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.
Watch Now
Transcription
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? All of these things that we’ve talked about in theory on this podcast, we have actually had to live out in real life. 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. 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, 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 plan 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, but we’re so thrilled to be able to come back for the fall and winter of 2025. As we prepare to finish our False Teaching and Ancient Heresies series and then launch a new series in 2026, 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, 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. 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. 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. So back In April of 2025, we had been producing this new series on false Teaching on ancient heresies. And at the beginning of April, our area of the country, Northern Michigan, was hit with a massive ice storm. It was an unprecedented thing.
First time in a hundred 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 a Category 5 hurricane, staying in one place for three days. So the damage was atrocious, both to our farm and to the surrounding areas. And we spent around 80 hours just cleaning up our farm alone. Not to mention all the work that was done helping other people in our area to recover from that storm. 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, that we knew we had to take a step back from something in order to handle everything that was on our plate.
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. 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 apart. And that’s when we really started to say, okay, this secondary infertility is actually a bigger issue than we realized. We’d never struggled with this before.
We need to try to get help. And so in the Latter Half of 2024, I went through four rounds of fertility medication, letrozole, 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 for us in regard to 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, we have ethical objections to in vitro fertilization, so that was not something that we would have pursued. 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. 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.
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. 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 and also run the podcast. So the podcast took a backseat while we completed those obligations. 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. 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, weren’t sure how the story would end, 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 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 messages and your emails and how you all have encouraged us in these last nine months of walking this path. 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, this stress of trying to handle everything for the ministry, 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 help, as far as we’re able, help sustain this little life.
And so as we were kind of looking forward to the year, again, very cautiously optimistic regarding whether or not our child would live. Around the ninth week of the pregnancy, I got this message from a sweet follower reader of mine who did not know, because we had not announced anything, did not know that I was pregnant. And in her message, she very humbly said, hey, Phylicia, I had this dream. I feel kind of weird bringing it to you. I feel, you know, I don’t want to hurt you or trigger you 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 we were going to the doctor to see if the baby would live or die. And in the dream, 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 doesn’t know. She prayed for this baby, for this, this child. And she said the baby lived. And you named her Oliveira, 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, when the water had receded and the ark is sitting there, he sends out a dove. And the dove goes out twice. 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. So again, at the time that this dream was sent to us, you know, we had not shared publicly that we were pregnant. We were still really struggling with that kind of cautious optimism. And maybe it wasn’t even optimism. Maybe it was actually kind of cynicism, to be honest, like trying to pray for 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 cancer diagnosis, you don’t always know 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 praying in faith, but also open handed. And so when she sent this dream to us, 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. 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, 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 to and begin to pray in accordance with what she had received from the Lord, to pray for the life of this child.
And that’s what her dream said. We held that loosely. You know, we’re gonna wait on the Lord and see what he says, check everything against scripture. And at the 20 week ultrasound, we found out we were having a girl. And her name will be Olivera, 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 is willing to obey God and share what his voice had said, even when it was a risky thing to do. 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, onto 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 it truly reflects the heart of the ministry that we’re trying to do. 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 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, 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. 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. This has been a more difficult pregnancy than any of my other pregnancies. And all of this to say that, and I’m sharing this with you again to give, I think, more of a personalized look at 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 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 build up their faith 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. 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, 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. 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 up build us, especially in our hardest times. 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. 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 deeply, deeply blessed to get to serve you in this way. And as we’re moving forward and we’re kind of planning what we are going to do 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? What would you like to hear more about? As we continue to develop our series and begin to develop new resources, 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 kind, who truly love you and who look at your emails and your messages and your comments and discern how we can 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 what would serve you best in this space. 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.
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 buy 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, 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. We would love to have you join us. You can check that out@verityconference.com 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 2020, 2026. Thank you as always for listening to the 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. 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.
Hey Verity Podcast listeners. It’s Zach Smith, your friendly EWAT, videographer, photographer, etc. Etc. 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 at 4:06 in the morning. 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. God is good and we have her in Josh’s arms. The journey that it took to get here is incredible and I cannot 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. Olivera Hope Masenheimer born. After all of that, I want to extend a huge praise to God after all of this. Miracles do happen and we were all along for the ride. Thank you for being faithful listeners.
Those of you who are new, welcome. We look forward to joining you for the Verity Podcast and Verity Conference for the next year. In the meantime, God bless.