking about how huge her house is and how there's, like, an underground part of her house that goes and goes. And she started kind of making up this grandiose story.

And my son and I sort of debriefed it afterwards, recognizing, like, even from an early age, this girl was feeling like her house didn't compare to the other students in this group.

And so she had to sort of, like, try to figure out how to, you know, raise the stock of what she had to bring to the table in the house department, even though no one else was talking about it.

I think there's this sort of, like, weird house shame or house home comparison stuff and feels like there's things that go on in our homes that we all want to hide in a closet, not let anyone see. And then there are certain things that we'll bring out and shine up and post on social media that when they look lovely and beautiful.

Do you see this to be true?

Yes. Yes. All the time. And I actually experience some on maybe a different angle.

I have people who say that they would feel embarrassed to invite me over because. Because they are subconsciously comparing their house to my house or, you know, whatever. And that is so sad and breaks your heart at the same time.

You're like, oh, no. Like, I just want to be with you. And you find yourself reassuring people. Like, when you open your home, it is such a vulnerable thing, and it is so.

It's like people get to know you on a such a different level when they're in your home, in your world, see your life, your lifestyle.

And I think getting to that place where we can open not just our homes, but open our hearts all the time and be vulnerable and be authentic, I think that is a huge marker of our own growth.

Mm.

Well, it's interesting, too, how comparison and envy can not only make you feel like, I was talking about my friend who feels how shame that people judge her so she stopped having people over. And there's that vulnerability piece of putting herself in a vulnerable position.

But also when we're comparing ourselves, we can judge other people because it seems like they have a really great thing going. That's what you're experiencing. I've experienced that, but in not. Not around what my house looks like.

But I grew up, you know, and I think you know this about me, but I grew up in a restaurant, so for me, like, whipping out a meal or something is, like, a pretty easy thing for me to do. I don't.

I don't stress about the chaos that comes with it or whatever, but I've actually had girlfriends tell me that they don't invite us over for dinner because they can't cook.

And actually had one of my best friends who admitted to me that she felt silly because I will whip out some nice meal and they'll serve, like, frozen pizza and beer, and I'm like, so they kind of wanted to stop asking us over because she was feeling ashamed about her lack of cooking skills or something. And I was like, no. Like, I don't want to be left out of your life because I can cook and you can't. I love frozen pizza and beer. Like, we can do this.

You know, there's this. There's this weird thing that goes on with comparison.

And we're in a series this summer on the podcast, Just downloading God's wisdom from the Proverbs. And the Proverb that I really was so excited to have you on to dig into is out of Proverbs.

14:30, Which says, A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. And this passage, it just doesn't sound pretty right? Like, rotten bones. It's kind of like.

It's the kind of rot that starts on the inside, and it makes its way out. It's almost like envy doesn't stay inside of us, but it starts to kind of molding and stenching out.

And I'm wondering, in all your work with women in this book on home, how do you see envy that starts to rot us from the inside out?

I mean, it's so powerful to think about these things that are happening on the inside of us, how we're so impacted.

I find myself relating so much to your story about your friend, who you're having to basically defend how much you care about her as a person and how precious your time together is that you don't care if it's frozen pizza, because we all make frozen pizza from time to time, too. Like, it's. We're all human, and we have so much in common with one another, and memories we share are pretty much not a lot of tangible things.

Like, I don't remember everything I've always ate, but I remember how somebody made me feel.

And so we both find ourselves, you and I, in this position where maybe we're at times defending what is true and good about human relationships at their core, that is completely not related to what the house looks like or what things that we own or food that we eat or skills that we have or don't have, because we just love connecting with people, and we see the value and worth in people. When I read that, it shows me that what's going on on the inside will impact what happens on the outside. Right?

And like you're saying, envy is like that. My. You know, it's like that cancer in the bones. My version right here says, jealousy. A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body.

Jealousy is like a cancer in the bones.

And so that's telling me that it starts in those bones, and it may be a while before you can even see it or touch it or feel it or experience it, but it's happening on the inside really deep down. In my book, which is on home organization, 50% of the book, 45% maybe focuses on what are you telling yourself. And I make this chart.

And so we kind of craft this narrative of, I'm a failure, I. I can't cook. My home is a mess. I've failed. I'm not doing this great. There's all These pressures in society I'm not meeting up to. So clearly I'm not enough.

And those become lies. But we believe them. We not going to say, oh, that's a lie and I need to replace it with truth. It's true to you like it is truth to you.

You will wake up every day saying, I'm not enough. And I don't measure up. And I don't measure up to you or to you or to you.

And that's where that envy really lies, is within that lie that we truly believe is trut am so to me like realizing that all those things that are going on the inside have that. And that's why I say when you remake a space in your home, you don't just get a new home, you get a new you.

Because when you do that deep heart work, it impacts the way that you move about in your home and the things that you learn and do and the expression of who you are just has a natural way of coming out. I don't know how. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I, I'm wondering because I love that chart in your book.

I love that you invite women to begin to look at how they're viewing themselves in their own home because that's where the true transformation is going to come about versus looking at other people and, and somehow comparing and downgrading other people and elevating themselves or downgrading themselves and elevating other people. There' peace that comes from that. So I love that, I love that you invite women into that.

What do you keep seeing as a pattern of things that women seem to be jealous or comparing each other about each other.

They look at things that seem to be a certain way because we oftentimes forget to be curious or to ask questions or to value connection.

And we find, we find ourselves just, just making these assumptions about, oh, since they have, you know, that kind of a couch or this kind of square footage in their home or because their dishes are this way or something that, you know, X, Y and Z is true about them or their character or. I don't know.

I think there's a really beautiful humility that comes when we're just curious about people, when we can ask the questions and get to know what's going on on such a deeper level.

Have you ever, like, when you think back over the course of your adult life, do you recall a time where envy was sort of rotting your bones?

Yes, two specific times that come to mind. The first one is when we were married about five years. We had moved cross country from Ohio to Texas.

We decided to live with my parents for about six weeks because I was literally 36 weeks pregnant with my second. And I remember living in my parents home feeling really, really discouraged.

I didn't know anybody, just moved to a new state, had a two year old and an almost ready to have a baby. Living in my parents house was.

Was so great for those couple of weeks and it needed to happen because just with having a baby and we knew we were going to be looking for a home.

Well, we went from owning a home that we had fixed up ourselves that we were really kind of, in a way maybe proud of and then we couldn't afford anything. The housing market was so different here.

We went into a tiny apartment and so I remember living in my parents house, looking at houses and thinking oh my gosh, we can't even afford a house.

So we had to go from a large home that was three bedrooms and felt like it suited our family's needs for a long period of time, even for forever and then move to a really small apartment. And I remember just like what you were saying about a small group and meeting in different homes. I was like, I had gotten involved in a local church.

I was so embarrassed in that whole transition. I was like please skip over me.

I don't want to host in my house because I was in this tiny apartment and it took me a little while to work through that. And then we were in that apartment for a couple years before we ended up being able to buy a home again.

I remember it was just really a huge struggle for me to really be in that position. Then the second time that that happened was really fairly recent about two and a half, three years ago. We went from.

We had a long period of time that we lived in Washington. We knew we went there intentionally for a few months and we came back and we. Things just did not pan out the way that we thought.

We sold our house, it sold really quickly.

We couldn't get into a new house and a lot of life things happening all at one time and we ended up going to a hotel and I was like oh my gosh, so now we're living in a hotel.

We were there for a long time and then we went to an apartment again and every offers that we were putting through were kind of falling through and I was just so embarrassed and I went oh my gosh, why am I feeling this way? And so envious of everybody whose real estate happened so smoothly. Which is just a fiction. It's just fiction.

Like it's not, it's a figment of your imagination because people have difficulties buying homes all the time and have life things that don't go your way.

And people in our human nature, we kind of romanticize our life experiences, life experience of others when we see our situations as so much worse than they really are.

Yeah, it's interesting, right? We start to fixate on when we're discontent in our own life. We start to fixate on what someone else has that we don't have.

But when we have it, we're not really fixing our eyes on what they have. It's. It seems envy seems to be invited due to our discontent.

You know, you mentioned earlier you kind of spoke a little bit about social media and I had written a bible study book that we put out this last year called the Birds and Lilies and it's on Jesus's sermon about worry and anxiety.

So I did a bunch of research on statistics regarding such and listen to this statistic because I think it's really interesting, especially as we talk about this topic.

Rates of stress, anxiety and depression are rising sharply among teenage girls and what mental health specialists say is a deeply worrying trend that began with the rise of social media. How much do you think social media and Pinterest like has puffed up our envy?

Massively. I mean, it's astounding. It's so that statistic is so accurate and we all feel it, we just do.

And I think it's really, I think it's really up to the influencers in those spaces to continue to move towards their authenticity. Where you're showing, you're showing things that are real and, and it's weird because even the generation before us, they just didn't even have.

Not that there weren't cell phones or laptops, but social media became where people had access to us all the time and all the details of our life we share, where we are, what we're doing, what we ate for breakfast. I mean, 20, 30 years ago. That's not the kind of information we knew about people's day to day.

We, you know, would meet people for dinner or lunch or connect on different ways.

But now with social media, we see everything that's happening and it causes us to stay in that place where we're watching everything that's happening in everybody's lives. And it's so powerful. I think it's really up to being myself, like on Instagram and having a blog.

I think it's up to those of us who are influencing in those Space to keep it vulnerable and real where you don't only show up. I don't always show up with makeup on and having showered.

I was saying two days ago, I haven't washed my hair in four days and I wasn't gonna have time yesterday. So I was just like, oh, well, I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna say what's true.

Like I haven't washed my hair in a couple of days and everybody understands and, and it's not a big deal at all. You know, where you're. I think it's up to those influencers to continue to draw what's true and authentic.

And what we don't realize is even those who say they have like a really powerful blog that's all of beautiful pictures all over Pinterest, their house looks like a magazine and all those kinds of things, Maybe they have 500,000 followers, most likely they have a full time photographer, they have personal assistants, they have a staff of people. I know, yes, I know one girl who has a staff of eight full time people who run her online world. It's the full time work of eight full time people.

40 Hours a week planning content for the blog, making covers for Pinterest like what you pin on Pinterest called a pin cover, making different pin covers for every post.

And then on top of that, things like, you know, photographers coming up with all these creative and crafty ways to take new pictures in your home or new angles or this and that. I was just watching yesterday as a girl that I follow her home was being filmed for Better Homes and Gardens.

Well, it looked like to me, I counted there were six full time staff people there. It took them three days to prepare the photo shoot. The photo shoot itself took 12 hours. And her home is small. It's for the small space issue.

But you just pick up the magazine and look at it and don't realize all the work that went into that. It's not real. It's not real life. None of it's real.

And all that's happening behind the scenes, it's, it's somebody's career, it's their, it's, it's actual work. It's not like it's not life.

I love that you brought this up because I was actually going to ask you a question that I was kind of like, I don't want to Ask it, but we have to ask it. And it was this question of do you think we need to be aware and cautious about the ways we might cause envy in other people?

And you're kind of saying that, you're saying if you're a person of influence, you need to think about what does it look like for you to share the real life, not just this sort of like built up life of this image that everyone's going to think you have this amazing life which is going to make them feel unhappy about theirs.

There is this sort of like, I don't know if you feel this, but I'll try to put it in words, but like a tricky balance between sort of bragging about your life in such a way that it makes others dissatisfied with theirs.

But then there's this also, you could swing to the other side where there's this unhealthy self debasing, where we only share like the suffering in the mediocre parts of our lives and we hide everything good that's going on because we don't want to make people feel bad about their life. Where do you kind of fall on that spectrum? Do you invite people into the great stuff and trust if it causes envy, that's on them?

Or do you hide things like vacation promotions, you know, Pottery Barn purchases and dinner parties at the look at the risk of looking like you're bragging on, on social media?

Wow, that's such a powerful question.

And for me, and how my blog has evolved and how I've chosen to do my work and serve people in those spaces, you know, if you look at my feed right now, it's probably looking more perfect than I wish.

Where we have a really powerful opportunity is in, is in our language and in our words and in our stories and how we show behind the scenes and how we do those kinds of things. It's an everyday struggle for me to figure out where that balance is, to be vulnerable, but also to use my creativity to inspire.

And so it's a really fine line between I'm not responsible for somebody else's heart, but I am responsible for living a life that I'm proud, where I can point people to Jesus, where I can care about what's going on inside of them, where I can share. We have this thing where we say there's a difference between personal and private.

And so for me, like sharing those struggles or sharing what's real in real life I think is wonderful.

But we have to be careful that it comes from a place of our healing where we've kind of done the hard work to, you know, we're not putting things out in our motive. Right.

Am I being vulnerable right now just for the sake of showing you real life so that you won't be envious of my life or sharing with you about my marriage problem?

Is that personal, which is, you know, valuable, or is that just private, that I should maybe work on some healing, or maybe I should get some help, or maybe I should spend time with Jesus to, you know, really understand what's going on, or maybe I should really care about my spouse and protect, you know, not sharing that until we've kind of worked that out a little bit. I think it has. I think we have to ask ourselves what. What's the motive? What's the heart behind what's happening here, what we're doing?

And yeah, I mean, sometimes I hide the good in my own life because I don't want to look like I'm bragging or I don't want people to judge me or I don't want other people to feel left out, which I know can sometimes be good. But it can also be shame based where, I don't know, like, we tend to feel bad when we feel good.

And so sometimes we hide the good and only show the bad. So it's like, if we aren't envying because we want something we don't have, we're feeling shame because we finally have what we always wanted.

And so it kind of feels like shame is the second cousin to envy. Like, if. If we're feeling really good about our life, we almost feel ashamed of it. Like, oh, well, maybe, I guess.

Or if we're feeling discontent, we feel envious and it feels like we camp in one or the other. And we can't just be like, he, this is where I'm at and this is real. And it's okay to be in this place and not have shame and not have envy.

Yes, it makes perfect sense.

When I wish I had what others have, I feel, like, ashamed. I'm wondering, how have you fought shame and found the invitation that sort of stands there in the midst of. Midst of what you have?

And how are you finding contentment there is what I'm trying to ask.

For me, gratitude opens the door to contentment every single time. Being grateful for what I have, finding new ways to use what I have, to share what I have to share.

Gifts with others and to see others gifts and the beautiful things that they do, whether it's a beautiful picture they made for their Instagram or a Beautiful blog post they made for Pinterest or a beautiful something in their home. To appreciate that with gratitude opens that door to that content, peaceful place in my heart where I can truly.

I can truly say, like, if I have nothing more than what I have right now, like, this is enough. Like, I can. I can have access to the gifts of other people by way of being grateful and being curious and caring about what's going on in their life.

And I. You know, I was at a point in my life where I wanted to learn about decorating, and I read some books, talked to some people.

Rather than looking at a beautiful picture and saying, oh, I can't do that, I was like, well, what if I practice and try to learn, and maybe that person who knows how to do that would want to actually teach me, you know, and maybe that would be something that I think would be cool to learn, not like I would need to. But when we're grateful for the things and our heart is at content, it's content and that peace, we have the ability to learn and grow, and we could.

You know, we can be appreciative and. But I think. I don't know.

I think that's what I'm trying to say is whether it's waking up every morning and saying, these are the five things I'm grateful for, or at nighttime, you know, saying our bedtime prayers, we can say, lord, thank you for these things, or thank you for these things. And somebody else that I see that I love that protects my heart from being in that place where I want to envy them.

Yeah, I love that. Celebrating what others have. I think that's a really spiritually mature place to get to where we can sell.

I mean, scripture calls us to mourn with those who mourn and celebrate with those who celebrate.

And sometimes we might be mourning something in our own life, but to be able to thank God for what someone else has that we don't, that's a really healthy place to be.

Yes, absolutely.

And I love what Hebrews Hebrews 13:5 says, Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Because God has said, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.

And this kind of charge, their contentment, comes from God, not from our perfect house or a perfect marriage, perfect kitchen, our perfect body. How are you inviting your girls into fighting that battle of being content with who they are and what they have now and not what the world's telling.

Them that they need every day?

I just had somebody yesterday who was asking me like, is there this pressure of fame when it comes to social media or I'm not sure I could ever deal with that or whatever. And we had this conversation and I went, wow.

Like I just started talking about like how it's so important to realize that the work of our life is built from small things and from faithful things. And we start talking about it, we go, oh yeah, faithful, faithful over fame. Like when we, when our time, our time on earth is like a slice of time.

And I think when we get to the other side of things, we're going to look back and say, oh my gosh, didn't realize how much these small things really mattered. And doing the small everyday things make such a huge impact. I was sharing, I was actually got emotional a couple of days ago.

I was sharing how I was reorganizing my pantry to get ready for back to school. And it looked pretty. Like it looked pretty and I liked it and it was a pretty picture.

But I opened up my daughter's lunchbox when I was putting it in its spot and inside she had saved all the lunch notes that I gave her from last year. And it was just like this big wad of mess notes.

And rather than continue to show the beautiful, like, okay, if you put the lunch boxes, stack them this way, doesn't that look pretty on the shelf?

I let myself get teary eyed and I told them, like, I don't think that we realize how much our children are impacted by the small everyday things that we do. Like it's kind of, you know, just a small little thing. Just put a note in her little lunchbox.

She was a kindergartener last year and the fact that she saved them and cherished them and when I showed them to her, she wanted to keep, keep them went, oh my gosh, like I don't care where you put your lunchbox on the shelf. When our kids, when our kids connect to the small, faithful ways that we use our life, that's.

That kind of faithfulness keeps us focused on what matters and what will matter in the end. When it comes down to it, at the end of the day our children are going to remember the small everyday things that we did for them.

And when I took a picture for social media, I didn't just show the pantry and where I put the lunch boxes on this nice shelf, but I showed the picture of the lunchbox with the notes and shared, you know, easy ways to or pre made lunch notes that you just, you know, would be easy or simple or ways.

But highlighting these Small faithful things that I think we're going to look back and say that really mattered and that that was the most important thing that happened.

I love that challenge of. Or even it can become a mantra like faithful over fame. I love that.

Like, how are you called to be faithful over being famous today and, and inviting our daughters into fighting the battle of be you, not her. That's what I say a lot around here is like, you're called to be Brooke, you're not called to be Jenny or Christy or anyone else.

And I know that there's so many women follow you and look to you and want to emulate you, but surely you must also often struggle with looking at other people and going, oh, but I, I want to do this or I want to be like this or you know, I'm sure you struggle with envy like, you know, anyone else does. What are you finding is, are your tools to help get you unstuck when you go to that place? Place.

Yeah, there's no doubt about that. Because when we're human like we, we all struggle with those things.

I, I was reading just a couple verses in Proverbs 14, verse 27 says, Fear of the Lord is a life giving fountain. It offers escape from the snares of death. For me, fear of the Lord, which is such a powerful theme in all of the book of Proverbs.

To me, fear of the Lord in opposition to fear of man.

We're always offered that opportunity to trust in man, to trust in man made things, to trust in the world that man's hands have built to things that are made, they come from the heart of man. But when we idolize men, we will also fear them. And it keeps us trapped in this place.

It's only death for our hearts, for our soul spiritual condition. But when we put our hope in the Lord and we fear the Lord, that's where the life comes.

That's where we're offered that gift of it says a life giving fountain. And that, that to me when I'm focusing on.

And I just the other day, I mean sometimes I can be like, move to tears like, oh my gosh, everybody's liking all their pictures and their post and saying all these nice things and, and nobody cared about my post today, which is so silly. But I was in that place of being like, it's envy and looking at that and going, wait, that was where I was idolizing man.

And man made things like Instagram and what's God's heart for me? God's heart for me is that Today that picture was just a picture of my kitchen. And today I will have mouths to feed. I will have kids to hug.

I will have shoelaces to tie. I will have lunches to pack. And those notes in the lunchbox, those little shoes, those wiping this down, those.

Whatever, those are the things where God has called me to. Those are the places. Those are the people that he's called me to serve and has nothing to do with the men.

That are the women in this case that I'm envying. That's not what they're called to, you know, or maybe they're called to it, but in their own lane, you know.

And so really, just for me, getting out of that trap meant, like, how can I value what is faithful for me? How can I value what is God actually calling me to today? And how can I do that?

Well, but getting to that place where it's like, rooted in the fear of the Lord and my heart is, is fixated on him, that always pulls me out.

I love that because I think so often we as women are comparing our callings, whether it's, you know, stay at home moms comparing themselves to working moms, and working moms comparing themselves to stay at home moms. And it just, there's always this sort of, like, comparison of an envy. And to go back and be reminded of, am I, I.

Am I being faithful to what God has called me to do? Because I'm, I'm called to live out my life, not her life.

And I, I love that you remind yourself of that and that you invite us into that same reminder. I interviewed Shauna Nyquist, which we will, we will air soon. And she talked about a season of struggling with being jealous of a friend.

And it was that experience that helped her realize envy, as she kind of talks about, is a great opportunity to ask yourself, what am I longing for? And I love the question she poses herself and invites us to ask of ourselves.

And I'm wondering, Brooke, in the work that you do with women, what do you think at the heart of it we are longing for?

I think when I think about myself, and so if I talk about me sometimes or in that situation that I gave about, like this picture of somebody's kitchen that did so. This post that did so well on Instagram, in my kitchen post that was a flop. I was craving and longing for an affirmation.

I was really wanting to be loved and encouraged and affirmed. And I realized that at the core, that affirmation can only come from God. That that craving that I have for love, man's love will always fall short.

Even as awesome as my husband is, we still have seasons that we struggle in our marriage or difficult days where I'm not feeling love. Even as good, as humanly possible as our relationships can be at times, our love will always fall short of God's love.

And so I. I don't know about others, how other women perceive it, but I do think that it's.

I do think at the core that we all want to be loved and we want to be maybe liked but affirmed and encouraged and valued like people know who they see our worth. I don't know that man can ever come close to the way that God made us and the way that he sees us and the way that he.

That he will pour out his love for us and chase us down with his goodness every day. So when I'm in a place that I'm reminding myself of that, that is so powerful.

I like that you admit what we all know is true, that when you did this post about your kitchen and you say it was a flop, that you realized you were looking for affirmation. I think isn't that true that we're all looking for that?

And maybe a good question to ask ourselves when we're feeling disappointed by how, how things are going when we look at other people's success and our flops is, am I looking for affirmation in the right place? You know, because then if we can recognize we're not, we can pull ourselves out of. Of that place.

The wisdom and proverbs says a heart at peace gives life to the body. And so you can kind of evaluate, you know, if your spirit is down, if your body is down, what's going on.

Is, is this due to the ro bones from envy in comparison?

I'm wondering as we come to a close today, because you and I could talk forever, but what is your best advice for people listening for grasping a heart at peace so the envy never takes hold.

I like to say that maybe having a well crafted routine at home brings peace.

Or maybe, you know, setting up your life and your world in a way that works for you, or really loving your nighttime routine or having a babysitter occasionally so you can have breaks and have self care. All those things do bring a certain level of peace. Maybe. But at the core, everything we need is found in Him. And Jesus is.

He calls himself the Prince of Peace. I'm more aware than ever that the things happening around us and in us just totally pale in comparison to what he wants to do. Through us.

And so for me, like inviting Jesus into the places that have chaos and letting him bring the order that they need might look different than what I would think might look different than what I think that I even need. I think in a self care obsessed culture and world and even Christian culture, our soul may need therapy, but it may also need Jesus.

And I don't think we can replace any things that would bring peace, whether it's organizing a space or transforming, transforming a room that is really chaotic because it's over cluttered and donating things and decluttering and getting rid of things and reorganizing. That brings a great measure of peace. Peace. But at the end of the day, like, our hearts are made to be at one with him.

And the reason that we can have peace in our world and in our life and we can administer peace to others and to our space and to our world is because of Him. So I. So I keep landing there. I just keep landing there. That.

That your peaceful heart is a grateful heart, is a content heart, is a heart that invites Jesus in and walks with him daily and finds places of chaos and says, jesus, come here now and bring your peace and your order and how you order your world. Help me to order my world. And I don't know anywhere else to find peace. I really don't.

I love those closing words. Those are beautiful.

Brooke, thank you so much for being with me me on the podcast and I really want women to know how can they connect with you, where can they find your book? Where are you on social so that they can be blessed by the work that you do.

Well, thank you so much for having me, first of all. And I just value you so much and the work that you're doing and I'm so glad we get to hang out in real life too.

And you cook for me and it's delicious. I love that.

I'm gonna make my way to Texas one day, I promise.

I would love to. I would love to have you. I. I have. And in recent recently, you don't find me showing up on Facebook very much.

So best way for you to find me is on Instagram. I'm there almost daily. Posting and on Stories is where you get my heart. And so I hope to see you there. If you find me there, please message me.

I always say, please feel free to unfollow, but if you're here, be my friend. Let's be friends over followers. Let's connect, ask questions, be helpful. I'll always respond. And so we're there. On Instagram every single day.

And I occasionally post on the blog daily. I post on an app called like to Know it, which is just fun and helpful.

And you'll find fun and helpful things there, like my favorite sheets from Amazon prime or what we're wearing or what we're doing with the kids or whatever. So you can find me on those places. I have a website, brooksaylor.com and I hope to meet some of you in those places.

That's awesome. Thank you so much, Brooke. For those of you that are listening, you can find us on Instagram, Collide, and on Facebook as Collide Women.

We're also on Pinterest and you can check out our website at wecollide.net

I'm so glad that you joined us on the podcast today, and we'll catch you next week.