1.1: Five More Minutes

What if the moments we're rushing through are the very ones we'll someday wish we could get back?

In the very first episode of Things We Don’t Say, Nicole invites you into an ordinary morning—the snooze button, the unfinished plans, the cold coffee, and the interruptions that feel inconvenient in the moment.

Maybe the ordinary moments aren't interruptions at all. Maybe they're invitations—to slow down, pay attention, and notice the people and stories right in front of us.

Sometimes the words come later. And sometimes... all it takes is five more minutes.

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Every morning I tell myself, "Tomorrow's gonna be different. Tomorrow I'm gonna wake up before my kids, I'm gonna spend my time with God, I'm gonna exercise, I'm gonna drink my coffee while it's still hot, and I'm gonna be patient," and that is the biggest one too. I am going to be patient. I'll be the mom that I want to be, I'm gonna be that woman that I hope to be, and I'm really gonna be that person that I strive to be every single day. And almost every single morning, none of that happens. Instead, somewhere between my alarm clock and that first sip of coffee, there's these four little girls who end up all piled into my bed, most of the time right on top of me. And I'm thinking to myself, "Please, please, for the love of God, please just give me five more minutes." And they're thinking, "Mom, I just wanna be with you." And isn't that interesting? Because if you ask me what I want most in the world, I'd always tell you it's them. They're these children that I prayed years to have, the children that I begged God for, and they're the children that I thought might never come. And yet, in one of the most ordinary moments of my day, I somehow find myself not wanting the very thing I once would have given anything to have. And I don't think I'm the only one, either. I think that's one of the things we don't say Welcome to The Things We Don't Say. I'm Nicole. I spent a lot of my life paying attention. I've paid attention to people, to stories, to conversations, to the moments that seem ordinary at the time, but somehow stay with us long after they're over. Because life is full of things we don't say. The grief we don't know how to explain, struggles behind the words, "I'm fine," questions we carry, fears that we don't want to admit, parenting moments that humble us, marriage lessons that we all learn the hard way, friendships that change us, seasons that are shaping us, and sometimes the ordinary moments that end up meaning the most. Each week, we'll have authentic conversations about motherhood, marriage, friendship, family, mental health, everyday life. Sometimes it'll be me. Sometimes I'll invite my friends and other guests to join the conversation. But my hope is always the same. My hope is this, that together we'll learn to notice what's happening beneath the surface and to recognize that there's this bigger picture that's out there. We'll find meaning in the ordinary, and ultimately, I really wanna behold God's goodness and glory in the everyday moments of life. I really hope that you can try and do the same. I'm glad you're here. Welcome to The Things We Don't Say. The words come later. I love you. I love you, Mommy I don't know if you've heard the words I love you anytime lately, but can I just say that my most favorite thing in the world is listening to one of my kids or my husband or even my mom telling me that they love me. And there's-- I, I just believe so strongly that there's something created inside of each of us that just is yearning to be loved and that we were created to love others. And so if you're coming on here, and it's been a while since you've heard the words I love you, I'm gonna tell you right now, and I hope that you believe it because I genuinely mean it, that I love you. And I've loved people for as long as I can remember, even without meeting them, because there's just something about being with another person and being given the opportunity to build them up that fills me up. I think that's where this whole idea of doing a podcast came from in the first place. I started out loving people from the time that I was really young, just wanting to connect with them, wanting to be with them, wanting to be helpful and listen. And so if you were to go and ask my parents, they would not at all be surprised to know that I ended up choosing, different jobs or careers that allowed me to just reign on empathy with other people. They probably also would not be surprised that I am now doing something where I get to sit and talk with people because that's what I have always loved to do. And honestly, I hope that I'm making them proud since they paid thousands and thousands of dollars to put me through school so that I could be professionally trained in how to sit and talk to people. That's why I'm here. That's why I now have this place where I can just go and unpack all the things that are going on in my head because I know through all of that, that others have a lot of things that are going on in their heads too. And what I'm finding more and more every day is that we have the same stuff going on in our heads. And so I wanna talk about what's going on in my head right now. I have four kids. I know not everybody can relate to that. You may be listening to this and not have any kids. You may be listening to this, you have one kid and your kid is grown and starting a family of their own. However, I think something that all of us can agree on is that life goes really fast. And my kids right now, they're growing up really fast. Time is a thief, right? We hear that all the time. I have twins who are seven and a half, and we prayed long and hard for them. My husband and I, we went through infertility, and so when we finally got pregnant with our twins, It was like God was giving us this big, huge chocolate bar, and he had a bow wrapped around it and this sign that said, "Hey, I've seen what you've gone through, and I've seen how you've used this, your struggles with infertility. And so I'm gonna trust you with these baby girls, and I'm gonna watch you and enable you to go and do amazing things with them so that they can go and do amazing things with others." And so we've never taken for granted these gifts that God's given us. And in fact, we have considered it an even bigger blessing when then a couple years later, He chose us to be the parents of another little girl, our Robbie. And Robbie, she's named after my dad. My dad died in 2017, and she's just like him in all the ways with a little extra spunk. And she starts kindergarten this fall. It's breaking my heart into a million pieces But thank goodness God gave us one more, and that's our Pippa girl. We call her Pip Pip. We're the only ones allowed to call her Pip Pip, and she is clearly the baby of the family and teaching us all sorts of metaphors for life simply because she's a toddler, and she's just an absolute joy to have, just like her name, Pippa Joy. And so this whole idea of saying the days are long, the years are short, we're living so much of this right now. I'm gonna tell you, because of these four little girls, every single day looks different in my life. But one thing that always remains the same is that I am not a morning person by any means, and I have all intention of getting up early, and I wanna be awake before my kids because I know that I can be the best Nicole that I could possibly be when I have my alone time. And so I like to set my alarm at five o'clock every morning. You may have just heard that and shrieked, um, but I do this for a reason. I-- it sits across the room from me, and it's there with a purpose because when it goes off, it forces me to get up, it forces me to get out of bed, and I'm forced to go and turn it off. However, I married the most amazing man in the world who hears my alarm going off, and he knows deep down I really don't want to get out of bed, and so he'll go, and he'll hit snooze for me, and then that gives me a whole extra nine minutes before I have to then get up and go hit the snooze button for him so that he gets his extra nine minutes 'cause he doesn't wanna get up either. And that's what makes us a team, right? It's like this beauty in having a life partner. And, and so we're laying in bed. Neither one of us is really talking yet. But we like to have this time in the morning so we can reconnect with one another. And it hasn't always been like this, but we believe in investing in our relationship so that we can come together, um, as a stronger team for our family. And so we try and set aside like ten minutes or so every morning where we just kinda walk through what our day is gonna look like. And he usually starts it, um, again, 'cause I'm not a morning person, and he'll start it saying something like, "Oh, you know, what do you have going on today?" And I'll tell him, and then we'll kinda work through logistics. "Are you gonna meet us at soccer?" Or, you know, whatever it is. Sometimes it's, "Hey, I really need this from you because X, Y, and Z." And so the whole idea is that it should be a fairly quick check-in but that it's something that would keep us locked in step together and on the same page and the same team for our family. It's this intentional time of connection. And, and so we have this conversation. Sometimes it ends up being more like 18 minutes because of the nine minutes of snoozing, and then, and then I'm supposed to get up, and I'm supposed to go. And I'm supposed to do my prayer time. I'm supposed to go downstairs and start my exercising because I have this really long Peloton streak that I just don't wanna give up. Um, but what really happens, since I don't wanna give it up, is that I start my phone on a meditation, and there you go. I keep my streak. You know, streaks are important. We're going through these mornings, and my kids, they have these lights on their sound machines. I don't know if any of, of you guys sleep with a sound machine, but um, man, for kids, it's like life-changing. So anyways, the, the little ones have sound machines. They know their colors and that they're supposed to wait until their light turns green. And the twins, they have an alarm clock, so Alexa will come in and tell them, "Okay, good morning. Get up. Get dressed. Make your bed. Brush your teeth." And so they have these tasks that they're supposed to be doing every day, um, before they come in and they say good morning to us. You know, we're not going by our usual routine, but they're supposed to wait in their rooms until they have those triggers. And goodness gracious, they come into my room, and sometimes Trey and I are still laying in bed talking because at that point we've now snoozed for 54 minutes because, again, multiples of nine. And I'm like, uh, also, like, snooze buttons, why nine minutes, right? That's a different episode, different day. But the kids, they come into our bed, and I'm always like, "Stop. No, no, no. This is my time with your dad. Please get out." And to be honest, that probably sounds way nicer than I actually say it because, again, I'm not a morning person. But they come, they get in bed with us, and I just get mad. And so Elsie, she's seven and a half, and she's like, "Hey, Mom, did you have your coffee yet?" Because she knows, she recognizes that I'm just not a morning person. I'm not myself yet. Now, though, we're at a point where my husband, he just brings me coffee in bed because he knows that I want and I crave that alone time. About a year and a half ago, we made the decision to homeschool one of the twins, and this past year I ended up homeschooling both of them. And so something that I've lost is alone time. And actually, I don't know, maybe that's more of a perspective thing. It's not that I've lost it. I should be looking at it more as that I've gained time with my girls, more time to connect with them. But one thing that I miss a lot is the alone time that I used to have. And so, so I catch myself. I'm getting mad at my kids who just wanna come, and they wanna be with me. They, they wanna be with me before they do any other part of their day. They just wanna come, and they want to breathe me in, and they wanna connect with me. And I have to remember, you know, if you don't have any kids, this might be kind of foreign to you, but when they're first newborns, you know, you, you have your newborn baby at home with you, and you're holding them, and it's like the smell of mom just immediately calms them when they're upset or whatever. It's like you give them a bottle, and they just immediately, "Ah." And, and it's just this feeling of they sink into you. And Even as the kids get older, they hurt themselves or they have hurt feelings and they come to you and they hug you and you just feel them sink into you because they've achieved that connection. And I have to remind myself these days are going by really quickly and they just crave to be with me the way that they did when they were babies or now as older kids when they have those moments. They crave it at 6.38 in the morning or whatever time that multiple of nine is and I'm just sitting there thinking I really want my alone time. And so it's such an adjustment and I don't know that I'll ever fully get it because like one, I'm not nice at all and two, I probably smell bad and I'm probably not showered. And so the fact that they want to be with me, I don't know that I'll ever fully get it. But so, okay, here's the thing that we don't say. We say that our kids are growing up too fast or that life is just going by too fast, but sometimes we're okay with that because we want to just sit and have that one cup of coffee in peace instead of going from one thing to the next thing to the next thing. Something I believe and something that we're instilling in our kids, if you know me, I'm very open about it. I'm a Jesus follower. And so if that's not where you are, don't turn me off yet because I think everybody can get on the same page with this, whether you believe in a higher being or not. We want to be known as kind and we want our kids to be known as kind kids. We want to be known as generous and we want our kids to be generous and we want to be known as patient and we want to be known as loving and all of these things, right? And as a Jesus follower, we believe that we've been created in the image of God, God the Father, and that's who he is. He is kind and generous and patient and loving among many, many other qualities and attributes. If we're honest, this is something that we wouldn't say. If we're honest, okay, the people we love the most often get the version of us that's running on empty and that's not who God created us to be. He created us to be generous with our time with others so that we could connect with them. Maybe underneath it all, we're trying. We're trying to be that good mom and, and that kind woman, that devoted person, the good dads, the good spouses, good friends, neighbors, and just, just really good, generous people. And we're all trying to become this person that we hope we are. We sit in this moment of who we want to be and who we are in the moment, but they feel miles apart. I don't want my girls to remember a mom who always needed one more minute or five more minutes for that matter. When Pippa comes in and she says, "I love you. I love you, Mommy," I want her to remember more than anything that I noticed her and that I delighted in her and that I made room to connect with her. And the irony isn't lost on me. These are the children that I prayed for. These are the children that I begged God on my knees for. They're the children I didn't know if I would ever get to hold, and now they're climbing on me in my bed before sunrise, before that cup of coffee. And they're not asking for toys. They're not asking for screens. They're not asking for anything that money could buy. They just want me and a chance to connect with me. I think that's what all of us want. We want this feeling that we're loved. We don't need more success, more stuff. We don't need another perfectly planned morning. I think what we really want is a, is a moment where we can connect with someone else to be noticed for the person that we've been created to be. Whether that's being kind or generous, we want to connect so that we know our presence matters, and that we know it matters more than what we're doing in the moment. I think we know deep down people matter. I started noticing this in our home, and because I'm a reflective person, I realized that I've been seeing the same longing everywhere. You know, when we were walking through our infertility, I had this blog. Um, I act- I started this blog when I was in my twenties. It's called Nicole Beholds, and it was a place for me to just unpack a lot of the stuff that I was going through when I was meeting and loving on people. And so whether that was in the church that I was working at at the time or people I was meeting in grad school and in my internships, um, and when I was doing school counseling. So we're walking through this infertility journey, and it's very lonely. It's like it's, it's this silent and secret journey that you're on with these constant disappointments. And I'll talk more about our infertility journey later in a future episode. But what we learned in that and through publishing these blog posts was that there's community everywhere and a chance to connect with anyone. And there's the other thing that I wholeheartedly believe in is that we've been created for community, for connection, and that's why it matters so much for us to feel loved. There's this whole thing in culture, and I've been guilty of it because I say, "Oh, I need my alone time. I, I need that alone time so I can be the best Nicole that I can be. Self-care." Um, but I can't honestly do that alone because the whole reason I want that is for my kids and this opportunity for connection that I've been given in my home or out in their extracurricular activities where we're interacting with other families, or even in our community at church. And so this whole idea that culture is giving us, not just moms, but you need to do this, you need your self-care, you need to take care of yourself first, it kinda, it ends up neglecting this whole idea of connection. And so here's the other thing that we don't say. Do we really need that? Do we need that to be kind? Or is it really that we just need commitment and more dedication because that's the person we really want to be? I've realized. There's loneliness inside of doing life for ourselves. How beautiful is it that my kids don't care my smell or my mood and they just want to be with me? How beautiful is it that our spouses of 10, 11, 15, 17 years want to spend time with us, right? Think about it. If you're married, if you've been married for a long time, do you crave that connection? And so here's what I'm learning. It's really defeating to think that I would choose the alternative. But here, it's so beautiful because it's not a huge failure. It's not a loss of an opportunity that I can't just try and make better the next time I think that's really important to recognize because do we need that, that alone time to sit in that loneliness, to take an extra moment out of our day in order to be loving and kind to somebody else? Or to take those five more minutes out of our day for someone that we already love to meet their longing for connection with us That's the thing we don't say. Okay, so if you're an introvert, you might be listening thinking, "Uh..." And I haven't forgotten you, because you need to know you are my people. Even more so, we, the introverts, long for connections. We're not rejecting community. We're rejecting shallow interactions. I think that's, that's one of the reasons why I've just delved into this whole idea of loving others, so that I have a chance to, to get into a deeper, more connected relationship or friendship. The thing we don't say, this is actually for us introverts, we still long to be deeply known and deeply loved and understood and safe, and mostly connected, even if it's only to a few people. That's still community. In fact, some of the deepest community I've experienced has been with other introverts, because they often prefer depth over breadth. And so the language simply becomes this. We're made for connection. Connection can happen whether you're an introvert or extrovert. It can happen with one person, your partner, your roommate, your best friend, your child. It can happen with God or in a, a Bible study group or a book club. It can happen with a stranger in a meaningful conversation. It can happen with a podcast host who makes you feel understood. And I'm not necessarily saying that we need more socialization. We have these friends. They're our very best friends who we just adore. And actually it wasn't until I was in the hospital when we had Pippa and my mother-in-law had met them at dance. The kids were in preschool together. They were also at dance together. And she had called Trey and I and she said, I just met the most amazing guy. And I just know you're going to have so much in common with him and his family. The girls, we saw them at preschool. And so she's just telling us. And I'm looking at Trey and we get off the phone. I'm like, Trey, we don't have time for more friends. We have all our friends at church. We just had a baby. How are we going to form this new friendship? But I am so glad that we gave it a chance because now they're some of our best friends and we connected, right? It just happened. And I'm just saying we noticed it. We noticed this opportunity. And obviously I was reluctant and we all laugh about the story now. But Trey was like, no, I really think she's right. We're going to hit it off with them. Almost like dating, right? But the moral of the story is we were created for connection. And that's why feeling seen and known and loved so much matters. We found our best friends just by stopping among our busy life and all the activities, including a brand new baby, and have some of the best friends that we've ever had since we've been married. Every person that we encounter has a story. They had their story, we had our story, but when our stories intersected, man, what a beautiful friendship that was birthed out of that. And so it doesn't require somebody to be an introvert or an extrovert. It really just requires for us to pay attention, to have this awareness of other people's humanity There's a really fine line. Uh, one of the things that I've noticed, and it's actually really sad, is that there's so many people who are seeking approval, and they're getting that confused with connection. And as I've kind of sat and I've watched and all these different people that I've encountered along the way, I don't know if it's just discernment, but there's this sense that there's always an ulterior motive, and that's the ugliness that the seeking of approval brings out. And I think there's a lot of stuff underneath that, probably like some insecurity that goes back to where we were in middle school and this constant need to, am I doing the right thing? Am I cool enough? Is this how I'm supposed to dress? All those kinds of things, when in reality, everybody's going through that, and that's what we could have connected on in the first place. So that's something else that I could totally go off on a tangent on. If you're a guy listening to this, you probably are like, "I, I don't care about approval at all." But if you're a woman listening to this, then the whole idea of insecurity, it's kind of resonating, and hello, we are connecting over that. And so what it just boils down to is recognizing that we all have this longing in ourselves, and we begin to see it in everyone else too, and that's where the opportunities open up for the deeper connections. It's those little itty-bitty moments when our stories get to intersect with someone else's story, and it's like these fireworks are going off because we celebrate that we've been able to give love, and we feel celebrated because we've just connected with somebody else. I think those fireworks, they're going off because we've become a part of this beautiful space and this great opportunity for us to be the things we're longing to be, genuinely seen and genuinely known That's why these ordinary moments, they matter so, so much. Not because they're extraordinary in themselves, but because they're really shaping us and allowing us to model it for those around us. The thing we don't say, we can't rush through it. It's the way we interact with people in general, your roommate, your spouse, the Starbucks barista. It's the way we notice or fail to notice the people around us. Those small moments help cultivate the people that we are becoming, and that's how we're gonna look at life together. So this week, before you rush past another ordinary moment, maybe give it five more minutes. Five more minutes to listen, five more minutes to notice, five more minutes to ask one more question. Five minutes to look someone in the eyes instead of at your phone. Five more minutes to sit on the edge of your child's bed. Five more minutes to call your mom because I have a feeling that's what we're really longing for. It's not more time, it's more connection, and that's where the love is found. Love isn't usually revealed in life's biggest moments. It's revealed in the ordinary moments that we choose. We shouldn't be rushing through that. We should be rushing to find connection instead. So pay attention. I know that I already have since I've put this all together, and maybe that's all it takes. Pay attention to the interruptions. Pay attention to the conversations, to these ordinary moments that you might be tempted to rush past because there just might be something waiting to be seen. At its heart, The Things We Don't Say is about helping people recognize that there's always more going on beneath the surface of everyday life. It's about paying attention. It's about meaning. It's about beholding the bigger picture hidden inside ordinary moments. Because often, the things we don't say reveal the things that matter most. Thanks for listening