Do You Feel Overlooked? Encouragement from the Most Overlooked Women of the Bible [Podcast Transcript

Title: Do You Feel Overlooked? Encouragement from the Most Overlooked Women of the Bible

Podcast Date: April 4, 2025

Listen Here: 

Description

Heather is joined by Mary DeMuth, speaker, podcast host, and author of more than thirty books including her latest, "The Most Overlooked Women of the Bible." (Amazon affiliate link.)

Heather and Mary talk about how feeling overlooked can connect to aging and why and how we may feel we're losing our "shine" as we get older. Mary offers encouragement around being honest about the grief and loss of aging and discusses the helpful tool of lament. Mary also shares stories of some of her favorite overlooked women from the Bible and what we can learn from them.

Listen to other conversations with Mary DeMuth here:

Leah and Misunderstood Women of the Bible: https://omny.fm/shows/compared-to-who/leah-and-other-misunderstood-women-of-bible-feat-m

 Body Image and Sexual Abuse: https://omny.fm/shows/compared-to-who/body-image-sexual-abuse-hope-healing-resources-for

Connect with Compared to Who? and get our Aging April resource plus other freebies - like the new Mirror Fast Bible Study, here: https://wwwimprovebodyimage.com

Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is AI-generated and has not been edited for accuracy or clarity.

Heather Creekmore [00:00:02]:

Life audio. Hey there. Heather Creekmore here.

Mary Demuth [00:00:05]:

Thanks for listening to the Compare To You podcast today. Have you ever felt overlooked? Have you ever felt unseen? Goodness. We're in aging April, and I feel like this is part of the aging process. But maybe you've never connected the dots to that. Maybe you've just always felt overlooked. Today, I'm talking to my good friend, Mary Demuth. She's an author. She's a speaker.

Mary Demuth [00:00:30]:

She's a wise woman, and she just wrote a book on the most overlooked women in the bible. And today, we hope to encourage you that even if you feel overlooked, God still has a plan for you. And there's many women in scripture who can relate. Have you gotten your April resource kit yet? Every month, we're putting out a list of great resources for you on the topic of the month this month. Resource kit is all about aging. Make sure you're on our mailing list. Go to improvebodyimage.com. You can sign up there.

Mary Demuth [00:01:01]:

Also, I've got a free mirror fast bible study you can download. It's fifteen days worth of content. Grab it at improvebodyimage.com. Let's be email friends, and

Heather Creekmore [00:01:10]:

then you'll get all this stuff and be in the know all the time.

Mary Demuth [00:01:13]:

Also, our next forty day journey is coming up in June. You can sign up now at improvebodyimage.com. Now let's get to the basics.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:31]:

Mary Demuth, thank you so much for being on the Compare To podcast today.

Mary Demuth [00:01:35]:

It's It's so good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Heather Creekmore [00:01:37]:

Oh, well, it's always fun to talk to you. We've had lots of these conversations and I'll make sure to link in the show notes some of our other great conversations. But today I've invited you on to be part of Aging April. Our favorite thing, right, Mary? Aging. I love it. So excited to be here. But you just wrote a book on the most overlooked women in the Bible, and it just caught my attention because I thought overlooked. I think that's one of our greatest fears Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:02:12]:

When it comes to aging. Like, I think that kind of drives a lot of the other things we decide to do or maybe dream about doing in aging. Right? Because it's like, oh, no one's gonna see me anymore. Mhmm. Anyway, I don't know. Like, I've felt this happening. Like, what's what's your experience been? You obviously wrote a book about overlooked women for a reason. Where are you coming from, Mary?

Mary Demuth [00:02:40]:

Well, let's see. It all started back in junior high at those junior high dances where you're lining the wall, wanting to be unseen but completely seen, and it continues to this day. And I did have an interesting thing happen where we're in a community group with our new church, and one of the daughters came up and said, I want you to go on mission trip because it'd be like having my grandma come.

Heather Creekmore [00:03:02]:

I was like, but she's like, you know, 17 years old. And I'm like, I'm like, I think you're the right age for me to be your grandmother. But it was like heartwarming sentiment. I don't know. She meant it so kindly. And I was

Mary Demuth [00:03:16]:

like, oh,

Heather Creekmore [00:03:17]:

and her parents were like, she's not that old. Oh, no. It's okay.

Mary Demuth [00:03:22]:

But, yes, I think one of the things that I have watched over the years has been the marginalization of the older folks in our church. Yeah. As not even marginalization, but complete and utter dismissal. Mhmm. Like, they don't count and they don't matter. And that just it breaks my heart. I'm I'm grateful. I'm in a congregation now that is of all ages and a beautiful spectrum of humanity, but, that's not always the case.

Mary Demuth [00:03:55]:

And even in our culture, and I'm sure we're gonna talk about this, even in our culture in particular, we value youth in a morbid way. Mhmm. And, and it's a it's a twisted way. And we malign or dismiss those who have so much to offer us in way of wisdom and life experience because they have wrinkles or because they're older than us, and that is absolutely not the heart of the gospel. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:28]:

Agreed. Yeah. As you were talking, I was thinking, and I know you sing. It's I'm trying to think of the last time I was at a church where someone my age or older Yeah. Was part of the worship team. Like, maybe men. Mhmm. But even then, I was actually having a conversation with a woman whose husband is a worship leader, and he was about to turn 40.

Heather Creekmore [00:04:50]:

And she's like, if he doesn't get a job, he's never gonna be able to do it because he'll be aged out. Yeah. I mean, that's odd, isn't it?

Mary Demuth [00:04:59]:

It is. And and that's kind of the projection, and that's it's feeding the problem

Heather Creekmore [00:05:05]:

Yeah.

Mary Demuth [00:05:05]:

That you're working on very hard about, our comparison to others, our feeling like we don't measure up to impossible beauty standards. This kind of thing is, it's rampant in our churches, and that's really sad because it should we should be a winsome, different kingdom minded community that does things different. And I'll say this too that relates to it kind of in a sideways way, but you will understand. When I, as a literary agent, talk with publishers, who have been in both places, whether they've been in the Christian sphere or the New York sphere, they will they will tell me that it's the Christian publishers that are more fame adjacent and more platform obsessed than the normal regular publishers out there. And that to me is a that is an alarm bell. Mhmm. It we should be different, but we're not. And we're worse.

Mary Demuth [00:06:03]:

That's even worse. Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:05]:

Oh, it's interesting, Mary, since you went that direction, we'll get back to aging. You know, even though you and I have this very specific thing in common, like I think it applies to everything career wise or really anything you're trying to pursue. But I was actually, I just said these words last week. Like, I don't know why I'm invisible. And it was because I saw someone online and they're writing a book and it's the first time a book has ever been out on this topic. And I said to a friend, I'm like, I'm in a bore. I don't know why I'm invisible. Right.

Heather Creekmore [00:06:38]:

And and it's true. Like in those moments, like, what what do we do? Like, what do you do with that? I know you've written a lot on Instagram stuff about these feelings. Like, everyone has that that, oh, I don't know how I'm invisible. Why am I invisible feeling? What what do we do with that?

Mary Demuth [00:06:56]:

Part of it is something I'm learning a discipline of is being off socials. And because I think they feed that feeling

Heather Creekmore [00:07:04]:

Absolutely.

Mary Demuth [00:07:05]:

Because I probably wouldn't know that I was being overlooked.

Heather Creekmore [00:07:08]:

Right. That's a good point.

Mary Demuth [00:07:11]:

So there's that. But I have to go back to and, again, I don't do it perfectly by any stretch, but going back to that passage in Corinthians where it says each man's, you know, work is gonna be made evident. There's gonna be wood. There's gonna be hay. There's gonna be stubble. The fire is gonna refine it. And I think a lot of the things that we think are shiny on Earth Mhmm. Are just hay and and straw, and things that we think are hay and straw on this earth are actually gold on the other side.

Mary Demuth [00:07:42]:

And so we have to kind of preach the gospel to ourselves and say, yeah. I'm overlooked. Yeah. The the words that I say don't matter as much as these splashy folks, but I am I being faithful? Am I taking the next right step that God is asking me to do? I'm not gonna hear well done, good and faithful servant from the masses. I'm gonna hear it from one, and that should be the audience I I am most obsessed with.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:09]:

Yeah. That's really good. So what do we do when we want to be faithful and shiny, Mary? Especially as we age, like I would have almost used that word shiny to describe, I think, the feeling, because I think it does feel like, oh, like I'm losing my shininess. It's no longer the Yeah. Like it's not a look over here kind of thing when you walk in the room anymore. And you know, it's funny because I just did this episode and I I I compared it to the the game b s. Right? Have you ever played the bluffing game b s? Now someone told me it was a drinking game. I didn't know that.

Heather Creekmore [00:08:49]:

I went to a little Christian college. I'm surprised if I offended anyone in that. But the you know, we played the card game and you called the s if someone was bluffing. And and I just did this episode where I talked about how so many of us are convinced that we were totally happy with our bodies before. Like, if I could just go back to the body I had ten years ago, then I'd be happy now or twenty years ago, whatever. Right? And so I did this whole thing, like, I call BS. You probably weren't, you know, completely, you know, there and let's kinda go through some diagnostic things. And I kinda think it's the same with aging.

Heather Creekmore [00:09:21]:

Mhmm. Like, I kinda believe that we might have a little bit of revisionist history if that's what we think about how great we felt when we were younger. But it's so hard.

Mary Demuth [00:09:33]:

No. I think you're right. And I think but then I I look back to some pretty interesting, pieces of my life. Like, I I really wouldn't wanna go back to all the sleeplessness of babies. Mhmm. That was really rough.

Heather Creekmore [00:09:47]:

Mhmm.

Mary Demuth [00:09:48]:

And, I was not very happy during that time because I was really

Heather Creekmore [00:09:52]:

grumpy. It's not shiny. Not shiny. Not shiny then.

Mary Demuth [00:09:56]:

Any shine I had was the spit up on me, but it was no shiny. So there I but I do think you're right. I think we I think as we age too, I think at least this is my experience is I I have a little bit of a lament there of the of that I didn't understand what I had in the moment. You know, like, this this regret of I think about the heyday of going back to writing, you know, the Christian writers conferences of the mid two thousands to the, like, twenty tens, '20 fifteens. They were hopping. And it was a really fun atmosphere. But in the moment of it, I didn't think stop, slow down. This is gonna end, and this is not gonna ever happen again.

Mary Demuth [00:10:43]:

And enjoy this moment. And so I think that's part of there's a melancholy in aging of, I wish I would have, you know, just cherish that moment more, lived it more instead of always looking for the next thing, always looking for the next thing.

Heather Creekmore [00:10:58]:

Right. Right. Well, and it's like this drive through our twenties, thirties, even forties. I gotta get there. I gotta get there. I and then it's like, you're there. Yeah. I got there.

Heather Creekmore [00:11:07]:

Is it there? It doesn't look like there. I didn't expect there to be like this. Like, shouldn't there be more balloons or something shiny? Yeah. I I mean, I get I get that too. So you use the word lament. What does that look like for you?

Mary Demuth [00:11:24]:

I teach a workshop to not only writers, but just people with issues, and we all have them, so normal people in the world. And, teach through the lament Psalms, and these are Psalms that David and or others have said, why, Lord? How long, oh, Lord? How long? But they end with praise. I think too often though that if we do write our own lament song, which is what I teach how to do, we wanna jump over to, but I love you Jesus and everything's great and you're so awesome. We need to spend some time naming what we're lamenting. I've I have written a lament song about aging because it is a it's not for the faint of heart. Mhmm. And it is part of your sanctification journey. It doesn't feel good.

Mary Demuth [00:12:09]:

And, it is the art of entropy. You're going from order to disorder, and you're continually going into disordered states. And that's not very much fun. And, you know, recently, just to kind of add to that in this lament space, I have a mom who she did, quote, unquote, everything right in terms of her physical health, and I always really admired her for that. But of late, she is failing in some other areas of her life, and nothing that she could do even though she was very religious about it. Like, she would use religious language around all the things that she would do because she was, like, a good and righteous person to do these right kinds of exercises and eat the right way, and it didn't prevent aging. It she may have a good physical body more than others her age, but there's other issues that have happened. And this I I guess part of me was just, like, kinda mad.

Mary Demuth [00:13:08]:

It's like, well, shoot. I thought if I did all these things, that would prevent this from happening. But there's it's there's you do your best, but you cannot guarantee an outcome by being, quote, unquote, perfect in your exercise and in your eating habits. Right.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:24]:

Yeah. It's a false narrative that we have complete control. Yeah. Yeah. And but I mean, that's, you know, it's like and then it's kind of funny because it's like, it's humorous, although I've fallen for it many times.

Mary Demuth [00:13:37]:

Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:13:38]:

But I will pay someone $99.99 a month or whatever the $99.95. What whatever it is a month to guarantee outcomes that I, we neither one of us has any control or like it's just, it's, it's silly, but I think it does reveal the desperation in our hearts for something. And I do think part of that something is being seen. Right? And and maybe not, like, I think we do confuse what it means to be seen in our culture. Right? Like lots of Instagram likes, like great looking pictures. Right? With being truly seen by God, by others, you know, someone knowing us seeing through our skin, if you will, not in a creepy way, but in a healthy way. Right. But, but the fear is there that unless I look a certain way on the outside, no one will get that close.

Heather Creekmore [00:14:37]:

No one will see me.

Mary Demuth [00:14:38]:

The odd thing is is that that persona we've developed so that people can see us, you know, in our most beautiful light, prevents intimacy and prevents us from getting really known. I Agree. I had a good conversation with one of our pastors today, and I came after I had worked out. And I was like, oh, here I am. This is me. This is me in a ponytail, and, I don't need to put on airs. This is just what life is. And I'm so grateful for the freedom to do that, but, I still pause when I am putting up a a picture.

Mary Demuth [00:15:19]:

I mean, I guess you could say as authors, we have to maintain a specific kind of mystique or whatever, but I feel like I'm not very mysterious. But I you know, why? Why? Why do we need to I guess, like, I think what you said is you kind of get to the end of it. You pursue, pursue, pursue thirties, twenties, thirties, forties. You get to the end of it, and then you're standing there with 3,283 likes, you know, 10,500 followers, and you're still not happy.

Heather Creekmore [00:15:54]:

Yeah.

Mary Demuth [00:15:54]:

And it never and and even if you got one more like or one more follower, you're still the same person. Mhmm. And that one follower is not gonna put you over the edge of list them.

Heather Creekmore [00:16:05]:

So it's

Mary Demuth [00:16:05]:

a it's a revolving it's a carrot in front of you that you never get.

Heather Creekmore [00:16:09]:

Yep. Agreed. Agreed. So what happened as you were researching these overlooked women of the bible? Like, how did how did that encourage you? Or, like, what did it make you think about?

Mary Demuth [00:16:21]:

Well, first, I I when I do these rapid read throughs of the Bible. And so when I was thinking of doing this one, I had kind of in mind, look for the overlooked ones. So that was really helpful. It would help me to pick them out. But it I that also was a result of listening to a lot of sermons where men are talked about from the Bible, and there's just so few women talked about. So they're overlooked just by history. Mhmm. They they are overlooked in their own time, but it it's also important to know that a lot of these women's stories are overlooked by history.

Mary Demuth [00:16:54]:

And, yet they were living, breathing women like us, and they imperfectly navigated a difficult world, and therefore, I can learn from them. I can treat them like my elders, you know, as people who have wisdom to give me.

Heather Creekmore [00:17:10]:

Yeah. I love that. So who was your favorite?

Mary Demuth [00:17:15]:

It's interesting because it is, there were 10, like, groups of women, because some of the women were in groups. And the one that I I just have affection for is Anna, and she is old. She is a widow, and she is hanging out in the temple all the time. And god saw her. I mean, she was if anyone was to be overlooked and unseen, it would have been this very ancient widow who was known as a prophetess, which was a very rare thing in those times because we're coming off the intertestamental period where God was not saying anything to anyone. And so she was known as a prophetess, which means God was truly with her, and then he fulfilled a promise to her that she would see, you know, Jesus. She got to look on the face of Jesus before she died. And that is such an in inspiration to me because it means that when we're 60, 70, 80, 90, a hundred years old, God's not done with us, and he's still working out his promises toward us.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:15]:

Yeah. I love that. You you had kind of a similar sentiment about Lois and Eunice as well. Right?

Mary Demuth [00:18:22]:

Yes. Because I think what I caught from them was this, like, quiet unseen work. And we're all in our evangelical spaces of labor, all about big old names and big old stages and numbers of followers. I think about them, and I think they just did the quiet work of pouring into Timothy. And so for those of you who are moms and grandmas out there just quietly pouring into the lives of others, that's kingdom work. Mhmm. And it doesn't get a lot of fanfare, but it is the right work to do.

Heather Creekmore [00:18:55]:

Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we planted a church right down the road from where you live

Mary Demuth [00:19:00]:

That's right.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:01]:

About ten years ago, there was a a couple that came in and I remember thinking they were old. Oh, please forgive me if you're listening to this. Like my age now. But, but there, they were empty nesters. And I will never forget her name was Alba and I will never forget. They visited the church one time and we were like, they're probably not gonna come back. I mean, like at that time, our church was mostly made up of the wait staff from the Forney Chili's. Okay.

Heather Creekmore [00:19:31]:

That was what our church was. And and so I just remember, like, she came, we were like so excited that these older people, quote unquote, older people were there and she's about to leave. And she's like, you know, I've been praying that God would send us to a church that needed help. And she's like, you need help. Like, praise God, we do need help. But she very much, and you mentioned Miriam in the book too. Like she would reach, she reached out and she, you know, told me and my husband, it was a very appropriate, respectful situation, but she's like, I feel like I'm supposed to be lifting your husband's arms up. Mhmm.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:06]:

I feel like I'm supposed to be here to help support, encourage him. Mhmm. And I mean, it was it was the nicest, like, the best gift that anyone could have given us at that season. So Mhmm. Yeah. We we have stuff to do. Mhmm. Even if we're not allowed on the worship stage.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:24]:

That's right.

Mary Demuth [00:20:24]:

Sing. We will sing in microphones from, like,

Heather Creekmore [00:20:27]:

the backstage. We go. You don't have to show me. I just wanna sing. It's fine. Oh, well, Mary, what what encouragement do you have for the woman who's just like, you know, I I'm just I'm tired of feeling overlooked. Like, I just I mean, because, you know, my crowd, right, and you you understand this this world. Like, we're tempted.

Heather Creekmore [00:20:53]:

Like, maybe I just go get the surgery, and then everyone will look at me again. Right? And it doesn't actually work out that nicely or neatly ever, by the way. Right? But there's lots of things calling to us, saying, if you try me, you know, then you'll be seen. What's your encouragement to the woman who's just really wrestling this down in her heart today?

Mary Demuth [00:21:15]:

Well, first, I would just say I'm with you, and I am struggling alongside you. And your sisters near you are struggling in the exact same manner. We're all we're all a part of the atmosphere of this world, and so we are all gonna be hearing all of those messages that you don't matter the older you get, that the more wrinkles you have, the more gray hairs, the less important you are to the body of Christ or to the world and to contributions, and that has to be fought. It has to be like it's like a little bit of warfare. You have to retrain your mind. And my I I know I've said this with you before, Heather, but, my goal, even though I still struggle this way, is that every year, my soul will become more beautiful. I can so quote, unquote, control that in in the sense of I can be receptive to the Lord and his ways and his his unctions and his leadings. I can do that.

Mary Demuth [00:22:12]:

I can't control whether, you know, that limb doesn't work anymore or, you know, I I I can do my best. I can, you know, do rehab and all of that kind of stuff, but, I can't control the injuries that come. I can't necessarily do much about that, but I can have a receptivity to the Lord.

Mary Demuth [00:22:32]:

Yeah. I love that. And really, like, isn't that the heart

Heather Creekmore [00:22:35]:

of the battle? Right? Which definition are we gonna believe? Are we gonna believe culture's definition That beauty means you are thirty five and you are the certain size. You know, you, I don't know, look this certain way or, you know, that beauty is really a heart that is submitted to the Lord. Right? A heart that's seeking to look more like Jesus.

Mary Demuth [00:23:01]:

Yeah.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:02]:

Right? That a spirit that is gentle because we're trying to be gentle like Jesus was, which doesn't mean, you know, weak and then not having an opinion. Right? It means it means gentle filled with truth and grace. Oh, yeah. I love that. Well, tell us, tell us where we can get most overlooked women in the Bible. And I bet you have you what? You put out, like, 17,000 books a year, I think it is now. What what other projects do you have going, Mary?

Mary Demuth [00:23:31]:

Oh, gosh. So the the last one in that series is the the most overwhelmed women in the bible.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:36]:

Oh, that'll be good.

Mary Demuth [00:23:37]:

Okay. Yeah. That one comes out. I have one, 99 prayers to pray for your adult children. I have, one that is called I can't remember what the title is, but it's something about surrender, and it's with IBP, and it's featuring my art, which is really fun. Mhmm. The freedom of surrender. That's what it's called.

Heather Creekmore [00:23:57]:

Love that.

Mary Demuth [00:23:58]:

And then I have one on restorying, which I think comes out next year.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:02]:

Okay.

Mary Demuth [00:24:03]:

But people can find, most overlooked women anywhere books are sold. I do have a little tool for those of you you know, I wrote this book in the middle of Church Hurt, and, in the aftermath of Church Hurt, I'm launching it. And so I have a free checklist at marydemeith.com/churchhurt.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:22]:

Okay.

Mary Demuth [00:24:22]:

And what I have found that there is a lot of overlooking going on when it comes to that, and a lot of us who have walked through it don't even have words Mhmm. To be able to describe what we've gone through. So this is a checklist. So you can go through and just kind of of check, oh, yeah, this. Yep. That. Yep. This.

Mary Demuth [00:24:38]:

And it's just a tool to help you be able to have a conversation with someone about it and say, these are the seven things I've worked through in my church hurt, and now I can talk about it because I before, I didn't even have language for it.

Heather Creekmore [00:24:50]:

Yeah. That's good. That's good. Okay. So marydb.com backslash church hurt. We'll put the link to that in the show notes and all the other okay. Five, not 17,000, but I don't know. In in the writer world, I think five and seventeen thousand are kind of equal.

Mary Demuth [00:25:06]:

It feels it feels like a lot

Heather Creekmore [00:25:08]:

right now. So I I hear it. That's amazing, Mary. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Mary Demuth [00:25:14]:

It's been a joy. Thank you so much.

Heather Creekmore [00:25:16]:

And thank you for watching or listening today. I hope something today has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye bye.

Mary Demuth [00:25:23]:

Compared to podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For more great Christian podcasts, go

Heather Creekmore [00:25:27]:

to lifeaudio.com.