Latest / The Midlife Momma Podcast - Empty nest mom, Parenting adult children, Midlife transition, Christian mom / 240. How to Trust God When You Can't Control the Outcome with Fiction Writer Cheryl Esper Balcom

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240. How to Trust God When You Can't Control the Outcome with Fiction Writer Cheryl Esper Balcom · The Midlife Momma Podcast - Empty nest mom, Parenting adult children, Midlife transition, Christian mom

0:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Christian Parenting.
0:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey mama, I'm Pamela Hinkoman, certified Emptiness Coach and your listening to the Midlife Mama podcast.
0:15
[SPEAKER_01]: This show is for Christian moms navigating the Emptiness, learning how to let go with grace, set healthy boundaries, reconnected marriage, and step confidently into their God-given purpose.
0:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Each week I'll coach you through this season with faith-building
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: On his conversations and practical tools that you can apply right away to your relationships and your life.
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: If this episode encourages you, I'd be grateful if you leave a quick rating and review.
0:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It helps other moms find the support they need.
0:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll find the link in the show notes.
0:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And make sure you're following the podcast.
0:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And let's get started.
0:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
0:52
[SPEAKER_02]: where at our final episode of our special Fall series, her next chapter, where we're exploring the beautiful sometimes unexpected journey of midlife by covering topics I don't normally cover.
1:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Today we're taking a slight departure from our usual conversation to talk about the power of fiction.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: My guest is author, Cheryl Esperbelkum.
1:14
[SPEAKER_02]: whose new novel, Mother of the Year, tells the story of Lindy Thomas, a woman whose carefully order blight is turned upside down after the unexpected step of her husband.
1:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And as she embarks on a cross-country road trip, she discovers the hardest journey isn't across the country.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the one that we've heard from striving to surrender.
1:34
[SPEAKER_02]: You've ever felt responsible for holding your family together, struggling to let go of control or wondering how God meets us in season we never would have chosen.
1:43
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you'll see pieces of your own story in Lindi's story.
1:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's dive into this conversation with Cheryl as for welcome.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome, Cheryl.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, Camelap.
1:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
1:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I just swan at day.
1:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I so enjoyed your book.
1:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I read it in an afternoon.
1:59
[SPEAKER_02]: I was just like, I forgot to find out what this note is offered.
2:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, life's timing about Lady, your main character.
2:10
[SPEAKER_02]: She has spent her life believing it's her job to hold everyone together.
2:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And so why do you think many women, especially mothers, carry that burden and what finally convinced you to explore that theme in the novel?
2:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that all of us, I think women in general, we kind of have this control gene, right?
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that comes from our from the curse of and the ball in the garden after Eve eight, the forbidden fruit.
2:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The curse was for us that we would desire our husband, but his role would be over us.
2:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we will struggle against that a lot in our lives.
2:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, especially for moms, we have also been given this nurturing gene, right?
2:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Does desire to care for our families and our children?
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we just, we take on this responsibility so seriously, right?
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's with all good intentions, with love and care and desire for good for those people that we love.
3:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So Lindi, of course, feels this way.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: She's already wired that way and then we find out in the book that she has about back story.
3:20
[SPEAKER_00]: She has her own kind of mother wound from her own mother.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So she's trying to prove that she can do a better job than her own mother.
3:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really heightened for her.
3:30
[SPEAKER_00]: This desire to just have this good light, this good strong family and build everything together.
3:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I think you're spot on that with women in our age of maybe obviously we've been doing it the full time and that's why this season can be so hard when our kid leave and their adults and we're like how do we not still be responsible for these children and so I love the storyline of the son who lives in London and she's I think he just needs to get a job back in the
4:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Isn't that a mom to try to figure out how can I get that child back?
4:05
[SPEAKER_02]: What's her theory?
4:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm about to talk about when landies has been dies.
4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: She's forced into a season.
4:13
[SPEAKER_02]: She never would have chosen.
4:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you think grief has a way of rebuilding both our deepest fears and that places where God's go wants to heal up?
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, greed kind of just peels away all the layers doesn't it?
4:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It just makes us realize that we actually all have a sense of entitlement because we're always surprised by the things that happen that we kind of feel like this will weren't supposed to go this way.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: which means we had a way that we wanted it to go, right?
4:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It just reveals our weakness, it reveals our pride.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that grief and pain, our lenses that God allows us to look through to see him more clearly.
4:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that make sense?
4:57
[SPEAKER_02]: A beautiful say about again.
4:58
[SPEAKER_02]: See you in the again.
4:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Grace and pain and suffering are lenses that God use this to allow us to see him more clearly, to see our weakness, but also to see his strength.
5:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And so she is worth to do a lot of things that she doesn't want to do, right?
5:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And her husband, so I tried to write it so that we could see that her husband, she was already had an empty nest for a few years, but her husband has made this a safe place and made that a comfortable space for her as she's adjusted.
5:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And now all of a sudden, he's gone.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was always for safe place.
5:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now, like we all do, if this stage of life, I have four grown kids.
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like,
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Who am I now and she's doubly perplexed because she's I don't I'm a widow now and my kids are in very various stages of life and phases of things that they're going through and I one point in the story she literally gets stuck in between them.
5:56
[SPEAKER_00]: She's the middle of the country and one child has been on the west coast of one child within Michigan and struggling with some things and she's like
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Where am I supposed to be?
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: What am I supposed to do?
6:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Who am I in this moment?
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the road trip is a metaphor for her journey to releasing and surrendering and letting God be her state plate.
6:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
6:19
[SPEAKER_02]: The book is titled Mother of the Year and it is so adorable how through the whole book you did be little bit title for when this happens.
6:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you give us a few
6:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, the headlines, they're fermenting the headlines.
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Then that is, I have to say that's just a piece of my own life because I have this little voice that summarizing everything I do, right?
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, father of the year is a tongue-in-sheet title, because don't we all just that's our goal, right?
6:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to be normal.
6:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, yeah, it's we want to be the best mom.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to guarantee these outcomes, right?
6:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Certain outcomes.
6:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And so in her head, she and of course there is a tie to a headline from a newspaper from her past.
7:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that has started the habit that summarizes everything she's doing, one of them in.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So, she doesn't fly, but her son is this musical crotty G, who is in the London Symphony Orchestra, and everyone has flown to see him except for her, so that's one of the headlines.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
7:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has seen musical crotty G, except his own mother.
7:27
[SPEAKER_00]: In some times, these headlines are building her up and puffing her up and sometimes they're just the little herba.
7:32
[SPEAKER_00]: We all had their voice, don't we?
7:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like just judging everything we do,
7:39
[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, you've met just so cleverly and I could relate to every one of them, I'd love to admit.
7:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So why do you think, what do you hope women discover about their identity beyond being the good
8:01
[SPEAKER_00]: her relationship with her husband and how he was for safe place.
8:05
[SPEAKER_00]: He kind of gave her purpose once the kids were out of the house.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: He was still there for her to care for and be responsible for and share life with.
8:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that just got all flipped down and pad after he passed away unexpectedly.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So what she has to learn is that God is truly our safety net.
8:23
[SPEAKER_00]: God is the one who
8:25
[SPEAKER_00]: He has us purpose.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to be in other people.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: He has work for us to do people are always going to disappoint.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to disappoint ourselves.
8:35
[SPEAKER_00]: We may again have these desired outcomes that we want.
8:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But really it's about surrendering to his will for our light.
8:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that was the underlying theme, honestly.
8:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Lindi had so many ideas about how life should be.
8:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And isn't that just like moms, we just have these expectations up.
8:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But if it were like this, then then I'd be a little more at peace if they did this.
8:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately, I think every mom must learn this lesson that it's not about what we want.
9:06
[SPEAKER_02]: God's will prevail.
9:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Our children are free to go and build their life.
9:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if it is in London, it's far away.
9:14
[SPEAKER_02]: We cannot stand in the way of that in that the tension of releasing that of even when she will when she watches her daughter struggle with infertility like how so many moms can relate to that.
9:28
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so painful, right?
9:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have to let change it.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we have to let go of our own like Lindy and her husband really wanted to be grandparents.
9:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that unknowingly, she was really not sharing her daughter.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there were some whole other circumstances there that needed to come to light.
9:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And God just gently and beautifully restored that.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just wanted to be there.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They went down the way here.
9:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a message of God's great.
9:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's always what I'm trying to come back.
9:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was honestly, it was done so well.
10:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey mama, if your house feels too quiet and your heart feels too heavy after launching your child, I've created a guide just for you.
10:10
[SPEAKER_01]: It's called journaling through transitional grief.
10:14
[SPEAKER_01]: A gentle, faith-filled resource to help you process the deep of motions of letting go.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Inside you'll find six reflection questions that will help you name your feelings.
10:25
[SPEAKER_01]: invite God into the grief and experience his comfort in the middle of change.
10:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember, transitional grief is only a season and God is leading you toward peace, purpose, and joy.
10:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You can grab your free copy at the link in the show notes.
10:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, let's get back to our conversation.
10:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Lindi has to take this road trip.
10:46
[SPEAKER_02]: That's ridiculous.
10:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Because the sun has flown from London to California, and she gets to see him perform.
10:53
[SPEAKER_02]: So because she's afraid to fly, she's going to drive across the country.
10:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And she has all these realizations.
11:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So throughout the road trip, Lindi slowly realizes that she can't control the people she loves.
11:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a lesson.
11:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do you think letting go is so difficult and
11:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a funny story to share, and this is from real life that influenced this book, and I just want to say for the record that the children in the story are not my children.
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not their stories.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to lie.
11:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But I have four got children as I mentioned, 31 down to 24, and our youngest daughter is not a believer.
11:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And a couple years ago,
11:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I bought tickets for this program.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a musical, daged, dramatic performance of Kiligres Pibras in the Dukkump Pilgrim.
11:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I heard all these rave reviews and so I was like, this is going to be fabulous.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting tickets for the whole family.
11:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So I got tickets in a couple days before the performance.
11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: My daughter looked at me and said, yeah, no, I'm not going to that.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like,
12:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't choose 22 at the time.
12:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't strap her into the mini van and make her go.
12:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But I had all the schemes and plans that this was fun to be what brought her to the Lord.
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew how to do the best, right?
12:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So that left then, it lindy strobes with that, as you reference to trying to manipulate circumstance.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So this journey that Lindi takes to see her slime is all about the process of letting go.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: She read more and more things she realizes are out of her control and that surrendering down to God by the end of the story she sees that his way is so much better and and it can be good.
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
12:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We think there's only one way to get to good and have me, but bads way is so much better.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you did it when we learned.
12:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like all of us are my kids are.
12:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I have five kids and they are 37 to 25.
12:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I just the other day I was thinking, I started letting my kids go in 2007.
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
13:04
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not even practicing with a long time.
13:08
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that the layers upon layers of surrender and surrender.
13:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you finally get to that place, it just feels so good.
13:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like very yours, God.
13:16
[SPEAKER_02]: their yours.
13:17
[SPEAKER_02]: They can make the choices that they want.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a beautiful thing.
13:23
[SPEAKER_02]: So what are the things I love about fiction is that it often reaches our hearts and ways that non-fiction can't.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to know, why did you choose to tell this message through a story instead of writing a traditional Christian living book?
13:39
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's so interesting.
13:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So I never thought I could write fiction.
13:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I, my kids for me were young.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't think I was creative.
13:45
[SPEAKER_00]: My kids would ask for bedtime stories.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd be like, oh no, I can't think of anything.
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'd come up with stuff and silly.
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll always tack on a moral or a lesson at the end of the story, right?
13:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So the first thing I wrote was my memoir.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: When I started writing to be published, I wrote my memoir because things tell new writers write what you know.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I knew my own life.
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I did write a time of us over 50, so I had some life experiences that I had seen for God work through.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And wrote all of that out.
14:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Still.
14:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of that helped me realize that I can take real-life situations and fictionalize that to tell the story and I feel like sometimes non-fiction for me writing non-fiction, I feel like I'm pointing my finger and saying, through what you should do, right?
14:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And I felt this way, I had a lot of fun with it actually because I thought how God had taught me through letting go of my own children.
14:42
[SPEAKER_00]: and then just fictionalize it all into Lindy in her story, and I feel like that readers can relate to that, and not it more relate to Lindy rather than sealing pointed at or pointed out or called out.
14:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's beautiful.
14:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, friend, you have got to get this bug.
14:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It is phenomenal.
15:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I literally, I was like, okay, when's your next one?
15:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that one, mate.
15:07
[SPEAKER_02]: This is another important part of this story is that Cheryl discovered this date when she was fit.
15:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that's phenomenal.
15:19
[SPEAKER_02]: That's phenomenal.
15:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not too late, friends.
15:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not too late to try something new.
15:26
[SPEAKER_02]: It is not too late to step in to something God is calling you to anything that is fabulous.
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: That might be the best part in the whole story.
15:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You had courage to do that.
15:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we all have a story to tell.
15:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we are followers of Christ, he has done something in our life.
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all have a story to tell for share.
15:47
[SPEAKER_00]: About hand.
15:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
15:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So how did you land on the story itself?
15:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you land on that.
15:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So I talked about this a little bit in the authors' note at the end of the book.
15:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wrote my memoir, Sublierth ago, and that kind of centers around the loss of my dad, who died when he was 61.
16:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my mother was widowed at age 59.
16:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I, at the time, was a young mom with young children.
16:13
[SPEAKER_00]: After my dad died, my mom, who does not cry, went to visit my brother, who is an opera singer.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: He was living in Germany.
16:20
[SPEAKER_00]: If you came to Seattle, so my mom took this road trip, so I was like, I'll be a funny story.
16:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So I combined it with my own experience of where I am with adult children and letting go and woven all together to be this story.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: But the seed was planted from my mom's own experience, and so lindy's grief, I watched
16:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And then lindies adopt children.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I watched myself go through.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So that can combine to make the story.
16:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it's well, bad.
16:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd like, I know there's got to be this kind of be a portion of Cheryl in here, a little bit.
16:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got to be.
16:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, for sure.
16:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Simply put a lot of love.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that you've really portrayed what we as emptiness moms experience.
17:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just done so beautifully.
17:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone who reads it can, well, relate.
17:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, see themselves with out giving away the anything.
17:15
[SPEAKER_02]: If a woman is listening today feels exhausted from trying to carry her family or manage every outcome, it keep everyone happy.
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you hope she takes away from Rindy's journey?
17:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So the verse Isaiah 49, 16 is mentioned in this referred to a couple of times in the book, and it says, behold, I have engraved you on the palm of my hand.
17:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the questions that Lindy finds herself asking is, who will know me in this season of life?
17:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Who knows me now?
17:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Because husband is gone, or children are gone?
17:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the message I want for reader to take away is that you are known right where you are you are loved God knows you he created you he formed you in the world he needed you together he knows the number of your days he knows your thought you can't ever escape his present
18:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So you are never alone.
18:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You are loved and know and you can trust him.
18:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what I hope the reader will take away.
18:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think they very much will.
18:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Every mom has to come to this revelation like we all get to this point where we go
18:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I did what I needed to do, and my job was to release them, like that's a job.
18:36
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I'm calling in it, Ethan.
18:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like open hands, open hearts, and just letting them go, trusting God with it all, and that wherever we're at, kind of sees us.
18:48
[SPEAKER_02]: He knows exactly what we need.
18:50
[SPEAKER_02]: He knows exactly what we're concerned about.
18:52
[SPEAKER_02]: When you so faithful, and I think it's in the opening of our hands, like Landy did, where she finally had eats.
19:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So many moms are like holding on something.
19:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And that can destroy our relationships.
19:05
[SPEAKER_02]: So just this open-handedness is just a beautiful way to live.
19:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to know, Cheryl, do you have a plan for another picture book or non-fiction?
19:15
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think?
19:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, I definitely have another nonfiction book in the works and one of our gotters hands from special needs and so I've been working on open on to the past few years on a devotional or parents of children what's special need.
19:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that will probably be the next thing that I published, but I'm not really out another novel in the future.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see what got to happen.
19:37
[SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome.
19:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to ask, can you tell my listeners where they can find you online and find your book?
19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I have both books, my memoir, and this novel, Mother of the Year, are available on Amazon.
19:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have a website, Cheryl, usperbalcrum.com, and you can find the books there.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find more information.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I write blog articles as well there.
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I even have a page of free resources to help you dig into the word a little bit on your own.
20:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, so that website is safe for me.
20:07
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, I will leave those links in the show notes.
20:10
[SPEAKER_02]: What a beautiful reminder that God often meets if not when everything is under control, but when we finally admit, we can't carry it all anymore.
20:20
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20:22
[SPEAKER_02]: In each episode, I will give you one actionable step to improve your life.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Remember, we can't change everything, but you've been take a one step to be better.
20:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Today, I just wanted you to think about one little thing that you've been holding on,
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[SPEAKER_02]: to tightly.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Take some time with Jesus and surrender it to Him.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And take note of how that feels.
20:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I will be Feral's conversation, encourage you to loosen your grip just a little, and trust the one who has been carrying you all along.
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're grieving the loss, navigating changing relationships with your adult children, or stepping into an unexpected midlife season, your next chapter doesn't have to be perfect to be filled with purpose, God has already there, writing a story of hope and redemption.
21:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Until next time, Mama, Grace and Peace, you've got this, and God's got you.
21:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for spending time with me on the Midlife Mama Podcast.
21:18
[SPEAKER_01]: My hope is that you leave each episode feeling encouraged, grounded, and clearer.
21:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Clearer about what you're feeling, what God may be stirring in you, and how to move forward in the season of the empty nest.
21:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Through these conversations, I'm not just sharing stories, I'm coaching you, helping you name what's happening beneath the service, challenging the thoughts that keep you stuck and take intentional steps toward peace and confidence as a midlife mom.
21:45
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're ready to go deeper and want personalized coaching support, I invite you to apply for coaching.
21:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Coaching is a focused one-on-one space where we work together to gain clarity and
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[SPEAKER_01]: Process emotions and discern what God is calling you to in this next chapter.
22:01
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll find the application linked in the show notes, and let's stay connected.
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You can find me on Instagram at P-Hinglman, that's P-H-E-N-K-E-L-M-A-N, or on Facebook at Pamela Hinglman, Emptinessed Coach.
22:16
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to figure out the season alone, Mama.
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Support and direction are possible, and I'm here when you're ready.