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Elaine Lankford: From Rock Bottom to Purpose · Why I Believe

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome back to Why I Believe.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Michelle Von Ruden.
• 0:05
  And today with me, have Elaine Langford.
• 0:08
  Hi Elaine, thanks for being here today.
• 0:10
  Hey, thank you so much for having me, Michelle, it's an honor.
• 0:14
  Yeah, would you like to introduce yourself for us?
• 0:16
  Sure, so my name is Elaine Lankford and I am the founder of She Stops Ford Coaching and She Stops Ford International.
• 0:26
  I am an entrepreneur coach for Christian Females trying to get into the marketplace and I live in Virginia.
• 0:34
  Awesome.
• 0:35
  Well, thank you so much.
• 0:36
  Yeah, so we've met through a mutual friend of ours, so I think that was a great connection.
• 0:40
  So always looking for those connections.
• 0:42
  So you said in your application when we were talking, and you didn't give it all away.
• 0:48
  In fact, I don't know very little about this, but you said you had a job-like moment in 2008.
• 0:54
  Yeah, I absolutely did.
• 0:56
  I was just carrying on in a very successful 16 year nursing career and I had moved up the ladder in leadership.
• 1:06
  I'd gone from being a registered nurse all the way until a nurse practitioner and I was out practicing in pain management in a local practice in my area.
• 1:17
  And uh unfortunately about that time in 2008, pain management had become very political.
• 1:23
  in nature, we had had a heyday where we were recognizing that patients were not being treated fairly in the late, early 2000s, I'll say.
• 1:34
  And we had risen in that specialty and that specialty had come to be recognized as needed.
• 1:42
  But by 2008, things had kind of gotten a little shaky again and there was a lot of stuff going on out there.
• 1:49
  And so unfortunately,
• 1:51
  On an August afternoon at two o'clock in the afternoon, the state medical board came into the office and closed our practice.
• 2:00
  And it was very unfortunate.
• 2:02
  It was very shocking.
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  um Not too long after that happened, I found out that they were actually going, the state board of nursing was going to investigate me.
• 2:14
  So compounded shock on shock was occurring.
• 2:19
  and around August of that time.
• 2:20
  And I can say that that was a year long fight trying to um save my career, save my reputation from some things that were just not true.
• 2:31
  But in the midst of all of that, if that were not enough to have your career completely swept out from under you, my father passed away in about December of that year he was the
• 2:42
  glue to our family.
• 2:43
  And so here I am.
• 2:45
  fighting for my career and then going through the grief of losing a parent.
• 2:49
  then around May of the next year, as I'm at the tail end of this fight, my husband at 47 was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
• 2:57
  And I'd been an oncology nurse, so I knew ramifications of that.
• 3:01
  Fortunately, he was very early stage, had surgery, and he is well into survival years, but...
• 3:08
  You can imagine all within about 12 months how my world just came crashing down around me and I was just trying to figure out what in the world.
• 3:16
  Yeah, that's a lot.
• 3:17
  Like one of those would be enough, right?
• 3:20
  But to have all of it compound within a small timeframe is just overwhelming.
• 3:26
  Absolutely.
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  you know, looking back, you know, God always has a hand in everything, even in those bad situations that take us back.
• 3:39
  And so why he allowed what he allowed in my nursing career, I now kind of realized that he was kind of saving me from some things.
• 3:48
  had grown up as a church girl.
• 3:51
  been in the church world my entire life.
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  tell people I'm pretty sure I was spit out in the church nursery, even though my certificate says Oversea Hospital.
• 3:59
  My parents were very faithful.
• 4:01
  And I'd known since sixth grade, I was supposed to be a nurse.
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  Like I heard that still small voice.
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  I can tell you the classroom I was in, the window I was looking out.
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  And so why he allowed it, I believe, was because I had kind of gotten away from identifying myself with
• 4:18
  Christ and it wasn't a punishment.
• 4:20
  It was a saving moment.
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  I want people to understand that when you start to get off the path and go away that is not beneficial to you.
• 4:29
  He will intervene and so I'd become very probably materialistic.
• 4:34
  You know, it was all about the degrees on the wall and the alphabet behind my name was what was the next thing I could accomplish and you know, I knew him.
• 4:43
  I knew him and I knew and I did love him, but I was not chasing him.
• 4:47
  And so I believe that God is the jealous God and it's a sweetness and jealousy and that he calls us to himself.
• 4:54
  And so I believe he really pulled me out of that to save me from going down a path that may have had some complications in my life if I'd have kept going that way.
• 5:04
  ah And so now when I look back, I'm as much as I hated it, as much as it hurt.
• 5:11
  um He's opened up a beautiful path for me and he's shown me that he can do more when I give him what's in my hand and I take what he has in his.
• 5:21
  Yeah, that's so, so true.
• 5:24
  And I think that's a key to point out is that it's not a punishment, right?
• 5:27
  So when we start tying our identity to what we do and not to him, that's when the problems start to arise.
• 5:33
  And I mean, it took me a long time to realize this to Elaine.
• 5:36
  And I'm sure there's people listening that are in that same boat, right?
• 5:38
  That we're chasing the degrees, we have the alphabet soup, we have all of the things.
• 5:43
  And so when you went back to your roots, your origin story,
• 5:50
  What changed for you?
• 5:52
  Is that when you decided to start doing the Christian coaching?
• 5:55
  Is that when everything started to fall in place in that way?
• 5:58
  Yeah, so it was a transition.
• 6:01
  I tell people there was about a five year period when you when I say I walked through the valley.
• 6:07
  I walked through the valley.
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  So those first two years were detrimental because what happened with the nursing board is not that I lost.
• 6:18
  my license, but there was an agreement made to stop the process.
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  Because after a year, we were financially drowning.
• 6:24
  They were continuing to pursue.
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  And so we went into something called a consent order, which means I don't agree with you, you don't agree with me, but we're going to agree on these terms and stop this process.
• 6:34
  And so when I walked away from that, um
• 6:37
  I didn't use my nurse practitioner.
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  I had to rebuild my career off of my RN.
• 6:41
  But for two years, really set.
• 6:43
  I really set.
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  I was unable to find employment.
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  It was very difficult.
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  I was overqualified for most jobs.
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  A lot of the jobs I might have qualified for, people are a little edgy, even though people in my community knew me.
• 6:56
  And I had eight physicians, by the way, write letters for me during that period of time saying if she was in practice tomorrow, I would use her.
• 7:03
  ah It was that kind of a situation.
• 7:06
  So when I got through it, they were like, Lane, we love you.
• 7:08
  But if they would do that to you and we know you, you're solid.
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  watched you grow up.
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  We watched you go through nursing school.
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  What would they do to us if you were in our practice?
• 7:16
  So I kind of became a tar baby, if you will.
• 7:20
  And so finding employment was difficult and I sat for two years.
• 7:23
  But during that time, what happened was around 2010, my church, was that at the time, started going to Nicaragua and I went down there for
• 7:32
  nine years with them on missions trips.
• 7:34
  But in those first few trips, God showed me how he can really use you despite.
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  So the first trip down, really quickly, the pastor's wife was a nurse from the Nicaraguan system.
• 7:47
  She wasn't in nursing at the time, but she had been in nursing.
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  So when she found out I was coming down, she immediately wanted to set up a female hygiene education for girls.
• 7:57
  And I thought,
• 7:58
  You know, I was going to talk to about 20, 25 kids at the orphanage that they, um, that they owned and ran.
• 8:06
  And I got down there with a biology teacher.
• 8:09
  That's how funny God is.
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  Had a biology teacher.
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  And Val and I ended up talking to over 200 girls on that truck into several of the school systems.
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  to explain to them about their female hygiene and all of those kind of things.
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  And I just saw God use my nursing in a different way.
• 8:28
  And let me know that if he really wants me to have it, that he will, he will.
• 8:35
  And so we did that for a couple of trips.
• 8:38
  And then of course we did other stuff on other trips.
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  But in the midst of that one morning at
• 8:44
  one early morning sitting on a porch drinking coffee with an obnoxious rooster going off in the background.
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  I heard him say, go home and raise up my daughters.
• 8:55
  And I had no idea what that meant.
• 8:58
  I was like, God, I went through high school, but I wasn't in the cliques.
• 9:02
  I didn't go to full college.
• 9:04
  I went to nursing school.
• 9:05
  So no sorority girls, right?
• 9:08
  I, know, girls were mean.
• 9:12
  And I said, why, why would you want me to do that?
• 9:15
  But got home and, um, my church at the time had grown from about 400 to a thousand and we'd built a new building.
• 9:25
  And so I looked out in the congregation one morning and I saw all these beautiful women.
• 9:30
  Cause my husband and I had been there for about 14 years.
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  We were very active.
• 9:33
  We were small group leaders or Bible study leaders, whichever way you say that in your churches.
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  Um, he played in the band.
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  I had started going on missions trip.
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  I knew so many of these women in the congregation and their stories.
• 9:47
  And I just couldn't understand why they were coming in, checking a box and going home.
• 9:50
  And that's when it hit me that he was positioning me to be a catalyst to put, push these women out into their purpose.
• 9:59
  And that's how it all kind of got started.
• 10:05
  It feels like there might have been an easier way, right?
• 10:07
  But yeah.
• 10:13
  all things are used.
• 10:15
  And I think because of my story and people in the church watched me walk through that, I had more of an influence because they were like, we don't know how you got through that.
• 10:23
  We don't know how you hold onto your faith.
• 10:25
  It was a true crossroads moment.
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  I could either lean into my faith or I could run away.
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  And I chose to lean in.
• 10:33
  and serve and so getting back and serving in the church during that dark period of time those two years when I was sitting still was my way out and I want to tell people when you
• 10:42
  have a problem like that if you can refocus and turn it outward instead of turning it inward you will walk through it so much faster not easy but walk through it faster more
• 10:54
  efficient God is trying to do something with you that's what he's really calling to um and so that's
• 11:02
  When I just figured out like I want to figure out how to motivate them.
• 11:07
  And so that's how I got into coaching.
• 11:10
  I love John Maxwell.
• 11:11
  Who doesn't love John Maxwell?
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  I'd heard of him.
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  I've heard of his faith, how he blended things.
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  I was so impressed with that.
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  And so 2017 I went down and got my John Maxwell certification and somewhere within that year I met a great Christian guy here in my area who was a coach and
• 11:28
  He kind of started coaching me so could figure out this path that God was putting me on with these women.
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  And I thought at first that, you know, it was gonna be inside of the church, that I was gonna be working with women inside of the church.
• 11:40
  And he quickly moved it to outside of the church, to this marketplace ministry, as we call it.
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  Because all along the way, like 2016, I'm putting together my LLC.
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  And then in 2019,
• 11:56
  He gave me an inspiration for something called the She Steps Forward Conference and I launched that in 2019.
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  And God being the funny God that he is, in 2019 when I launched that first conference and had about 60 ladies from here in the area that came out and we supported 15 women vendors
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  and we did three, we had three female founders of nonprofits.
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  We did something tangible for in the midst of all of that.
• 12:22
  He brought someone from Kenya to conference the very first conference and I'm like what is happening right now and So I got a chance to meet Teresa at that conference and she was
• 12:32
  able to hang out with me in the area for a little bit and she's about the same age as I was and had kids who were in college and doing great things and was a co-pastor with her
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  husband in Nairobi, Kenya and When we got to the end of that week, we just felt very very in sync
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  And she knew that this was something that women in Africa needed.
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  And she was bold enough to ask me if I'd come to Nairobi.
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  And I'm like, mouth drop, what are we doing now?
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  And so, you know, I traveled out of country to Nicaragua.
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  So I was like, this is a new adventure.
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  And I'm kind of a travel girl anyway.
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  So I went home and told my husband that all of sudden, hey, honey, I'm going to Africa.
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  And we planned that out over a year.
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  got on WhatsApp and Zoom and planned it out in February of 2020 before the whole world shut down.
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  I landed in Nairobi, Kenya and we did our first G-Steps for a conference there and we had 60 ladies from five different African countries represented.
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  And I just knew he was up to something.
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  So I come home and I'm looking at this whole spance of what could happen in Africa.
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  Cause not only have we have conference, but now I've met three
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  dynamic organizations over there.
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  I've met Miss Grace who runs an orphanage that's about 65 kids on any given day and Phyllis who runs a teenage female advocacy program there and then Wilson and Mary run the
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  Umijo Disability Center and they have a large portion of women with disabilities or women with children with disabilities.
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  And I'm like we have to make this a missions week because we have to go back.
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  And so I come home and I develop a nonprofit because what else are you going to do when you start doing international stuff, but you need that nonprofit arm.
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  And so here I am.
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  I have the LLC.
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  He's moved me along.
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  We're doing significant programs like conference platforms.
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  And now I have my nonprofit and that's how it kind of clicked for me.
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  It's like, okay, now I have all of these experiences that I can share.
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  I'm someone who's coming out of a steady work position into a entrepreneurial
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  shift and that is quite a difference when someone is controlling your hours, your paycheck, everything structured into you now have to sit in the CEO seat.
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  ah And so I just thought that was a beautiful transition and I knew a lot of these women could do the same if they just knew how to do it.
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  And so that's how I got into entrepreneurship and that's how I kind of started my coaching with Christian Females.
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  And I think it's really important to point out, so none of this would have happened without your trials.
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  Right?
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  And I think so many of us, when we hit those hard moments, we want to hurry up and rush through things.
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  And it's not about going through them.
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  It's about growing through them and really reflecting on it as it hap- you know, in the past, like what happened?
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  What did I learn from this?
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  How do I move forward?
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  Um, because without that, we really did just go through something.
• 15:34
  But how do we use it and take it to our use to our advantage?
• 15:37
  Because like you did, had you not gone through that, you wouldn't be where you're at today, first of all.
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  Secondly, you wouldn't have probably had a lot of the credibility and relatability that you need to build what you're building.
• 15:51
  And I say building because I don't think you're done yet.
• 15:54
  I think you got a lot of more work to do.
• 15:56
  Yeah.
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  absolutely.
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  You know, it's funny.
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  uh We have to look at the characters in the Bible and it didn't come easy.
• 16:05
  Right.
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  Moses had several things that he went through before he became the leader of the Israelite people.
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  Joseph went through a lot before he became second in command to Pharaoh.
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  Paul.
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  my goodness, his whole entire ministry, a lot of it was out of a prison cell, right?
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  That he's preaching and writing.
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  Like we have to be realistic that Christ calls us and we say in, in, in our world calls us into the deep.
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  And when we come into the deep, there are layers of faith that we have to develop.
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  How will we develop that?
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  Only by going through trials.
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  only by going through some tough stuff to realize that he can take us through it.
• 16:50
  Like we can't tone our muscles without some stress against them, right?
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  There has to be some resistance and that resistance, which we in our lives look at sometimes as tragedy and there are tragic events.
• 17:03
  Don't get me wrong.
• 17:03
  I don't mean it in that way, but we look at it as tragedy and just uprooting and uh destruction.
• 17:11
  But sometimes that is just the resistance that we need.
• 17:15
  God knows us before we're born.
• 17:17
  He knows what we can go through and what he can get us through.
• 17:20
  We have to open ourselves up to that possibility.
• 17:24
  It's hard when you're in it.
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  Absolutely 100%.
• 17:27
  It's not fun.
• 17:27
  Nobody wants to do it.
• 17:29
  Nobody wants to work out either.
• 17:31
  But we all want a ripped body, right?
• 17:34
  So, but we don't want to like eat the way we're supposed to eat.
• 17:37
  We don't want to work out.
• 17:38
  And it's the same thing with our faith.
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  faith has to be worked in order to grow.
• 17:43
  you know, Paul is our biggest example of that.
• 17:46
  my goodness, for sure.
• 17:47
  Um, but even Jesus, Jesus's walk was not easy.
• 17:53
  Um, we kind of like, I think in some of our portrayals of what went on in that time can kind of Hollywood it.
• 18:04
  But it was difficult.
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  People were, you know, as soon as he stepped into his ministry role, people were after him.
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  People were accusing him.
• 18:11
  People were trying to plot to kill him.
• 18:14
  And eventually they thought that they did, you know, that he laid down his life in that episode.
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  But what pain he went through for us.
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  And so if he can go through that for me, what have I to say about what happens in my life except to lean in and to trust?
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  And that's faith.
• 18:35
  That's that's faith walk.
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  That's how we build it.
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  One episode after another.
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  But there are there are always going to be times when he gives us rest, when he gives us peace, when he gives us joy and we have to lean in and enjoy those times.
• 18:49
  ah But yeah, life isn't fair.
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  It's not fair.
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  And we have to just live with that.
• 18:57
  Yeah, and I think, you you've hit a lot of the big points, right?
• 19:01
  And life isn't fair, and we have to do the reps, we have to put that time in.
• 19:05
  And it's easier to do that when things are hard.
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  But how do you walk in faith every day, for the moments when your life doesn't feel like it's exploding right in front of you?
• 19:17
  How does that, what does that walk look like every day?
• 19:20
  You know, back when all of that happened and I am sitting for an entire, almost an entire two years, like just nowhere to go and nowhere to turn.
• 19:32
  Those are the times that are the sweetest when I look back because those are the times that I sat and actually read my Bible.
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  I think for the first time in my life, I read the Bible the entire way through and not only just read it, but deeply studied it.
• 19:49
  Like I spent that time with him and there's so much that grew in me and and so much that he showed me in that time.
• 19:57
  There's so many scriptures I could pull out now.
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  It come from that time of sitting there.
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  That's how deep it got into me.
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  The other thing was just the revelation that he gave.
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  I wrote, I wrote during that period of time.
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  I would journal, I would document, I was doing all these things.
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  And because of that,
• 20:18
  Two years later, I look back and I heard him say, need you to put all of that in a book.
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  And I thought, uh-uh.
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  I want to see, nobody's going to understand.
• 20:27
  At that point, I was like, everybody's going to understand this story.
• 20:30
  Jesus, I don't want to do that.
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  Put all my stuff out there in the public.
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  But when I look back at all of those days, what was he doing?
• 20:38
  He was crafting a book.
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  He was crafting my story in a way that I could put it out there.
• 20:45
  in book format and show people my walk with him, show them my pain, show them the times when he showed up and tapped me on the shoulder to let me know he was still there.
• 20:56
  Show all the emotion that I went through and then come out on the other side more in love with him than before and knowing that he had a plan for me.
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  And that book, you know, I self-published it and, you know, got out there and Lord knows I went to churches and did talks.
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  I went to
• 21:16
  any kind of marketplace I could get in to sell it.
• 21:18
  I met so many people through that and I had people come back and tell me, my gosh, Elaine, I love how much scripture you put in your book and I love how you positioned it.
• 21:30
  I use it as a devotional now.
• 21:32
  When I get in a tough spot, there are certain chapters of your book I go back to and I read and that was that blew my mind.
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  Because I was like, I'm not Beth Moore, I'm not like Priscilla Schiver.
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  Like I didn't have like the big depth theology back then.
• 21:48
  oh And I just was so touched that people would just see a story, see the scriptures attached to it, relate to it, and just feel like it was so worth their time to go through
• 22:03
  it over and over again.
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  That's God.
• 22:07
  That is God.
• 22:09
  So what are you doing these days?
• 22:10
  So you have all the big moments are past you.
• 22:13
  You've kind of got the LLC, you've got the nonprofit.
• 22:16
  How are you walking in faith every day today?
• 22:19
  What does that look like?
• 22:20
  Do you have a routine?
• 22:22
  yeah, so right now we're still in the midst of building out both for me, a private coaching practice.
• 22:29
  And that's the joy of my life to walk alongside women who would like the one-on-one attention and to see them light up when they figure out that they are definitely in the
• 22:41
  right place at the right time to see them align.
• 22:45
  um
• 22:46
  what they have in a way that's going to be impactful and then just start running it is so great.
• 22:51
  And then with the nonprofit, we had started a group coaching cohort program in Africa.
• 22:58
  It was an easier way to transition the information.
• 23:00
  They don't do like online memberships and stuff like that.
• 23:03
  But we have taken at this point 14 women through a six month entrepreneurial training.
• 23:09
  10 of them were in the last cohort and we're getting ready in July.
• 23:13
  I'll be going back to Nairobi to host the conference and celebrate these women who are now more foundationally solid in building their businesses.
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  And so to see that what's gonna happen is a ripple effect.
• 23:26
  And that's what gets me up and gets me going every morning.
• 23:28
  It makes me do the administrative stuff that needs to get done, the social media, all the things and then.
• 23:34
  To spend time with people coaching them on whatever level whether it's the one-on-one in the private practice or our ten people in Africa that we're trying to finish up the cohort
• 23:44
  with like all of these things are just um Heartwarming and it makes me get up every morning and want to do it all over again And so that's what we're kind of doing.
• 23:55
  We're balancing the two.
• 23:57
  We're growing them both out
• 23:59
  And we're just trying to launch these women out because of the, I'm sorry, I got off track because of the ripple effect.
• 24:05
  Sorry, I get excited when I think about them.
• 24:07
  The ripple effect that occurs because what happens with all of the women that I am either coaching or working with in group coaching is they have something inside of them that they
• 24:16
  know they can go back and they're gonna change their community because they are developing these businesses, ministries and nonprofits, not necessarily for profitable gain, although
• 24:26
  that's good.
• 24:27
  but because they have a gap that they see that they want to fill and knowing that we're creating ripple effects, not only here in the States, but in Africa is just more than I
• 24:38
  could have asked for.
• 24:40
  And it's extremely humbling.
• 24:42
  And I'm so glad that I was able to make the shift to lean in and to let him have what was in my hand because what he has given me in his hand is beyond what I could have ever
• 24:54
  imagined.
• 24:56
  Yeah, that's awesome.
• 24:58
  And yeah, the ripple effect is so impactful.
• 25:01
  We don't think about just the one little thing.
• 25:02
  And I that's true with even what we do in our daily lives.
• 25:05
  Like even just the one small sin that we have or the one good deed that we do, all of it ripples and impacts so many people.
• 25:14
  And I just don't think that we realize the magnitude of that in our daily lives unless we sit down and really think about it.
• 25:22
  Yeah, I am really big and this probably comes from my John Maxwell influence.
• 25:26
  I am really big on legacy and we need to realize that we are writing a legacy not just in the future, but every day.
• 25:34
  And what do we want our legacies to be and will they glorify God?
• 25:39
  And so I think about that on a daily basis that when it gets hard, when it gets tough, when I want to quit, when I want to just pull out my hair because it's not going the way I
• 25:48
  want it to go.
• 25:50
  I have to look at the legacy that I'm leaving in that ripple effect and just all the ways and the joy that it's bringing to know that women here who would not have access to the
• 26:03
  quality coaching that I'm offering now have access because I get that.
• 26:07
  came out of a period where in those new years, uh zero to three year entrepreneurs don't have access to as many high level coaches as everybody else.
• 26:19
  And we know within the first five years it's critical to their survival, whether we're going to survive or not.
• 26:25
  You got to get past those first five years to help them through that process and give them that ability to have access to coaching is wonderful.
• 26:34
  And then of course in Africa, it is not only that, but pulling people right out of the jaws of poverty.
• 26:41
  Like these are women who are on the poverty line.
• 26:44
  um It's a different situation.
• 26:46
  If you don't have money to pay your rent your doors get locked.
• 26:49
  There's no like renters Agreement, there's no like there's no safety net as we say in Africa, right?
• 26:57
  So you you have to have yourself together in order to survive and so m It's just all of that it's like making these big significant um Heartfelt moves that are gonna help make
• 27:13
  more significant heartfelt moves along the way.
• 27:18
  Yeah.
• 27:19
  Awesome.
• 27:19
  Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 27:20
  I do want to ask you one last question.
• 27:22
  I'm sorry I didn't prep you for this, but what is your Bible verse that you're walking through this year?
• 27:27
  wow.
• 27:27
  This year.
• 27:28
  Oh, that's a good one.
• 27:30
  Let me just say my life verse right now should be the one that I should say is Luke one forty five.
• 27:37
  And that is Elizabeth speaking over Mary.
• 27:39
  And it says, and blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
• 27:45
  And honestly, that is always my light.
• 27:49
  uh
• 27:52
  that I'm walking toward because all of this is yet to be fulfilled.
• 27:56
  I know there's more.
• 27:57
  And so I really lean into that one.
• 28:01
  beautiful.
• 28:02
  Well thank you Elaine so much for being here today and sharing your story of trials and tribulations and the good that's come out of it.
• 28:09
  I really appreciate you being here.
• 28:11
  Thank you so much.
• 28:12
  Thank you for having me