Colleen and Nikki talk about podcast production and encouragement during isolation and the pandemic. Podcast was published April 27, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Hi, and welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker.
Nikki: And today for our COVID check-in podcast, we’re really just going to chat a little bit about how it’s been for us recording a podcast –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – in quarantine and just, I don’t know, how the last weeks have gone for us personally. It’s been rather entertaining talking about this before we recorded. [Laughter.]
Colleen: One of the things that took us down this path of talking about recording in quarantine was thinking about the fact that we’re in different spaces and how our sound is probably different. Just, you know, full disclosure here: We have a very interesting setup where we normally do our podcast, where I still sit.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It used to be Nathaniel’s bedroom when he was growing up. It’s a slot, it’s 9 x 12. It’s a tiny room. One wall is completely a bookcase, and the opposite wall has a filing cabinet on it and, the big surprise, a very big sound deadening recording studio screen up on the wall and one propped against the wall underneath it. Now, that was never something we expected to have, but last fall our older son came and said, “Could you use these screens? I got them at such a good price at an estate sale, and I’m not going to be able to use them, and he helped Richard hang them. And it was that day that we looked at each other and said, “We gotta start the podcast.” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] Yes, that was very exciting.
Colleen: So there is actually professional sound deadening in Nathaniel’s old bedroom, and it makes the sound different. So you’re not in a studio –
Nikki: No, no, far from it.
Colleen: – with sound deadening, but let me hasten to add, this is far from a studio, and as I speak, Artie is asleep beside me, so he would not be allowed in a studio. So go ahead. What’s going on where you’re recording?
Nikki: I live on a rather busy street, and if we didn’t have such a devoted editor, you guys would probably be far more aware of that.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: There are busy motorcyclists and even people on dirt bikes go tearing down the street, especially being in quarantine, nobody’s going to work, but they’re all going to play because we have great trails around us where they can go hiking and dirt biking or just take a nice cruise on their motorcycle through the hills where the apple orchards are, and they’re blossoming right now. Anyway, there’s a lot of traffic out there. So it’s pretty noisy, and then we also – during this quarantine we pulled up the carpet in our room, and we laid flooring down, so the sound is constantly changing, and then there’s the fact that I’m not there with you in studio, which I know it’s Nathaniel’s room, but I lovingly call it the studio.
Colleen: Well, it is for us now.
Nikki: So I don’t have all of the same sound equipment, I don’t have the same headphones. I told you I feel like I’m on site reporting in the middle of rain or in the weather –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – just shouting into the microphone. So, yeah, it’s all different, and I’m getting used to it, which is kind of sad. So the first three weeks it was just, “Cool, look what we can do. We can actually pull this off.” You know, Richard did a great job getting me set up here at home so that we could do this, and then by week three, when we were getting ready to record one of our – it was one of our Bible study podcasts –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – so you have to have your heart and mind in the right place when you go into something like that, and I just remember feeling like a little four-year-old, just pouting inside because here I was at home still, and I wanted to be in the studio with you, and I was missing it so much and was ____ myself through that before we could start that podcast.
Colleen: That first one we did where we didn’t use video to see each other –
Nikki: Oh, yeah.
Colleen: – we were just listening to each other over the phone? That was disorienting.
Nikki: Wasn’t that weird?
Colleen: Yeah. I hated it. And I take so much of my cue from seeing your expressions as I’m talking, and you do from me, and we didn’t have that visual cue. It was just disorienting. I hated it. We finally set up Facetime so that we can watch each other while we talk. [Laughter.]
Nikki: And so that I can occasionally watch you fall off the table. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah, I have my phone propped up on a very inappropriate stand, but it falls forward sometimes, and I disappear from your sight.
Nikki: So, yeah. There’ve been a lot of interesting challenges that go with recording a podcast.
Colleen: And like you said, if we didn’t have such a dedicated editor, I – you know, sometimes Richard and I ponder who knew way back when in, believe me, the dark ages when we were in college and he took a PR degree, who knew how much that PR degree would be the root from which we drew so much understanding and knowledge of the ministry that we’ve done over the years, and you know, he took classes in radio production, and here he is, able to do the editing of this podcast in a way that makes me really proud of it. He really fixes us, Nikki. [Laughter.]
Nikki: He really does. [Laughter.]
Colleen: So what else have you been doing this – this is week five. I figured that out last night when I was writing the editorial for today’s email for Proclamation! It was five weeks ago today that our governor said we had to shelter at home and not go out. It’s really hard because we can’t meet together, and we actually have to sit and chat over Facetime for a while before we can record.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I find that being here without person-to-person access – I think I’m really an introvert, and I think that most people don’t understand that about me. I can hunker down and be alone very easily. I get refreshed by being by myself –
Nikki: Yeah, me too.
Colleen: – but I can also kind of get out of touch with myself if I stay too long that way. And I find I have to talk with you so I can kind of air out my feelings, which I’ve been ignoring [laughter] because I’ve been trying to keep busy.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: It makes it more accessible to talk.
Nikki: I get such a kick out of these spoofs that people are putting out describing what it’s like to be in quarantine, going one day from cleaning your baseboards with Q-tips to the next day you’re crying on the couch.
Colleen: Uh-huh [laughter]. Yes.
Nikki: It’s just such a strange thing, and I was looking at my calendar, and I think we hunkered down a week before the state mandate, my family did, and so we’re at week six here, and it feels like week 60. It feels like it’s been monthsof this, and it’s hard to think we had only just been a few weeks out of the FAF Conference when all of this stuff put us home.
Colleen: Um-hmm. And I remember driving to the FAF Conference from our house thinking, “That virus is spreading through the world, I wonder if it will come here. I’m thankful it didn’t stop the conference.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: “I wonder if we’ll get it.”
Nikki: Yeah, me too. In fact, I don’t know if you remember, we were trying to find hand sanitizer. There was not a lot of talk yet of it being in our country. I don’t even think we had our first known case, at least known to me, in February. I think that the first case was in January, but I didn’t know about that one until later. It wasn’t really much of a thought, but I thought, you know, it’s flu season. It’s always flu season –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – when we have our conference, and so I usually will have a little glass container of cough drops and tissue at the registration desk for people because one year we didn’t, and there was coughing all over all the recordings –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yes.
Nikki: – so that’s kind of just been sort of a normal thing for me to do for a couple years now, and I forgot to get hand sanitizer, and so we had asked someone if they could pick it up, and when they got back to us they said, “Yeah, Costco’s completely out because of this coronavirus,” and like, what? It’s not even here. How are they out of –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: It took a long time to find some hand sanitizer, and then by the time we had it, church was canceled, and it’s probably still sitting there unused. [Laughter.]
Colleen: It is still sitting there [laughter]. When we go in for livestream, there it is. It’s interesting, a couple of weeks ago – we’ve been watching President Trump’s reports, the COVID reports, and one day he featured the truckers who are keeping the supply lines open?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And he had invited three or four drivers from different trucking lines to just briefly speak and tell what they were doing, and one man – it startled me. I had not even realized this was happening. He said, “I am proudly transporting hand sanitizer from a prohibition still in upper state New York.
Nikki: Oh! [Laughter.]
Colleen: And I did not know that distilleries had been retooled to do hand sanitizer after that huge, you know, when we couldn’t find it anywhere?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s back up and running. Kind of like finding out that car companies had been retooled to make ventilators.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: It’s like wartime. Richard said he remembered his parents telling him that in the Second World War, Ford Motor Company stopped making cars and started making airplanes.
Nikki: Yeah! I had heard things like that. And this has reminded me of that. I know the people who make the jerseys for the sports teams also stopped making those and started making protective wear for the first responders. I can’t tell you how many times I have thought twice about whether or not I really want to use that paper towel. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: I’m kidding. I do. It’s just changed so much about how we do our day-to-day.
Colleen: It has.
Nikki: It’s wild.
Colleen: My old coping skill has come to the fore: If in doubt, bake! [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: There’s something I can accomplish with an immediate result. It’s a funny thing. I don’t even know why this is so comforting to me, but I’ve always liked baking, so just before we did this I took a loaf of artisan bread out of the oven. My daughter-in-law gave me a recipe, and I said, “Why not? I’m gonna try it.” And it was quite good.
Nikki: Lucky Richard. But yeah, you kind of have to – you have to keep busy, at least my personality. I have to keep busy or I’m going to go outside and I’m going to stare at the cracks in the sidewalk and not know what to do with myself.
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: So I guess it’s been a blessing that we’ve had work we’ve needed to do and that we’ve had those distractions. It’s really interesting trying to tuck your normal routine, your normal life, into this kind of chaotic “is this real and what isn’t” and then all of the misinformation that’s coming in _____. Actually, it’s a little reminiscent of my life as an Adventist, to be honest with you. [Laughter.]
Colleen: Well, actually for me too.
Nikki: Really?
Colleen: Yeah, I’ve thought of that many times. Isn’t that funny?
Nikki: That is funny.
Colleen: This misinformation and hearing things that contradict, and I was thinking, “This is really where I lived a whole lot of my life.”
Nikki: Yeah. I was just talking to a friend recently. People will sometimes send me stuff on Facebook in the Messenger that’s really interesting. I was talking to a friend today, and he said, “What do you think about that?” And I said, “You know what? I’ve gotten to the point in my life where the only truth I’m willing to put my weight on is from Scripture, and everything else goes in the “Huh, interesting” category.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And then it just sort of stays there. And I just want to watch it all play out because really, there’s nothing I can do about any of it. If we are being lied to by our government, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: If we are not and we’re being lied to by someone else, that wouldn’t surprise me.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: So what can I really do about any of it?
Colleen: That’s where I’ve come down, and I actually have thought about it quite a bit during this time, that there isn’t any source of truth except Scripture, and I know that old feeling of, “Well, Scripture doesn’t answer all our questions, it doesn’t tell us, you know ‘is the virus going to end in the summer, is it coming back in the fall,'” but you know, what we do know is what we can expect from the Lord and who we are and how it all ends, and I find it very anchoring. I did not know that anchor as an Adventist.
Nikki: Uh-uh.
Colleen: I remember being terrified when any kind of a natural disaster was looming –
Nikki: Yep.
Colleen: – when there wasn’t enough rain as a child, any little thing that disrupted the norm, I was full-bore linear panic because I didn’t know what would happen to me. And I don’t find that I’m panicking now. I miss some things. I feel shut down a bit. But I don’t feel panic, and I don’t feel hopeless.
Nikki: I think part of what’s connected to the panic that we end up feeling, we become very aware of our helplessness.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We become very aware of our powerlessness. And you know, there are some things that we do have some control over. By the grace of God, those of us who live in the United States, we have the opportunity to vote. We need to be aware of various things and educate ourselves and make informed decisions, and sometimes I think that we can go so far with that sense of power that when things really are outside of our control, that helpless feeling can get us worked up. I think that what’s changed all of this for me a little bit has been understanding – not just knowing the details as it’s taught in Scripture, but understanding in a way that I think only God can give us that He is sovereign over everything. So for me, I don’t have to know if the virus is going to go away in the summer.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: I don’t have to know if we’re going to have a vaccine that’s safe and works well or if it’s the mark of the beast.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Right.
Nikki: Because there’s absolutely nothing that Nikki can do to thwart God’s plans, whatever they are, and I have to believe that whatever happens is happening under His sovereign hand, so that stabilizes me, and it’s strange to think that really coming to terms with your powerlessness would be comforting. It is somehow.
Colleen: When I realized years ago that God really is sovereign and that I really can’t say, “Well, He wouldn’t do this, this is what Satan wants,” that that’s not the way the universe runs. The universe runs according to God’s plan –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – and no, I can’t second guess Him, but no, He is not surprised, I feel so much safer.
Nikki: God does not trick us. As an Adventist I thought I had to get in with the right people who had the secret information about what was going to happen in the last days so that I could be prepared –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: – to not succumb to this deception.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And so there was a lot of pressure on me to know what truth was. But since becoming a Christian and believing in the absolute infallible inerrancy of Scripture, I know what God doesn’t leave white space there for me to get gnostic information or whatever –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – special information to read between the lines and then make sure. He tells me absolutely everything I need to know. If it’s not in Scripture, I can watch it, and it’s interesting, but I don’t have to fear that I’m missing something God wants me to know, because He is not like that. He’s not a trickster.
Colleen: And He gives us each other, even though we’re not in the same room recording these podcasts anymore –
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: – but I have my Bible still open from recording the last podcast we did from the Book of Hebrews, and I have this verse in front of me, which has become so meaningful to me, “But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I realize what a blessing it is that God has granted to me – it’s like a grace from God – that we can do this podcast together.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Because I feel like I’m getting that kind of encouragement by having these conversations with you and sharing them with everybody.
Nikki: I feel connected with all of our brothers and sisters out there who are on this unique journey.
Colleen: Me too.
Nikki: It’s been such a blessing.
Colleen: And you know what? Even if you can’t get out from the house and you’re stuck with that immediate family that lives under your roof, you can call, you can email, you can text, you can send a card in the mail, you can send a Dayspring card by email, whatever. Reach out to somebody and let them know you’re thinking of them and praying for them. We have received a few cards and letters in the mail over the last five weeks. It’s been so encouraging and such a surprise, and I think you’d be surprised how meaningful it is to someone to hear from you. So encourage one another. And we do that so that we will not be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. And Nikki, thank you for encouraging me. Thank you for doing these podcasts with me, because it is a great encouragement to me, always, but especially during this time when I can’t see you.
Nikki: Oh, thank you too! It’s so important for all of us to just normalize through this because this is such a strange time for everybody. It’s funny, even now as we’re wrapping this podcast, a text from a friend that says, “I can’t stop eating bread!” [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: So if your life is a little bit disoriented, people, just know it is for all of us.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: And we’re walking through this together, and we love you guys, and we’re so grateful for the encouragement you give to us.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We love hearing from you. Continue to write. We have an email, formeradventist@gmail.com, that you can write to or you can even go to proclamationmagazine.com, look at our back issues from the print magazine or sign up for the blog, and you can even donate there if you’d like to, and we’re also on Instagram and Facebook. You can follow us there. You can get in touch with us there. We’re all in this together; right? In every way. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] In every way. So thank you for bearing with us and for sharing the memories of these five weeks today. We’ll see you again.
Nikki: Bye.
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