Welcome And What This Show Is

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello my friends and welcome to Everyday God for Your Every Day with Kathy, a space where we'll discuss real practical ways for life with God, especially for those days when life is hard, complicated, and messy. How do we apply biblical principles such as God's love, mercy, grace, and wisdom to our daily grind? Well, join me each week as we do just that together. So wherever you may find yourself today, please know that you are seen, held, accepted, loved, and never alone. So let's get to it.

Graduation Season And Life Endings

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hello and good morning. Welcome to another episode of Everyday God for your everyday. I am Kathy, your host. So today is Monday, June 1st. So this is very different because I normally do not record my episodes on Mondays. It's normally either a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday if I'm running late. So I had a very busy week last week. My daughter, I may have mentioned this on a previous episode, but my daughter was graduating from high school. But at this time, I could I guess I could say that she graduated. She graduated last week. And we had a graduation party for her on Saturday with family, had a good time. But it really got me thinking May is like the month of endings, right? As I was going and shopping and going to Costco with a cart full of stuff. Immediately, one of the guys at Costco was like, Let me guess, graduation party. I was like, Yeah, how'd you know? And he's like, Yep, tis the season. You know, I really started thinking, May is the month of endings and the promise of new beginnings. Looking at my daughter as she really ends one season of her life, like she's no longer, I mean, she's still my kid, she's still a child, but she's done in terms of school as she's known it for the better part of her life. And she's going to embark on this new season of her life. And so if you think about like May ends, most high school seniors, I mean, that's the end of not only their senior year, but the end of their high school career. But then they have this weird summer period where it's the end of what they've known, right? This end of this chapter, and they're excited because most of them at this point already know what colleges they're going to. If you're not going to college, you kind of know what you're going to if you're going into the military or if you're going into some kind of, you know, technical school, whatever it may be, you have an idea of what it is that may be the next step, right? But unlike your junior year, where you had some idea of what senior year was going to look like, this is really different for them. For many of them, they either have just turned 18 or about to turn 18, which is another new thing, right? Because I'm the world says, or at least America and the United States of America, you've gone from like being a child, a minor, to being this adult. But are they really? Because they're still teenagers. So they are in a period of transition. So that's what we're going to focus on the next few episodes of

Why Transitions Deserve Attention

SPEAKER_00 3:44

this season. We're going to wrap up this season talking about transitions. Because uh in life, every living thing goes through multiple transition periods in their lives. And as human beings, we go through them because it's change. It's going from one season or one aspect of something to another. I think we we talk about new seasons and we talk about the different seasons in our lives, but I don't know that we spend the amount of time, or at least we give the attention that we ought to to the transition period, to what that represents. Because how we address the transition and how what we do during those periods of transition, I believe are equally as important, if not more so, than how we actually do in the new seasons or in these different seasons in our lives. We're going to really focus on transitions in terms of endings, the middle, messy middle, and of course the new beginnings.

Childbirth As A Transition Picture

SPEAKER_00 5:04

I had this thing that I had written a few months back on childbirth. So if we think about childbirth itself, it's pretty traumatic. It's a traumatic experience for both mom and child. But then as I started thinking about it, I'm like, there are other people involved as well. Even like for those pet parents out there, when all the dog has had or the cat is themselves and their pet parent, and then you're introducing a new life into that home, it can be fairly traumatic. And I know because I've read enough articles, and I know pet parents who are bringing a new life in, and I will tell you that they will tell you that how that pet or that other child has accepted that new life, that new baby, had more to do with the time that they spent preparing either that pet or that other child or that home or that spouse, by the way, or themselves to receive that new life. So in that transition period before the child came into the home. So let's talk about childbirth for a minute. There's nothing more natural or organic than a woman birthing a child. Yet if we think about the experience itself of both giving life and coming to life, it requires pain. It requires discomfort, it requires will and grit. And if we think about that, those are very, there are similar things that are required when we're moving or transitioning from one place to another. Because especially when we're transitioning from a place of comfort, something that we have known, or a known thing, to then the unknown or something that is new. So the promise of life requires, or even the promise of newness, which if we think about it, life is new, right? New life, especially, requires both a surrender and a figurative death, a sacrifice of the former things. In childbirth, the mother must be willing to surrender all ideas of comfort and the known in order to go through pain and literally a giving of self in order to birth a child. While the unborn child, on the other hand, must surrender their comfort, their habitat to go through the birth canal, which is super traumatic. I mean, if you've ever birthed a child, I'm sure most of us can't remember what it was like to go through the birth canal, but I will tell you just the contraction, what the physical pain and all of the things that I experienced birthing all three of my children, it was traumatic for me. So I can only imagine how traumatic it is for a child. And if you think about it, the first thing that typically happens, which by the way is healthy and is expected for a newborn, is to scream. It is for them to cry when they experience the outside world for the first time. And who wouldn't cry if I'm going from the warmth and the coziness, the, the, the soothing environment of the womb? Because the newborn is really being ripped from the only home they've known. And by the way, not by their own choice or their own making. It's just a natural progression of life. It is supposed to happen, but yet it doesn't feel good. Going again from that warm, super intimate, fluid-filled cocoon to a cold, stark vastness of this outside world that is supposed to be this new home for you. And we're talking that this is science, this is biology, this is nature, all exhibiting what truly the experience of life is like. I think sometimes we romanticize what newness in life is. It's wonderful, it is great, it is supposed to happen, but before, even not even before it happens, but the actual process of life and of newness, of birthing something new is anything but beautiful, it is anything but clean and neat, it is anything but linear, it is anything but soothing, it is anything but comfortable. When I think about that, I'm like our life's goal is really, it's not, it's it's a misnomer to think that it's about comfort in ultimate happiness or to get everything that we ever wanted. Life is not even about achieving a seemingly singular goal, or that once you've achieved something, you've arrived, and then from there it's easy street. That's why we're going to focus on transitions, because we experience multiple transitions in our lifetime. Transition process itself, if we think about it, it is the bridge or pathway that connects either the beginning to an end or an end to a beginning. Similar to transitional words or phrases when we're writing or a transition or a bridge in music or even sports, transitioning from offense to defense. Because I'm sorry, I'm giving a sports analogy. And if anybody knows me personally, you know that I'm not real, I don't actually watch sports, but I watch the highlights, right? And I was just watching, well, not watching, but watching the highlights or reading the highlights from the Spurs and the OKC Thunder. Life transitions, they're not, I mean, and I'm I'm sure I'm gonna say it's simple and straightforward. I'm not gonna use that for sports. I'm gonna say life's transitions are not, you know, as simple nor as straightforward as the ones that we find in writing or in music, maybe. I'm not a lyricist, nor do I write music, but I do think, at least as a writer, I can say it's not as straightforward. But it is equally as critical to our ability to successfully navigate through life. And again, we're gonna look at that word successful or successfully, like what exactly does that mean, especially in terms of navigating through life? Transitions can be hard. I mean, for most of us, because, well, most human beings don't handle change well. And even when it's a change that we've initiated, even then, it's typically not as smooth as we would like, because you can initiate a change. But remember, change impacts more than just you. So I can initiate a change. For example, the analogy that I just used, in terms of bringing a new baby to a home that either had another sibling, an existing sibling, or a pet sibling. You may have done everything that you thought necessary, but that other person or that other entity or it doesn't necessarily have to follow the script as you imagined it. The way we navigate from one season to another is critically important to how we are able to then thrive in the different seasons of our lives. And I think oftentimes, as I've said before, we don't take the time nor the I think that the attention needed to the way that we transition from one season or from one place to another. And then when we fail to transition properly, then we really end up carrying old baggage, old thought patterns, old wounds into new seasons, into new jobs, new relationships, new settings, for which, you know, those new relationships or new jobs or new settings, they weren't meant to handle your old baggage. And then all of a sudden, there are cracks in the foundation, or there's a buckling under the weight of this new thing, whether it's a new house, a new family, new whatever. Because again, that old foundation or that old wineskin, and we're going to talk about that in a second, was not meant to handle the new because we didn't spend the time that we needed in the transition.

New Wine Needs New Wineskins

SPEAKER_00 14:46

There's a Bible verse, a very known one, famous one, that can be found either in Matthew 9, chapter 9, verse 17, Mark 22, or Luke 5, verses 37 through 39, where Jesus says, and no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins will be ruined. No, because new wine is poured into new wineskins. So in biblical times, wineskins were made of animal hide, right? Animal skin that stretched as new fermenting wine expanded. So new wineskins could handle the expansion of the new fermenting wine. But old wineskin loses its flexibility as it ages. So if you poured new wine, which would expand into old wineskins, it would burst when you think about that. We often will go into new, a new environment, a new job, for example. We were at a old job, we did things this way, and we go into this new role, not even in a new job. It can be sometimes a new role that you go into in the same organization, but you're going in with old ideas and old ways of doing things. You and how successful are you going to be then? You can't be. So it's it's the same principle that we have to take the time to focus before we go into whatever newness that God is doing or whatever new thing that we're going into. We have to really pay attention to how we're transitioning. Transitions generally involve three phases: an ending, you know, it's it's ending, losing, letting go. And of course, second phase is kind of like that middle ground, you know, the messy middle, the messy in-between time, that neutral zone. And then, of course, the third is the new beginning, right? The emerging from the transition. But if we don't spend the time that we need to in each of those phases to really acknowledge what it is that we're experiencing and what we're going through emotionally, psychologically, and we don't pay attention even to our environment and what others might be feeling in those stages, then we're really not setting ourselves up for success. You know, Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. There's a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain f to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. Now some of you may not necessarily be familiar with Ecclesiastes, and by the way, that was Ecclesiastes 3, verses 1 through 8. Some of you may not be familiar with Ecclesiastes, but there was actually a song, and I cannot remember who did it. I know I can't remember, but there's a song that actually goes through those. There's a there's a time for everything.

Endings Require Real Grief

SPEAKER_00 19:10

And the reason that I'm talking about that is this episode, we're going to focus on the ending. The messy middle is is messy. And I believe that we'll do that next episode. But I want to talk about endings because especially as I think about May, as I think about my child along with other countless graduates, whether it was, you know, graduating senior year, your senior year in high school, or whether it was you being a senior in college, or whether it's, you know, a child graduating the eighth grade and going into high school, or graduating elementary school and going into middle school for the first time. It's or whether you're someone leaving one job and going into a new one, or you're leaving singleness, right? Being single for the bulk of your life at this point, and then going into a new relationship or a new marriage. Or if you are someone who's been single and without, well, not necessarily single, but you haven't had a child, and now you're either about to birth a child or you're about to adopt, that that's a new season. You're in a period of transition right now. Or I'm I'm gonna speak to the, you know, women in their 40s right now or in your 30s, God, late 30s, and you're entering in your early 40s. Uh, welcome to the stage of freaking perimenopause. And for those of us who are in menopause right now, it's it's a transition. By the way, perimenopause and menopause, it's not just emotional or psychological, hormonal. There are biological things happening, there are physical things happening. So I want to spend some time to talk about that because it is an ending to something. And I don't think that, again, we spend enough time talking about what happens when a when one season ends and we're about to begin another season. Endings, regardless of how exciting it might be, that it's a good thing, it's a promotion, it's whatever, it is still an ending. And whether we are cognizant of it or not, we are grieving during that ending. Whether you realize it or or not, or whether you spend time to acknowledge what it is that you're feeling, it's happening. Now you can either do it healthily and acknowledge it and spend the time to really Really address it, to feel it, to be in the moment. Well, you can suppress it, but it's still gonna come out and it's not gonna come out in a way that you want it to. Okay. So as I was thinking about this, my preparation for these last few episodes have been different. And I think they were there, they've been different intentionally, they've been different on purpose. God meant for them to be that way because I was used to doing things a certain way. And we talked about this last episode. My, you know, my holding on tightly to my structure in my way of doing things to old wineskins. And God telling me that this new season that I am about to enter, or because I do believe that I'm in a season of transition. And this new thing that He is doing in my life does require a forgetting of the former things. And I'm gonna say a forgetting of the former things is not as easy as it sounds. It means that we have to die to the former things. For me to do an episode on a Monday, to record my episode on a Monday, to have missed a deadline. By the way, self-imposed deadline. Like there is no one telling me that you have to deliver this. But because it is my deadline, it's something that I've established, I typically will drive myself crazy and I need to deliver it, you know, on a Sunday. And by the way, God has, as a great collaborator, as a great partner in this, has always, you know, ensured that I have met my deadline. But as I was preparing for my kids' graduation party, her graduation, and the multitude of activities that happen, you guys, you know, parents of graduating seniors, you know this. I had both a piece and attention. I had a piece that I'm gonna deliver this the way that I'm supposed to, the way that God means for me to. And I knew that he's been putting the whole idea of transition in my head. So that was prepared. But I did not have the time to sit down and start thinking about this episode until today, until this morning. Yesterday I meant fully intended to do it. I woke up in the morning and I was like, oh, you know what? I need to write, I need to write the episode and I need to record the episode because I need to get it out. And it was as if like God was like, no, because you're wanting to get it done and over with so that you don't feel uncomfortable missing your deadline. But there is a lesson to be learned here that, you know, again, we're closing and ending some ways of thinking, some structures, some constructs that you have, Kathy, that we need to do. We're doing a new thing. We're doing a new thing. Because if you continue holding on to these old ways of thinking and old ways of doing things, you're gonna buckle under the new that I'm doing in your life. I started thinking about transitions and seasons, right? But the seasons that we're familiar with, like spring, you know, summer, fall, and winter. And I started again, as which often happens when God gives me an idea, and then uh again, devotionals and all of that, then you start seeing a pattern. And as I was looking at it and I had to like write it out, I'm like, huh. At first I thought ending and losing and letting go was really more like winter and fall. But then I started looking at it. I'm like, nah, mm-mm. When you're ending, when something is ending, when there's a chapter that closes, when you lose something, it feels very much like summer. And the reason I'm gonna say that is, oh, for those of you who are in South Florida, we are in May and it has been, I mean, hot. And the only thing I kept saying is, what in the world? If it's May now and we're experiencing this level of heat, what in the world is going to happen in July and in August, which are the hottest months in South Florida? And then I started thinking about it, like summer, summer's hot. And if I think about like an ending and a loss, it's a grieving. You can often feel like you are in this very uncomfortable place where you are very much like the heat where you can't escape it. Summer, when it's hot, living things tend to wilt in the summer. We don't thrive in it. It's kind of like, you know, I love flowers. I love fresh flowers, I love hydrant. Happens to be my favorite flower, but I love flowers. I love roses too. And when I love fresh flowers and I love being given fresh flowers, but I also don't because I always immediately go to it's gonna die. And I don't actually like to see the flowers wilt before they dry up. I don't like to see that happen because you go from the beauty, the vibrant colors of the flowers to seeing it slowly kind of wilt and give way to death. And that's what closing a chapter or endings are like. And if you're ending a marriage, if you're ending a relationship, it is important that before you go into a new one, that you spend time grieving that relationship, whether it was toxic at the end or whatever, it there was still something that was good about it. At some point, you started it. Even if it the old job, you became stagnant or you had horrible feelings toward the leadership at that point, but there was something that I promise you you might have enjoyed or loved, something that you did. It's still something, it's still a period or something that you spent time in. It requires that we give it the time and we grieve it properly, that we think about, okay, what what am I losing? What did I enjoy? What did I like about this period? I'm gonna tell you, like, as someone who is right now menopausal, right? I'm 49. One of the things that I had to grieve was, I mean, I've thoroughly enjoyed being a mother. I love being a mom. I love being a mother. I I'm gonna say may because science says I probably won't be a mom, but God always has other plans. But it's not like I'm wanting to be a mother. There are other ways one can be a mother, but I have grieved the fact that I may never carry another child, that I will never again maybe experience what it's like to be pregnant, to have a life inside of me. I'm currently grieving my kids growing up. You know, I'm, you know, people keep saying, oh my gosh, you're almost an empty nester. It's not something, it's not that I'm not looking forward to it, but it's not something that I'm actively seeking. I know that it's the natural progression of life, that it's supposed to happen. But I keep having moments where I think about my kids when they were little. And I keep telling them that. I miss it. I miss it when I miss the smell of my kids when they were little. I miss doing their hair. I miss holding on to them. I miss even the days that we would play hookie, right? And I would keep all three of them, whether it was from daycare or from school, just to spend time with them. I miss sitting in front of the television and watching their shows with them, whether it was the big comfy couch with my oldest, or whether it was, you know, and then she was also an Elmo lover. Elmo was a great partner, or whether it was, you know, for my middle child, she loved Sunny Patch Friends, I think. That that's yeah, Sunny Patch Friends. She loved the backyard agains. And I miss that. I miss Legos all over the floor. And I'm thinking about like, okay, this is gonna be this last vacation where our family unit is going to look that way. I'm excited for their new chapters. I am. I'm excited for what God is doing in their lives, but I have to spend time grieving what once was. I don't want to stay in the grieving period. You're not supposed to just live there. But if we do not spend the time to grieve those things, those seasons in our lives, those moments in our lives, then we are not going to fully be everything that we need to be for the new things, for the new seasons, because there's a part of us that is going to still be lingering in the past. In order to fully close one chapter, I believe that you have to, you can't think about a book when you're reading. If I'm reading a book and I'm skipping chapters, am I really entering into that new chapter the way that the writer meant for me to? Am I really doing the story justice in not reading or not reading the chapter thoroughly and then closing that chapter and beginning a new chapter? And I think that that's what we do as human beings. We're in such a hurry. And sometimes it's in a hurry because, oh, the new is exciting, right? The new is great. Yes, it's all that, but it's also freaking new. It's new for a reason. And I'm saying that we must also grieve the past because there's lessons that we learn in the grieving. There are lessons that are meant to be learned in the grieving that we need, that we're going to need, that's going to equip us for the new. And if we don't do that, then we're not preparing ourselves for what it is, for all that the new is supposed to be.

A Senior Year That Already Shifted

SPEAKER_00 33:22

You know, I've thought about like my daughter, and she really didn't do much in terms of like senior activities. Like she didn't take senior pictures, she didn't go to prom. She really didn't do a lot. And, you know, I was sitting there and I'm like, okay, did she miss out? Am I, do I need to talk to her about it? And then I had to remind myself, and she kind of had to remind me that mom, like when she finished her junior year, so she wasn't going back to school in the same way. So this entire senior year has really been in many ways a grieving or a transition period for her because she ended her high school career really as a junior, going to school every day, riding the bus, or hanging out with her friends daily, seeing teachers, all of that ended for her, her junior year. So this year has been really a transition period. She, you know, got her license, she's driving, she took college courses, found out that, ooh, okay, this is not, this is not high school. She had her failures, she had her successes, she's been working full time, she's been in her transition period. As she prepares to go to college and she's going to be going away, she's had to think about it and she's been like, Mom, you remember I'm gonna be going away. So I'm hugging her more and kissing her more and holding on to her a little bit more than I typically I would be comfortable doing. Because I, you know, we've talked about it. I'm not the most affectionate person in the world. I'm not a feeler. I will tell you that in endings, it is important that we spend the time and we grieve what once was. Whether you talk about it, whether you journal about it, but you have to allow yourself the time to really sit in it and think about what you're losing. Think about what those moments meant to you. And I want to anchor it in this way.

Menopause And God’s Provision By Season

SPEAKER_00 35:45

God is with us in all of these transitions, he's with us in these moments. And I I don't know whether I shared this with you guys or not, because, you know, again, menopause is, I tell you, it's a tricky thing. The brain fog is real. I was talking to my friend the other day. I was thinking about it. I was like, God gives us exactly what we need in for the seasons that we need them. When my kids were younger, especially considering that I am not a feeler and I'm a thinker, I'm not the most affectionate person in the world. I really don't like physical affection. I don't like affection of any kind for the most part. Just not, it's not that I don't like it. I'm just uncomfortable with it. But yet when I was, when the kids were little, I was uber affectionate with them. It was crazy. I hugged them a lot, told them that I love them a lot. And then I think about it and I'm like, I didn't grow up that way. But yet God equipped me to do that. And then I think about like I traveled a lot when my kids were little. I worked from home when I was home, when I was local. And so I was also, I was able to be room mom. And I coked like every day, every day, y'all, every day. I made them breakfast every morning before they went to school. I packed their lunches. I mean, their teachers used to be like, oh my God, they were envious of my kids' lunches. I packed lunches for all of them every day. Three different kinds of fruit, warm, warm meals that needed to be heated up for them and snacks. And then when they came home, I cooked for them and I cleaned my house. And I mean, it was overwhelming. It was a lot, but God equipped me to do all of that. Now, when I look back at that, I'm like, oh, holy, how in the world did I do that? And I was able to work. And I had a memory, like, oh my gosh, it was, it was an unnatural memory, y'all. Memory of an elephant. I could remember everything. I could, I was a, I was a high-level juggler. I could juggle multiple things at once. I had no brain fog. It was helpful and it was useful for that season. But I also held on to a lot of stuff. I also was high strung. Now, as I'm looking at this phase of my life where I've slowed down, where God literally paused a lot in my life. I don't need to remember everything because I think sometimes I'm in the season of letting go. If I had my supernatural memory, it would be hard for me to let go of the things that I need to let go of. It would be hard for me to navigate through these, through these days, this, these last few months. You know, my brain fog has been super helpful for me because I can't hold on to things because I'll be angry right now, like this moment, and then the next moment, I've forgotten. I've moved on. Like my brain literally cannot hold on to that. And so as I was grieving, like, God, why can't I remember things? And I need to do these things. And, you know, grieving how strong I used to be and what my body used to do. And God is teaching me to appreciate the things that I can do now. But I had to grieve who I was. And there are moments where I'm still grieving. By the way, transition, as I said before, is not linear. There are times where you're gonna think that, oh, I'm doing well and I've I've, you know, I've kind of gone through this, I've let it go. And then you'll go back and you'll be like, oh, I'm feeling this again. You have to make room and allow yourself grace to feel what it is that you need to feel. When things end, it is not a one-time thing. And so, if you think about all of like these things that we've talked about in previous episodes, the fact that they are continual. As people who want to do life with God, learn one thing. The only thing that is one and done is your salvation. Period. And do you know why? Because you're not the one who did it. It was Christ that did it, and he said, it is finished. That's the one and done. Everything else is a process. Everything else is continual. It is a constant, perpetual state of seeking God. It is a constant perpetual state of dying to self. It is a constant perpetual state of surrender. It is of surrendering. So I'm not even gonna talk about surrender, surrendering because you're constantly doing it. It is a constant state of accepting, of acceptance, acceptance of yourself, acceptance of where you are, acceptance of, you know, things ending and letting

Letting Go Of Rigid Spiritual Routines

SPEAKER_00 40:51

go. It is a constant state of knowing who God is, you know, talking about letting go and endings and transitions. I've talked to you all about it. Like I would wake up early in the morning. I read my verse of the day. I mean, like clockwork. Read my verse of the day. I would normally read an entire chapter, that entire chapter where the verse came from. Then I would do this is on the U version, y'all. I would do the video, then I would have, then I would do the guided prayer. Then there was a devotional that would be with the verse of the day. I would do that, and then I would do the guided prayer, and then I would do my own prayer, and then I would do a slew of devotionals, and then I would be like, yay, I'm ready to face the day. And then sometimes, oftentimes, depending on what I'm facing, I would journal. I've been struggling the last, I would say, a couple of months. I they're not hitting, like doing the verse of the day, I'm still doing it, but it's just not giving me what it normally did. And then I'm doing my guided prayer and I'm like, Lord, like I want my structure. And God was like, Do you want me or do you want your structure? Because the whole goal of reading the verse of the day and spending time in scripture and doing all of the things that you used to do, Kat, was about me. It was about you spending time with me, not about checking off a box. And right now I'm in a transition period. I don't, I'm in the middle. So that's ended. I'm in the middle. I like I don't know what the new routine is yet, except that I'm constantly talking to him. God's like, you're communing with me, but you're just not communing with me in the way that you were used to. And so I've had to make room to grieve even the way that I used to commune with God. That now I'm communing in a new way. We're talking on a consistent basis. I'm just praying without the aid of a guided prayer. Because at the time I may have needed that structure, but now God is, I'm doing a new thing. And do you not perceive it? Forget the former things. It's hard, y'all. Like it, it's it's hard. Transitions are hard. Change is hard, but it's even harder when we don't take the time to grieve the things that once were, to go through the process of transition, to go through the stages. Next episode, we're gonna talk about the messy middle. I I have uh ooh, y'all, I don't even know what the messy middle is gonna be like because I'm kind of still in the messy middle. And so we're gonna talk about that. I want you to to really think about what transition, what are you transitioning from right now? What chapters, what books are you closing right now? If you are a high school senior, I want to tell you that it's okay when you miss, and I'm gonna say when, not if, when you miss different things that you might have enjoyed about your senior year, or when you miss, don't let anybody tell you just because you're 18 or you're 19 that you you are an adult, and somehow that's supposed to mean that you don't feel things, or you can't cry, or you can't miss being a kid. Grieve the adolescence that you had, grieve it because that'll just make you so much more well-rounded. Address the hurt, address like I'm gonna miss this aspect of my life and what I used to do, hanging out with my girls or hanging out with my boys, going to the movies, like I'm going away. Some of y'all are going away to college and not only moving away from your homes, but separating from friends that you have done not just high school with, which is four years, but done middle school with. And yeah, the phone is great. FaceTime is great, like all of that is awesome, but it is no substitution for seeing that person on a daily basis for being in class with them, for all of the things that y'all shared for the many years that you shared them. Doesn't mean that the new relationship can't thrive. It's just gonna be new. The dynamic is gonna be different. Take time to grieve what once was. For those of you who are maybe graduating college and about to enter the world like adulthood, grieve what you had in college. Grieve the time that you got to not have to worry about a whole lot of things other than classes. Grieve that. Acknowledge it. Yes, be excited about whatever new is happening, whether you're going into your career of choice or whether you're not going into your career of choice. Be excited about that. But in the excitement for the new, take the time to truly read that chapter, to reflect on it, that old chapter, before you forget the former things. Take the time, give yourself the grace to feel what you need to feel. And then for those of you who may be going into a new career, a new job, a new role, a new promotion, any new stage of life, uh, it's it's the same advice. Take from it, learn, grieve it, and then take the time to heal. The word that's gonna happen in the middle. We'll talk about that. But close out, you you have to grieve. You have to allow yourself to to, whether it was a chapter that was ending because you wanted it to end, or one that ended and you didn't want it to end. And that that's hard. It still requires grieving. Let yourself feel the anger that you need to feel. Let yourself feel the fear, acknowledge it, and then the sadness. Allow yourself to feel that. Because if you don't feel those things, then you absolutely will be resistant to whatever the newness is. And we're we'll talk about that on the next episode.

Journal It And Bring It To God

SPEAKER_00 47:34

Before we wrap up, I am going to ask that you guys do something. If you have a journal, I want you to journal about all of the things that you were, that you loved, that you enjoyed. Or for those of you who may not have a journal, you don't keep a journal, you make notes, whatever. Write it out, vent it out to someone. If it's a therapist, if it's a friend, talk about it, acknowledge it. If if you're a mom right now and you're look at the pictures, look at the old pictures, tell your kids what you loved, talk about the old memories, laugh about them, cry about them. Allow yourself the space to feel, to be in the moment. Allow yourself the grace to be uncomfortable, the grace to be in the heat of that summer, to watch the things that you loved, wilt, maybe the fall of just the shedding of the things that no longer will serve you, the things that can no longer be, the shedding of old identities, old ways of thinking, old relationships, old environments, old dynamics. Allow yourself to shed them. And we're gonna have to prepare for the winter of the messy middle, where sometimes it's hard to see what's growing, and it's hard to see the work that God is doing. And by the way, in the grieving period and the anger, you can vent to God, take it to God. Not you can, you should. When you're questioning why, Lord, why did this have to end? Why did you take this from me? Why, why did you close that door? Go to Him. You can say it, you can tell Him why. But hold on for those of you that are questioning, hold on to what we discussed on the previous episodes, the sovereignty of God. Know that if you are in this period right now, if you are in this season of transition, if something is ending that God has you, He knows the plans he has for you, the plans to prosper you, plans not to harm you, plans to give you hope in a future. So as we end, end. Ha! I love that. End. Let's

Prayer And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_00 49:58

pray. Father God, thank you. Thank you for being the wonderful Father and the wonderful God that you are. Thank you for being the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, which tells us, Lord, that you are familiar with the beginnings and with the ends. Father, you reminded me the other day of how important it is to be present in the transition, to be present in the moment when things are ending, even though you can be excited about whatever new is gonna happen because you know what's gonna happen, Lord. Like Jesus when Lazarus died, he knew that he was going to resurrect Lazarus. He knew that in a few moments he was going to do that. But yet, Lord, Jesus stayed in that moment. He acknowledged the mourning, the hurt that Mary, Martha, and everyone else was feeling. And he wept. He wept although he knew what was to come. He wept although he knew that joy was just a few minutes away. He knew what he was, he could have immediately said, Hey, y'all don't have to mourn because I'm about to do a new thing, I'm about to resurrect him. He could have said that, but instead he wept. Lord, that is Jesus, that is you modeling what it is that we ought to do, to take the time to grieve and to weep and to mourn the things that were, or to mourn with those who are mourning. Thank you, God, for being the God who is constant, the one who has always been with us, who never leaves us and never forsakes us, the one who is in the discomfort, in the pain, in the grieving, in the ending with us, but also the one who is already in our future waiting for us. So, Father God, I pray for every listener, for every person, for every life, for everyone listening to this episode, Lord, that Father, that you would enable them, that your Holy Spirit would enable them to show themselves grace, to weep, to mourn, to grieve what once was, to mourn the endings, not to stay there, to model what Jesus did, which is to take the time to grieve what once was, even while so having hope and being excited for what you are doing in our future. So, Father, I pray that you would bless those who are listening, that you would bless their lives, that you would bless their families, that you would bless the things, Lord, that you are doing in their lives. It is in your holy name, Lord Jesus, that I pray. Amen. Thank you, and I'll see you guys for the next episode and as we discuss the middle, the messy middle. Have a blessed one.