That Time Substack Paid for My Unicorn

celebrating two years as a self-published writer

This week is the two year anniversary of launching my Substack, The Redemptive!

To celebrate, all paid subscriptions are 30% for the rest of the week (which comes out to $3.50 a month or $35 for the whole year!) Whether you’re a current free subscriber or a visitor, consider getting 30% off by by tapping here or on the button below. Offer ends Sunday, August 18th.

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Big Lots Babies

When Jonathan and I got married, we had no furniture and no money to buy new furniture beyond a bed. My parents helped with some necessary items like a secondhand, severely scratched up dining table. My brother and his wife gave us their old sectional for free. It worked well enough as a placeholder until we could invest in our first ever new couch, a $600 reclining 3-seater from Big Lots. Bless. 

That couch served us well until we added a second baby. In a whirl of sleepless nights and breastfeeding and diapers suddenly neither of our babies were babies anymore. “We really need to replace that couch.” We’d say in passing to each other over the years, but then I ended up in the emergency room, the lawnmower broke, the kitchen floor had a leak that developed mold. “Replace couch” got moved further and further down the urgent household needs list. 

This year we started buckling down and researching Actual Couches™. You know, not ones your brother gave you for free or ones you find randomly at Big Lots. The quest was… deflating. Do you know how expensive Actual Couches™ are nowadays? Do you know most of the inventory for Actual Couches™ is online? Who buys an Actual Couch™ they haven’t sat in yet?! 

Furthermore, do you know how exhausting and stressful it is to shop for couches in person? Back up. Do you know how exhausting and stressful it is to shop for couches with two small children in tow, when you have a tight budget and live half an hour away from anything resembling a furniture store? This has been our situation for months. 

The Hunt Was On Exhausting

My poor, introverted self who is married to my poor, introverted husband braved multiple furniture stores multiple times to face understandably aggressive salespersons (I am the daughter of an aggressive salesperson, I have empathy for how commission works). 

They pop up from behind $5,000 sectionals as soon as you swing open the door to say things like, “What are you looking for today?” and “We have a great financing promotion running from now until Tuesday!” Jonathan and I would try to play it casual by replying with, “Oh we’re just looking!” To which they would respond brightly, “Great! We’ll just leave you alone to browse and check on you in about 10 minutes, ok?”

Jonathan and I would then herd the kids through the maze of furniture while watching them not pay a lick of attention to the “Please don’t plop down rowdily on every couch in the store.” speech we gave them in the van. We’d try to act un-shocked about couches with the sticker price of $12,000, make sure to swing by the ugly clearance section in the back and finally, beeline it for the door before the salesperson could come back around to “check on us”. 

I would get home and pull up web page after web page rifling through furniture websites until my eyes dried up like raisins. Everything was ugly, the wrong material or staggeringly out of budget. 

Maybe our standards were too high? Jonathan wanted a mid-century modern style. I was adamant that it had to be leather or microfiber (two pets + two kids = easy to clean furniture). We both wanted it to be at least moderately comfortable—not too slouchy, not too firm. And yet, it needed to be soft enough to make a temporary bed for guests if need be. A non-negotiable was that it had to have enough room for all us all to pile on with friends and watch a movie. And the main deciding factor was that we had a tiny budget. Essentially, we didn’t need an Actual Couch™, we needed a Unicorn Couch™. 

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Two Years of Substack

Two years ago this week, I published my first essay on Substack. I’d been writing for a long time but I’d never been paid for it. I didn’t have instant success. I didn’t come to this platform with hundreds of baked in paid subscribers. My growth has been slow and up and down and all around. Living with a chronic illness that severely affects my mental health and has limited my ability to be consistent in the ways I’ve seen other writers be in this space.

But I kept showing up through joys and grief and hard days and really, really good days and sought to write down the redemptive story of God working through it all. 

And then, one year ago I impulsively made the decision to create a second substack entirely dedicated to exploring the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. “We’ve had one, yes. But what about second substack?” 

I shared it with my TikTok followers as a way for them to join my annual read-through of The Lord of the Rings and was shocked to watch so many sign up for paid subscriptions in order to participate. 

(if the button above doesn’t work, tap here for 30% off a year subscription)

The paid subscriptions from both substacks combined have been nothing less than a Godsend for our family. My work here has paid for new flooring in our kitchen (remember the one that was destroyed by mold from a water leak?). My work here has paid massive unexpected bills we had this spring for our home. My work has helped pay for our kid’s homeschool curriculum. And most recently my writing work paid for our very own Unicorn Couch. 

Back to the Couch Saga

One night, during one of my endless scroll-a-thons through furniture websites, I saw a link to an outlet warehouse near us. Their site said they had a couch in stock that (mostly) appeared to be something we would be interested in. I showed Jonathan and we immediately made plans to be there as soon as the warehouse opened at 10am the following morning. 

We woke up, rushed out the door, grabbed breakfast on the way and walked in the doors as soon as they unlocked. On our way back to where the couches were displayed, an employee sensed I was a woman on a mission and asked, “Is there something I can help you find?” 

“Yes, actually!” I quickly pulled up the picture of the couch I bookmarked last night on my phone.

“Ah, I think that sold yesterday. Yeah, it was right there.” He gestured to an empty spot on the floor. “The inventory on the website must not have been updated yet.” 

I thanked him and we left disappointed but not completely deterred. We found out the warehouse was running a 20% off sale on the already heavily discounted prices. We also realized the inventory moves fast. So we figured we’d just come back and check whenever we could and hope our Unicorn Couch™ would appear one day. 

This led to us coming back the following morning. We walked in and the kids fell instantly in love with a couch Jonathan liked as well. The price was phenomenal (just over $400) but it was small, off-white and wait for it…corduroy. I loved the way it looked, but knew deep in my gut that even at that cheap price, I’d come to loathe a couch I could ever really get clean. But at the same time if I let this couch go, would we ever find another one in our budget, this close to the style we wanted? Was this our Unicorn Couch™ and I was letting it slip through my fingers?

While I waffled about what to do and the kids begged me to buy it, Jonathan left the decision up to me “We’re spending money from your Substack. If you don’t feel confident about it, don’t do it.” (complementarians¹, avert ye eyes!).

Much to our children’s dismay, we walked out of the warehouse couchless. I knew I’d made the right decision when I felt relief on the way home, not regret. 

A Monstrosity

The following day, Jonathan went to work and I figured it was worth a shot to take the kids by myself to drive 30 minutes one way to check if the warehouse had any new inventory. The sun was out, the kids played games by themselves the entire time. If anything, we could get a nice drive out of it. 

As we pulled up to the warehouse, I told the kids we were going to pray. I rolled up to the intersection saying out loud, “Jesus, please help us to the couch we need. One that’s in our budget, the right material and the style we want.”

I went on to explain to the kids that God loves to give us things we want, but He doesn’t always do that. This is when we have the opportunity to trust that He knows what’s best for us. I think they were too excited about romping through another furniture store to pay heed to my bite-size theology lesson. No matter, I figure all of this stores up in their subconscious anyway (or at least, I pray it does). 

We tumbled out of the van and, once again, walked to the back to see if there was any new stock. The first thing the kids spotted was a sectional very similar to the one I’d decided not to buy the day before. I sent Jonathan a picture of it with the very-much-in-our-budget price

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And then I turned to my right. 

I saw a giant sectional that looked massive even in the warehouse. It dwarfed all of the other living room furniture on the floor that day. I snapped a picture of it and texted it to Jonathan in a “Lol. Look at this monstrosity, yeah right.” kind of way. 

It was a mid-century style, leather sectional with enough seating for our family (and possibly our entire county). It was comfortable, supportive but not too stiff. One of the warehouse employees told me there wasn’t anything wrong with it, it had just been an online return. It was in our budget, but admittedly on the high end of our budget.

I tried to FaceTime Jonathan at work but the connection was spotty. We chatted for a few minutes about the pros and cons but again, he left the decision up to me. I knew as it sat, this sectional wouldn’t fit in our tiny living room. It wouldn’t even go with our current living room set up. This sectional would be bought in the hopes that it would one day reside in a new home.

The big catch was, this warehouse didn’t offer return or refunds. If I bought this thing, I’d be stuck with it. All sales were final. And just to add drama, this store location had a policy that you had to arrange for pick up by the end of the day. Jonathan was at work an hour away and we didn’t own a truck. 

While one of my children (who shall remain nameless) took their shoes off, climbed on the sectional and started running on top of it lengthwise, I told Jonathan I was going to do it. We ended the call, he rented a truck and left work early to make it to the warehouse before they closed.

I walked up to the register, swiped our card and realized, I just bought a whole couch with words I wrote on the internet. It was listed on the website with the price of $2,999. I found it for…nowhere near that price. 

The kids were ecstatic. I felt slightly sick. Please note, we have neither a basement, attic or garage. So if we truly couldn’t get it to fit in our living room, we were in a real pickle. But like my oldest said on the way home, “Mom, we’re Rodgers. We always figure things out.”

Hilarity Ensues

Jonathan was able to get the sectional home but then we had the task of unloading all seven sections, plus cushions (15 separate pieces in all) into our humble little house. We had to move our old couch into the kitchen and pile all the new cushions on it while we shuffled everything around. The whole situation was ridiculous. 

We got it all assembled in the living room and immediately burst into belly laughter. As in, both Jonathan and I were doubled over giggling at just how BIG this piece of furniture was. We no longer had a living room, we had a living couch. And we loved it. After some configuring, we ended up taking out two sections (which are currently crammed in our bedroom and office). And it was still huge. And perfect.

We finally had our Unicorn Couch™. 

I’m undeniably proud that our family had a need and I was able to provide for it. Paying for this couch would not have been possible if I hadn’t started publishing my work on Substack. The people who pay to support what I do here (and over on Many Meetings) have enabled me to have the freedom to cover many family expenses, but the most memorable so far is the giant, chestnut couch I’m currently writing this from. 

God doesn’t always answer your prayers in the way you expect. Sometimes He brings you a unicorn. 🦄

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Thank you for reading this free post on my substack. Don’t forget, subscriptions are 30% for the rest of the week! You can paid subscriber for just $3.50 a month or $35 for the whole year. Tap here to check out the offer!

Thanks for allowing me to do this work for the past two years. I’m deeply grateful and can’t wait to see how God continues to grow The Redemptive. 

Offer ends Sunday, August 18th.

1. In some (not all ) complementarian marriages the wife is expect to defer to the husband on major decisions they can’t come to an agreement about. Say for example, if he liked a couch and she didn't, the wife is expected to “submit” to the husband’s headship because he’s the “head of the home.” I was raised to believe this was the model for a godly marriage. Jonathan and I have moved so far away from that perspective that the idea of applying it to this couch situation gave us a good chuckle.